Ep. 37: Up Close With Visually Impaired Writer, Marc Muszynski

Alex and Lee sit down for a chat with visually impaired writer, Marc Muszynski, who has worked on shows such as “Dexter” and “Polly Pocket”. Marc chronicles his journey with visual impairment and talks about his experience in the writers' room.

Check out the Honest trailer for “Frozen” here:
https://youtu.be/Zb5IH57SorQ?si=llA9Qhz6hGn_PCFH

If you would like to reach us, feel free to e-mail us at darkroomfilmcast@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and subscribe on YouTube to @darkroomfilmcast.

Check out the Blind Can Film Festival hosted by our sponsor, Ben Fox:
https://www.blindcan.com

Search for Audio Description availability for any title on the American Council for the Blind's Website!

Find transcripts of our episodes on our hosting site, Buzzsprout!
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
Support us on Patreon!
Follow us on Instagram!
Find us on Facebook!

Transcript

Lee Pugsley
What's up, film lovers, and welcome back to another episode of The Dark Room, where two blind cinephiles illuminate the sighted. I'm Lee Pugsley.

Alex Howard
I'm Alex Howard.

Lee Pugsley
And this is a podcast hosted by two legally blind guys for film lovers of all abilities. And today, we are very excited because we have a special guest on. I'm so happy to be able to introduce Mark Muszynski, who is a visually impaired writer who has worked on many things, from Dexter to Polly Pocket. He's had a really cool journey that we're going to learn about today. Mark, thank you so much for being on the show.

Marc Muszynski
Thank you so much for having me. Long-time listener, first-time caller.

Alex Howard
To start off, we always ask, especially our blind guests, what was your blind journey? When did you go blind? How did it progress? How do you identify with all of that now?

Marc Muszynski
It was a weird journey, but it was all in childhood. My understanding of it is a little hazy. But what I remember was when I was really little, my parents thought that I was very dumb because I couldn't read. They were confused because-- dumb, that's mean. But they just thought that I was having some problems because I knew all my letters. And then I would hold the book in my lap the way that all the other kids were, and then I couldn't read any of the words in it. So they were very concerned about that. Then when I hit kindergarten, they do that school vision test, which maybe has evolved. But at the time, you looked through a little thing, and there's a box, and you had to say if the dot was inside or outside of the box. I was like, "What box?" That was the first indication that it was eye-related. And so I went to... They took me to a variety of specialists. For a while, they thought I had lazy eyes, so I had to sit with a patch over one eye and watch TV. And they got to a couple of people that slowly knew more and more about retinal degenerative conditions. And eventually, I got to someone at the Chicago Lighthouse who eventually diagnosed me with Stargardt's disease. And it got progressively worse, I'd say through my teens and then college, and that has somewhat leveled off since. I think gone down a little bit, but not nearly as dramatically. My relationship with it has also evolved quite a bit over time. But I think I'm weirdly in a pretty good place with it now because... Well, a couple of things happened. My father and sister both started having symptoms very late in life, which is uncommon for Stargardt's. So that sort of made it more of a hereditary thing. I don't know why, but that somehow, in a way, makes me feel like, "Oh, I'm part of the family." Then more importantly, as I got older, and my wife and I were talking about having kids, she got tested for... They were doing a discount genetic panel at her OB. I don't know. I guess we've reached a point in the human genome where you can offer sales on it. And for $99, they tested her for 300 different common genetic mutations, and the only one she was a carrier for was Stargardt's.

Alex Howard
Of course, that's how it works, right?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, of course. We were like, "Is it some weird genetic predisposition? Can our bodies tell that we both have this mutation?" I mean, I guess different mutations, but same gene. And that was really scary at the time. It made me think a lot about my journey with it. I don't know if I ever fully came around to this, like, "Your disability is your superpower" thing. I mean I love it as, conceptually, but I don't know that I ever fully reached it internally. But I do think that being disabled changed the course of my life in ways that I don't regret, in ways that I'm actually thrilled about. I probably would have been doing a lot more sports and a lot less theater if I could see better. Those track changes led me to where I am now doing something that I absolutely love. When we were talking about having a kid, all of a sudden you're like, "Do I want my child to have this thing?" There's a 50/50 chance that they might have Stargardt's. And thinking like, "Well, wouldn't I prefer that they don't have Stargardt's?" All of a sudden is like, "Wait, so, then would I prefer I don't have...?" It sort of reopens this whole thing. Then we had our daughter, and because they knew this was a possibility, they draw blood and do some genetic testing right after the child is born, at least in California. They took her blood and we just asked them, "Hey, can you test for Stargardt's as well?" And because there was a pre-existing medical reason for it, they were able to do so. And they found out that she does have the genetic predisposition for it. At first, that was really scary I think. But now, two years in, knowing the daughter that we have, that we're so lucky to have, I think if any of those genes were any different, she'd be a completely different person. The weirdest thing about parenting is realizing that the day that child was conceived, essentially, is an inflection point. If you were to change almost anything prior to that, you'd have a different child. Knowing the kid that we have, I'm just so happy that we have her. And then on top of that, there's a lot of cool... There's pharmaceutical treatments coming out that might help prevent her from expressing symptoms and all sorts of stuff like that, which I'm optimistic for her and for her future. But in the moment, I think it's like we're just happy to have this person in the world with us. Honestly, if she gets to do anywhere near the amount of fun things that I have had the opportunity to do, then I think she'll be pretty thrilled, whether it's with or without Stargardt's.

Alex Howard
That is really, really beautiful. Can you tell for people who don't know, what is Stargardt's?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. It's a macular degeneration condition. There's a scar on the center of my retina, essentially. So my central vision is basically unusable, and everything I see is around the periphery. But that peripheral vision is also generally bad. Then on top of that, because all that vision is bad and because my eyes, one of them is slightly better than the other, they also shake a bunch. So the end result is no central vision, and then everything else is a little bit blurry and shaky, and I have to look really close to stuff.

Lee Pugsley
And to your knowledge, currently, are there any surgical procedures that can be done to restore vision with this condition?

Marc Muszynski
I think they're working on stuff. A lot of the stuff they're working on is the less damage that has already happened, the more effective the treatments are. In my case, maybe in the next several years, there might be something that could slow down the slow decay. But there are plenty of-- I mean, everything from injecting modified stem cells for the light receptors in your eye, injecting them into your retina with a one-atom thick needle of carbon or whatever, everything from that to replacing parts of your eye with cameras, or pharmaceuticals to stop the damage. There's a lot of stuff in the works. I don't know that I personally will be a candidate for it, but I think my daughter might. I think that future generations will be much benefited by it. Especially because a lot of the stuff, I think, will cross over into different but similar retinal conditions. There's a lot of people that just develop these same symptoms as they age. If this stuff can prevent that, that would be a huge boon for the population.

Alex Howard
I totally get what you're saying with that. But also with what you were saying about your daughter. I mean, I have a son, and so being scared about, "Oh, does he have this or that?" But then you're right, there is that crisis of, "Do I regret having it?" It's almost like an internal monolog that you have with yourself when you're worried about your child having something like that. Then even with your family, like how you said your dad and your sister now show symptoms, it's almost like they 'get' what you're going through now. It's almost like they're someone you can go to and talk to about it, and they actually physically understand it. That's really, really... I mean, it's not great that they have it, but you know what I mean. It's great that you have people you can go to and talk to.

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. I also feel like I've had a couple other opportunities to talk about it. One of my very best friends and former roommates used to work at BuzzFeed, and we did three different videos just about being being visually impaired. At first, I was like, "Yeah, whatever. Let's make these videos. Sure. You need to crank out two videos a week to keep your job. Why not have me in a couple of them?" But in retrospect, I think the process of making those and forcing myself to sit there and tell a camera how I felt about it was really helpful in centering my thinking about it and making me live up to the perspective I wanted to have versus maybe how I felt and still occasionally feel.

Alex Howard
I 100% get that. That's pretty much what this podcast is. We were just like, "Let's go for it." It's almost like, "Yeah, I'm positive about it, but now I actually am positive about it." Yeah, it definitely rubs off like that. We were wondering if you could walk us through your career. I mean, obviously, I looked you up on IMDb before and I saw you also worked on Honest Trailers, which is freaking awesome. But if you could walk us through your steps to get in the Dexter's writers room, where I'm sure many people would love to be. How did your career trajectory take you there?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. It's a very long and winding road, and I'm very bad at summarizing those, so I'll do my absolute best. I went to college for, I guess, English Education, but quickly switched to theater. I grew up near Chicago. I was in Chicago after college doing sketch and improv and storefront theater stuff. I always knew that the writing and producing and directing parts were where I was contributing. Not to knock my onstage work, but I think most audiences would agree. I knew that I loved TV and movies. Even in high school, my friends and I would make movies and stuff like that. But because as part of being visually impaired, I can't drive. So LA always just seemed impossible. Then one day, one of my improv idols in Chicago showed up late for a class because he had to pawn his skateboard to make rent. And I was like, "What am I doing with my life?" So I ended up just committing to move to LA. And luckily, I was performing and doing a little touring with an improv group called Octavarius at the time, which was a lot of folks that I had gone to college with. We had stayed friends, and we just made this thing on our own. And it was, I guess, in the scope of improv, very successful. We were living together, several of us. And I came home that day and I was like, "I think I have to move to LA." And luckily for me, I wasn't the only one who was having those kinds of thoughts. And so I got to move out here with four friends who all knew me really well, knew my disability, knew some of the specific needs I might have in a city like LA. But I think way more importantly than that was just having a social group to move with and take this crazy leap with, disabled or not. And so we all moved out here in 2013, but we had the very good fortune of... About a month before we moved out here, we had created this web series in 2012 called I Made America, and we had entered it into the Austin TV Festival pitch competition, and we were finalists for it. And so I went down there with the others, and we all pitched this show as part of this pitch competition, and we were lucky enough to win. And so about a month before we moved to LA, we won this thing, and they were like, "The prize for winning is you get a mentor, and they're going to set up pitches for this show all around LA." And so we got to move to LA thinking, "Hey, we're going to pitch this show. Why does everyone say this is so hard?" We got this amazing mentor, this woman, Deena, who was so supportive and who took time beyond just this specific project to give me notes on my writing and stuff like that. And so we roll up in LA and we do, I think, four different pitches, Comedy Central, NBC, Sony, somewhere else, and everyone passes. Then I'm like, "Oh, God, I'm just an unemployed guy who just moved to LA who can't drive, and I want to get into the entertainment industry." Around that same time, I was realizing that every single entry-level entertainment job required a driver's license, at least at the time. I think that has shifted a bit.

Alex Howard
Oh, it's still very common. Yeah. Okay.

Marc Muszynski
I sort of get it, in the sense that if you need your assistant to occasionally be able to go back to your house and let the plumber in, you might think they need a driver's license for that. This was a little bit pre Uber and Lyft, too. And that's on top of how hard it is to even get an interview for an assistant job in LA. And so the one thing I knew is that I wanted to attack it in as many angles as I had stamina to do so. I knew I was going to keep writing so I could keep sending scripts to people. I knew I was going to keep making stuff with my friends who were both out here. We were doing videos, we were doing sketch shows and improv shows anywhere we could. But I also knew I wanted to get some sort of entertainment industry job so that I could meet people that I could tell about the sketch shows and ask to read the scripts. And that third one was by far the hardest, to the point where about a year in, I had been dating my then-girlfriend, now wife. We met in Chicago. She basically gave me a year to figure things out in LA because she wasn't working in any entertainment industry-specific role. So she was sort of like, "What if you can't get around and this doesn't work out? I don't want to uproot my whole life and move there just to move back." She said it really lovingly, though, and fully justified, not in some of crass, like "you're going to fail" way. So she was moving out. I ended up getting another just a day job to have something. And I was just like, "This assistant thing sucks, and I don't know how I'm ever going to get one of these." Then about six months after she moved there, and right after we had gotten engaged, I saw a job posting for a part-time student internship in Sony Comedy. And Deena, the one mentor that we had, had formerly worked at Sony in that department. And so she was able to put my resume in, but not before asking, "Are you sure you want to do this? You're 29 years old, and this is a part-time student internship that pays $9 an hour. And also, you're not a student." And I was like, "Oh, hang on. I just enrolled in LA City College so that I can qualify."

Alex Howard
There you go. That's how you do it.

Marc Muszynski
And so, she was able to get them to actually look at my resume, which I think is the first battle of getting any assistant job. And I don't know by what happenstance I made the cut of people they bothered calling, but they did. And the two people that called me were awesome. We hit it off. I brought up my eyes near the end of the call because I didn't want to feel like I was trying to bait and switch them or something. They were like, "Yeah, we think that'll be fine." And so, for six months, I was a part-time student intern, and my wife helped me buy college kid-looking clothes, and I shaved my beard, and I tried my best to fit in with the other 19 and 20-year-old interns who were real college students. Luckily, nobody checked to see if I had actually enrolled in any LACC classes. And the people at Sony were awesome. Right toward the end of my time there, the head of the department's assistant left. And I realized this was my one big chance to get a desk job where you don't necessarily need to be driving. And on top of that, a desk job at a place where I felt... Where they knew who I was, they knew what I could do, and I wouldn't have to explain that to them in the interview. And so I went in with my whole speech prepared. I told them how much I felt like I loved working there, and I had really grown and contributed, and they were like, "That's amazing. Yes, we agree. It's too bad we already hired someone." That woman, whose name was Alexandra Franklin, ended up becoming one of my best friends and now writing partners. But at the time, I was like, "Oh, no. She stole my dreams."

Alex Howard
Oh that's funny.

Marc Muszynski
But she was super cool about it. And in her defense, she had been on her own journey where this job was a really important milestone. And everyone at Sony was really supportive and helped me get a job at NBC. I spent three and a half years at NBC. They helped me get a job working on the pilot of the show Abby's, which was a short-lived NBC multi-cam set in a backyard bar.

Alex Howard
Who was in that?

Marc Muszynski
Natalie Morales was the lead, and then Nelson Franklin was in it. Neil Flynn from Scrubs in the middle. Oh, God, who else? There's so many... Kimia Behpoornia was in it. It was a fantastic cast. They were all just the best people. And everyone who worked, the writers were so nice and welcoming. I got lucky in that the pilot got picked up to series, which isn't a given, in fact, is a rarity. And I got to continue on the show as a writer's assistant. Then I got even luckier that they had 10 episodes and nine writers. And when it came to the last one, the showrunner was so busy with everything else that he let the script coordinator and I be the writers on it with quite a bit of handholding from the more experienced members of the writing staff. And so I got to write. After taking a very circuitous route for not being able to drive, I had a real stroke of luck getting to work on this really fun show and ultimately get a writing credit out of it. Then the show got canceled. I was like, "Oh, no. I'm basically back at square one, and it's hard to go back now." It took me four years to get a writer's assistant job, and now I'm unemployed and my insurance is running out, and I need to get one again somehow. Luckily for me, another friend, also named Alex, ironically. A lot of great Alexes in the world, as some of you know.

Lee Pugsley
I would agree with that.

Marc Muszynski
Who I had met doing sketch and improv stuff in LA, but then become friends with. He had collaborated on some writing stuff, a script for his comedy band. He happened to know that this guy, Clyde Phillips, who was the showrunner of the first four seasons of Dexter, amongst other things, was looking for an assistant at the time. He put me up for that. He didn't even really ask me about it. He was just like, "You're going to get a call from this guy. Be cool. I put you up for this job." I'm so glad he did. I'm also so glad he rushed it because I could have easily overthought myself out of it because I'm like, "Ah, he's doing drama. Most of my experience is comedy," blah, blah, blah. But Clyde was really cool. He did end up hiring me. Through him, I got to see how his mind works in putting together a show because we did a lot of development and pitches and stuff. He let me be in the room for those. He was just incredibly open and thoughtful and engaged as a mentor. Then during my time working for him, the revival of Dexter, which became Dexter: New Blood, came across his plate. And so I got to see him come up with the pitch for that and take it out and talk to get Michael C. Hall on board and get the network on board and watch all that come together. At the very end of it, he was like, "Hey," he was just awesome and supportive and gracious enough to staff my writing partner and I on that season. That was... It's crazy because it was like the journey. I wouldn't have gotten the assistant work without that mentor, and I wouldn't have gotten that mentor without creating stuff, and I wouldn't have gotten a writing credit without having done all that other stuff, but I wouldn't have gotten put in front of Clyde without that friend that I met putting up shows and collaborating on stuff. Like, we spent probably hundreds of hours writing things together. And then Clyde wouldn't have hired me if I hadn't had the writing experience before. He certainly wouldn't have trusted me and probably would not have given us the chance to staff if I hadn't had a credit and hadn't worked so diligently for him and with him. It was this confluence of all the different approaches I was taking happened to come together for a couple of big pops that pushed me over the edge.

Alex Howard
Where does the Screen Junkies of it all fit into it?

Marc Muszynski
Oh, yeah. Okay, so when I was first here-

Alex Howard
I really love Honest Trailers, so I had to ask you.

Marc Muszynski
They're so funny. Basically, what happened was when I was just applying for random assistant jobs, I saw that there was a position of, I forgot what they called it, but it was essentially staff writer for a week at Defy Media, which was the parent company of Screen Junkies and Honest Trailers at the time. I applied for it with a really unconventional-- Like my cover letter was just essentially a BuzzFeed article of "10 reasons you should hire me" or something like that because I was like, "Whatever. I don't know anybody. They're not going to call me." This was such a long shot. Then they ultimately did. The two people who did the interview were awesome. We spent most of the time talking about the game Flappy Bird, which was huge in that moment.

Alex Howard
Oh, that's hilarious.

Marc Muszynski
Then ultimately, I got to work there for about a week, and it happened to be the week that they were doing the Honest Trailer for Frozen, which was a huge movie at the time. I mean, still is a huge movie. I think it's still one of their bigger... One of the biggest trailers. It was also a really humbling experience because they were really funny in general, but also really knew that format well. I, coming in, thinking I had a good amount of comedy experience, realized the value of the specificity of this specific format, what works in an Honest Trailer. They had such a gut feeling for it that when I look at that thing and I look at the stuff that I contributed, and then more importantly, the stuff that I had the first draft of that I look at how they tweaked it, I should have paid them for the learning experience.

Alex Howard
Well, we will definitely link to the Frozen Honest Trailer in the description. If you guys haven't seen it, it's pretty funny.

Lee Pugsley
It's really good. I remember that trailer it came out, too.

Marc Muszynski
I mean, it was so much fun. They were all so smart. We were all rolling our eyes at the movie. Then Andy, I think was his name, the guy who was in charge of it, looked at some of the early jokes and early bits that were in it. He's like, "You know, regardless of what we're all joking about, I think the general consensus is that people love this movie. And this Honest Trailer, if it's snarky without that sense of love, it won't work. That, I think, was more importantly than any of the good jokes, that is why it was successful, is that he understood how it needed to land with the audience.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I think that was a very good decision because without that love there, people would have responded to it differently, I'm sure.

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. Oh, my God. And there are some movies where I think people want to hate on it or whatever, and they do those great, too. But he aptly observed that this was not one of them and this needed to be handled differently.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Also, too, just thinking about all the stuff that you've done and just your journey is really cool in terms of the career trajectory. It's really cool and crazy when, as you were saying, you look back at everything you've done and just see how it all goes together. And you think about those moments where you're like, "Am I even going to get anywhere? This all seems pointless. What's the point of any of this?" And yeah. I don't know. I started out in theater as well, and I'm more in the film space currently. But just seeing how all the things in my trajectory, too, I've gone together and culminated in where I'm at now that I'm like, "Oh, if I hadn't done this, then this wouldn't have happened, if I hadn't met this person." Basically, so much relatability in what you're saying. I think that's for anyone out there listening, it's just the nature of the industry that it can all go together. You may not see it at the time or realize it, but there can be a payoff.

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, completely. I think it's really hard to track if you're making progress some of the time because there's obvious markers like, "Did someone offer me a job" or "Did someone buy my script or make my movie" or whatever it is? But how do you know if you're hitting the milestones along that path because so much of the rest of it, it feels like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, windfall. The reality is there are actually some signs that you can track. When I think about getting that assistant job working for Clyde, which ultimately turned into the thing, my friend Alex wouldn't have thought of me and put me up for it if he hadn't respected the work we'd done together and liked me as a person and thought I could handle that job.

Lee Pugsley
Exactly. Yeah, no, that tracks. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing about your journey, and congratulations on your success with the things that you've been able to achieve so far. On that note, too, I was wanting to shift a little bit to ask you in relation to your visual impairment, when you've been in like, writers rooms or even just other office jobs and everything, what accommodations have you had to bring to the table for yourself? And have you felt like people around you job accommodated your disability well?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, I've been really lucky in that most of the writers rooms I've been in have all been Dexter shows, and they've been with the same... like a similar leadership team and a lot of the same writers, depending on what show it was. So I've been really lucky in that I haven't had to spend a lot of time explaining it in the more recent ones. Every show I've worked on has been great. Dexter, I was so scared when I first started. I was like, "Man, are they just going to think I'm weird or annoying?" The two people at the top, Clyde Phillips and then another guy, Scott Reynolds, were both, like, immediately jumped in, and Scott was just like, "I'll read the boards back to you every time I write on them" or whatever. And they did ask me, "Is there something else you need that would be better?" Depending on the writer's room and someone's specific disability, I'm sure there are different things. But in my case, I spend a lot of time just trying to remember stuff anyway. And so reading it back was a pretty good system for me. And that has been the main thing. And then going forward, I think they don't care what program I write a first draft of something in as long as I can convert it to a Final Draft file by the time it gets to them. So I'll write in Highland, usually, when I'm doing my part of our scripts. And I'll use whatever other tools I need to get job done. Then even on set, there's technology now where you can stream whatever's in camera just to an iPad, which I don't know if either of you have experienced when on set or anything. But for me, that was game-changing because I could hold the iPad right up to my face, and then I can actually see what's going on instead of trying to stick my head in front of other people at Video Village and feeling guilty about it or whatever. Everyone was really supportive about that. Then the only time I've worked on a non-Dexter show was between seasons, we worked on Polly Pocket, which is like an animated thing for Netflix. And they scheduled a meeting with me ahead of time to ask about accessibility concerns and stuff like that. It was almost too much. I was like, "This is too nice, and I don't know how to handle it."

Alex Howard
Did you say Netflix scheduled a meeting?

Marc Muszynski
No, sorry. It was this woman, Laila, who was the story editor on the show. She, knowing that I was visually impaired, was like, "I want to get ahead of this and do the right thing." It was almost like all the things that if you had written a guidebook of how to do it, she must have found that and then done them all because I was like, "I feel too..." I almost wish I needed more things just so that you would know how much I appreciate this.

Alex Howard
Yeah, that's awesome. Would you say Highland is more accessible than Final Draft in terms of Voiceover and all of that?

Marc Muszynski
I don't know in terms of Voiceover, specifically, because I use it sparingly. I'll dictate in spots. But what I mainly love about Highland is the font on the editor can be however big you want it to be, and it'll still output a thing that looks like a script. For me, the font on Highland is jacked up to 80 point font or whatever, and that's enough that I can read it without too much strain.

Lee Pugsley
You still rely more on vision for writing than using Voiceover or playback?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, usually. I've been slowly transitioning, partially because it is easier in a lot of cases, and also because my vision is not going to get any better. So I might as well start embracing the future. I especially use dictation whenever I have to write any other thing I'm doing on my phone, if I'm writing a text message or making a note to myself, that's where it started to seep in more and more. I think because I'm so used to typing when I'm writing and revising, just the feedback loop of eyes to hands is what I'm more used to. It's been harder to shift.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, I can relate to that because I used to rely a lot more on vision and just increasing the font. I have glaucoma, so as my vision has regressed over time, I've had to switch more to relying on Voiceover. And I recently just got Final Draft for my first time, so all I'll be exploring that as well in terms of the scripts and everything that I'm writing. But one of the things I did do recently when you're talking about dictation on your phone and everything is actually just got a Bluetooth keyboard, and it can sync with my iPhone now. If I'm writing an email or a note or whatever, I can do it so much quicker now, just like typing on the Bluetooth keyboard and just syncing it to my phone. I'll even write like scenes and stuff on my phone on a notepad or on a Google Doc or something. That was a game changer for me. For now I'll still rely on Voiceover to tell me like the words and everything because dictation is cool, and I do use it, but I'm always afraid that it's going to have spelling errors or something that I don't see or add an extra comma that I didn't want there, that people are going to read in there and be like, "Oh, do you know grammar?" I'm like, "I do, but it's dictation."

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, I have all those same fears. Do either of you know Sheridan O'Donnell?

Lee Pugsley
No.

Alex Howard
I think I do. Are they associated with Respectability?

Marc Muszynski
I know him through the Inevitable Foundation, but he may have done Respectability at some point. He's a writer-director with RP, and he's a fantastic writer and a fantastic director. He also has spent a lot of time figuring out Final Draft and Highland, Voiceover-y type stuff. In general, he'd be a great person for this podcast just for his brilliant filmmaking stuff. But he's also a great person to to if you're trying to navigate that stuff.

Lee Pugsley
That's so good to know. I might have to reach out if Final Draft gives me a lot of headaches. Because there's always that learning curve for all of us every time you're learning a new software, whether it's visually for us or with Voiceover, it can be really frustrating. For me, I always start something new, and then I'm just like, "I hate this. I'm never using this again." And I'll put it down for a few days, then I come back to it, and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to do this now."

Marc Muszynski
Well, and I think in his case, and he'd be able to give a more detailed version of the story, there were a couple of things where I think he reached out to Final Draft, and they're like, "Yeah, we're not incorporating that in this version, maybe in the future." And he was like, "All right, I'm going to start working on Highland then." So there might be a couple of things that are just not Voiceover-able at this moment.

Alex Howard
Yeah. And for people who aren't aware, Final Draft and Highland are script writing software. I know that was a little bit of inside baseball, but have you ever brought in some of your life experience being visually impaired into any of your writing for Dexter or any of the other shows that you've worked on?

Marc Muszynski
Not specifically for Dexter. I feel like it does inform. It informs so many things that I'm sure it has featured in it in some way. But one of the Polly Pocket episodes we did is about Polly Pocket encountering a blind dog. So it definitely featured in that one.

Alex Howard
Oh, that's cool.

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. It was really fun to do. It's interesting because my ultimate takeaway was like, gave me sympathy for some of the less nuanced takes on stuff and even ones that maybe non-disabled people have created. Because Polly Pocket is an 11-minute show for 6-to-11-year-olds where they have to use various magic powers, and it has to have jokes and funny hijinks and all this stuff. We had to work so hard to try to... If you want to make a nuanced thing, you have to get to the nuance. You can't just start there. You need to establish your argument in a way. I was like, "Man, trying to squeeze that in while also making sure somebody uses their tiny power" was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, especially in 11 minutes, you don't really have a lot of time to get all that nuance in there because nuance takes time to build.

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. It's funny because I feel like the way the episode turned out when I watched it, I was like, "Oh, I think we successfully got most of the nuance statement we were trying to make in there, but I wish the episode was funnier and had more going on."

Alex Howard
That is good that they had you in the writers room there for reference, because I know a lot of shows... I've consulted on a couple, especially kid shows, trying to bring in blind characters and all of that. But it's good that you were there to guide the ship in the right direction because it is very easy in a comedic show like that to go offensive with it. You know what I mean?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, definitely. The way that that show and a lot of other animated things work is there's sort of, there was like a summit where we'd meet for a couple of days. There were six writers, and we'd all break our episodes together in two days, which was also fun because it was rapid. It was like speed-breaking story. Then you'd go off and write it. And so that was an episode that I had been... You had to come in with six episode ideas, and I was like, "Oh, maybe one about some visually impaired stuff. That might be fun to write." So I felt better knowing that it had come from me and that I was ultimately going to... My writing partner Alex and I were going to ultimately be the ones writing it. That made me feel a little better about it. They were super respectful about, I don't think they ever gave any notes that were like, "Are you sure blind people think this about themselves?" They were very supportive. Honestly, just the fact that they could have picked any of the other five ideas, which were also great. I think I appreciate on their side that they wanted to engage with that as a subject for an episode.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that's really good to hear. I'm glad that they were receptive to that idea. Out of curiosity, within your career as a writer, what challenges have you encountered, aside from just typical writer's block, which any writer can attest to, but what other challenges, whether related to the visual impairment or not have you encountered?

Marc Muszynski
I think the biggest challenges are just that a lot of things in your career, and even a career, "career" seems weird to say because a career is something you can look backward at, but it's not really something you can do in the moment. In the moment, you could write something, you could reach out to people, you could try to meet new people. In theory, you're doing "career" in that way, but you'd never describe it that way. But when I think of... The biggest hurdle has been realizing that there's so much of it that's outside your control and that the best thing you can do is, for example, oh, man, winning an Emmy Award would be awesome. But I can't control whether I win an Emmy Award. I can't control if I'm nominated for an Emmy Award. I can barely control if I work on a show that would even be eligible to be nominated for an Emmy Award. I CAN control is, "Did I write a script? Did I show up prepared for work? Did I do my best to get my writing to the people who've maybe expressed interest?" Then there's some stuff that I can kind of influence. Even when you go in to pitch a show to somebody... A mentor once told me that 90% of the time, they already know if it's a yes or a no based on the general idea and what they know of you as a writer, and who else is attached, most importantly. Only some of the time can you sell the show, but you can always sell yourself. I've basically been just trying to focus on the things that are within my control. The more direct answer to your question is, we've had three pieces of development that we've taken out. The first one went out to people on the Thursday before the COVID stay-at-home order. So that was not great. The second one went out to people, and then a few days later was the George Floyd Black Lives Matter stuff. It was all these way more important things than our silly little shows. Then we were supposed to send something out last week, and then now LA is on fire. You just realize how sort of small everything is. I think the challenge is not letting that beat you down and focusing on stuff you're excited about and stories you want to tell and hoping that those get out.

Lee Pugsley
I completely resonate with that, and it makes me think of this. I'm a big theater guy, so there was this Stephen Sondheim documentary that came out a few years ago. One of the things he said in it was, "Don't write for success or for something to be a hit. Just write because you're passionate about it." And I think that... I would even say that transcends just writing. As a creative, it's like, "Create because it's something you care about and something that you're passionate about." I always tell people, "If you want to create art, any of us can create art. We can't control how widely distributed it becomes, but whatever art we create, that's a piece of us that reflects a bit of who we are, and no one can take that away from us." And I think just reflecting on that in those times where I'm like, "What am I doing? I wish I could create." It does feel very empowering to know that, to know, "Okay, this is what I have control over." And even taking that a bit farther, too, as my vision has decreased, and maybe you guys can relate to this, too, it's like there are discouraging moments, but it's also like, "Okay, I can't control the fact that this is happening. What I can control is what I can do still and what I'm going to do." So I just think what you said resonates on so many different levels that I think are very applicable to anyone.

Alex Howard
Yeah. And even with this podcast, Lee and I, I mean, yeah, it'd be great if we got sponsors, and yeah, it'd be great if this, this, and this, but all we can do is book good guests and ask good questions and do good research and be passionate and love what we're doing and then see what happens from there.

Marc Muszynski
When I think about what I want for this next year of 2025, or maybe not what I want, but how I want to show up in the world, one of the big things that I want to focus on is doing over being. Because whenever I spend a lot of time thinking about being a writer, being a writer is this just, I don't know, romantic vision of myself sitting at a desk, cranking out brilliant material. But ultimately, I'm only a writer when I'm writing, when I'm doing the writing. A lot of the rest of the time, I'm a father or a husband or a friend or like, a guy vacuuming. I don't know. And if I focus the moments of be... You'll only be a thing for the fleeting time that it's there, and then everything else is changing around you. If that's what you're focused on and you don't enjoy the process of coming to that moment, then the joy, the happiness you feel from being that thing will fade just as fast.

Lee Pugsley
Well said. I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Alex Howard
Oh, no, me too. Clearly, you are a writer in what you just said. That was really great. One question for you. I'm currently watching Dexter: Original Sin. It is really great. Like I mentioned to you before we started recording, I am in awe of how... I mean, all the actors captured what they did in the original series, but especially the guy playing Dexter. He got those mannerisms down, and it's crazy how the writing and his performance and everything matches up to the original. But if there's a show on right now that it was your dream call for them to have you on, like, in their writers room, besides Dexter, what would it be?

Marc Muszynski
Oh, man. I feel like I'm not allowed to answer that because I want Dexter to come back, and I don't want to.

Alex Howard
That's a good answer.

Marc Muszynski
But what I will say about Patrick Gibson, who's the actor who plays Young Dexter. Actually, and all the actors. I mean, that show is blessed with between Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Those are three incredible veteran actors. One of the things that was really... The first show we worked on, Dexter: New Blood, we didn't get to go to set because it was during COVID, and they were shooting in Massachusetts. They didn't want anyone there, and they certainly didn't want to pay for anyone to be there. Then the second Dexter we worked on ended up getting shelved in favor of Dexter: Original Sin. So that was the first one where we had the chance to go to set. And it's easy to forget in the grind of writing for film and television that the end goal of these things is to get produced. And being on set and seeing the wisdom that the actors brought to the characters, even if it meant sometimes asking for lines to be different, and not just the actors, like what the director was thinking about, what the lighting people and sound people and costume people and all of this stuff, how they were interpreting the words on the page and how they were enhancing and elevating them was really informative to me and the writing process. Because at the end of the day, the script is the seed of a vision that has to get planted and grown and blossom. And understanding how those other people can bring their voices to it and making space for them to do so, both in a colleague, coworker way, but also in the script is really powerful.

Lee Pugsley
I think that's the beauty of the collaborative process. I think that's why creation is so fun, because you get to bring this culmination of ideas together with so many other people. Oftentimes, the finished product is even better than what you had envisioned in your mind on any capacity, whether you're a designer or an actor, a director, a writer. It's like, "Oh, I never would have thought that it could reach this level," and then all these people come together, and it does, and it's so cool. It's such a beautiful thing.

Marc Muszynski
Yeah. There are times where that's frustrating, waiting for all those pieces to come together. And in those times, I think about writing fiction.

Lee Pugsley
[laughing] That's great, too.

Marc Muszynski
But you just need to know what you need as a creative person. If you need a podcast to have something to make and do and keep you present and connected with an audience of people, do that. Then if you want to work on a TV pilot that seven people may read and will just live in that desk behind me forever, then that's also great sometimes.

Alex Howard
My last question for you, is there anything you're working on, on the side? I know you mentioned writing fiction. Are you writing a book or anything on your own or anything you can talk about or no?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah, my writing partner and I have pilots of our own that we're taking out, and then we're working on a feature because we both love features. I feel like movies is all I watched when I was really young. Then TV, I came to later. And I'm excited to work on a feature length thing.

Alex Howard
That is what I wanted to ask you earlier. You said you patched and you watched TV, and I did that, too. What do you remember watching when you used to patch your eye?

Marc Muszynski
Oh, my God. I remember it being cartoons. Definitely Looney Tunes at some point. But how old would I have been? I think maybe I had already gotten into the Toonami, the anime, the easily commercialized anime that they had on Cartoon Network.

Alex Howard
Okay, great. I was in preschool. So I did the, um, you remember the Disney Storybook VHS tapes?

Marc Muszynski
Yeah.

Alex Howard
We had tons of those. So I would, my mom would be like, "All right, go pick one out so you can patch your eye" and I'd go pick one out and come down, and yeah.

Marc Muszynski
What an insane. Even as a kid, I was like, "So the thing I'm supposed to do is the thing that you tell me I'm not allowed to do for this long?"

Alex Howard
Yeah. No, definitely. Well, thank you so much for being on our show. This has been really great. I love that we were able to time it out with as Dexter is running too, make it a little timely. If anyone's interested, you can watch Dexter: Original Sin on Paramount Plus. It has audio description. Same with Dexter: New Blood. That also has audio description. So thank you so much for being on. Is there anything else that you wanted to plug?

Marc Muszynski
Just thank you both for having me and for making such a wonderful show.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, we really appreciate your perspective on just the creative process, on life in general, and just your approach to everything is really cool. And I appreciate your insights, and everything you have to say. So thank you so much.

Marc Muszynski
Thank you.

Alex Howard
And for everyone listening, you can email us. If you have any questions for Marc or for us or with any topics you have suggestions for, you can email us at DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. That is DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com.

Lee Pugsley
You can also follow us on Instagram @DarkRoomFilmCast and subscribe to us on YouTube @DarkRoomFilmCast. Before we sign off, we just want to take a moment to thank Matt Lauterbach and All Senses Go for making transcripts of this episode possible. Also, we want to thank BlindCAN for being our sponsor for editing this episode as well, and all previous episodes, too. So thank you guys so much for listening, and we will see you here next time on The Dark Room.

Alex Howard
All right. Take care, guys. Stay safe.