Speaker 1: He hired me as a punch up writer for one day.
Speaker 1: I just kept coming back. This was pre not eleven days,
Speaker 1: and I got to notice security guard at the gate
Speaker 1: at ABC, and he just saw me coming every day,
Speaker 1: so he'd let me in. And you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to get that guy fired now, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's still there. But every day I kept
Speaker 1: coming in and not just going the writer's room and
Speaker 1: sit on the couch and just keep pitching jokes and
Speaker 1: pitching jokes until Don Rio, who was our showrunner, Uh,
Speaker 1: he said, you know what, sit at the table, and
Speaker 1: that was the beginning. Hright. My name is Rodney Barnes.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer and writer on the hit show
Speaker 1: Winning Time on HBO, and I write a bunch of
Speaker 1: other cool stuffs. Hello, friends, welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: Off the Beat. I'm so glad you're here. As always,
Speaker 1: this is your host, Brian Baumgartner. Today, as you just heard,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be speaking with writer producer Rodney Barnes. Now,
Speaker 1: who's Rodney Barnes, you might ask, Well, he is a man,
Speaker 1: a writer who has mastered almost every genre. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not exaggerating He's worked on everything from sitcom's like
Speaker 1: Everybody Hates Chris Too, satirical cartoons like The Boon Docks,
Speaker 1: which by the way, won him a Peabody, and sports
Speaker 1: dramas like the new hit HBO show that I just finished,
Speaker 1: Winning Time. Trust me check that show out if you haven't.
Speaker 1: It is worth it, whether you're a sports fan or not.
Speaker 1: Oh and when he's not doing all of that, he
Speaker 1: also writes graphic novels. So yeah, no big deal. Listen,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for some inspiration for some real talk
Speaker 1: about show biz, you have come to the right place today.
Speaker 1: I mean Rodney. He literally left the writer's room for
Speaker 1: season two of Win Time to come here and to
Speaker 1: talk to us. We're gonna walk through his incredible career
Speaker 1: from being a production assistant on a first name basis
Speaker 1: with his childhood heroes to learning to tell the best
Speaker 1: story he can no matter what room he is in.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'm gonna let the man. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let the master speak for himself. So here he is
Speaker 1: Rodney Barnes. Everyone, Bubble and Squeak. I love it, Bubble
Speaker 1: and Squeak, Bubble and Squeaker. Cook at every month left
Speaker 1: over from the night before. What's up, Rodney, How are
Speaker 1: you sure? I'm all right? How are you doing? Doing okay,
Speaker 1: doing okay, just okay today. Yeah, so we has worked.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff going on at the same time,
Speaker 1: but it's all good stuff. Well, good, well, thank you
Speaker 1: for taking the time to talk to me. First off,
Speaker 1: I have to say congratulations on your huge smash hit,
Speaker 1: which I finished a couple of days ago, now winning
Speaker 1: time on HBO. I'm very excited to talk to you
Speaker 1: about that. But I wanted to start going back a
Speaker 1: little bit for our listeners and for me, like how
Speaker 1: you got to where you are now? You grew up
Speaker 1: in Maryland, right, Annapolis, Maryland? Annapolis, Maryland is where I
Speaker 1: grew up. You grew up, you were born and raised,
Speaker 1: you lived there for your youth. Yeah. I was born
Speaker 1: at the U. S. Naval Academy. My father was in
Speaker 1: the military, lived there, stayed there for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: I went to college in the area. Sort of figured
Speaker 1: my life was just gonna be regular Annapolitan for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word. Every job that I have was
Speaker 1: in the area and never really could sider being in California.
Speaker 1: One day and then um. When I went to Howard University,
Speaker 1: I started to work on movies and TV shows Pelican Brief,
Speaker 1: Clear Present, Danger, Quiz Show, Forrest Gump, anything that came
Speaker 1: to the area and I could get a gig on
Speaker 1: would be a production assistant or an assistant director. And
Speaker 1: then eventually I worked on a movie, Major Pain, with
Speaker 1: Damon Wayams, and he took an interest in me and
Speaker 1: gave me an opportunity to work on his movies. And
Speaker 1: that sort of led me to l A And I'm
Speaker 1: packed up my stuff, moved out and left in my
Speaker 1: car for a while. That famous l A story, you know,
Speaker 1: scratching and scraping and try to make your way. And
Speaker 1: I did that and here we are here, here we
Speaker 1: are before I want to talk about the car. But
Speaker 1: when you went to Howard, as you said, when did
Speaker 1: you start to sort of think this is what I
Speaker 1: want to do. I want to be involved in entertainment
Speaker 1: or I want to be a writer. Well what happened
Speaker 1: was I went to when I first went to college,
Speaker 1: a bunch of journey colleges and different colleges. It was
Speaker 1: to play sports, and probably a third of the way
Speaker 1: in I realized I wasn't good enough to make a
Speaker 1: living at being an athlete. But I kept doing it
Speaker 1: anyway because I didn't have a plan. B There was
Speaker 1: nothing else really there, um, you know, for me to do.
Speaker 1: So I kept doing it because it was something to do.
Speaker 1: And then eventually, UM hit a wall and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to run out of time, and a friend
Speaker 1: suggested I go back to school for real, and I
Speaker 1: went back to Howard focused on the film and television business.
Speaker 1: Still had no idea how it was going to work.
Speaker 1: I did not know what the bridge from the East
Speaker 1: Coast to Hollywood, you know, how that worked. Didn't understand
Speaker 1: the business at all, but slowly but surely, and I'd
Speaker 1: say being a production assistant was a huge part of
Speaker 1: it because I got an opportunity to see how it
Speaker 1: all sort of came together and slowly but surely make
Speaker 1: my way in it. Now. Writing was another thing. It
Speaker 1: was more of. I knew I wanted to write, and
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to be in the business, but
Speaker 1: I pretty much knew no one was going to hire
Speaker 1: me just being so green and just buy a script
Speaker 1: from me and make a million dollars and everything was
Speaker 1: going to be great coming out of the box. So
Speaker 1: I looked at being a production assistant and working in
Speaker 1: production as a way to keep a roof over my head,
Speaker 1: you know, while I was figuring out the writing part two.
Speaker 1: So the first part sort of supported the second part, right.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so interesting. I've talked to so many
Speaker 1: people and we've talked about the value of just on
Speaker 1: set experience, just being around a set, seeing how things work,
Speaker 1: whether you're working in exactly the area that you want
Speaker 1: to be. How valuable that just that experience is. Well
Speaker 1: what I think a lot of people I talked to
Speaker 1: a lot of writers, they don't want to go through
Speaker 1: that process. They want to do the thing they want
Speaker 1: to do, which is understandable. But if you come from
Speaker 1: the conventional working world, which ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 1: of us come from, it works its own way. But
Speaker 1: the entertainment business works another way. It's a way we talk,
Speaker 1: it's a way at the pace at which it moves,
Speaker 1: the expectations, the emotional psychological development that you have in
Speaker 1: order to be able to deal with constant rejection, all
Speaker 1: of that stuff you typically don't get in the conventional world.
Speaker 1: If you work at a regular government job, like you know,
Speaker 1: my family did. They are boundaries that you work within.
Speaker 1: You you know what they are. You get a reviewed
Speaker 1: every year, you get raised, or you don't get a raised,
Speaker 1: and it's very conventional, and in Hollywood it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the circus. You know, every month, two months, three months,
Speaker 1: you could be moving on to the next place, and
Speaker 1: you've got to figure out how you're gonna make it.
Speaker 1: In between, there's a lot of rejection, or could be.
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody that hasn't, but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be out to miss it. Certainly in my career has
Speaker 1: been a lot of rejection, and you have to mostly
Speaker 1: be able to continue to get back up off the
Speaker 1: horse when things don't go the way that you wanted
Speaker 1: to go. Maybe you don't have that mental toughness. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be a really hard ride for you. And
Speaker 1: so I think having those jobs gave me an opportunity
Speaker 1: to learn stuff, to get those muscles ready. Living in
Speaker 1: my car, just a lot of things that I had
Speaker 1: to do to get to this place that I didn't
Speaker 1: realize at the time. I always use the analogy of
Speaker 1: when you're in the gym, you have the machines and
Speaker 1: you have free weights, the machines do some of the
Speaker 1: work for you because they balanced the weight that you're
Speaker 1: lifting and you're just doing the movement. But when you're
Speaker 1: doing free weights, you have all those little muscles to
Speaker 1: balance it that you're doing yourself, that you're utilizing to
Speaker 1: lift in the weight. That's sort of what I look
Speaker 1: at working in production is because there's so many little
Speaker 1: things that you're getting about how to interact with other
Speaker 1: people within the business and learning what to do and
Speaker 1: what not to do. You know, I've never had mentors
Speaker 1: in the conventional sense of the word that someone put
Speaker 1: their arm around me and said, sonen, come on, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna show you how this business work. But I've been
Speaker 1: blessed to be in rooms with some really high level
Speaker 1: people and how they conducted themselves and how they dealt
Speaker 1: with stress, and how they you know, we're leaders, and
Speaker 1: just to be able to observe was the biggest thing.
Speaker 1: If I had had success in my twenties or you know,
Speaker 1: even early thirties, I would have blown it. I know
Speaker 1: I would have blown it. And having the opportunity to
Speaker 1: take a step back and just learn is invaluable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, everything for me is not about the office.
Speaker 1: But I will talk about Greg Daniels, our showrunner, who
Speaker 1: talked about for him, which makes so much sense. Oftentimes, writers,
Speaker 1: particularly young writers, are writing and a void without really
Speaker 1: understanding how television or movies are constructed. Whereas when you
Speaker 1: hear a p A and when you're on set, you
Speaker 1: know you can't write some things. I used to joke
Speaker 1: with him, I'm not Homer Simpson. There are things that
Speaker 1: a writer can write for Homer Simpson and and an
Speaker 1: animator can animate that. My body is not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: There's no way to shoot certain things. And so I
Speaker 1: think as a writer having that because oftentimes they're right,
Speaker 1: you're stuck in a writer's room. You're not really on
Speaker 1: set on a day to day basis. Being able to
Speaker 1: understand that is so important. The greatest boot camp for
Speaker 1: me on My Wife and Kids, which was my first
Speaker 1: show sitcom, was that I had the opportunity to you,
Speaker 1: after you're a million percent right, that you believe, when
Speaker 1: you're sort of in the comfort of your own mind
Speaker 1: and space without anybody evaluating the work, that you can
Speaker 1: just write about anything. You can say anything, you could
Speaker 1: do anything that no boundaries. But when you start to
Speaker 1: learn how to write producible scripts within the budget that
Speaker 1: you're working with, within the constraints of a net worked
Speaker 1: if you're a network on a network show or what
Speaker 1: have you, you realize when you're actually in production and
Speaker 1: making a thing, now you're really writing to something versus
Speaker 1: just your imagination and your desire to write. And I
Speaker 1: can say for me, the first ten years of my
Speaker 1: career were really all about that thing that you what
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, It was learning how to be a
Speaker 1: professional writer and learning how to be a professional you know,
Speaker 1: mentally and emotionally in both situations. Like like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I had to go through the process
Speaker 1: of being a staff writer twice the story editor. I
Speaker 1: jumped up a couple of levels because I was on
Speaker 1: some shows for a while, But I needed that initial
Speaker 1: training in order to get from zero to one, or
Speaker 1: I doubt that I would have. You know, some of
Speaker 1: the good things that have happened to me later in
Speaker 1: my career wouldn't have happened if I didn't have that
Speaker 1: foundation to go back to. Yeah. Yeah, so you meet
Speaker 1: the wayans their supply word of of you. Yes, you
Speaker 1: decided to make the jump to Los Angeles, and then yes,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, you were living out of your car. Now,
Speaker 1: how what did that do for you or to you
Speaker 1: in terms of it would have been very easy to
Speaker 1: give up at that point. Yeah, I was fortunate about
Speaker 1: the whole living in my car thing. You know, certainly
Speaker 1: when you say it through the years of Today's listener
Speaker 1: and they go, oh my god, you lived in your car.
Speaker 1: You were homeless. It must have been the worst thing
Speaker 1: in the world. And it wasn't. For the two years
Speaker 1: that I was following Dame and around the country. He
Speaker 1: wasn't putting me up in hotels. I was living in
Speaker 1: my car then too, But there was something about being
Speaker 1: close to the thing that I wanted to do. I
Speaker 1: knew everything in my hometown. I knew what life would
Speaker 1: be if I went back there. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: it would be in Hollywood. And I've got this guy,
Speaker 1: and he's given me jobs and the mom sets every
Speaker 1: day and I'm meeting the right people. I'm learning a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, it didn't feel like homelessness. It didn't feel
Speaker 1: painful because in my mind, Okay, I would be in
Speaker 1: my car at night, but I would be on set
Speaker 1: like six seven in the morning because that's what the
Speaker 1: p's you know, come in. They come in first. I
Speaker 1: could eat and craft service all day. I probably actually
Speaker 1: gain weight because there's endless there's an endless plat food.
Speaker 1: I got along with the transport guys because so they
Speaker 1: gave me gas. I could go into honey wagons and
Speaker 1: take a shower. I started a garbage business with my
Speaker 1: truck where at the end of the night they would
Speaker 1: give me a buck fifty a bag to get rid
Speaker 1: of the catering the locations. Folks would like here, get
Speaker 1: rid of this, and I make a hundred bucks, which
Speaker 1: at that time was huge with my dollar a day salary.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't bad. It was work a boy.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I was a guy doing nothing. It
Speaker 1: was just I didn't have enough to sustain myself in
Speaker 1: the way that I'm sustaining myself. Yeah, that you took
Speaker 1: it as this is just what life is, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking for this next opportunity. But I'm in l A.
Speaker 1: I'm working, I'm I'm doing it. Yeah. Blade was my
Speaker 1: first movie that I worked on in l A. I
Speaker 1: love comic books and a comic book guy, so I'm
Speaker 1: on set every day. Wesley Snipes knows my name. He's
Speaker 1: in the Blade outfit. Steve Norrington is telling me stories
Speaker 1: about when he was a special effects guy and the
Speaker 1: chest Burster and alien Like. I'm around some really cool
Speaker 1: people doing really cool stuff. I'm learning l a because
Speaker 1: every day we have a different location. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Yeah after that, Uh, you mentioned it already.
Speaker 1: You you work with the Wayans. Your first writing job
Speaker 1: right on my wife and kids. That was your first
Speaker 1: staff writing job on television. Yeah, Damon, Uh, Damon and
Speaker 1: I we weren't around each other for a hot second,
Speaker 1: and then I got an opportunity to work on my
Speaker 1: wife and kids. He hired me as a punch up
Speaker 1: writer for one day. I just kept coming back. This
Speaker 1: was pret not eleven day. And I got to notice
Speaker 1: security guard at the gate at ABC, and he just
Speaker 1: saw me coming every day, so he'd let me in.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not trying to get that guy
Speaker 1: fired now, but I don't know if he's still there.
Speaker 1: But every day I kept coming in and not just
Speaker 1: going the writer's room and sit on the couch and
Speaker 1: just keep pitching jokes and pitching jokes until Don Rio,
Speaker 1: who was our showrunner, Uh. He said, you know what,
Speaker 1: sit at the table. And that was the beginning. And
Speaker 1: once I got at the table, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep doing this thing. Now I'm sitting at
Speaker 1: a writer's table. I'm a writer. And they hired me
Speaker 1: to be a staff writer the next season, and that
Speaker 1: sort of was the beginning. Television, particularly that type of
Speaker 1: television coming from films is different, right, I mean the
Speaker 1: presentational style. Did that present for you any challenges or
Speaker 1: were you just full on enthusiastic about just being a writer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was enthusiast. I was terrified about being a writer.
Speaker 1: This is that them talking about the emotional psychological stuff.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of imposter syndrome. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of knowing what I didn't know. I thank god
Speaker 1: that Done was my first guy because he was patient
Speaker 1: with me. He saw whatever he saw and allowed me
Speaker 1: to grow. And so it was really a thing about
Speaker 1: a lot of times folks come to me and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to work for you so
Speaker 1: I can learn. I just want to learn. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: this isn't college. You know. I don't say it out loud,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking, but I did get an opportunity to learn,
Speaker 1: but I also contributed as well. There was this duality
Speaker 1: of walking with both realities. That being in the writer's
Speaker 1: room with someone who had a huge amount of experience,
Speaker 1: it was invaluable, but I had to earn it every
Speaker 1: single day when I went in. I had to do
Speaker 1: what I could to answer your question. I didn't really
Speaker 1: have professional chops in the way that I think I
Speaker 1: do today, but I gave what ahead right. What attracted
Speaker 1: you from an early age to graphic novels? What what
Speaker 1: was it about that or comic books that that that
Speaker 1: you really responded to? Well, I could tell you. My
Speaker 1: mother was a school teacher and she used to do
Speaker 1: her lesson plans at the public library. This is pre
Speaker 1: they weren't computers. All she had was paper and pen
Speaker 1: during those days. Being a single parent, she would take
Speaker 1: me to the public library with her, and they had
Speaker 1: this little pen where they had the kids books in
Speaker 1: and the Curious George's and Dr Seuss and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. But under those books was a box, and
Speaker 1: then that box were comic books. And I knew what
Speaker 1: that box was, and I pulled him out and this
Speaker 1: love affair was born that to this day still grips
Speaker 1: me in a weird kind of way. I think it
Speaker 1: was the nature of the stories challenged me in a
Speaker 1: way that the kids books didn't. It's like the kids
Speaker 1: books were clearly for kids. If I had nothing, I
Speaker 1: would read them. But there was something about like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna name folks I don't know if anyone knows who
Speaker 1: they are. But there were guys like Jim Starling and
Speaker 1: Neil Adams and Mike Rell and a bunch of great
Speaker 1: creators who wrote what I would call early Star Wars
Speaker 1: or early you know, Star Trek or any of the
Speaker 1: things that would push the envelope. They would talk about
Speaker 1: social issues, they would talk about you know, good versus evil,
Speaker 1: life and death, all of this stuff. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: literature in the classical sense of the word, but it
Speaker 1: was preparing me for all of those things that I
Speaker 1: would encounter later. So they didn't feel intimidating if someone
Speaker 1: had me read Shakespeare, because these guys had already taken
Speaker 1: a piece of the things that they do and put
Speaker 1: them into Superman, Batman, green letter books. That sort of
Speaker 1: was a great bridge from me to the more adult
Speaker 1: fair that I and in too earlier but I was
Speaker 1: just in tregue. I love the art, I love the stories,
Speaker 1: and I'm I was an only child. Even though I
Speaker 1: have a lot of half brothers and sisters, I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time by myself as a kid, So
Speaker 1: comic books were sort of like a friend that I
Speaker 1: could depend on. Yeah, this doesn't fully relate. I am
Speaker 1: wondering if my daughter has kind of a similar fascination
Speaker 1: my sister. This happened last night, not a joke. My
Speaker 1: sister sent a bunch of books from her Her kids
Speaker 1: are older, my daughter's seven. She reads every night. She
Speaker 1: just reads, reads, reads, reads, and she's been getting into
Speaker 1: this box of books. And she said to me last night,
Speaker 1: as we're going up, she said, I read this cool
Speaker 1: story last night. The woman died because got bit by
Speaker 1: a snake. But then the the man died too because
Speaker 1: he got bit by a snake. And she starts talking
Speaker 1: and I'm like, what is she reading? Where did she find?
Speaker 1: And it was a kid's adaptation of Anthony and Cleopatra.
Speaker 1: She I go, where is this book? I've got to
Speaker 1: see this book and it's just, you know, totally for kids.
Speaker 1: But like she doesn't she doesn't want to read Dr Seush.
Speaker 1: She she is fascinated by what you're talking about, like
Speaker 1: bigger stories that, even if they're told in a simplistic
Speaker 1: way for kids, clearly had a huge impact on her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know Stephen King walks along the lines of
Speaker 1: that as well. I remember as a kid when you say,
Speaker 1: have paperback books on a spinner, and I had to
Speaker 1: reach up. So that tells you how old I was
Speaker 1: to them. Six eight now, so I've been like six
Speaker 1: ft tall since I was probably thirteen years old. And
Speaker 1: I remember getting carried. I remember the cover of the book.
Speaker 1: I remember where I was when I bought the book,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why I grabbed my eye. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I caught me, but I was just
Speaker 1: spending and spending and spending, and it stopped right there,
Speaker 1: and I bought carry and I remember opening up the
Speaker 1: book and I saw all of the reviews. They used
Speaker 1: to have them in the I don't know if which
Speaker 1: publisher it was, Penguin or whoever, but I saw all
Speaker 1: of these reviews. I was like, Wow, this must be
Speaker 1: really good. All of these people like this book, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how it worked back then with the
Speaker 1: press and not to say that it was obviously I'm
Speaker 1: still a fan, and then he did tell him slot
Speaker 1: then he did the shining, and I was right there
Speaker 1: just going basically doing the same thing I was with
Speaker 1: comic books. I was building a relationship. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in my fifties now and I was a teenager then,
Speaker 1: and I just built this relationship with an author that
Speaker 1: I came to depend on the consistency of a guy
Speaker 1: like a Stephen King. You know, in my mind when
Speaker 1: I think about being an author and writing comic books
Speaker 1: and novels as well, it was like, how could I
Speaker 1: build up a lifestyle that would house that type of
Speaker 1: discipline to where I could be prolific in that way too,
Speaker 1: to where you know, I'm writing television, but I'm writing
Speaker 1: comic books, and I'm writing novels, and I'm writing movies
Speaker 1: and I'm doing all these things. But that requires a
Speaker 1: certain type of structure to your life, because no one's gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, make you right or make you do these things.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of come up with the intention
Speaker 1: on your own that this is what I want to do,
Speaker 1: this is what I need to do. And again, going
Speaker 1: back to that p a thing and survival. You know,
Speaker 1: pas come and go. You know, it's the thing that
Speaker 1: you can get rid of. There's ten more standard in line.
Speaker 1: There's a thing that you have to do two um,
Speaker 1: you know, show that you really want to be there
Speaker 1: and develop the reputation so that people keep hiring you
Speaker 1: again and again and again. You know, just to be
Speaker 1: able to think nimbly. Nobody comes along and says this
Speaker 1: is what you need to do. You have to figure
Speaker 1: it out yourself. And I think that that skill set
Speaker 1: went from being a production assistant to being a professional
Speaker 1: writer to this day. You mentioned Stephen King, and I
Speaker 1: know you have a deep love of vampire horror novels.
Speaker 1: What is it about that material or the way that
Speaker 1: stories are told in that genre that appeals to you
Speaker 1: so much. The life and death thing is huge, you know,
Speaker 1: the life and death thing that didn't exist in children's
Speaker 1: books unless you were getting into the dark Disney stuff.
Speaker 1: You know what, wasn't afraid to deal with life and death.
Speaker 1: But typically there's this thing in horror to where there's
Speaker 1: a good guy and a bad guy, and the bad
Speaker 1: guy the antagonist operates on a place with a lot
Speaker 1: of intangibles. That's the supernatural stuff, and in order for
Speaker 1: the protagonist to make it out alive, whichever one does,
Speaker 1: because obviously some won't, he has to use a unique
Speaker 1: set of skills that go beyond conventional thinking because you
Speaker 1: never know, you're dealing with a vampire who is immortal
Speaker 1: and you know, can turn into a bet and some
Speaker 1: of the mythos, and what do you do if you're
Speaker 1: trying not to get your next sector, try to you know,
Speaker 1: get your wife back. She's been bitten and you want
Speaker 1: her to come back to being a human. What do
Speaker 1: you do? There was always something about that and then
Speaker 1: um not being able to predict the outcome, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to go in a room and that could
Speaker 1: be scary stuff in there, and a gun might not
Speaker 1: help you, karate might not help you. There's there's just
Speaker 1: so much to it that you have to use your
Speaker 1: mind and your imagination in order to be able to
Speaker 1: make it. That's so I've never thought about that before.
Speaker 1: But the unconventional solutions to a high stakes problem where
Speaker 1: you have to use your imagination, I think that's that's
Speaker 1: awesome kept me going. Get time. I have to talk
Speaker 1: about one of your really mega successes, The Boondocks, for
Speaker 1: which you want a Peabody Award, And really that's mixing
Speaker 1: a few of your loves, right, adapting a comic strip
Speaker 1: into a television show. What was the process like for
Speaker 1: launching that, forgetting that that show going? It was already
Speaker 1: on track. The strips creator uh Am Gruta had already
Speaker 1: been working on getting it going and was really looking
Speaker 1: to work with television writer because he was trying to
Speaker 1: adapt it for TV. And at the time I've been
Speaker 1: working on my wife and kids, and our sensibilities sort
Speaker 1: of meshed in a way. There was this frustration I
Speaker 1: had because it was another side of me being a
Speaker 1: writer working on network television with my wife and kids,
Speaker 1: and everybody hates Chris the boundaries she had to work
Speaker 1: within and with the Boon Ducks that didn't exist in
Speaker 1: the same way. So I was able to find this
Speaker 1: world where you could virtually say anything seemingly and be
Speaker 1: creative in a way at network television didn't allow during
Speaker 1: that period of time. And certainly, and even bringing the
Speaker 1: cultural thing in, I could talk about black people in
Speaker 1: a way here that I couldn't run network TV. Frustrations
Speaker 1: and politics and all of this other stuff that it
Speaker 1: gave a certain amount of freedom that wasn't there and
Speaker 1: any of the other things that I had done, so,
Speaker 1: you know, just having the opportunity and I was doing it.
Speaker 1: I was working on that show at the same time
Speaker 1: I was working on the other show, So it was
Speaker 1: almost like an exhaust valve, you know, uh, air brakes
Speaker 1: where you just need to let off some pressures. Like
Speaker 1: I would do this one thing in the morning and
Speaker 1: then do another thing at night, and they were completely
Speaker 1: different things. But again, I look at all of that
Speaker 1: stuff is sort of a boot camp or training ground
Speaker 1: because school teaches you what school teaches you. But when
Speaker 1: you're trying to build that bridge to being a professional
Speaker 1: and wanting to do more mature things, it takes, like
Speaker 1: any crap a, doing it over and over and over,
Speaker 1: and then different types of ways and different entry points
Speaker 1: of different tones and different styles, and before you can
Speaker 1: get to a place where you can say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not intimidated by anything that's coming my way because I've
Speaker 1: probably seen it before. You know, there's always that the
Speaker 1: intrigue of something new. But once you've done something enough,
Speaker 1: you know. The championship games are tonight in the NBA,
Speaker 1: and these guys have been playing basketball for so long,
Speaker 1: even though it's a different style, is still a game
Speaker 1: of basketball. And that's sort of how I look at
Speaker 1: writing because of the drama. I've done, comedy, I've done animation,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of different single camera, multi caam commercials, whatever,
Speaker 1: and all of that comes from having done so many
Speaker 1: different things that when I walk in the room, even
Speaker 1: if I haven't done it before, I'm like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is connected to something that I've done before, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel completely foreign to the place where I'm going
Speaker 1: to be intimidated. Yes, well, I just finished Winning Time
Speaker 1: on HBO. You were talking before about having a fascination
Speaker 1: or or really appreciating life and death situations high stakes. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess there is a little bit of death in this.
Speaker 1: I think you guys did an astounding job of making
Speaker 1: everyone watching feel how high the stakes are, even though
Speaker 1: again we're talking about about basketball. So talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit or you're you're clearly you're a basketball fan.
Speaker 1: I am as well. What attracted you to wanting to
Speaker 1: tell this story? Obviously a seminal moment for well, for
Speaker 1: the Lakers, for the city of Los Angeles, and for
Speaker 1: the n b A in general, I'm as a huge
Speaker 1: NBA fan. I was very interested in the character of
Speaker 1: David Stern actually and sort of beginning to see his
Speaker 1: ascension through the organization and how he shaped the next
Speaker 1: from Magic and Larry to Michael, and how how he
Speaker 1: viewed building the league. How did this show come to be?
Speaker 1: Obviously it's based on a book, showtime. What attracted you
Speaker 1: to it and made it a story you wanted to tell? Well,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a history of how it all
Speaker 1: came to be before me. Jim Heckt, who was one
Speaker 1: of our executive producers, read the book, Jeff Berman's book,
Speaker 1: got it to Adam McKay. Adam McKay dug the book,
Speaker 1: he got it to HBO. HBO said, yes, we'll do
Speaker 1: a mini series on this. We need a writer. They
Speaker 1: reached out to Max Bornstein, who I've been writing with
Speaker 1: for about a decade, and then he reached out to me.
Speaker 1: That's sort of how I got involved. Unfortunately, I'm old
Speaker 1: enough to have seen a lot of bad sports theme
Speaker 1: movies TV shows, um where if it's not about one
Speaker 1: particular player, it's usually about the coach or the owner
Speaker 1: or someone and the players are sort of relegated to
Speaker 1: one dimensional caricatures. That's the good one, that's the bad
Speaker 1: when that's the one that's gonna a shot as someone
Speaker 1: is going to jail. And we won the final game.
Speaker 1: Where we lost the final game, that was sort of it.
Speaker 1: This was an opportunity to tell a layered story. It
Speaker 1: was the opportunity to speak to a period of time
Speaker 1: I knew. I understood not just the games, but everything
Speaker 1: that was happening in the world. I remembered the rhythm
Speaker 1: and how people spoke, how people looked, the attitudes of people.
Speaker 1: I was telling my son one day, we were talking
Speaker 1: about professional wrestling, and uh, you know, my son was
Speaker 1: looking at some of the footage I was looking at
Speaker 1: and he was like, oh my god, that's appalling. He
Speaker 1: was looking through today's sensibilities into the past and it
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago, and I'm trying to explain to
Speaker 1: him the context of how it's different and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and all he could see is what he knew. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to give sort of kind of creative bridge
Speaker 1: to be able to speak to a world that I
Speaker 1: won't say I missed, but I'm certainly and of in
Speaker 1: its own unique way. I just watched the George Carlin
Speaker 1: documentary on HBO. You know, it was another voice of
Speaker 1: that period of time that I remember so clearly, and
Speaker 1: comedy sort of doesn't work that way anymore, and not
Speaker 1: on mass and so the opportunity just to speak to
Speaker 1: a period of time on a subject that I was
Speaker 1: deeply connected to, that was the draw for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have heard that you describe the show as a
Speaker 1: love letter to a period of time, but also to
Speaker 1: the Lakers and to the game. It's fascinating again, a
Speaker 1: layered story. You described it as focus. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, who is the show about?
Speaker 1: Is it Dr Buss? It's about the organization because everybody
Speaker 1: gets some everybody gets love. So you got Dr Bus.
Speaker 1: Dr Buss and Magic are sort of two halves of
Speaker 1: a whole. And then there's the world that's the extensions
Speaker 1: of those two worlds. You've got from Dr Buss, you've
Speaker 1: got his Emily, you've got the management team and the
Speaker 1: people that he interacts with primarily, and from Magic side,
Speaker 1: you have his family and other players, and you know
Speaker 1: how they interact with him and the little in the
Speaker 1: world that they occupyed the thing, the verb of what
Speaker 1: they do. They played basketball. The management side owns and
Speaker 1: operates the team, so that would be the two halves
Speaker 1: of the whole. But everybody gets enough love that I
Speaker 1: would say it's about the Laker organization as a whole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're the expert without knowing the story,
Speaker 1: and I had not read the book, but I sort
Speaker 1: of understood the show time that it was sort of
Speaker 1: made in Dr Busses image. But I think adding in
Speaker 1: or explaining the stakes of what he was going through
Speaker 1: and the decisions that he made and the choices from
Speaker 1: everyone else essentially in the organization to say, this is
Speaker 1: only gonna work if we build it in his image
Speaker 1: in a way in terms of not just the style
Speaker 1: of play though it was, but also everything else that
Speaker 1: created it an event that is now arguably the biggest
Speaker 1: a basketball game in Los Angeles for the Lakers, is
Speaker 1: arguably the biggest sporting event for a regular season game
Speaker 1: that you could go to maybe the Knicks at Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden or something like that, but but in a
Speaker 1: particular time. But yeah, yeah, but I think even you know,
Speaker 1: even so today, I mean, having the stars, they're having well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess Lebron is there now, but it
Speaker 1: becomes an event going to a game. It's not just
Speaker 1: a game. I agree. I mean I think that you know,
Speaker 1: for the Lakers, whether they're good or bad, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they're having a good or a bad season, they've
Speaker 1: built sort of an entertainment infrastructure that it becomes an event.
Speaker 1: Every game becomes an event, is sold out, regardless of
Speaker 1: they play in the worst team in the league or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'd say, A team like the Yankees, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of have that mystique to them to whether they're good
Speaker 1: or bad, you show up and there's this aura of
Speaker 1: what they are that sort of accompanies the experience of
Speaker 1: watching them play. Maybe the next have it, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the Dallas Cowboys have it. Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the Patriots. Those teams that are sort
Speaker 1: of have sort of broken out of the idea of
Speaker 1: sports and into the zeitgeist of pop culture. To me
Speaker 1: are the ones that have an extra thing happening. Um,
Speaker 1: how important was it for you to get the characterization's
Speaker 1: right about the people you were covering. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of discussion about some of the portrayals,
Speaker 1: I would say, most notably Jerry West also Kareem a
Speaker 1: little bit early on in the in the thing, how
Speaker 1: important was it for you and how accurate do you
Speaker 1: think that you all ended up being portraying these these
Speaker 1: legends and the sport. This is what I'll say. We
Speaker 1: did a lot of research with what we had read,
Speaker 1: a lot of books, a lot of articles. Never about
Speaker 1: disparaging anyone. We come from a place of fandom and appreciation,
Speaker 1: you know that said, I'm also very empathetic with the
Speaker 1: idea that if someone was telling the story of Rodney Barnes,
Speaker 1: and certainly of a certain period, and they picked certain
Speaker 1: things and they said, I'm gonna tell oh, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell that story, and I don't get an
Speaker 1: opportunity to sort of net or add all of the
Speaker 1: various things that were going on in my life in
Speaker 1: my mind at the time to sort of supported that.
Speaker 1: I would feel a way too, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: more of um, it's more of a place of understanding. Again,
Speaker 1: never work to disparage them. Put a lot of work
Speaker 1: and effort into the research that we did, and we
Speaker 1: try to take a year's worth of a basketball season,
Speaker 1: condense it to ten hours. You know, it's very difficult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get like a documentary style thing
Speaker 1: where things are told by effects only. You have to
Speaker 1: dramatize a certain thing in order to make it work,
Speaker 1: and we try to the best of our ability to
Speaker 1: do that in a way that is um balanced and so,
Speaker 1: you know, again, empathetic to those guys, right, I certainly
Speaker 1: hear and believe that. I mean, there's a ton of
Speaker 1: love shown for everyone involved. I guess I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: this in a slightly different way. Is it more important
Speaker 1: as a writer on this series to tell the best
Speaker 1: story that you can or to get it right? Right?
Speaker 1: Is such a subjective thing, you know what is right?
Speaker 1: I think you try to tell this the best story
Speaker 1: that you can, for sure, but you also try to
Speaker 1: tell a story that is layered and nuanced and his
Speaker 1: depth and is entertaining the other stuff that goes into
Speaker 1: the gumbo of storytelling. It's a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: of course, being fair and all of those things too,
Speaker 1: But we're making entertainment more so than just spouting facts
Speaker 1: and again right as relative Right, I listened to John Ireland,
Speaker 1: who is the now the voice of the Lakers. He
Speaker 1: and Mason are probably my two favorite l A sports
Speaker 1: people to listen to if I'm driving around picking up
Speaker 1: kids from school in the afternoon. And he loves that.
Speaker 1: I've heard him rave about it, and he's a current
Speaker 1: employee obviously of the Lakers. He said, and it was
Speaker 1: in the middle of a huge compliment, he said. Oh
Speaker 1: and by the way, leading up to Boston, the Lakers
Speaker 1: actually won the game before, but he tells in in
Speaker 1: the story that it would be better, right, I assume
Speaker 1: in terms of stakes that they were as down and
Speaker 1: out as possible before they end up beating Boston. Is
Speaker 1: that the thinking that's kind of what I'm talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say it's related to that sort of thinking.
Speaker 1: I think when you're trying to tell a story, you're
Speaker 1: trying to manipulate emotions. You can tell a story about
Speaker 1: a boxer, or if you're saying you're doing a thrill
Speaker 1: in Manila, you're making a movie about it. Ali one
Speaker 1: fifteen rounds probably in that fight, would it be slightly
Speaker 1: better if you gave if you showed Frasier's punches landing,
Speaker 1: you know, and a little bit more, you know, even
Speaker 1: way so that by the time you get to the
Speaker 1: end that yes, Ali one, But do you want to
Speaker 1: watch a fight that's unusual because Thrill in Manila was
Speaker 1: a great fight. But do you just want to see
Speaker 1: this fight where you have Ali dominating if you're making
Speaker 1: a movie of it, or do you want to make
Speaker 1: it seem as though there's more danger present for Ali
Speaker 1: in that fight in those areas where we may have said, Okay,
Speaker 1: the score was a little bit different or whatever. You're
Speaker 1: trying to emphasize the next moment that you're coming to
Speaker 1: that ultimately is going to drive us to the ultimate truth.
Speaker 1: The Lakers won the title and etcetera, etcetera. But the
Speaker 1: journey to getting there for the person that wasn't alive
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, it doesn't know the history, It
Speaker 1: doesn't know any of those things that's going on this
Speaker 1: this ride. You want to make it as pleasurable for
Speaker 1: him as you can. Yeah, well, and it It certainly
Speaker 1: was that compelling for well, for sports fans and non
Speaker 1: sports fans alike. It's just a great story. I just
Speaker 1: want to ask you, because obviously we employed this, you know,
Speaker 1: slightly different way on the office. The decision to have
Speaker 1: direct addresses to the camera where the characters are sharing
Speaker 1: their thoughts. What was the idea behind that or why
Speaker 1: why was that decision made? You know, it's another way
Speaker 1: of it's another way of getting more information out from
Speaker 1: either the scene or more exposition with the character. And
Speaker 1: it's just something that Adam McKay does incredibly well in
Speaker 1: some of his stuff that we utilize in our show
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. We've got a massive cast.
Speaker 1: You've got so many characters and so much narrative real
Speaker 1: estate that you're trying to occupy with all of these
Speaker 1: characters that anytime you get the opportunity to add a
Speaker 1: little bit more so that, you know, to enrich the
Speaker 1: experience of a scene or a moment, that's sort of
Speaker 1: what's behind it. Yeah, I felt like especially with the
Speaker 1: scenes with John c Riley and Dr Buss, they really
Speaker 1: helped get in. I had the head of that character
Speaker 1: in moments that I felt were both pleasurable and important historically.
Speaker 1: Was he that cash poor? Is that true? There were
Speaker 1: financial issues? There were financial issues. There were financial issues. Yes,
Speaker 1: they were financial issues. It's fascinating to me. Well, you
Speaker 1: had a huge cast, you were a part of it
Speaker 1: Maurice stead of Lager Security, Leger Security. Thank you. Brilliant performance.
Speaker 1: By the way, how was that like for you being
Speaker 1: on camera with all the guys, Well, hey, it was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: It was not something that I requested. The way it started,
Speaker 1: we were working on the show in New York when
Speaker 1: I was working on Wu Tang and Max was working
Speaker 1: on a movie Worth in New York. We would get
Speaker 1: together on a weekends, UH some other folks and start
Speaker 1: working on the show. And I saw my picture up
Speaker 1: on the wall with the other actors, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what is my picture on the wall? And oh, you'll
Speaker 1: you'll see, You'll see. So when we got to l A,
Speaker 1: I see this character Maurice. Oh you're gonna be Maurice.
Speaker 1: Who the hell is Maurice? I know Cooper and Worthy
Speaker 1: knows who the hell is Maurice. Oh he's security. Gonna
Speaker 1: do one episode and blah blah blah. Then I did
Speaker 1: another episode and then it started to become this thing
Speaker 1: to where when we had to cut a scene but
Speaker 1: we still needed the information, we just sticked ma res
Speaker 1: in and you know in that scene we would compensate
Speaker 1: for the thing that we couldn't do anymore. That Scalper's
Speaker 1: one in episode five was really because we didn't have
Speaker 1: time for a bunch of extras and a scalper and
Speaker 1: for Claire to go outside and talk to the scalper
Speaker 1: and get her. So we had her talking to me
Speaker 1: about give these tickets to them when you go outside.
Speaker 1: You know. Every scene that I was in apologized to
Speaker 1: the actor I was working with, because he deserved better.
Speaker 1: The first scene was with Adrian Brody. He was an
Speaker 1: Oscar winner, you know, and so it was like Ctera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It was an honor, was intimidating, but it was that's awesome.
Speaker 1: And he, by the way, Adrian Brody is, pat Riley is.
Speaker 1: He's great. And I've always been personally fascinated with Riley
Speaker 1: and his story and l A to New York to
Speaker 1: Miami and so interesting. What surprised you most about the
Speaker 1: reaction to the show? I think the players, some of
Speaker 1: the real life folks who judged it the way that
Speaker 1: they did, some of whom didn't watch it first. That
Speaker 1: was a surprise, you know. Other than that, everything else
Speaker 1: sort of kind of was what I expected it to
Speaker 1: be because I knew what we had. I knew we
Speaker 1: put a lot of work into it, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say the reaction was the only thing that was
Speaker 1: a surprise. I was thinking about and by the way,
Speaker 1: my math is not great, but I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the movie Nixon, right. I was thinking about the movie
Speaker 1: Nixon with Anthony Hopkins, and I was thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: recreating that time period. And I started thinking, well, but
Speaker 1: so much time had passed between Nixon and that movie,
Speaker 1: And then I started thinking. I started doing the math
Speaker 1: in my head. I mean, it's been forty three years.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like it, but it's been forty three
Speaker 1: years since that season of basketball happened, which is probably
Speaker 1: longer than the Nixon Between the Nixon movie. It's so
Speaker 1: interesting to me that it's still so present. And maybe
Speaker 1: it's because some of those guys are still so such
Speaker 1: big personalities today. There's that. But the thing that always
Speaker 1: gets me when we talk about numbers in time, I
Speaker 1: think because it was the turn of the century, when
Speaker 1: you get to the nine the seventies to two thousand,
Speaker 1: for some reason, because it's that, it doesn't seem as
Speaker 1: long as it did if you were saying nineteen, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, There's something about the math. That makes it
Speaker 1: feel like it wasn't that long ago, but it really was.
Speaker 1: And like you said, I think the state of media
Speaker 1: keeps the guys present because they work on the liquor
Speaker 1: after show. You still see Norm Nixon, We still see
Speaker 1: magic everywhere Kareem. You know, it's like you see them
Speaker 1: in a way that in the seventies, you know, retired
Speaker 1: guys probably you wouldn't see in the same way because
Speaker 1: you didn't have television and media the way and social
Speaker 1: media they had. They still have a voice, you know
Speaker 1: that usually wasn't the case. Um, congratulations on everything. You
Speaker 1: have a number of really interesting projects going back to
Speaker 1: some horror graphic novel stuff, Tales from the Crip with
Speaker 1: Snoop Dogs That sounds so exciting to me. And have
Speaker 1: you started working on that? Is that is that going?
Speaker 1: I'm writing the book now, along with a bunch of
Speaker 1: other ones of Blackula and my regular book Philadelphia and
Speaker 1: a lot of vampires, a lot of horror, a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. That's a lot of fun. It takes me
Speaker 1: back to my childhood. A labor of love more so
Speaker 1: than just labor. But Snoop Dogg is fantastic. We talk
Speaker 1: all the time. It's great. Oh that's awesome. And I
Speaker 1: I want to say, I think what is so cool
Speaker 1: about what you have done and are doing that. You're
Speaker 1: bringing your own cultural experiences to these types of stories
Speaker 1: that that hasn't been done before. And I find that
Speaker 1: so bold and courageous and well awesome. Really, so thank you.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that. Good luck with all of that. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm a big golfer golf fan myself. You're working on
Speaker 1: the Tiger Woods scripted mini series, good old Tiger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: finished the script and finished the Bible and let's see
Speaker 1: what happens. Well. Congratulations on all of it and on
Speaker 1: winning time. Congratulations on that. I can't wait to the
Speaker 1: season two. Right as this is truth has has been ordered,
Speaker 1: it's we're going. I left our writer's room to come
Speaker 1: talk to you. There. You went for one zoom to
Speaker 1: the next zoom, so I don't know if I would have,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate you doing it. Thank you so much, Rodney.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time. Congratulations and good luck. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Look forward to doing it again. Rodney. It was so
Speaker 1: great to talk to you and to get to know
Speaker 1: you a little bit. Thank you for stopping by. I
Speaker 1: cannot wait for your Snoop Dog collaboration coming up very
Speaker 1: very soon. I know it is going to be incredible.
Speaker 1: And to those of you out there listening, thank you
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Rodney said it best. What we do
Speaker 1: is a labor of love and you know, not not
Speaker 1: to be too cheesy, but we get to do it
Speaker 1: because of you. So thanks, I appreciate you listening, and
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another exciting interview and hey,
Speaker 1: I think that you're gonna like it. Off the Beat
Speaker 1: is hosted an executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside
Speaker 1: our executive producer Lang Lee. Our producers are Diego Tapia,
Speaker 1: Liz Hayes, Emily Carr, and Hannah Harris. Our talent producer
Speaker 1: is Ryan Papa Zachary. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak
Speaker 1: performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and the episode
Speaker 1: was mixed by Seth o'landski