Hollywood Confessional

The Best Worst Strike Story Ever

• Ninth Way Media • Season 2 • Episode 18

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We dedicate this episode to @Time Person of the Year Nominee the Hollywood Strikers! 

Getting real for a sec, though -- the Hollywood Strikes of 2023 are officially over, and TBH we're feeling a little uncertain.


A lot of hope and solidarity were born this Hot Labor Summer. Yet despite all the wins and losses, joy and tears, no one really knows what the future holds.

Part of our mission at the Hollywood Confessional is to share untold stories from people working in entertainment so that other folks in the industry know they're not alone. Enter our Season Two Finale, "The Best Worst Strike Story Ever."

In this episode, we hear from a confessor about how their crazy career path led to a crisis during the WGA Strike of 2007-2008. The years of struggle. The short wins and endless losses. The moment when their dream finally comes true... followed by the moment when they realize it's about to be waylaid by forces beyond their control.

Through the ups and downs, we hear how despite all the changes in Hollywood, much remains the same... even the occasional happily ever after.

Join us in the booth for this funny, heartwarming confession that will have you nodding along and feeling that spark we all need to keep our love of this industry alive. If you like the episode, please share and connect with us on socials @fessuphollywood. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how you want to make Hollywood a happier place in 2024 and beyond!


#Hollywood #WGAStrong #SAGAFTRAStrong #Strikes #fessuphollywood

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Hollywood Confessional is a Ninth Way Media production, produced by Meagan Daine and J.R. Zamora-Thal.

Sound Effects and Music provided by Zapsplat and Pixabay.

Keywords: filmmaking podcast, film podcast, screenwriting podcast, entertainment podcast, Hollywood, filmmaking, writerslife, actorslife, setlife

Speaker 1:

In the name of the Spirit, of the Spirit amen.

Speaker 2:

Hello Hollywood faithful, welcome back to another episode of the Hollywood Confessional. I am your podcast priest, megan Dane. It's been a minute. I almost forgot what I was supposed to say, right.

Speaker 1:

It's been so long. You forgot your co-priest, and I'm JR Zamora Thal.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, man. Hey, jr missed ya. And how about you guys? Did you guys miss us? We've been taking a little bit of a break because, as you know, things change for us during the strikes. We were trying to figure out if we're working with actors or how we were doing that, and we have a wonderful new confession that we have been waiting to drop until the actor's strike ended, thinking initially that, I mean, I think it's okay to be totally open about this. We sort of felt like, when the actors got their deal, that it was going to be a moment of celebration for everyone.

Speaker 1:

Well, we thought it was going to come right after the WGA finished their strike, but the AMPTP just dragged it out as long as they possibly could.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and didn't, unfortunately, offer what a lot of people were hoping that they were going to offer.

Speaker 1:

But you know this industry, it is an industry of uncertainty and no matter what happens with the strike, some things are going to change and some things are going to stay the same, and I think that's something we all have to reckon with, and that's something we reckon with as we come into this industry. You know, nothing is certain. You don't know if you're going to have a job tomorrow. You don't know if your next job is going to come in six months or a year. It's tough, but we love what we do and that's why we do it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. So it is now Tuesday, december 5th, and we had been planning to hold off to see which way the vote went, because today is the last day of voting for the SAG-AFTRA contract. And then you know what we thought? No, because uncertainty is really a part of it, you know. And whether the contract is ratified or it's not ratified, either way, like you say, things are going to change and we don't know how things are going to change, and there's going to be a lot of uncertainty, and yet many things are going to stay the same. And that is what brings us to today's awesome confessional.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, there are some great things about the industry and thankfully those things, you know, a lot of them will stay the same, and one of those things is the friendships that we've made along the way. I think Spoiler. Maybe we should get into this before I spoil the rest of the story. Yeah, I think we should.

Speaker 2:

Sorry guys, we're a little rusty on our hosting duties, but with no further ado.

Speaker 1:

This is the best war strike ever. Let's hop into the confessional booth.

Speaker 2:

Oh people, so far, so good.

Speaker 3:

Forgive me, Father, for I feel like the old guy who's like way back in the old seven strike.

Speaker 1:

But we want to hear it Absolutely. Share your wisdom, old timer.

Speaker 3:

My favorite part about watching television is when they get to the origin story. You know Marvel doesn't have a monopoly on the origin story. Every one of us aspiring lemmings that are drawn out here to Hollywood, we all have origin stories, and my partners in mind is a little longer, I think, than some people's, because it started when f*** and I were roommates in college. F*** and I came from very different upbringings. We were raised with almost nothing in common, but when we were assigned to be freshman roommates we found out we had read all the same books fantasy and sci-fi. We would watch Star Trek reruns together. It was our bonding thing. Nobody really got along with their computer assigned freshman roommate but we did. So f*** and I lived together for a lot of college and then after college we had all the same post college lame ass jobs. We wanted to be TV writers but we were living in f***, which might as well have been a million miles from LA.

Speaker 3:

As we were trying to figure things out, we got an opportunity to open a restaurant together. F*** was like why would I open a restaurant? And I said man, we're 23,. We don't know shit about shit. Let's open this restaurant. We'll meet a million people and we'll have something to write about. This was a terrible slash great idea. It's like building a ship because you want to go across the ocean as opposed to buying a ticket. It's just too big, but I talked him into it and we did it and unexpectedly the restaurant became a hit. Oh wow, we had lines around the block, the reviews were off the charts, we had three hour waits for a couple of years and one thing led to another. We opened another restaurant in f*** with a full bar and a martini.

Speaker 2:

Oh my god, this is insane.

Speaker 3:

It was insane. Eventually, we were sitting at the bar one New Year's Eve and we were looking around at the managers and feeling we'd become less important. This turned out not to be true, but it felt that way at the time and I said you know what? I'm going to start writing tomorrow. If you want to be there, we'll do it together.

Speaker 3:

And he did so. My best friend, former college roommate, now business partner and I started writing and we were terrible, of course. We basically knew nothing. But the worst slash best thing that happened was our first script was really pretty good. It was a Simpson spec and we actually made each other laugh and we were like, okay, we can f***ing do this. This isn't as hard as we thought. And then of course, the next eight scripts sucked. Oh no, we had just gotten lucky with the first one, but for a while after that we just got worse and worse and worse. Up to that point f***ing, and I had almost never argued about anything None of the restaurant stuff, the dramas that we had. But now we're writing and we're starting to get annoyed with each other because we're in it and we care, and maybe that was the difference with the restaurants. We cared about them, but it was not a core thing, it was just the project to get us to writing. And we knew that One day, while we were doing this, a friend of ours called and said hey, I got a development deal at f***ing and I need an assistant.

Speaker 3:

If you guys want the job, it's yours. We were about to sign a lease for our third restaurant. But the job was in LA, which meant we'd have to move. So we met with the landlord and said we're out, and we turned most of the management of our restaurants over to our partners a chef and another manager. We said we're moving, here you go. And then we said to our wives Wait, wait, wait, wives.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I just gotten married.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God, you seriously told your brand new wife hey, these insanely successful restaurants we got going, we just sold them and we're moving to LA to be assistants.

Speaker 3:

I think it's really important to test your marriage in the first month. I told my wife when we were dating that I wanted to be a writer. I told her Listen, this is my trajectory. I want to go to LA, I want to be a TV writer. So she knew that was a possibility. Swife took a little more convincing but, you know, we married the right people. They supported the dream. So we left the city where we owned two restaurants with 100 employees and everything was free I hadn't paid for a drink in years at this point and moved to LA where suddenly we were assistants, doing assistant things all day, while at the same time I was on the phone all day with the restaurants trying to help them and keep that going, because they were now paying my rent 50% of an assistant salary wasn't doing it.

Speaker 1:

Let me tell you wait, they hired both of you, but only paid you each half.

Speaker 3:

There was only one position, so we said, can we split it? And they said, yeah, so we split the position and we're making $18,000 a year. Oh wow. We were thrilled, though, because they gave both of us benefits, so we had generous health care, and we were so excited we would have done the job for free, because now we were on a studio lot, and one of the greatest things was we were in an office right across the hall from the president of his name was he had a couple of assistants, and we got friendly with them, but I never saw him in a good mood not once. He never, like saw anybody else. You know he would walk past our office to his office, but he never once looked inside, no, like hey, good morning. It was really like, wow, he's on his mission.

Speaker 3:

I am an irrelevancy, which was interesting to me because I wasn't a 20-year-old assistant. I had all these employees, I'd achieved a certain amount of stuff, and now I wasn't even worth him acknowledging when we passed in the hall. Nobody else did that, by the way, there were big producers all over the building and they would say hello or whatever. He was the only one that did that. I'd never heard anybody yell in the workplace before F*** and I had created our own workplace right and we didn't yell. I did have a crazy chef for a while and he was out of control, but other than that F*** and I are not yellers, but the president was actually yelling regularly and I just remember his assistants who worked insane hours and had to listen to him yell all day.

Speaker 3:

That was my first experience with that kind of personality, not just in Hollywood but in my life. I have no doubt that at some point I made some pathetic attempt to chat him up in some way. You know my little junior writer, heart beating in my chest. I probably wrote the approach in my mind. My dialogue was clever, but not you know too much. It was just the right amount. It was a beautiful scene and in this little script that I wrote he probably turned to me and said you know what, standing next to you at the urinal here, I realize you are really so smart.

Speaker 3:

You would be a great candidate to run this show we have every Tuesday night at 10.

Speaker 2:

That's beautiful.

Speaker 3:

But I don't actually remember ever talking to him. If I did, it was probably terrible, like a nice to meet you. That destroyed my fantasy. I never really met him.

Speaker 3:

Even so, there were a lot of perks to this assistant job, one of them being that we had access to all the scripts they got during staffing season. One day they put them all in the recycling room and I went right over there and started picking up bundles of scripts and bringing them back to the office. There were over a hundred of them. I was like, oh look, these are all represented writers. All the scripts had jackets like CAA endeavor, you know all the stuff. They were all so fancy. It was like the promised land, like this could happen to us someday. So I said let's read the scripts and rank where we are, you know, and how we compare to these represented writers. It was an education because, first of all, there were some great writers in there. I mean, this was the early odds. So it was like Sopranos and stuff like that. Like holy shit, these guys can really write. That was maybe a third of them, but a lot of them were terrible and we were like I think we're doing better than this. We might've been smoking our own stuff there, but a good script really pops out and you could definitely tell.

Speaker 3:

So here we were all alone on this island reading scripts, writing as fast as we could, eating at the Studio Commissary. At the same time, we're still managing the restaurants back home because they were really paying our rent and we ended up spending a huge amount of money to remodel one of those restaurants. We opened it on September 9th 2001 and then September 11th happened. Oh shit, everyone went into shock for a long time. Then in the entertainment industry, we just kept going.

Speaker 3:

Not a lot changed for b***h and me as assistants, but the restaurant business changed dramatically. America stopped eating out. Revenues dropped like 30 to 40%. Pretty soon our restaurants were on life support and by this time I had a few month old baby. I owned a little house in Pasadena that was more than I could afford. This was back in the day when they would give you a mortgage if you had a pulse. And one day I was out mowing the lawn with my daughter in a baby beorn, thinking how am I going to pay for everything? How is this going to work? And a silver jet of poles up in front of my house and this dude gets out and goes hey, are you b***h? And I said yes, and he hands me a jacket of papers and I find out I'm being sued for both leases on the restaurant plus money we had borrowed to keep them generating income.

Speaker 3:

Oh my god it was a sum total of $1.3 million. That was a real low point. Eventually, b***h and I managed to negotiate our way out of a lot of that stuff and settle for a teeny, tiny amount of money Not teeny to us, but teeny to them. But at the end of it we had nothing no career, no restaurants. We just had some debt and we were like what the hell are we going to do now? Around this time, someone I knew socially was like hey, there's this guy and he wants to get into the movie business. He wants to hire writers, but of course, like everybody in the movie business, he didn't want to pay professional writers. So they told us to send a sample. So we sent over a spec script and the guy who'd been hired to read for this budding producer really liked it. So we got the job. We ended up writing two scripts for this guy. On the first one he paid us $3,000.

Speaker 2:

For a feature. What is?

Speaker 1:

this 1923?.

Speaker 3:

Yep, and we were happy to get it. We had to go meet with him to get paid. We had to go through a gate to the house, then walk over a bridge that went over the pool that had cherubs peeing highly chlorinated water and then we went in there and he paid us our $3,000.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my God.

Speaker 3:

Then, as we're leaving, he's like hey, do you like beer? I'm repping this Thai beer company because his day job was being a marketing person. So he's like there's beer in the basement, take as much as you want. So we went down there and there were cases and cases and cases and cases of beer. The only thing was we had to carry them all the way around over the bridge down the you know. It's like how bad do you want?

Speaker 1:

this beer.

Speaker 3:

It was like come on, man, we got three or four cases, that's enough, but I was like fuck that man, I'm going back for more.

Speaker 3:

Hell, yeah, you were. I think we walked out of there with like eight or 10 cases and I drank that beer for I don't even know how long. I never got sick of it because it was free beer and I was broke and I was like God damn right, you just saved me some money. I don't think it impressed my wife. She was hoping I'd bring home rent money. But we wrote that script and then we wrote another one that he paid us like $10 or $12,000 for and along the way we became friends with the guy who was reading the scripts. Later on that friend started working at a production company and he said hey, do you guys have anything? And we went in there and we pitched and the pitch was terrible, but the exact like the idea, and he helped us shape it into an actual pitch and eventually we sold it. Oh, yay.

Speaker 3:

It was an amazing feeling. But the pilot didn't go. So we wrote another one and this time we were like, okay, this one is really good. It was based on a Stephen King property, so it had strong IP behind it. We had a lot of faith in it. We were like, okay, this is the one. It has to be the one, because by that time we were like one foot out of the business. We have nothing left. We have less than nothing left. I was borrowing money against my house to pay my bills. Might have even gotten a book like how to change careers for dummies.

Speaker 3:

We were just like, if this doesn't work and it did work we sold the second pilot yeah sold it to, and then we were working with the head of drama and her number two and number three and an assistant. We did all the normal development stuff and then it ended up on the president's desk the same angry guy we sat across the hall from as assistants all those years before. And then the writer's guild went on strike.

Speaker 3:

I was like oh my God, you know how you get so close. You get so close and then nothing happens all the time. And by this time we were wrapped. So we had to commission the agent and the lawyer and then we had to split the check. So you know, the money we got for the pilot was already spent, but we supported it 100%, just like we did this strike, even though it had come at kind of the worst moment for us. So we went to pick it and it just so happened that we got a sign to pick it at the oh my god, the same studio that was considering your pilot, Yep it was in the same big building where it is now, and the picket lines were very casual, just like they were this last time.

Speaker 3:

You know, a lot of writers going back and forth and talking to each other and eating food donated by wealthy celebrities. So, f***ing, I are there picketing, knowing our script is literally on the president's desk and he's making a decision about what pilots he's going to pick up right then, and we see him driving onto the lot Every day.

Speaker 1:

Oh my god.

Speaker 3:

Every day I see him go by and I think to myself does he recognize us? And part of me hoped he did, but I also kind of hoped he didn't. And the day that I really hoped he didn't was one day when he had to pause. He had turned left to go into the office but the picket was going and he had to wait for us to cross. And as he waited he was getting angrier and angrier and when he was finally able to go he stopped and he flipped off double barrel all the writers, including us, and then kept going and went in the park.

Speaker 2:

Oh no.

Speaker 3:

I like to think it wasn't that day, but maybe it was that he took our script and put it in the trailer. This asshole oh my god F*** and I were standing right there side by side on the picket line and we looked at each other. We laughed about it, you know, and internally cried about it. It was just so surreal. Part of me did think it was funny, Like you think it's funny when some horrifically embarrassing thing happens and part of your writer brain is like, okay, that was pretty good.

Speaker 3:

But at the same time I had a baby at home and a mortgage and you know expenses, and I knew that things had just taken a turn in absolutely the wrong direction. So there were a lot of emotions going on at the same time. But you know, we laughed because I'm standing next to the guy that I sat and laughed with over dumb stuff in our little 8x10 dorm room all those years before we had been through college successful restaurants moving to LA, then closing the restaurants because of a terrorist attack on the country, and then, you know, being served with papers and finally selling a pilot or two that might get us out, and then, bam, the strike and this asshole's reaction is flipping us off because he can't get into the parking lot as fast as he wants to. But my best friend is next to me and we've seen so much at that point, and so it was just like, okay, this is life.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1:

So did they end up making the pilot Hell?

Speaker 3:

no, but the production company didn't let it go. They knew they had something. The script was really good, it had great underlying IP. So after the strike ended they were shopping it and shopping it and eventually it landed at f***ing and was picked up and turned into a series.

Speaker 2:

What Happy ending yeah.

Speaker 3:

And when it went into production they flew us out to f***ing and we get into a transpo van and we drive for a long time and we're in the middle of nowhere and we go to an abandoned firehouse that had been turned into the production offices and there in the window was a handwritten, taped up sign and it said the name of our show, and at that moment I was still sitting next to the guy who we were freshmen, and then we were successful, and then we were broke, and then we were nowhere and then we got flipped off by the president and now we're on our own show. Things haven't been easy since then, but when you've been there, everything seems easy. After that. Now we're executive producers and we work a lot, but there's not a day that I take for granted ever, because I remember that stuff Old wounds, past wounds they have some value, as it turns out in the end.

Speaker 3:

As for the president of f***ing, he's not in the business anymore. You know he had an anger problem, clearly, so let me just give you the double barrel right back wherever the f*** you are. Amen to that.

Speaker 2:

And hallelujah.

Speaker 1:

I have been hearing that story for quite some time now. That confessor is a dear friend and we're very happy to have this story on the podcast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's so good to hear it every time I do. I just love it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I really love this story too. It so crystallizes for me exactly the reason why I do this. We've talked about what keeps you going. What's that flame? Whoa, did I just book into our season?

Speaker 1:

Very well done. Not as rusty as we thought.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, our first confession of the season. We were talking about the flame, that how to keep your flame burning, and for me it's friendship, the people that we meet along the way and the family that we create. And you and I are really lucky, JR, in that we have had an opportunity to form that family and we are actually working right now on a show that you guys listeners know that we were working on last season, called Cross. It's an Amazon show. They made a decision to premiere it in fall of 2024, so it's gonna be a minute before you can see it, but we're currently working on season two and Like, so so happy to be here and back with the same awesome people that we were in season one.

Speaker 1:

It's incredible. I've never been in a room where I like every single person in the room and I get to go to work with People that I love being around. It's incredible. It's a great feeling.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I love that Moving forward with the Hollywood confessional, I hope we'll be able to talk more about what's actually going on in that show, because Last season we weren't able to talk about the show very much yet, but now that it's kind of an established thing and we're moving on to season two, you know, maybe we could talk a little bit about like the dynamics of the room or you know what's happening on set or things like that. Of course it will all be totally anonymous, but just to you know, like just as sort of a Look behind the scenes and, yeah, so you could see those real-world examples for our oh for our Amazon overlords.

Speaker 1:

We're definitely not gonna give away any spoilers, just a little peek behind the curtain of how it actually works to make a TV show, from the writing process To being on set, to even post. We're gonna experience a little bit of that this time around.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean even the little things that happened, like today, aldous Hodge walked into our writer's room and that was pretty fucking awesome, what a guy. We had lunch with him, like what, but yeah, so that's what we're working on now, you guys, and we're going to take a holiday hiatus from the Hollywood confessional with this last wonderful story and Get ready for season three season three of the Hollywood confessional.

Speaker 2:

We have still have quite a few Confessions that we were not able to air this season because of the strikes, and so we're holding on to those. We've got a ton of stories in the wings from people that have been reaching out to us that we're very excited about, and so just a ton of really great stuff coming. Thank you all for being with us on this journey, and please connect with us online. We're at fess up Hollywood. We want to hear from you and stay in touch over the holidays and, in the meantime, everybody have a wonderful holiday season go holiday and peace.

Speaker 2:

Amen.

Speaker 1:

The Hollywood confessional is produced by Megan Dane and JR Zamora thal, special effects provided by Zapp Splat and Pixabay. Hollywood confessional is a ninth way media production. Follow us on socials at fess up Hollywood.