June 2, 2026 • 56 mins
The prolific screenwriter, David Silverman, is back on StoryBeat for the second time. David has written for stars like Robin Williams, Bob Newhart, Rosanne Barr, Drew Carey, Sarah Silverman, Pee Wee Herman, and others. David has co-created 5 TV series and written and produced on more than 30 different series, including hugely popular shows like Newhart, Roseanne, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Alice, Dilbert, and South Park.
David co-created The Wild Thornberrys, which spawned two feature films: The Wild Thornberrys Movie and Rugrats Go Wild. Other feature films David has co-written include Stepping Out, Purple Haze, and The Flintstones Movie.
As a Stanford-educated psychotherapist, David’s treated and coached aspiring writers, many of whom have gone on to sell their own feature films and TV shows.
David and his wife Rogena, who is also a writer and editor, recently collaborated on their excellent book, How to Be a Rockstar Screenwriter, which contains some of the best advice I’ve read on the mindset that ambitious screen and TV writers need to succeed. Unlike most books on screenwriting, How to Be a Rockstar Screenwriter is filled with solid advice for those dealing with the challenging psychological issues facing writers who wish to work in Hollywood, as well as for those who are already successful screenwriters. I urge anyone hoping to make it as a professional writer in Hollywood to check out this very wise book.
For the record, David and I have known one another for many decades, connected by our mutual friend, the late, great Steve Sustarsic. David and Steve were a well-known, highly successful sit-com writing team. They wrote and produced hundreds of TV scripts together.
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Steve Cu (00:00):
On today's Story Beat,
(00:02):
You need to, assemble, uh, some people in yourlife who are good writers and usually that could
be a person in the screenwriting class that you'retaking. It really helps to have a mentor in this
business send your script around too. But if youtake their class and you show them really good
work, then, uh, you're likely to impress somebodywho can really help you in your career.
(00:25):
This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast forthe creative mind. Story explores how masters of
creativity develop and produce brilliant worksthat people everywhere love and admire. So join
us, uh, as we discover how talented creators findsuccess in the
(00:46):
worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here nowis your host, Steve Cuden.
Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We're comingto you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Well, I'm delighted that my guesttoday, the prolific screenwriter David Silverman,
(01:07):
is back on Story Beat for the second time. Davidhas written for stars like Robin Williams, Bob
Newhart, Roseanne Barr, Drew Carey, SarahSilverman, Pee Wee Herman and others. David has co
created five TV series and written and produced onmore than 30 different series, including hugely
popular shows like Newhart, Roseanne, One Day at aTime, the Jeffersons, Alice Dilbert and South
(01:33):
Park. David co created the Wild Thornberrys, whichspawned two feature films, the Wild Thornberrys
Movie and Rugrats Go Wild. Other feature filmsDavid has co written include Stepping Out, Purple
Haze and the Flintstones Movie. As a Stanfordeducated psychotherapist, David's treated and
coached aspiring writers, many of whom who've goneon to sell their own feature films and TV shows.
(01:57):
David and his wife Rogina, who is also a writerand editor, recently collaborated on their
excellent book, how to Be a Rock StarScreenwriter, which contains some of the best
advice I've read on the mindset that ambitiousscreen and TV writers need to succeed. Unlike most
books on screenwriting, how to Be a Rock StarScreenwriter is filled with solid advice for those
(02:19):
dealing with the challenging psychological issuesfacing writers who wish to work in Hollywood as
well as for those who are already successfulscreenwriters. I urge anyone hoping to make it as
a professional writer in Hollywood to check outthis very wise book. David and I have known one
another for many decades, connected by our mutualfriend, the late great Steve Sstarsik. David and
(02:40):
Steve were a well known, highly successful sitcomwriting team. They wrote and produced hundreds of
TV scripts together. So for all those reasons andmany more, it's a real joy for me to welcome back
to Story Beat the screenwriter, author, therapistand and My friend, David Silverman. David, it's
great to have you on the show for the second time.
David Si (03:00):
Yeah, good to be here.
Well, it's great to see you. So, uh, let's take alook at where you are today. Uh, you already did
one show and we talked about your history, sowe're going to skip over that a little bit, as I
typically do at the beginning of almost everyshow. But at this point in your life and career,
do you now think of yourself as primarily ascreenwriter, a therapist, a nonfiction book
(03:24):
writer, or. Or are they all of a piece?
Interesting? Uh, yeah, I think it changesdepending on what day it is. You know, right now
I'm not working on a book or a script, so I'm atherapist.
You're a therapist because you're not working onthis, but when you are, then you're that. Right.
So I do have some kind of. I juggle some ideas.
(03:47):
Screenplay. Um. Ideas.
Steve Cuden (03:48):
Mhm.
And, um, TV pilot. I did work on a TV pilotrecently. I feel like I was a writer.
So you're still working on scripts, just not sortof every day like you did in the past.
Right. And not getting paid for it is the otherkey?
Well, you, you and, um, you know, 500,000 otherwriters in Los Angeles. So, uh, let me ask you,
from a psychological standpoint, why do you thinkit is that we tell each other's stories? What's
(04:13):
the purpose of storytelling in the psychologicalsense?
Yeah, no, I think it's very integral to, you know,how we communicate, how, how people learn.
Probably cavemen were telling each other storiesas they wrote those little pictures of buffalo and
things.
Hieroglyphics.
Hieroglyphics, right. Um, yeah, I think. And Ithink there's also a need to be heard, you know,
(04:38):
that I feel when I'm doing psychotherapy, peopleneed to be heard. You know, that's a very big
deal. And I try to be there when they vent orrant.
Do you think that that was true for you too,throughout your career, that you needed to be
heard?
Um, yeah, you know, so, um, I did start out likebefore Steve and everything, as I used to memorize
(05:01):
Bill Cosby, uh, and recite them back to my BoyScout friends who were like a captured audience
that had to listen to me do why is their heir,
you know, to fill up volleyballs, David.
And, uh, yeah. And then When I was 12, my brotherand I, we used to listen to this, um, program,
(05:22):
Loman and Barkley. Uh, it was like a local LAshow. And they were funny. They had this contest,
Loman and barkley lemonade. They said, uh, theywanted everybody to, you know, anybody who wanted
to enter the cocktail for loan and barkleylemonade. And so my brother and I, we had an old
woollen sack, uh, tape recorder, you know, reel toreel. And we, uh, did, uh. I think we just. We
(05:46):
flushed the toilet, and we, uh, said, lemon andbarkley lemonade cleans like a white tornado or
something like that. And those guys liked it. Andthey had us come into their studio, like in
Hollywood, and rerecord it with them. And, um, soright away, I got the idea that maybe I could do
(06:07):
something with this humor.
How old were you at this time?
12? Yeah, my brother was four years younger. Hewas like eight.
So that was your first real taste of show businessthen, right?
Right. Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, I used toshow up at engineer Bill when he showed up at a
sharp shop, like, uh, a Kmart or something. And myparents would take me to meet him. He was a TV
(06:33):
personality. Uh, but, yeah, this is the first timeI actually created something people paid
attention. Probably got it in my head that thiswas going to be easy street, you know?
Yeah, it's totally easy street, isn't it? That'swhy you have so many clients.
David Silverman (06:50):
Right?
So, you know the old line, the famous line is,dying is easy, but comedy is hard.
It is hard. Yeah, that's very true.
I know it's almost impossible to define, butyou've now had also not only years of writing it,
but years of talking to people about, I assume, acertain amount of comedy writing can you think of
(07:12):
or say what you think makes comedy so difficult todo? Well?
Hmm. M. That's a very good question. I did noticethat, um, some of the smartest people make the
best comedy. Writers like Al Jean and Mike Reesewent to Harvard, and I think Al Jean was a
mathematician. You know, he's like. He majored inmath. And I was kind of like that, too. Kind of a
(07:35):
geek.
So we should let the listeners know who Al Jeanand Mike Reese are. They wrote on the Simpsons
forever, right?
Yeah, they were, uh. They ran the Simpsons for along time. Yeah.
So why do you think that being smart is. Thenmakes you better at figuring out how to write
comedy?
Yeah, it seems like there has to be like a. Adelay in the thought process. And being clever,
(07:59):
you kind of figure out how to be one step ahead ofthe audience. And once it's that little step where
they catch up with you, I think, is where thelaugh that's recognition oh, yeah, yeah. That's
kind of clever.
Someone who I am not remembering at this momentonce said that comedy is tragedy plus time.
Da (08:17):
Yeah, Lenny Bruce said that.
Steve (08:18):
Yeah, Lenny Bruce, yeah.
He was among a lot. Probably a lot of people.
Well, it seems like that there's a certain degreeof truth to that. I mean, I don't think it's true
in every case, but a lot of truth to it.
Right. And there's a certain amount of. Sometimesthe biggest laughs come from making fun of
somebody. Right. So it's a. There's a little bitof, like, uh, twisting the knife. Sometimes it's
(08:41):
you're being mean, but you're kind of covering upthe meanness by being clever. Some of the biggest
laughs come from doing that. Like, you know, uh,what do they call that they roast and star,
Everybody gets up and makes fun of.
Right. It's a little bit of schadenfreude. Uh, Ithink.
Yeah. Okay, that's a good term.
All right. So why did you become a therapist afterall those years of writing comedy?
(09:05):
So, you know, I had always wanted to be atherapist when I went to. So I went to a big
college, Stanford University, with the best. Thebest psychology department in the country. And I
majored in psychology.
Stev (09:17):
As an undergrad or a grad?
David Silverma (09:18):
As an undergrad.
Steve Cuden (09:20):
As an undergrad.
And then I did go back to a, uh, differentuniversity and get my master's in. But, uh, you
know, so I was. I had honors in psychology and,uh, from a big deal university. My parents paid a
fortune for me to go there, and they're verydisappointed when I became a comedy writer.
You probably made at least as much money as acomedy writer as you ever would have as a
(09:42):
therapist, right?
Yeah. Therapists don't make a lot of money. Yeah,that's true. They do these studies on masters, so
you get a master's in clinicals. It's one of theleast paying. Like you'd rather be an engineer or,
you know, or a chemist or anything else. So itdoesn't pay very well.
So at what point. Going back to when you startedto get into the business, at what point. The
(10:06):
business of Hollywood. At what point did you thinkto yourself, I am pretty good as a writer of this
comedy thing. Was there a moment where you had
that epiphany, you know? Um, so I also tookcreative writing classes from this guy who wrote
presumed.
Scott Turow.
Scott Turow. And he. He was a TA at Stanford, so.
(10:27):
Before he was famous.
Wow.
So I was hanging out with guys who listened toFireside Theater Records. And I don't know if you
know what that is.
Do you know that Phil Proctor has been on thisshow twice?
That's right. I was very impressed to see that.
Yeah, yeah, I know Firestine very well.
So we used to. Of course you're smoking pot in adorm room. And one of my friends designed his dorm
(10:50):
room. He put foil up on all four walls of his dormroom.
Okay.
He said it was the. So it was designed as theinside of a hash pipe.
That sounds like a Steve Sostarsic idea, doesn'tit?
Yeah. So I used to hang out with Steve likepeople, even before I met Steve.
Right.
(11:11):
And uh, for the listeners that don't
know, Steve Sistarsik was about the most out therehuman being I've ever known. And I'm sure David
will agree with me. Steve was on another planetwhen it came to thinking.
Yeah, yeah. Which made him an original thinker.
Very much so.
Very personally bad ideas, but sometimes really
difficult to deal with. But he was a, uh, trulyunique writer of comedy. I mean he was unique.
(11:36):
Yeah. And you know, fortunately he had made someinroads. Sent a couple of his scripts to people on
the new art show, for example. And they weren'tready to help him back then, but we wrote a couple
of specs that were a little bit better.
And so was there a moment then where you thought,yeah, you know what, I am trying this, I think I'm
(11:56):
good at it, but I am actually good enough. Wasthere that moment.
Wrote a couple funny short stories, plays while Iwas still an undergraduate. And then when I
graduated after that, I think the summer I decidedI was going to make a film, I took some film
classes. Dan for also. And then, uh, that kind ofchanged my uh, trajectory quite a bit because
(12:18):
instead of applying to grad, uh, school inpsychology, I applied to USC film school and I
made a short film during the summer with my sisterand some other people. And it was, it was funny
enough, it made us laugh. And I sent the script toUSC and they, and they accepted me. And that's
where I met Steve and we started working moreseriously on commercial.
(12:41):
Indeed. Well, that's where I met Steve too, was atusc. I met him in a playwriting class in the
theater department.
Right. Yeah. And uh, you've turn. It turned out tobe pretty good at that. Playwriting.
Yeah, that's turned out to be okay. Yeah.
David Sil (12:53):
Yeah, not bad at all.
Uh, so I am curious, you have this background inundergrad as a therapist or taking a therapy
Degree. Therapist degree. What is that degree?
What would that be?
At that point it was just a psychology degree.
Oh, a psychology degree. Do you think that thatdegree has had an impact or had an impact on the
(13:15):
way that you thought about characters and writingthem?
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think um, like some,some of our mentors had told us to write about the
characters, get into some depth.
Steve Cuden (13:26):
Mhm.
And I had that interest already from, you know,being a psychology student. And the other thing
about my family was we were in therapy, familytherapy from back when I was 12 and on Loman and
Barclay. I was, I was in family therapy with apsychiatrist and my brother had OCD and uh, so you
(13:47):
know, he was like germ phobic and all. He had allthese terrible symptoms. But the family therapy
worked and he became like a functional member ofsociety and I was impressed by that. So I think
that's where I got the idea that maybe a valuableservice to render would be a therapist.
Correct me if I'm wrong, part of learningpsychology and dealing in psychology is
(14:09):
archetypes, human archetypes, characterarchetypes. Right, that, that had to have had an
influence on the development of script work foryou. I assum.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I spent a lot of timestudying the archetypes and how they figure into
movies.
Can you think of an example of something that youused in your writing that was from some sort of a
(14:29):
psychological archetype?
Uh, let's see. Well, uh, the jester archetype isuh, there are certain characters that work well in
comedy. For example, uh, the greedy character likethe George Jefferson, the kind of, even a bigoted
character like Archie Bunker and things like. Soyou see that in, in those Jungians. Um, I had some
(14:54):
chapters which I didn't include involved, um, inthis book about archetypes, uh, that work that are
the most commercial archetypes to pattern yourscreenplays after. Um, and that's how partly how
the, the book came about is. When I startedpracticing, I had a private practice. I was
working with a lot of writers. I needed some sortof publicity. So I, I wrote for a, A, um, big um,
(15:19):
website called Psych Central. Right. And theyreached hundreds of thousands of people. It's kind
of like Psychology Today. I showed them somesamples of, you know, some ideas of blogs and
they, I, I didn't get paid for it, but they let mewrite a weekly article, a weekly blog, and I
probably wrote about 84 of them and a bunch ofthem had to do with the archetypes and what sells
(15:42):
and that sort of thing.
But you were right. I think the listeners shouldpay attention to what you just said. A moment ago.
You wrote 84 or so articles for this publicationonline, um, and got paid nothing. But you did that
as what a marketer would call a loss leader. Youwere doing that in order to entice people to you.
Correct?
Right. And in the back of my head I had the ideathat I would put this book together, uh, using
(16:06):
those chapters. So I didn't use all of them. Ithought some of them were better than others.
Well, we're going to talk about the book in justtwo seconds, but I have one more question I'm
curious about, uh, screenplays in particular playsand screenplays. Not always books, but books too.
Novels and so on usually require a singularcharacter that the audience, the reader, whoever
(16:29):
it is, can then relate to in some way throughoutthe story. That would be your protagonist from a
psychological perspective. Why do you thinkstorytelling requires that singular character?
Yeah, I think that people need to identify withsomething in their script and that's probably the
easiest way to do it. Want to be like, mhm. A goodmodel, like a hero.
(16:51):
So the audience has to identify with thatcharacter.
Right, right. And then you read like Save the Catand different books about how you want to make
that character like Ripley in the movie AlienSaves the cat. So that's where. That's a good book
too and has a lot of good advice.
It's one of a, ah, number of pretty good books outthere. I would, I would highly urge people to
(17:12):
check out Beating um, Hollywood was written byyours truly. But yes, that's just another kind of
book. So let's talk about how to be a rock starscreenwriter. Tell the listeners what the purpose
of the book is. Why did you, you, you wrote it?
Why did you write the book? What did you hope toexpress that people would get from it in total?
Right. So I, I was writing these um, blogs forpsych central and um, I was trying to come up with
(17:40):
good advice for screenwriters and advice that sortof touched on psychology in one way or another
because it was a psychology website, it wasn't ascreenwriter. But uh, those chapters seem like
they should be helpful to somebody and if I putthem into a book, maybe they, they could learn
some of the lessons that I learned the hard way.
Mhm.
(18:00):
That would give them a leg up.
Well, of course I've read it and there's noquestion it's very helpful. And as I told you,
after I read it, I wish that I had had that bookbefore I started my career, because I would have
found it very useful. It would have taken some ofthe psychological burdens off of me, where you
just don't understand what's going on, especiallyin the beginning of a career.
(18:23):
Career, Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of sortof myths about screenwriting. A lot of people
expect that they're going to write one screenplayand sell
it and make millions of dollars.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, uh, that's what those are,some of the myths. You know, another thing that
you wouldn't expect to learn is that the writeris, like, lower on the totem pole than you would
(18:44):
imagine.
You're saying that the writer is on the totem poleat all?
David (18:48):
Yeah. Right. Just barely.
Steve (18:50):
Barely on the totem pole.
Yeah. So I tried. So I tried to do it in the mostin the book. Try to be as, um, encouraging as
possible. There's a lot of bad news in thisbusiness.
Yeah. But you express it in which you will presentit as. This is what the difficulty is. And here's
(19:11):
how to think about it or overcome it.
Right, Right. For example, when people start outwriting their first spec script, which is how you
get into the business, you have to have a sampleto show around. And somebody did a study, and they
said that usually it takes about eight screenplaysbefore you're at the level where you sell one. And
so, you know, it could be very depressing, uh, tosit down and start to write your second, third.
(19:34):
You know, realize that this is not going to sellfor sure. I point out in the book, and this is an
example of me being encouraging, even if you don'tsell one of those screenplays, having a good
sample can get you a meeting with the producer.
And where the producer. Producer could say, I likethe style. I'd like to hear some of your ideas,
some other ideas.
(19:54):
And, um, it again, is going back to this conceptof a lost leader. You're creating something that
may not sell, but in fact, it might lead to otherthings that do sell.
Right. So I like to point out in the book thatmost. Like, the reason most people give up on
screenwriting is because they get all theserejections. And when you think about guys like
(20:16):
Lawrence Kasdan, whose seven scripts before theygot sold anything, you wonder, why were they
different? Why did they not give up? Uh, but ifyou realize that you got to write this sample
script, it's your only way in. You have to writesomething, and it has to be pretty great,
actually.
It has to be. You have a chapter in the Bookthat's about it has to be better than. Okay,
(20:37):
explain what you mean.
Right. So a lot of people will write a script thathas dialogue and character, beginning, middle and
end, and it feels very successful to them.
Steve Cuden (20:47):
Mhm.
You have to really wow the producers. You have tobe super, uh, impressive to get them to want to
work with you and pay you.
So writers that are listening to this right noware asking themselves, okay, David, tell me how to
wow people. And I'm going to guess you don't knowhow to wow people except to do it yourself.
Right. Uh, well, here's one key, and I think Ihave a chapter called the Zen of Screenwriting
(21:12):
Growth. You need to, um, assemble, uh, some peoplein your life who are good writers who can read
your script. And usually that could be a person inthe screenwriting class that you're taking. It
really helps to have a mentor in this business,someone who's. So, for example, Steve Starsek and
I took classes from Lorenzo Music and Sam Locke.
(21:33):
And these were guys Lorenzo Music had createdRhoda. Uh, Sam Locke had written for all in the
Family. We took their writing classes. We werelooking for mentors. So the other way you look for
a mentor is to send your script around toimportant people who probably don't have the time.
But if you take their class and you show themreally good work, then, uh, you're likely to
(21:56):
impress somebody who can really help you in yourcareer.
And if they don't actually hire you, they canactually give you advice and point you in the
right direction or maybe even introduce you tosomebody.
They did, yeah. So Lorenzo Music was good at that.
And, uh, he introduced us to some of his, uh, someof the writers he worked with. Like he was, um, on
Taxi.
And wasn't he also famously the voice of Garfieldthe cat?
(22:19):
Yeah, yeah. And we got to know him so well that hewould tell us stories about it. So he would get
paid for 15 minutes of doing voices. Uh, he wouldalso do commercials and things too, but he would
get paid a fortune. And he kind of bragged aboutall he had to do was go in and do 15 minutes.
Well, you and I both know from doing animationscript that, uh, the animation actors who are the
(22:42):
best voice actors in the world, they frequently,they come in, they do a whole episode. It only
takes them an hour or two, sometimes a littlelonger, but often it's only an hour or two and
they get paid quite well over time for them.
Yeah, yeah. And some of them do like ten voices.
Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. So do you consider ASam Locke and Lorenzo Music to be examples of a
(23:06):
rock, uh, star screenwriter.
Yeah. I think anybody who can pay the bills is therock star.
That's your definition of rock star, is that youcan pay the bills?
Yes, as long as you can. So not many people make aliving just by screenwriter. Most screenwriters
have, like, second jobs and things.
So now you probably as a psychotherapist, had younever been a screenwriter, you would not have been
(23:32):
able to write this book. You needed to have bothsides to write it.
Uh, yeah, because it forced me to look at thepsychological side of things. Some of the advice
is just about writing. But there's books like Savethe Cat that can give you better advice on how to
put 110 pages together.
Well, your book is not about, uh, writing ascreenplay. It's about the, um, mental management
(23:58):
of being a screenwriter and dealing with Hollywoodand all of the things that come with it. I would
not turn to how to be a rock star screenwriter toknow how many pages should be in a scene. That's
not what's right.
Yes, it's not for that. It's, uh, to help you makedecisions that will get you in a career in the
screenwriting, which is not an easy. No, probablynever was.
(24:21):
No, it really never was. Although I think as youlook back, it probably was easier in the old days
than it is today.
Yeah, I think so. The 80s part of that is becausestreaming has changed the nature of things. They
have smaller writing rooms.
Right. Do you think that, um, there are bigpsychological differences between writing a
(24:43):
screenplay and maybe writing a novel or a shortstory? Uh, does this book apply to that?
This has practical advice on how to break in toscreenwriting. Whereas novels. Yeah. It's not as
hard to publish a novel as it is to get ascreenplay produced by a million miles. Right. But
(25:04):
I do kind of recommend to writers to get a tasteof some success. And so if you're writing
screenplays and you've written 11 of them, and youmight try novelizing one of them and you might see
if you get some success there.
Well, it's become. I think it's still quite truethat, uh, it's somewhat easier if you're an
(25:26):
unknown screenwriter. It's somewhat easier topublish a novel and sell that concept to Hollywood
because it's an existing work versus writing anoriginal screenplay that nobody knows who you are.
Yeah. Intellectual property is a much bigger dealtoday than it was back in the 80s. Uh, yeah. Uh,
(25:48):
studios are less risk. Uh, they want to see somesuccess already. If you Have a novel that sold
50,000 copies or is on the New York Timesbestseller list, you got a pretty good shot at
getting a movie made.
Well, if not the movie made, at least you get anentree where people will talk to you, they'll meet
(26:10):
with you and so on. And that just like a specmight get you where you want to go.
Yeah, no, definitely, if you can. Of coursethey're going to look at how many books sold.
Well, of course if you sold a hundred books,that's a lot less interesting than a thousand or
ten thousand books.
Yeah. So. But um, yeah, it's, it's a way to go.
Also writing plays is another way to get somesuccess. And so I, I feel like, you know, that a
(26:36):
lot of the psychology behind writing is how do youstick with it for 20 years? And so having some
success, even if you're, you have a one act playor something with six characters, um, and you see
it produced and you get a good feeling about it,it keeps you going. So that's the kind of
psychology of it.
(26:56):
So part of your book is about how do you keepgoing, which you're just talking about now, how do
you keep the mental, uh, capacity to deal withbasically dry patches where you're not working at
all or not working for pay. That's the real key.
Right, right. And some other aspects are like whatkind of jobs can you get in the business? So I was
(27:19):
a story analyst for a studio. And that's the jobwhere you write coverage, which is a brief summary
of a script or a book.
It's like a book report, but it's not, it's alittle more than that.
Right. And you also grade it, you grade
dialogues, uh, characters, action characters, allthat.
So every day I would pick up a, um, and this was,uh, I was working as a bartender at that time. I
(27:43):
go to the studio, pick up a script or a novel. Iwould go to my night job, which was Tenny Bar, and
I had the kind of bartending job where uh, it waskind of behind the scenes and the cocktail
waitresses came in. So I didn't interact with thepublic. So I had a lot of free time. So I'd read
these things and I'd go home and write thecoverage. So every day I got a new one. So that
(28:06):
was a good experience in terms of learning storystructure and things like that. Then another
really good way to go is to get a job as awriter's assistant on a TV show. So for example,
uh, Steve and I worked on a couple Shows where wehad um, the kind of writer's assistant who was in
the room as uh, like you have a room full full ofwriters on a sitcom, like 10 writers and there's
(28:32):
one guy who keeps track of all the pitches. And sowe had these uh, two guys, uh, Eric Shaw was one
of them. So it was common to give um, a script tothe writer's assistant, just like one script as a
reward and they get, you know, paid $20,000 forthat. But it also could kick start your career. So
(28:56):
with Eric, it helped him start a career inwriting, uh, animation mostly. And he won an Emmy
for SpongeBob. And the other, uh, writer assistantwe had went on to write for Dexter and he. So we
gave him that first script.
Well, that's the big foot in the door. You got tohave a little foot in the door as becoming the
(29:20):
assistant. And then the bigfoot is when somebody,you've done good work and people like you and they
award you with a script like that. That's it. Thatis a, uh, that's one of the major ways that people
make that leap.
Right, right. Yes, one of the best ways.
How does somebody go about becoming a writer'sassistant?
Writer's assistant. Well, it does help to write agood spec, because they want to know that, you
(29:42):
know, screenplay for and all this. And it doesn'thurt if you're good at writing jokes, if it's
sitcom they're applying to because, you know, atsome points Eric would pitch a joke, then we would
say, that's pretty good. We put that in, put thatin the script. So he wasn't even on staff as a
paid writer. He was getting jokes in.
And so. All right, so as you're writing the book,how did you figure out you had all these articles
(30:06):
and you knew you were going to compile them intosome form here, uh, how did you start to do that?
Did you sit down and lay them all out on a tableand decide they were in this order? How did you
put the book together?
Yeah, I think I broke it into sections.
Well, you do you have it in section productivityhacks, uh, how to survive Hollywood, those kinds
(30:28):
of sections. Career strategies.
Yeah, how to survive Hollywood had to do with likesome writers. There's sort of writer's
personality. We tend to be very introspective andum, and we tend to sit in front of a typewriter.
You sit in front of a typewriter. What year isthis, David?
Yeah, well, at first it was a typewriter, butyeah.
(30:50):
Yes it was.
Yeah. IBM's electric too. That's. We're on One dayat a time.
I have many typewriters that sit in a. Sit in aroom. They don't do anything.
Yeah. Uh, yeah. So the breaking in, uh, writersjobs. The best day jobs for writers. And I, in the
book, I talk about some famous writers and what,you know, what they did. I do. I did a lot of
(31:10):
research on what famous writers. For example, twowell known writers. Um, Stephen King and, uh,
Aaron Sorkin.
Aaron Sorkin, sure.
They've talked about their, um. They wrote theirfirst scripts using cocaine and, uh, it fueled
them through the night.
I assume you do not recommend that.
Uh, yeah, it's too expensive for one thing.
(31:32):
Expensive.
It can also lead to some bad habits.
Steve Cud (31:37):
Yeah. Like addiction.
I think he had to go into rehab. But, um. Butyeah, it's interesting to know how people did it.
So I do break that down and then I have. I breakit down in terms of older writers. So a lot of
people are older, like 40, 50, and they want toget into the business. I recommend they write
screenplays. Uh, TV is a young man's game. Youknow, your 20s and your 30s is what they're
(32:02):
looking for.
S (32:03):
Why is it a young man's game?
Because it's, uh. There's a few reasons for that,but. A few reasons. One is because it's a group
thing. There's such a thing as a writer's roomwhere they hire 10 writer. The, the guys who run
shows might be in their 30s and they tend to hirepeople younger than them. They don't want people
with more experience above them.
They don't want to be shown up.
(32:24):
Exactly. So. So if you're, if you're under 40, Ithink it's. You want to write a TV pilot, which is
what the, uh, the way you get into writingtelevision is to write us pet. Which means it's
the first episode of a new series. Back when Steveand I broke in, we wrote a taxi spec and a Barney
Mill. It shows the people who are hiring that youknow how to handle character and write, uh, a
(32:49):
certain style and that sort of thing.
You write in the book about, um, why writersshould not worry about Hollywood stealing your
movie or story idea. Why is that?
Right. Because then if you just worry about thatall the time, you'll m. You'll be reluctant to
send your script out. It does happen sometimes.
It, uh.
But, uh, it's pretty rare though.
(33:11):
It's pretty rare. People are savvy and they knowthey might get sued.
Well, and also if you have Written something andyou've shown it to other people, there's sort of
great evidence. And if you then register it withthe WGA and copyright it, well, you don't really
need to copyright it. The WGA is sufficient to sayit exists.
Right, Right. So, yeah, you should cover yourself.
(33:33):
I do cover that in another chapter on copyrightand how to get the Writers Guild to, uh, register
your work as you're writing.
Why is it necessary that one be. Which is the wayit works in Hollywood. Why should your story be
familiar but original?
Uh, yes. So, um. Uh, the studios say we're lookingfor original screenplays. Right. They don't really
(33:59):
mean it. Uh, what they mean is, uh, so if you havea script that's a lot like Lethal Weapon, for
example, but you have a different relationshipbetween the two characters. Instead of having the,
uh, guy who wants to retire and the crazy guy, youcome up with a different buddy relationship. Uh,
(34:20):
and it seems like that's a good formula for, um,cop shows or for cop, uh, movies. Is the buddy cop
thing. There have been, like, 100 variations onit. If you can come up with an exciting new one.
For example, our. Our screenplay, Stepping Out. Wehave, uh. The witness in that screenplay is
(34:42):
agoraphobic, and so he's afraid to leave hishouse. And he's. He's in therapy, and he's
learning how to, uh, take baby steps. And so hetakes the. He, uh, gathers all his strength and he
crosses the street to the park. It's like aexperiment. And, uh, he unfortunately witnesses a
(35:04):
murder over there. And, um, he's interviewed by afemale cop who's kind of fearless. And it's a
little bit like Lethal Weapon, but it has thattwist. Anyway, we were able to sell that on the
pitch because it sounded original enough, butfamiliar. Right. So it's Lethal Weapon, except you
(35:24):
get a psycho and a, uh, female cop.
So they want an idea that is, uh. They know how tomarket it already. They know how to sell it, but
yet it's original in some way.
Right. So if you write a completely originalscreenplay, you know, it could be like a guy, um,
(35:44):
moving around on a chessboard or, you know, beingshot into space and. And, uh, living in the
stratosphere for 100 years. But that's toooriginal.
It can't be something that they don't know how tosell.
Exactly. So if they can compare it to a successfulfeature or successful TV show, then you're in
(36:08):
business.
Now, in that line, there's nothing that's betterthan something for selling a script than coming up
with what's called a high concept idea. What is ahigh concept idea?
It's something you can sell on a pitch. And that'swhat happened with Stepping Out.
So sometimes a high concept can be right from thetitle. The title can be a high concept. I'll give
(36:32):
you the best example I know of a high concepttitle. Snakes on a Plane.
Yeah. Right. Or Splash. Uh, no, that wasn't thetitle really, but Splash was a guy falls in love
with a mermaid. Right?
Yeah, There you go. You know, Spielberg has beenknown to say that he knows he has a story he can
work with when he can hold it in the palm of hishand. Meaning that it's. You can say state the
(36:55):
idea basically in one sentence or a few words,right?
David Silverman (36:59):
Yeah.
Steve Cuden (37:00):
High concept.
Yeah. There's something known as the elevatorpitch, which is like if you're happen to be on an
elevator with Spielberg and you've got like 20seconds to pitch, uh, if you can sell them on
something. And that's what happened with SteppingOut. Well, we had to set up a meeting with a
producer who looked for high concept stuff. And Ithink we pitched 10 ideas, but that one really
(37:22):
grabbed him. We ended up pitching that, my wifeand I. That too. Uh, he took us around to all
these studios. We pitched to some, uh, big shotdirectors. The guy who directed Lethal Weapon,
actually, we went to his house.
That's Dick Donner.
Dick Donner, yeah, we went to his house.
And so you're the ideal person to ask aboutcollaboration. You collaborated on the book with
(37:43):
Regina, you collaborated on Stepping out withRogina, but you spent years and years and years
collaborating with Steve Sistarsik. Decades. Um,what is it that makes a collaboration work?
Yeah, that's very tricky. Well, you have to beable to get along with the person. And with Steve,
sometimes that was difficult.
I wouldn't have any idea, David. Yeah, Steve was adifficult person sometimes. Yeah, but I think, I
(38:10):
think I'm a difficult person. And I don't know youthat well, but I'm imagining you have your own
quirks.
Of course. Yeah, yeah. We had differentapproaches. You know, early on, uh, we lived, uh,
in Orange county, both of us, and he lived closerto the beach and I lived in La Habra and there was
a Dunkin Donuts and. But halfway in between, andwe would meet there like every day and work on a
(38:35):
script. It worked out. It actually worked outpretty well. Um, so proximity, but also having the
same taste that can really break, um, you know,one person's Always thinking in terms of, um, very
broad comedy or something, and the other person'smore witty or something like that.
It's very helpful if you are on the same page asto what you're trying to achieve that goal.
(38:57):
Right. So if you can pitch something, a joke thatwould, you know, we had a pretty good
relationship. We had a rule that. Which I wouldrecommend for all partnerships, and I do like
partnerships. Another reason for that is you get.
Get through the low points in the career easierbecause you have someone to talk to and, you know,
bitch among.
(39:19):
Isn't it also helpful in comedy writing that youhave someone to bounce comedy off of?
Yeah. So comedy writing, a lot of it's done outloud, and a lot of times you test how good a joke
is by saying it out loud. So two people, that'show you work. We had some variations where he
would write act one, and I would write act two,and then we would switch and rewrite acts, which
(39:40):
is, you know, it's a good way to do it too.
Did the two of you ever bump into issues when youdid that where somebody changed something and you
got into an argument over it? Did that happen foryou?
Yeah, we had a good rule for that, which Irecommend to partners, is that you both have to
agree. You like something to keep it.
It's one. In your case, it would be one of twovotes knocks it out, right?
(40:03):
Yeah. So that we use that, uh, that's not easybecause m. A lot of partnerships, you hear about
the person nagging and nagging. We have to putthat back in. That works. That works.
You talk about perfection. I love the chapter onperfection. Um, you say that perfection is
frequently the enemy of good enough. What is itabout people and perfection? You must deal with
(40:27):
that in your practice, I assume.
Yeah. So perfectionism can keep you from starting.
Vomit draft, for example, where, you know, youhave to be able to live with that. Uh, your first
draft is, you know, it's been called worse. Thisis one of the nicer things they say. But, yeah,
the first draft usually sucks. So people who have.
(40:49):
Have too much of a perfection issue. It's hard forthem to live with that. But again, like, uh, the
rewriting is the key to a lot of this being a goodscreenwriter and, um, getting better. Like that
whole chapter on the Zen of screenwriting growth.
You want to have a person you can ask, uh, who cangive you honest opinion on your. Tell you what's
(41:10):
up. One that what's not working and what's. Andthat, uh, if you have a Person like that in your
life, it's going to make your growth much more,like, fast. It's going to be faster. Uh, people
who don't learn like that, they just keep writingthe same script over and over and they don't get
better at it.
What do you tell writers that come in and complainthat they're blocked, they have writers block?
(41:32):
What do you, how do you help them?
Yeah, there's different kinds of blocks and, um, Ihave some chapters on that too. But like, uh, one
thing that helps me go back and read the scriptfrom the beginning and a lot of rewriting I do is
just reading it and then putting in a better joke.
This and that. Yeah, it's, it's, uh. Rewriting istricky, so you have to, you have to be willing to
(41:55):
do it, which means you have to be willing to comeup with a better idea.
You can't succeed in Hollywood for sure if you'renot willing to revise, rewrite, revise. Oh, yeah,
it's all about that.
Yeah. Yeah. When they bought Stepping out, uh,they had a whole bunch of notes for us and not all
of them were good.
So what do you do when you get lousy notes? How doyou handle it?
(42:16):
Yeah, well, you get better at that. Uh, but youcan't ignore notes because the people who are
giving you notes have the power to keep yourproject alive or not.
Right.
So you have to give them either a good reason whythe note, it conflicts with something else that's
going on. And you have to be very diplomatic abouthow you put it. You don't want to step on too many
(42:40):
toes.
If you're sitting in a room, if you're sitting ina room with a, uh, producer, uh, or a studio or
something like that, and somebody behind a desk isgiving you verbal notes, what is the best way to
handle that in the room?
Yes, that's how it usually happens. So if theyhave a good note you definitely want to make them
(43:02):
feel good about. Yeah, that's a wonderful idea.
You know, really lay it on thick. I, yeah, I thinkI can see how to make that work. And you have to
be willing to go back to the drawing board and doit. And that's, ah, sometimes you agree to things
and then you go, oh, my God, I can never do this.
And if they give you a really terrible note, youdon't want to say that to them either. You just
(43:24):
say that. Well, that kind of conflicts with otherthings that are going on in the script. Uh, but
I'll try, I'll try. To work it in one way that
I like to think about taking notes. And it's oneof the things I teach. I think the best way to
handle a note that makes no sense or is you thinkis going to be harmful, uh, or they clearly
(43:44):
haven't read something, uh, one of those ways todeal with it is to ask them a question, is to put
it back on them. That's just um, a technique thatI've used over time where I'll say, well, if I do
what you're suggesting, then this will happen andhow would you think I should best handle that? And
then you're sort of putting the ball back in theircourt.
(44:05):
Right, right. That's very smart.
And then they feel like they're contributing.
Right? Yeah, that's the key. Make them feel heard,you know, so that's. As a psychotherapist I have
to do that a lot.
All right, so you also, I assume, deal with a fairamount of, um, writers who have anxiety over their
career and their scripts and so on. What do yourecommend to clients who are feeling anxious? What
(44:30):
do you say to them?
Right. Well, there's, there's a whole range ofthings you can do. Um, you can recommend an
antidepressant which is good for anxiety. There'sseveral good ones. Um, the other thing to do is to
help them feel better about their work, which islike trying these things, like try to write this a
(44:52):
play and see it done and feel good about whatyou've done there.
So to get over anxiety is to get over anxiety,that is to, to, to do work, to do the work and
move along.
Right. And um, and give them options. Like forexample, this whole idea that even if you don't
sell your script, you know, it can get you ameeting, it can get you, right, an agent or a
(45:15):
manager.
Right.
And so, yeah, people become very disillusionedafter they get 10 rejections. That's par for the
course. 10 rejections is.
It's not only not unusual. I think most writersshould go into the business expecting it.
David Silverman (45:30):
Right.
So you can embrace it rather than feeling likeyou've been rejected.
Right. Yeah. I think I use the term take a longterm approach. Uh, so in other words, if you don't
sell something right away, don't be discouraged.
Uh, you've got to send this to. And you know, Ihave some practical advice about how to get your
(45:52):
script to a, uh, the right person. Uh, There's aprogram, IMDb Pro is a good way to go find
producers who make movies similar to the Ones thatyou just wrote and send it to them. And I have a
chapter on how to write a query letter, how to
get an agent, a manager, that kind of thing too.
Right, right. And how to send your script, what alog line is, and how to create one that's really
(46:17):
good. And those. Those are important.
Well, are you, uh, thinking about publishinganything further? Any more books?
My wife is, uh, very interested in detectivenovels. And she might want to write one
of those, uh, with you or by herself, possibly.
Either way. But if she wants to do one with me, Iprobably would go ahead and try it.
Well, that'd be kind of fun. Would that be acomedy or would it be a straightforward detective
(46:41):
story?
Yeah, I don't know. I think it probably would workbetter if it had some. Some comedy in it.
Yeah, well, that's your. That's what you're knownfor. That's your forte also.
That's my approach to writing is I look for thejokes, and that can be a detriment. Also, uh, I
often think I wish I had written, like I have abunch of spec scripts that I have that are just
(47:03):
sitting around. I wish I'd been paying moreattention to the emotional arcs.
Well, I've been having just a spectacularconversation with David Silverman and, uh,
certainly about his book, how to be a Rock StarScreenwriter. His and his wife Rogina's, uh, um.
They wrote this just wonderful book that I highlyrecommend to you. Uh, especially if you're trying
(47:24):
to figure out how to think your way through acareer in Hollywood, which is a challenge for even
the most successful writers, have to deal withsome of these psychological challenges to
overcome. You've told us a whole lot of wonderfultales and stories already, but do you have a story
that you can share with us that's either weird,quirky and offbeat strange, or just plain funny?
(47:46):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I do have a few of those. Um, sothis guy, uh, in Las Vegas, he had a radio show.
Uh, yeah, I sent him the book and, uh, so he, um.
I'm listening. Uh, the radio show's on. He'sintroducing me as one of the co creators of the
Simpsons.
Steve Cuden (48:04):
The Simpsons.
The Simpsons. And also. And also he said that Iwas a Green Beret. So this is my introduction.
And you didn't create the Simpsons and you werenot a Green Beret.
Yeah, but I had a funny story that kind of savedit a little bit because when Steve and I worked at
Fox, which we were there for three or four years,the other David Silverman, there's A David
(48:28):
Silverman, who, uh, who was a director. M. And,uh. So, yeah, and I met him at one point, the guys
who ran the Simpsons. David Silverman. This isDavid Silverman. Anyway, so I kept getting his
paychecks, so I would get.
You kept getting his paycheck?
I would get paychecks for the other DavidSilverman.
(48:48):
Did you cash them?
Yeah, I tried every possible way I could think of.
Uh, but, uh, I figured I would get into a lot oftrouble.
I think you would get into a lot of trouble if youdid.
Yeah. So I sent them back to Fox and said, youknow, there's two David Silmans. We both work for
Fox. And, uh, this is the other David Silverman'scheck. It's like it was about $15,000 for
(49:12):
directing one episode. Then a couple, you know, aweek goes by, and I get the same check in the
mail. So they didn't register. What I told themwas that I was the wrong guy. So I got a hold of
the other David Silverman's phone number here. Igot to give you this check or I'll mail it to you.
It's a shame you couldn't just go cash it, youknow.
I know. I thought, you know, well, we havedifferent Social Security numbers, but I don't
(49:37):
know.
Oh, yeah, that would. That would show up reallyquick, wouldn't it?
If I could find his number, maybe I could do that.
And then he's. And he's banging on their doors.
Where's my money? Where's my money?
So that was kind of amusing. But, yeah, I had. Iexplained all that on the air.
What was. What was the story that. I know Stevetold me that I'm sure you were there. Uh, in which
(49:57):
one? A showrunner was getting a suit made whileyou were doing work in a room.
Yeah. So, yeah, sitcoms usually, like, take placein a big room full of writers, and this particular
writer seemed to just want to get away from hisfamily, and he. It wasn't his, uh. Getting the
work done was not high on his priorities, so. Andit was very obvious because he would. We would go
(50:23):
into the room and just. He would be interested inanything, but, like, he would, uh, go through the
baseball score. He would pick games to bet on andthings. And, uh, one day he brought his tailor in,
and he's like, having suit made, and I'm not goingto say his name because I don't want to
get sued, but he was getting fitted for a suitwhile you were all in front of him working.
(50:46):
Yeah. Yeah. And There was a couple of, uh, peoplein the room who nudge him, you know, like, we have
to get working here, you know, because thesethings could go all night and they often did. And
I remember this was at the Radford worked a lotand we worked till 6am and we went and got
breakfast, you know, and so we're. Everybody wantsto go home except for this guy who apparently
(51:09):
doesn't, you know, his marriage is failing orsomething.
Sure.
So yeah, so he's, he's there all night longgetting fitted and, and he would say, like, um,
yeah, have six suits, uh, have six of them sent tomy Aspen house and six suits sent to, you know,
my, um, my Beverly Hills house. And we'd be allgoing like, oh my God.
(51:31):
Well, that's the way it works. All right, so lastquestion for you today, David.
David Silverman (51:34):
Ah.
Uh, you've already given us a gigantic amount ofadvice. And your book, how to Be a Rock Star
Screenwriter is just chock a block filled withgreat advice. Do you have a piece of advice if
somebody comes up to you and says, david, whatshould I do? I want to have a career in, in
Hollywood. I want to be a writer. What should Ido? Do you have a piece of advice you can give
(51:56):
them?
Yeah. So I have a chapter on how to find a mentor.
Steve Cuden (52:00):
Mhm.
And so you need to send your work to an importantwriter, somebody who's well known, at least the
further up the ladder than you are and has somemore clout. And so Steve and I, uh, we kind of, we
kind of got lucky because we took those classes,the one with Lorenzo Music and now the one with
Sam Locke, he had written for, uh, all the familyand he was in his 60s when we took the class. And
(52:26):
Lorenzo, uh, Music was. I don't think he was thatold. He was still working. He was the voice of
Garfield anyway. But Sam Locke, he liked ourscript. He was a Barney Miller or something. Uh,
and we had arranged to pitch the Jeffersons. Andyou know, we were naive and we thought maybe it
would be a good idea to bring him with us andwe'll write it as a three.
Steve Cude (52:48):
How'd that work out?
So the three of us went in and we had some storyideas. We pitched them and uh, then we kind of
left and we got like a phone call later said, comeback without the old guy. Which touches on the
whole ageism thing also, which is very sad.
No kidding. That is sad. I mean, that's really.
(53:11):
I know it's sort of sadly funny,
but, but I think as you age in Hollywood. Thatdoes happen for people. And I, I do think it's a,
it is the, the, the notion that uh, there are abunch of young people in a room and they don't
want somebody old guy telling them what it is. Sothat is ageism. But at the same time, um, it's as
(53:34):
people climb up those ranks. Correct me if youthink I'm wrong. Uh, they, they drop out of the
business too because they, they get married, theyhave wives or husbands and kids, and suddenly they
don't want to spend all those crazy 14, 15, 16hour days. So they drop out that way too.
Correct? Right, right. Yeah, that's part of it.
(53:56):
Yeah, it's true. But the exciting, uh, thing aboutstaying up all night and writing for a TV show, it
gets old after 10 years. When you have kids andeverything.
It might get old after 10 years, weeks. I mean,that starts to wear on you because it's.
Especially if you have a family.
Right? Yeah. We wrote a pilot of another partnerof mine, Jack. We wrote a pilot about a 70 year
(54:21):
old comedy writer like me. His name is David. Anduh, he hasn't worked in a long time, but he has
good credits anyway. So, um, it's about ages. Andhe has a, uh, Hispanic daughter in law who um, is
also kind of funny. And he uses her as the front.
(54:45):
You know, she's the beard, she's the beard. Shegets the job on the TV show and then there's
episodes where she thinks she's good enough, kindof break away from the writer that has the Emmys
and uh, all the stuff they have to go through,keep their, their partnership together.
Well, that sounds like that would be, you'd beperfectly suited to think that one through, that's
(55:06):
for sure.
David Silverman (55:07):
Yeah.
Well, David Silverman, this has been a lot of funfor me and I can't thank you enough, uh, for your
time, your energy and your wisdom on this. And forthose of you out there that want to understand
what it takes, the, the guts that it takes tobecome a screenwriter of success in Hollywood,
check out how to be a rock Star Screenwriter byDavid and Regina Sillerman. David, thank you so
(55:31):
much for being on the show with me today.
David Silverma (55:33):
Okay, thank you.
And so we've come to the end of today's StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won't you please
take a moment to give us a comment, rating orreview on whatever app or platform you're
listening to. Your support helps us bring moregreat Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is
available on all major podcasts, apps andplatforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube,
(55:56):
Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others.
Until next time, I'm Steve Cuden, and may all yourstories be unforgettable.
On today's Story Beat,
(00:02):
You need to, assemble, uh, some people in yourlife who are good writers and usually that could
be a person in the screenwriting class that you'retaking. It really helps to have a mentor in this
business send your script around too. But if youtake their class and you show them really good
work, then, uh, you're likely to impress somebodywho can really help you in your career.
(00:25):
This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast forthe creative mind. Story explores how masters of
creativity develop and produce brilliant worksthat people everywhere love and admire. So join
us, uh, as we discover how talented creators findsuccess in the
(00:46):
worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here nowis your host, Steve Cuden.
Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We're comingto you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Well, I'm delighted that my guesttoday, the prolific screenwriter David Silverman,
(01:07):
is back on Story Beat for the second time. Davidhas written for stars like Robin Williams, Bob
Newhart, Roseanne Barr, Drew Carey, SarahSilverman, Pee Wee Herman and others. David has co
created five TV series and written and produced onmore than 30 different series, including hugely
popular shows like Newhart, Roseanne, One Day at aTime, the Jeffersons, Alice Dilbert and South
(01:33):
Park. David co created the Wild Thornberrys, whichspawned two feature films, the Wild Thornberrys
Movie and Rugrats Go Wild. Other feature filmsDavid has co written include Stepping Out, Purple
Haze and the Flintstones Movie. As a Stanfordeducated psychotherapist, David's treated and
coached aspiring writers, many of whom who've goneon to sell their own feature films and TV shows.
(01:57):
David and his wife Rogina, who is also a writerand editor, recently collaborated on their
excellent book, how to Be a Rock StarScreenwriter, which contains some of the best
advice I've read on the mindset that ambitiousscreen and TV writers need to succeed. Unlike most
books on screenwriting, how to Be a Rock StarScreenwriter is filled with solid advice for those
(02:19):
dealing with the challenging psychological issuesfacing writers who wish to work in Hollywood as
well as for those who are already successfulscreenwriters. I urge anyone hoping to make it as
a professional writer in Hollywood to check outthis very wise book. David and I have known one
another for many decades, connected by our mutualfriend, the late great Steve Sstarsik. David and
(02:40):
Steve were a well known, highly successful sitcomwriting team. They wrote and produced hundreds of
TV scripts together. So for all those reasons andmany more, it's a real joy for me to welcome back
to Story Beat the screenwriter, author, therapistand and My friend, David Silverman. David, it's
great to have you on the show for the second time.
David Si (03:00):
Yeah, good to be here.
Well, it's great to see you. So, uh, let's take alook at where you are today. Uh, you already did
one show and we talked about your history, sowe're going to skip over that a little bit, as I
typically do at the beginning of almost everyshow. But at this point in your life and career,
do you now think of yourself as primarily ascreenwriter, a therapist, a nonfiction book
(03:24):
writer, or. Or are they all of a piece?
Interesting? Uh, yeah, I think it changesdepending on what day it is. You know, right now
I'm not working on a book or a script, so I'm atherapist.
You're a therapist because you're not working onthis, but when you are, then you're that. Right.
So I do have some kind of. I juggle some ideas.
(03:47):
Screenplay. Um. Ideas.
Steve Cuden (03:48):
Mhm.
And, um, TV pilot. I did work on a TV pilotrecently. I feel like I was a writer.
So you're still working on scripts, just not sortof every day like you did in the past.
Right. And not getting paid for it is the otherkey?
Well, you, you and, um, you know, 500,000 otherwriters in Los Angeles. So, uh, let me ask you,
from a psychological standpoint, why do you thinkit is that we tell each other's stories? What's
(04:13):
the purpose of storytelling in the psychologicalsense?
Yeah, no, I think it's very integral to, you know,how we communicate, how, how people learn.
Probably cavemen were telling each other storiesas they wrote those little pictures of buffalo and
things.
Hieroglyphics.
Hieroglyphics, right. Um, yeah, I think. And Ithink there's also a need to be heard, you know,
(04:38):
that I feel when I'm doing psychotherapy, peopleneed to be heard. You know, that's a very big
deal. And I try to be there when they vent orrant.
Do you think that that was true for you too,throughout your career, that you needed to be
heard?
Um, yeah, you know, so, um, I did start out likebefore Steve and everything, as I used to memorize
(05:01):
Bill Cosby, uh, and recite them back to my BoyScout friends who were like a captured audience
that had to listen to me do why is their heir,
you know, to fill up volleyballs, David.
And, uh, yeah. And then When I was 12, my brotherand I, we used to listen to this, um, program,
(05:22):
Loman and Barkley. Uh, it was like a local LAshow. And they were funny. They had this contest,
Loman and barkley lemonade. They said, uh, theywanted everybody to, you know, anybody who wanted
to enter the cocktail for loan and barkleylemonade. And so my brother and I, we had an old
woollen sack, uh, tape recorder, you know, reel toreel. And we, uh, did, uh. I think we just. We
(05:46):
flushed the toilet, and we, uh, said, lemon andbarkley lemonade cleans like a white tornado or
something like that. And those guys liked it. Andthey had us come into their studio, like in
Hollywood, and rerecord it with them. And, um, soright away, I got the idea that maybe I could do
(06:07):
something with this humor.
How old were you at this time?
12? Yeah, my brother was four years younger. Hewas like eight.
So that was your first real taste of show businessthen, right?
Right. Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, I used toshow up at engineer Bill when he showed up at a
sharp shop, like, uh, a Kmart or something. And myparents would take me to meet him. He was a TV
(06:33):
personality. Uh, but, yeah, this is the first timeI actually created something people paid
attention. Probably got it in my head that thiswas going to be easy street, you know?
Yeah, it's totally easy street, isn't it? That'swhy you have so many clients.
David Silverman (06:50):
Right?
So, you know the old line, the famous line is,dying is easy, but comedy is hard.
It is hard. Yeah, that's very true.
I know it's almost impossible to define, butyou've now had also not only years of writing it,
but years of talking to people about, I assume, acertain amount of comedy writing can you think of
(07:12):
or say what you think makes comedy so difficult todo? Well?
Hmm. M. That's a very good question. I did noticethat, um, some of the smartest people make the
best comedy. Writers like Al Jean and Mike Reesewent to Harvard, and I think Al Jean was a
mathematician. You know, he's like. He majored inmath. And I was kind of like that, too. Kind of a
(07:35):
geek.
So we should let the listeners know who Al Jeanand Mike Reese are. They wrote on the Simpsons
forever, right?
Yeah, they were, uh. They ran the Simpsons for along time. Yeah.
So why do you think that being smart is. Thenmakes you better at figuring out how to write
comedy?
Yeah, it seems like there has to be like a. Adelay in the thought process. And being clever,
(07:59):
you kind of figure out how to be one step ahead ofthe audience. And once it's that little step where
they catch up with you, I think, is where thelaugh that's recognition oh, yeah, yeah. That's
kind of clever.
Someone who I am not remembering at this momentonce said that comedy is tragedy plus time.
Da (08:17):
Yeah, Lenny Bruce said that.
Steve (08:18):
Yeah, Lenny Bruce, yeah.
He was among a lot. Probably a lot of people.
Well, it seems like that there's a certain degreeof truth to that. I mean, I don't think it's true
in every case, but a lot of truth to it.
Right. And there's a certain amount of. Sometimesthe biggest laughs come from making fun of
somebody. Right. So it's a. There's a little bitof, like, uh, twisting the knife. Sometimes it's
(08:41):
you're being mean, but you're kind of covering upthe meanness by being clever. Some of the biggest
laughs come from doing that. Like, you know, uh,what do they call that they roast and star,
Everybody gets up and makes fun of.
Right. It's a little bit of schadenfreude. Uh, Ithink.
Yeah. Okay, that's a good term.
All right. So why did you become a therapist afterall those years of writing comedy?
(09:05):
So, you know, I had always wanted to be atherapist when I went to. So I went to a big
college, Stanford University, with the best. Thebest psychology department in the country. And I
majored in psychology.
Stev (09:17):
As an undergrad or a grad?
David Silverma (09:18):
As an undergrad.
Steve Cuden (09:20):
As an undergrad.
And then I did go back to a, uh, differentuniversity and get my master's in. But, uh, you
know, so I was. I had honors in psychology and,uh, from a big deal university. My parents paid a
fortune for me to go there, and they're verydisappointed when I became a comedy writer.
You probably made at least as much money as acomedy writer as you ever would have as a
(09:42):
therapist, right?
Yeah. Therapists don't make a lot of money. Yeah,that's true. They do these studies on masters, so
you get a master's in clinicals. It's one of theleast paying. Like you'd rather be an engineer or,
you know, or a chemist or anything else. So itdoesn't pay very well.
So at what point. Going back to when you startedto get into the business, at what point. The
(10:06):
business of Hollywood. At what point did you thinkto yourself, I am pretty good as a writer of this
comedy thing. Was there a moment where you had
that epiphany, you know? Um, so I also tookcreative writing classes from this guy who wrote
presumed.
Scott Turow.
Scott Turow. And he. He was a TA at Stanford, so.
(10:27):
Before he was famous.
Wow.
So I was hanging out with guys who listened toFireside Theater Records. And I don't know if you
know what that is.
Do you know that Phil Proctor has been on thisshow twice?
That's right. I was very impressed to see that.
Yeah, yeah, I know Firestine very well.
So we used to. Of course you're smoking pot in adorm room. And one of my friends designed his dorm
(10:50):
room. He put foil up on all four walls of his dormroom.
Okay.
He said it was the. So it was designed as theinside of a hash pipe.
That sounds like a Steve Sostarsic idea, doesn'tit?
Yeah. So I used to hang out with Steve likepeople, even before I met Steve.
Right.
(11:11):
And uh, for the listeners that don't
know, Steve Sistarsik was about the most out therehuman being I've ever known. And I'm sure David
will agree with me. Steve was on another planetwhen it came to thinking.
Yeah, yeah. Which made him an original thinker.
Very much so.
Very personally bad ideas, but sometimes really
difficult to deal with. But he was a, uh, trulyunique writer of comedy. I mean he was unique.
(11:36):
Yeah. And you know, fortunately he had made someinroads. Sent a couple of his scripts to people on
the new art show, for example. And they weren'tready to help him back then, but we wrote a couple
of specs that were a little bit better.
And so was there a moment then where you thought,yeah, you know what, I am trying this, I think I'm
(11:56):
good at it, but I am actually good enough. Wasthere that moment.
Wrote a couple funny short stories, plays while Iwas still an undergraduate. And then when I
graduated after that, I think the summer I decidedI was going to make a film, I took some film
classes. Dan for also. And then, uh, that kind ofchanged my uh, trajectory quite a bit because
(12:18):
instead of applying to grad, uh, school inpsychology, I applied to USC film school and I
made a short film during the summer with my sisterand some other people. And it was, it was funny
enough, it made us laugh. And I sent the script toUSC and they, and they accepted me. And that's
where I met Steve and we started working moreseriously on commercial.
(12:41):
Indeed. Well, that's where I met Steve too, was atusc. I met him in a playwriting class in the
theater department.
Right. Yeah. And uh, you've turn. It turned out tobe pretty good at that. Playwriting.
Yeah, that's turned out to be okay. Yeah.
David Sil (12:53):
Yeah, not bad at all.
Uh, so I am curious, you have this background inundergrad as a therapist or taking a therapy
Degree. Therapist degree. What is that degree?
What would that be?
At that point it was just a psychology degree.
Oh, a psychology degree. Do you think that thatdegree has had an impact or had an impact on the
(13:15):
way that you thought about characters and writingthem?
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think um, like some,some of our mentors had told us to write about the
characters, get into some depth.
Steve Cuden (13:26):
Mhm.
And I had that interest already from, you know,being a psychology student. And the other thing
about my family was we were in therapy, familytherapy from back when I was 12 and on Loman and
Barclay. I was, I was in family therapy with apsychiatrist and my brother had OCD and uh, so you
(13:47):
know, he was like germ phobic and all. He had allthese terrible symptoms. But the family therapy
worked and he became like a functional member ofsociety and I was impressed by that. So I think
that's where I got the idea that maybe a valuableservice to render would be a therapist.
Correct me if I'm wrong, part of learningpsychology and dealing in psychology is
(14:09):
archetypes, human archetypes, characterarchetypes. Right, that, that had to have had an
influence on the development of script work foryou. I assum.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I spent a lot of timestudying the archetypes and how they figure into
movies.
Can you think of an example of something that youused in your writing that was from some sort of a
(14:29):
psychological archetype?
Uh, let's see. Well, uh, the jester archetype isuh, there are certain characters that work well in
comedy. For example, uh, the greedy character likethe George Jefferson, the kind of, even a bigoted
character like Archie Bunker and things like. Soyou see that in, in those Jungians. Um, I had some
(14:54):
chapters which I didn't include involved, um, inthis book about archetypes, uh, that work that are
the most commercial archetypes to pattern yourscreenplays after. Um, and that's how partly how
the, the book came about is. When I startedpracticing, I had a private practice. I was
working with a lot of writers. I needed some sortof publicity. So I, I wrote for a, A, um, big um,
(15:19):
website called Psych Central. Right. And theyreached hundreds of thousands of people. It's kind
of like Psychology Today. I showed them somesamples of, you know, some ideas of blogs and
they, I, I didn't get paid for it, but they let mewrite a weekly article, a weekly blog, and I
probably wrote about 84 of them and a bunch ofthem had to do with the archetypes and what sells
(15:42):
and that sort of thing.
But you were right. I think the listeners shouldpay attention to what you just said. A moment ago.
You wrote 84 or so articles for this publicationonline, um, and got paid nothing. But you did that
as what a marketer would call a loss leader. Youwere doing that in order to entice people to you.
Correct?
Right. And in the back of my head I had the ideathat I would put this book together, uh, using
(16:06):
those chapters. So I didn't use all of them. Ithought some of them were better than others.
Well, we're going to talk about the book in justtwo seconds, but I have one more question I'm
curious about, uh, screenplays in particular playsand screenplays. Not always books, but books too.
Novels and so on usually require a singularcharacter that the audience, the reader, whoever
(16:29):
it is, can then relate to in some way throughoutthe story. That would be your protagonist from a
psychological perspective. Why do you thinkstorytelling requires that singular character?
Yeah, I think that people need to identify withsomething in their script and that's probably the
easiest way to do it. Want to be like, mhm. A goodmodel, like a hero.
(16:51):
So the audience has to identify with thatcharacter.
Right, right. And then you read like Save the Catand different books about how you want to make
that character like Ripley in the movie AlienSaves the cat. So that's where. That's a good book
too and has a lot of good advice.
It's one of a, ah, number of pretty good books outthere. I would, I would highly urge people to
(17:12):
check out Beating um, Hollywood was written byyours truly. But yes, that's just another kind of
book. So let's talk about how to be a rock starscreenwriter. Tell the listeners what the purpose
of the book is. Why did you, you, you wrote it?
Why did you write the book? What did you hope toexpress that people would get from it in total?
Right. So I, I was writing these um, blogs forpsych central and um, I was trying to come up with
(17:40):
good advice for screenwriters and advice that sortof touched on psychology in one way or another
because it was a psychology website, it wasn't ascreenwriter. But uh, those chapters seem like
they should be helpful to somebody and if I putthem into a book, maybe they, they could learn
some of the lessons that I learned the hard way.
Mhm.
(18:00):
That would give them a leg up.
Well, of course I've read it and there's noquestion it's very helpful. And as I told you,
after I read it, I wish that I had had that bookbefore I started my career, because I would have
found it very useful. It would have taken some ofthe psychological burdens off of me, where you
just don't understand what's going on, especiallyin the beginning of a career.
(18:23):
Career, Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of sortof myths about screenwriting. A lot of people
expect that they're going to write one screenplayand sell
it and make millions of dollars.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, uh, that's what those are,some of the myths. You know, another thing that
you wouldn't expect to learn is that the writeris, like, lower on the totem pole than you would
(18:44):
imagine.
You're saying that the writer is on the totem poleat all?
David (18:48):
Yeah. Right. Just barely.
Steve (18:50):
Barely on the totem pole.
Yeah. So I tried. So I tried to do it in the mostin the book. Try to be as, um, encouraging as
possible. There's a lot of bad news in thisbusiness.
Yeah. But you express it in which you will presentit as. This is what the difficulty is. And here's
(19:11):
how to think about it or overcome it.
Right, Right. For example, when people start outwriting their first spec script, which is how you
get into the business, you have to have a sampleto show around. And somebody did a study, and they
said that usually it takes about eight screenplaysbefore you're at the level where you sell one. And
so, you know, it could be very depressing, uh, tosit down and start to write your second, third.
(19:34):
You know, realize that this is not going to sellfor sure. I point out in the book, and this is an
example of me being encouraging, even if you don'tsell one of those screenplays, having a good
sample can get you a meeting with the producer.
And where the producer. Producer could say, I likethe style. I'd like to hear some of your ideas,
some other ideas.
(19:54):
And, um, it again, is going back to this conceptof a lost leader. You're creating something that
may not sell, but in fact, it might lead to otherthings that do sell.
Right. So I like to point out in the book thatmost. Like, the reason most people give up on
screenwriting is because they get all theserejections. And when you think about guys like
(20:16):
Lawrence Kasdan, whose seven scripts before theygot sold anything, you wonder, why were they
different? Why did they not give up? Uh, but ifyou realize that you got to write this sample
script, it's your only way in. You have to writesomething, and it has to be pretty great,
actually.
It has to be. You have a chapter in the Bookthat's about it has to be better than. Okay,
(20:37):
explain what you mean.
Right. So a lot of people will write a script thathas dialogue and character, beginning, middle and
end, and it feels very successful to them.
Steve Cuden (20:47):
Mhm.
You have to really wow the producers. You have tobe super, uh, impressive to get them to want to
work with you and pay you.
So writers that are listening to this right noware asking themselves, okay, David, tell me how to
wow people. And I'm going to guess you don't knowhow to wow people except to do it yourself.
Right. Uh, well, here's one key, and I think Ihave a chapter called the Zen of Screenwriting
(21:12):
Growth. You need to, um, assemble, uh, some peoplein your life who are good writers who can read
your script. And usually that could be a person inthe screenwriting class that you're taking. It
really helps to have a mentor in this business,someone who's. So, for example, Steve Starsek and
I took classes from Lorenzo Music and Sam Locke.
(21:33):
And these were guys Lorenzo Music had createdRhoda. Uh, Sam Locke had written for all in the
Family. We took their writing classes. We werelooking for mentors. So the other way you look for
a mentor is to send your script around toimportant people who probably don't have the time.
But if you take their class and you show themreally good work, then, uh, you're likely to
(21:56):
impress somebody who can really help you in yourcareer.
And if they don't actually hire you, they canactually give you advice and point you in the
right direction or maybe even introduce you tosomebody.
They did, yeah. So Lorenzo Music was good at that.
And, uh, he introduced us to some of his, uh, someof the writers he worked with. Like he was, um, on
Taxi.
And wasn't he also famously the voice of Garfieldthe cat?
(22:19):
Yeah, yeah. And we got to know him so well that hewould tell us stories about it. So he would get
paid for 15 minutes of doing voices. Uh, he wouldalso do commercials and things too, but he would
get paid a fortune. And he kind of bragged aboutall he had to do was go in and do 15 minutes.
Well, you and I both know from doing animationscript that, uh, the animation actors who are the
(22:42):
best voice actors in the world, they frequently,they come in, they do a whole episode. It only
takes them an hour or two, sometimes a littlelonger, but often it's only an hour or two and
they get paid quite well over time for them.
Yeah, yeah. And some of them do like ten voices.
Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. So do you consider ASam Locke and Lorenzo Music to be examples of a
(23:06):
rock, uh, star screenwriter.
Yeah. I think anybody who can pay the bills is therock star.
That's your definition of rock star, is that youcan pay the bills?
Yes, as long as you can. So not many people make aliving just by screenwriter. Most screenwriters
have, like, second jobs and things.
So now you probably as a psychotherapist, had younever been a screenwriter, you would not have been
(23:32):
able to write this book. You needed to have bothsides to write it.
Uh, yeah, because it forced me to look at thepsychological side of things. Some of the advice
is just about writing. But there's books like Savethe Cat that can give you better advice on how to
put 110 pages together.
Well, your book is not about, uh, writing ascreenplay. It's about the, um, mental management
(23:58):
of being a screenwriter and dealing with Hollywoodand all of the things that come with it. I would
not turn to how to be a rock star screenwriter toknow how many pages should be in a scene. That's
not what's right.
Yes, it's not for that. It's, uh, to help you makedecisions that will get you in a career in the
screenwriting, which is not an easy. No, probablynever was.
(24:21):
No, it really never was. Although I think as youlook back, it probably was easier in the old days
than it is today.
Yeah, I think so. The 80s part of that is becausestreaming has changed the nature of things. They
have smaller writing rooms.
Right. Do you think that, um, there are bigpsychological differences between writing a
(24:43):
screenplay and maybe writing a novel or a shortstory? Uh, does this book apply to that?
This has practical advice on how to break in toscreenwriting. Whereas novels. Yeah. It's not as
hard to publish a novel as it is to get ascreenplay produced by a million miles. Right. But
(25:04):
I do kind of recommend to writers to get a tasteof some success. And so if you're writing
screenplays and you've written 11 of them, and youmight try novelizing one of them and you might see
if you get some success there.
Well, it's become. I think it's still quite truethat, uh, it's somewhat easier if you're an
(25:26):
unknown screenwriter. It's somewhat easier topublish a novel and sell that concept to Hollywood
because it's an existing work versus writing anoriginal screenplay that nobody knows who you are.
Yeah. Intellectual property is a much bigger dealtoday than it was back in the 80s. Uh, yeah. Uh,
(25:48):
studios are less risk. Uh, they want to see somesuccess already. If you Have a novel that sold
50,000 copies or is on the New York Timesbestseller list, you got a pretty good shot at
getting a movie made.
Well, if not the movie made, at least you get anentree where people will talk to you, they'll meet
(26:10):
with you and so on. And that just like a specmight get you where you want to go.
Yeah, no, definitely, if you can. Of coursethey're going to look at how many books sold.
Well, of course if you sold a hundred books,that's a lot less interesting than a thousand or
ten thousand books.
Yeah. So. But um, yeah, it's, it's a way to go.
Also writing plays is another way to get somesuccess. And so I, I feel like, you know, that a
(26:36):
lot of the psychology behind writing is how do youstick with it for 20 years? And so having some
success, even if you're, you have a one act playor something with six characters, um, and you see
it produced and you get a good feeling about it,it keeps you going. So that's the kind of
psychology of it.
(26:56):
So part of your book is about how do you keepgoing, which you're just talking about now, how do
you keep the mental, uh, capacity to deal withbasically dry patches where you're not working at
all or not working for pay. That's the real key.
Right, right. And some other aspects are like whatkind of jobs can you get in the business? So I was
(27:19):
a story analyst for a studio. And that's the jobwhere you write coverage, which is a brief summary
of a script or a book.
It's like a book report, but it's not, it's alittle more than that.
Right. And you also grade it, you grade
dialogues, uh, characters, action characters, allthat.
So every day I would pick up a, um, and this was,uh, I was working as a bartender at that time. I
(27:43):
go to the studio, pick up a script or a novel. Iwould go to my night job, which was Tenny Bar, and
I had the kind of bartending job where uh, it waskind of behind the scenes and the cocktail
waitresses came in. So I didn't interact with thepublic. So I had a lot of free time. So I'd read
these things and I'd go home and write thecoverage. So every day I got a new one. So that
(28:06):
was a good experience in terms of learning storystructure and things like that. Then another
really good way to go is to get a job as awriter's assistant on a TV show. So for example,
uh, Steve and I worked on a couple Shows where wehad um, the kind of writer's assistant who was in
the room as uh, like you have a room full full ofwriters on a sitcom, like 10 writers and there's
(28:32):
one guy who keeps track of all the pitches. And sowe had these uh, two guys, uh, Eric Shaw was one
of them. So it was common to give um, a script tothe writer's assistant, just like one script as a
reward and they get, you know, paid $20,000 forthat. But it also could kick start your career. So
(28:56):
with Eric, it helped him start a career inwriting, uh, animation mostly. And he won an Emmy
for SpongeBob. And the other, uh, writer assistantwe had went on to write for Dexter and he. So we
gave him that first script.
Well, that's the big foot in the door. You got tohave a little foot in the door as becoming the
(29:20):
assistant. And then the bigfoot is when somebody,you've done good work and people like you and they
award you with a script like that. That's it. Thatis a, uh, that's one of the major ways that people
make that leap.
Right, right. Yes, one of the best ways.
How does somebody go about becoming a writer'sassistant?
Writer's assistant. Well, it does help to write agood spec, because they want to know that, you
(29:42):
know, screenplay for and all this. And it doesn'thurt if you're good at writing jokes, if it's
sitcom they're applying to because, you know, atsome points Eric would pitch a joke, then we would
say, that's pretty good. We put that in, put thatin the script. So he wasn't even on staff as a
paid writer. He was getting jokes in.
And so. All right, so as you're writing the book,how did you figure out you had all these articles
(30:06):
and you knew you were going to compile them intosome form here, uh, how did you start to do that?
Did you sit down and lay them all out on a tableand decide they were in this order? How did you
put the book together?
Yeah, I think I broke it into sections.
Well, you do you have it in section productivityhacks, uh, how to survive Hollywood, those kinds
(30:28):
of sections. Career strategies.
Yeah, how to survive Hollywood had to do with likesome writers. There's sort of writer's
personality. We tend to be very introspective andum, and we tend to sit in front of a typewriter.
You sit in front of a typewriter. What year isthis, David?
Yeah, well, at first it was a typewriter, butyeah.
(30:50):
Yes it was.
Yeah. IBM's electric too. That's. We're on One dayat a time.
I have many typewriters that sit in a. Sit in aroom. They don't do anything.
Yeah. Uh, yeah. So the breaking in, uh, writersjobs. The best day jobs for writers. And I, in the
book, I talk about some famous writers and what,you know, what they did. I do. I did a lot of
(31:10):
research on what famous writers. For example, twowell known writers. Um, Stephen King and, uh,
Aaron Sorkin.
Aaron Sorkin, sure.
They've talked about their, um. They wrote theirfirst scripts using cocaine and, uh, it fueled
them through the night.
I assume you do not recommend that.
Uh, yeah, it's too expensive for one thing.
(31:32):
Expensive.
It can also lead to some bad habits.
Steve Cud (31:37):
Yeah. Like addiction.
I think he had to go into rehab. But, um. Butyeah, it's interesting to know how people did it.
So I do break that down and then I have. I breakit down in terms of older writers. So a lot of
people are older, like 40, 50, and they want toget into the business. I recommend they write
screenplays. Uh, TV is a young man's game. Youknow, your 20s and your 30s is what they're
(32:02):
looking for.
S (32:03):
Why is it a young man's game?
Because it's, uh. There's a few reasons for that,but. A few reasons. One is because it's a group
thing. There's such a thing as a writer's roomwhere they hire 10 writer. The, the guys who run
shows might be in their 30s and they tend to hirepeople younger than them. They don't want people
with more experience above them.
They don't want to be shown up.
(32:24):
Exactly. So. So if you're, if you're under 40, Ithink it's. You want to write a TV pilot, which is
what the, uh, the way you get into writingtelevision is to write us pet. Which means it's
the first episode of a new series. Back when Steveand I broke in, we wrote a taxi spec and a Barney
Mill. It shows the people who are hiring that youknow how to handle character and write, uh, a
(32:49):
certain style and that sort of thing.
You write in the book about, um, why writersshould not worry about Hollywood stealing your
movie or story idea. Why is that?
Right. Because then if you just worry about thatall the time, you'll m. You'll be reluctant to
send your script out. It does happen sometimes.
It, uh.
But, uh, it's pretty rare though.
(33:11):
It's pretty rare. People are savvy and they knowthey might get sued.
Well, and also if you have Written something andyou've shown it to other people, there's sort of
great evidence. And if you then register it withthe WGA and copyright it, well, you don't really
need to copyright it. The WGA is sufficient to sayit exists.
Right, Right. So, yeah, you should cover yourself.
(33:33):
I do cover that in another chapter on copyrightand how to get the Writers Guild to, uh, register
your work as you're writing.
Why is it necessary that one be. Which is the wayit works in Hollywood. Why should your story be
familiar but original?
Uh, yes. So, um. Uh, the studios say we're lookingfor original screenplays. Right. They don't really
(33:59):
mean it. Uh, what they mean is, uh, so if you havea script that's a lot like Lethal Weapon, for
example, but you have a different relationshipbetween the two characters. Instead of having the,
uh, guy who wants to retire and the crazy guy, youcome up with a different buddy relationship. Uh,
(34:20):
and it seems like that's a good formula for, um,cop shows or for cop, uh, movies. Is the buddy cop
thing. There have been, like, 100 variations onit. If you can come up with an exciting new one.
For example, our. Our screenplay, Stepping Out. Wehave, uh. The witness in that screenplay is
(34:42):
agoraphobic, and so he's afraid to leave hishouse. And he's. He's in therapy, and he's
learning how to, uh, take baby steps. And so hetakes the. He, uh, gathers all his strength and he
crosses the street to the park. It's like aexperiment. And, uh, he unfortunately witnesses a
(35:04):
murder over there. And, um, he's interviewed by afemale cop who's kind of fearless. And it's a
little bit like Lethal Weapon, but it has thattwist. Anyway, we were able to sell that on the
pitch because it sounded original enough, butfamiliar. Right. So it's Lethal Weapon, except you
(35:24):
get a psycho and a, uh, female cop.
So they want an idea that is, uh. They know how tomarket it already. They know how to sell it, but
yet it's original in some way.
Right. So if you write a completely originalscreenplay, you know, it could be like a guy, um,
(35:44):
moving around on a chessboard or, you know, beingshot into space and. And, uh, living in the
stratosphere for 100 years. But that's toooriginal.
It can't be something that they don't know how tosell.
Exactly. So if they can compare it to a successfulfeature or successful TV show, then you're in
(36:08):
business.
Now, in that line, there's nothing that's betterthan something for selling a script than coming up
with what's called a high concept idea. What is ahigh concept idea?
It's something you can sell on a pitch. And that'swhat happened with Stepping Out.
So sometimes a high concept can be right from thetitle. The title can be a high concept. I'll give
(36:32):
you the best example I know of a high concepttitle. Snakes on a Plane.
Yeah. Right. Or Splash. Uh, no, that wasn't thetitle really, but Splash was a guy falls in love
with a mermaid. Right?
Yeah, There you go. You know, Spielberg has beenknown to say that he knows he has a story he can
work with when he can hold it in the palm of hishand. Meaning that it's. You can say state the
(36:55):
idea basically in one sentence or a few words,right?
David Silverman (36:59):
Yeah.
Steve Cuden (37:00):
High concept.
Yeah. There's something known as the elevatorpitch, which is like if you're happen to be on an
elevator with Spielberg and you've got like 20seconds to pitch, uh, if you can sell them on
something. And that's what happened with SteppingOut. Well, we had to set up a meeting with a
producer who looked for high concept stuff. And Ithink we pitched 10 ideas, but that one really
(37:22):
grabbed him. We ended up pitching that, my wifeand I. That too. Uh, he took us around to all
these studios. We pitched to some, uh, big shotdirectors. The guy who directed Lethal Weapon,
actually, we went to his house.
That's Dick Donner.
Dick Donner, yeah, we went to his house.
And so you're the ideal person to ask aboutcollaboration. You collaborated on the book with
(37:43):
Regina, you collaborated on Stepping out withRogina, but you spent years and years and years
collaborating with Steve Sistarsik. Decades. Um,what is it that makes a collaboration work?
Yeah, that's very tricky. Well, you have to beable to get along with the person. And with Steve,
sometimes that was difficult.
I wouldn't have any idea, David. Yeah, Steve was adifficult person sometimes. Yeah, but I think, I
(38:10):
think I'm a difficult person. And I don't know youthat well, but I'm imagining you have your own
quirks.
Of course. Yeah, yeah. We had differentapproaches. You know, early on, uh, we lived, uh,
in Orange county, both of us, and he lived closerto the beach and I lived in La Habra and there was
a Dunkin Donuts and. But halfway in between, andwe would meet there like every day and work on a
(38:35):
script. It worked out. It actually worked outpretty well. Um, so proximity, but also having the
same taste that can really break, um, you know,one person's Always thinking in terms of, um, very
broad comedy or something, and the other person'smore witty or something like that.
It's very helpful if you are on the same page asto what you're trying to achieve that goal.
(38:57):
Right. So if you can pitch something, a joke thatwould, you know, we had a pretty good
relationship. We had a rule that. Which I wouldrecommend for all partnerships, and I do like
partnerships. Another reason for that is you get.
Get through the low points in the career easierbecause you have someone to talk to and, you know,
bitch among.
(39:19):
Isn't it also helpful in comedy writing that youhave someone to bounce comedy off of?
Yeah. So comedy writing, a lot of it's done outloud, and a lot of times you test how good a joke
is by saying it out loud. So two people, that'show you work. We had some variations where he
would write act one, and I would write act two,and then we would switch and rewrite acts, which
(39:40):
is, you know, it's a good way to do it too.
Did the two of you ever bump into issues when youdid that where somebody changed something and you
got into an argument over it? Did that happen foryou?
Yeah, we had a good rule for that, which Irecommend to partners, is that you both have to
agree. You like something to keep it.
It's one. In your case, it would be one of twovotes knocks it out, right?
(40:03):
Yeah. So that we use that, uh, that's not easybecause m. A lot of partnerships, you hear about
the person nagging and nagging. We have to putthat back in. That works. That works.
You talk about perfection. I love the chapter onperfection. Um, you say that perfection is
frequently the enemy of good enough. What is itabout people and perfection? You must deal with
(40:27):
that in your practice, I assume.
Yeah. So perfectionism can keep you from starting.
Vomit draft, for example, where, you know, youhave to be able to live with that. Uh, your first
draft is, you know, it's been called worse. Thisis one of the nicer things they say. But, yeah,
the first draft usually sucks. So people who have.
(40:49):
Have too much of a perfection issue. It's hard forthem to live with that. But again, like, uh, the
rewriting is the key to a lot of this being a goodscreenwriter and, um, getting better. Like that
whole chapter on the Zen of screenwriting growth.
You want to have a person you can ask, uh, who cangive you honest opinion on your. Tell you what's
(41:10):
up. One that what's not working and what's. Andthat, uh, if you have a Person like that in your
life, it's going to make your growth much more,like, fast. It's going to be faster. Uh, people
who don't learn like that, they just keep writingthe same script over and over and they don't get
better at it.
What do you tell writers that come in and complainthat they're blocked, they have writers block?
(41:32):
What do you, how do you help them?
Yeah, there's different kinds of blocks and, um, Ihave some chapters on that too. But like, uh, one
thing that helps me go back and read the scriptfrom the beginning and a lot of rewriting I do is
just reading it and then putting in a better joke.
This and that. Yeah, it's, it's, uh. Rewriting istricky, so you have to, you have to be willing to
(41:55):
do it, which means you have to be willing to comeup with a better idea.
You can't succeed in Hollywood for sure if you'renot willing to revise, rewrite, revise. Oh, yeah,
it's all about that.
Yeah. Yeah. When they bought Stepping out, uh,they had a whole bunch of notes for us and not all
of them were good.
So what do you do when you get lousy notes? How doyou handle it?
(42:16):
Yeah, well, you get better at that. Uh, but youcan't ignore notes because the people who are
giving you notes have the power to keep yourproject alive or not.
Right.
So you have to give them either a good reason whythe note, it conflicts with something else that's
going on. And you have to be very diplomatic abouthow you put it. You don't want to step on too many
(42:40):
toes.
If you're sitting in a room, if you're sitting ina room with a, uh, producer, uh, or a studio or
something like that, and somebody behind a desk isgiving you verbal notes, what is the best way to
handle that in the room?
Yes, that's how it usually happens. So if theyhave a good note you definitely want to make them
(43:02):
feel good about. Yeah, that's a wonderful idea.
You know, really lay it on thick. I, yeah, I thinkI can see how to make that work. And you have to
be willing to go back to the drawing board and doit. And that's, ah, sometimes you agree to things
and then you go, oh, my God, I can never do this.
And if they give you a really terrible note, youdon't want to say that to them either. You just
(43:24):
say that. Well, that kind of conflicts with otherthings that are going on in the script. Uh, but
I'll try, I'll try. To work it in one way that
I like to think about taking notes. And it's oneof the things I teach. I think the best way to
handle a note that makes no sense or is you thinkis going to be harmful, uh, or they clearly
(43:44):
haven't read something, uh, one of those ways todeal with it is to ask them a question, is to put
it back on them. That's just um, a technique thatI've used over time where I'll say, well, if I do
what you're suggesting, then this will happen andhow would you think I should best handle that? And
then you're sort of putting the ball back in theircourt.
(44:05):
Right, right. That's very smart.
And then they feel like they're contributing.
Right? Yeah, that's the key. Make them feel heard,you know, so that's. As a psychotherapist I have
to do that a lot.
All right, so you also, I assume, deal with a fairamount of, um, writers who have anxiety over their
career and their scripts and so on. What do yourecommend to clients who are feeling anxious? What
(44:30):
do you say to them?
Right. Well, there's, there's a whole range ofthings you can do. Um, you can recommend an
antidepressant which is good for anxiety. There'sseveral good ones. Um, the other thing to do is to
help them feel better about their work, which islike trying these things, like try to write this a
(44:52):
play and see it done and feel good about whatyou've done there.
So to get over anxiety is to get over anxiety,that is to, to, to do work, to do the work and
move along.
Right. And um, and give them options. Like forexample, this whole idea that even if you don't
sell your script, you know, it can get you ameeting, it can get you, right, an agent or a
(45:15):
manager.
Right.
And so, yeah, people become very disillusionedafter they get 10 rejections. That's par for the
course. 10 rejections is.
It's not only not unusual. I think most writersshould go into the business expecting it.
David Silverman (45:30):
Right.
So you can embrace it rather than feeling likeyou've been rejected.
Right. Yeah. I think I use the term take a longterm approach. Uh, so in other words, if you don't
sell something right away, don't be discouraged.
Uh, you've got to send this to. And you know, Ihave some practical advice about how to get your
(45:52):
script to a, uh, the right person. Uh, There's aprogram, IMDb Pro is a good way to go find
producers who make movies similar to the Ones thatyou just wrote and send it to them. And I have a
chapter on how to write a query letter, how to
get an agent, a manager, that kind of thing too.
Right, right. And how to send your script, what alog line is, and how to create one that's really
(46:17):
good. And those. Those are important.
Well, are you, uh, thinking about publishinganything further? Any more books?
My wife is, uh, very interested in detectivenovels. And she might want to write one
of those, uh, with you or by herself, possibly.
Either way. But if she wants to do one with me, Iprobably would go ahead and try it.
Well, that'd be kind of fun. Would that be acomedy or would it be a straightforward detective
(46:41):
story?
Yeah, I don't know. I think it probably would workbetter if it had some. Some comedy in it.
Yeah, well, that's your. That's what you're knownfor. That's your forte also.
That's my approach to writing is I look for thejokes, and that can be a detriment. Also, uh, I
often think I wish I had written, like I have abunch of spec scripts that I have that are just
(47:03):
sitting around. I wish I'd been paying moreattention to the emotional arcs.
Well, I've been having just a spectacularconversation with David Silverman and, uh,
certainly about his book, how to be a Rock StarScreenwriter. His and his wife Rogina's, uh, um.
They wrote this just wonderful book that I highlyrecommend to you. Uh, especially if you're trying
(47:24):
to figure out how to think your way through acareer in Hollywood, which is a challenge for even
the most successful writers, have to deal withsome of these psychological challenges to
overcome. You've told us a whole lot of wonderfultales and stories already, but do you have a story
that you can share with us that's either weird,quirky and offbeat strange, or just plain funny?
(47:46):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I do have a few of those. Um, sothis guy, uh, in Las Vegas, he had a radio show.
Uh, yeah, I sent him the book and, uh, so he, um.
I'm listening. Uh, the radio show's on. He'sintroducing me as one of the co creators of the
Simpsons.
Steve Cuden (48:04):
The Simpsons.
The Simpsons. And also. And also he said that Iwas a Green Beret. So this is my introduction.
And you didn't create the Simpsons and you werenot a Green Beret.
Yeah, but I had a funny story that kind of savedit a little bit because when Steve and I worked at
Fox, which we were there for three or four years,the other David Silverman, there's A David
(48:28):
Silverman, who, uh, who was a director. M. And,uh. So, yeah, and I met him at one point, the guys
who ran the Simpsons. David Silverman. This isDavid Silverman. Anyway, so I kept getting his
paychecks, so I would get.
You kept getting his paycheck?
I would get paychecks for the other DavidSilverman.
(48:48):
Did you cash them?
Yeah, I tried every possible way I could think of.
Uh, but, uh, I figured I would get into a lot oftrouble.
I think you would get into a lot of trouble if youdid.
Yeah. So I sent them back to Fox and said, youknow, there's two David Silmans. We both work for
Fox. And, uh, this is the other David Silverman'scheck. It's like it was about $15,000 for
(49:12):
directing one episode. Then a couple, you know, aweek goes by, and I get the same check in the
mail. So they didn't register. What I told themwas that I was the wrong guy. So I got a hold of
the other David Silverman's phone number here. Igot to give you this check or I'll mail it to you.
It's a shame you couldn't just go cash it, youknow.
I know. I thought, you know, well, we havedifferent Social Security numbers, but I don't
(49:37):
know.
Oh, yeah, that would. That would show up reallyquick, wouldn't it?
If I could find his number, maybe I could do that.
And then he's. And he's banging on their doors.
Where's my money? Where's my money?
So that was kind of amusing. But, yeah, I had. Iexplained all that on the air.
What was. What was the story that. I know Stevetold me that I'm sure you were there. Uh, in which
(49:57):
one? A showrunner was getting a suit made whileyou were doing work in a room.
Yeah. So, yeah, sitcoms usually, like, take placein a big room full of writers, and this particular
writer seemed to just want to get away from hisfamily, and he. It wasn't his, uh. Getting the
work done was not high on his priorities, so. Andit was very obvious because he would. We would go
(50:23):
into the room and just. He would be interested inanything, but, like, he would, uh, go through the
baseball score. He would pick games to bet on andthings. And, uh, one day he brought his tailor in,
and he's like, having suit made, and I'm not goingto say his name because I don't want to
get sued, but he was getting fitted for a suitwhile you were all in front of him working.
(50:46):
Yeah. Yeah. And There was a couple of, uh, peoplein the room who nudge him, you know, like, we have
to get working here, you know, because thesethings could go all night and they often did. And
I remember this was at the Radford worked a lotand we worked till 6am and we went and got
breakfast, you know, and so we're. Everybody wantsto go home except for this guy who apparently
(51:09):
doesn't, you know, his marriage is failing orsomething.
Sure.
So yeah, so he's, he's there all night longgetting fitted and, and he would say, like, um,
yeah, have six suits, uh, have six of them sent tomy Aspen house and six suits sent to, you know,
my, um, my Beverly Hills house. And we'd be allgoing like, oh my God.
(51:31):
Well, that's the way it works. All right, so lastquestion for you today, David.
David Silverman (51:34):
Ah.
Uh, you've already given us a gigantic amount ofadvice. And your book, how to Be a Rock Star
Screenwriter is just chock a block filled withgreat advice. Do you have a piece of advice if
somebody comes up to you and says, david, whatshould I do? I want to have a career in, in
Hollywood. I want to be a writer. What should Ido? Do you have a piece of advice you can give
(51:56):
them?
Yeah. So I have a chapter on how to find a mentor.
Steve Cuden (52:00):
Mhm.
And so you need to send your work to an importantwriter, somebody who's well known, at least the
further up the ladder than you are and has somemore clout. And so Steve and I, uh, we kind of, we
kind of got lucky because we took those classes,the one with Lorenzo Music and now the one with
Sam Locke, he had written for, uh, all the familyand he was in his 60s when we took the class. And
(52:26):
Lorenzo, uh, Music was. I don't think he was thatold. He was still working. He was the voice of
Garfield anyway. But Sam Locke, he liked ourscript. He was a Barney Miller or something. Uh,
and we had arranged to pitch the Jeffersons. Andyou know, we were naive and we thought maybe it
would be a good idea to bring him with us andwe'll write it as a three.
Steve Cude (52:48):
How'd that work out?
So the three of us went in and we had some storyideas. We pitched them and uh, then we kind of
left and we got like a phone call later said, comeback without the old guy. Which touches on the
whole ageism thing also, which is very sad.
No kidding. That is sad. I mean, that's really.
(53:11):
I know it's sort of sadly funny,
but, but I think as you age in Hollywood. Thatdoes happen for people. And I, I do think it's a,
it is the, the, the notion that uh, there are abunch of young people in a room and they don't
want somebody old guy telling them what it is. Sothat is ageism. But at the same time, um, it's as
(53:34):
people climb up those ranks. Correct me if youthink I'm wrong. Uh, they, they drop out of the
business too because they, they get married, theyhave wives or husbands and kids, and suddenly they
don't want to spend all those crazy 14, 15, 16hour days. So they drop out that way too.
Correct? Right, right. Yeah, that's part of it.
(53:56):
Yeah, it's true. But the exciting, uh, thing aboutstaying up all night and writing for a TV show, it
gets old after 10 years. When you have kids andeverything.
It might get old after 10 years, weeks. I mean,that starts to wear on you because it's.
Especially if you have a family.
Right? Yeah. We wrote a pilot of another partnerof mine, Jack. We wrote a pilot about a 70 year
(54:21):
old comedy writer like me. His name is David. Anduh, he hasn't worked in a long time, but he has
good credits anyway. So, um, it's about ages. Andhe has a, uh, Hispanic daughter in law who um, is
also kind of funny. And he uses her as the front.
(54:45):
You know, she's the beard, she's the beard. Shegets the job on the TV show and then there's
episodes where she thinks she's good enough, kindof break away from the writer that has the Emmys
and uh, all the stuff they have to go through,keep their, their partnership together.
Well, that sounds like that would be, you'd beperfectly suited to think that one through, that's
(55:06):
for sure.
David Silverman (55:07):
Yeah.
Well, David Silverman, this has been a lot of funfor me and I can't thank you enough, uh, for your
time, your energy and your wisdom on this. And forthose of you out there that want to understand
what it takes, the, the guts that it takes tobecome a screenwriter of success in Hollywood,
check out how to be a rock Star Screenwriter byDavid and Regina Sillerman. David, thank you so
(55:31):
much for being on the show with me today.
David Silverma (55:33):
Okay, thank you.
And so we've come to the end of today's StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won't you please
take a moment to give us a comment, rating orreview on whatever app or platform you're
listening to. Your support helps us bring moregreat Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is
available on all major podcasts, apps andplatforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube,
(55:56):
Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others.
Until next time, I'm Steve Cuden, and may all yourstories be unforgettable.
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