Parental Guidance

How to talk to your relatives about your "job"

The Joy of Specs

So excited for our next Retrospecs live show on April 21, 2-4pm, at the Elysian Theater in LA! Look at the cast whom we’ve already amassed:

Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Sherry Cola (Joy Ride), Katie Cassidy (Arrow), Olivia Scott Welch (Fear Street), John Ross Bowie (Big Bang Theory), Hrishikesh Hirway (West Wing Weekly; Song Exploder), Ricardo Hurtado (School of Rock), Kiran Deol (Destroy All Neighbors), and more. And this is just the beginning!

They’ll be reading a West Wing by friend-of-the-stack Marc Guggenheim (co-creator, Arrow) and a Big Bang Theory by Helen Shang (Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power).

GET TICKETS NOW to attend or stream. But definitely attend!

The Talk

On a recent visit to Boston, I found myself in the position of having to talk to people outside of the entertainment business. Can you imagine? Mortifyingly, these people were related to me and seemed to care about the work I was doing not because they saw opportunities for themselves in any success I might have, but because they genuinely were wishing success for me.

But entertainment doesn’t have the same kinds of success markers as other industries—it usually isn’t as simple as a got-the-job-didn’t-get-the-job dichotomy. Indeed, there are plenty of times in which I have gotten a job in television only for the job to… not exist anymore.

Further, there are nuanced differences in “a great meeting” which actually means something and “a great meeting” which may not yield results for years, or ever. Ours is a bewildering, dumb, odd industry that’s confusing even to those inside it and which frequently sounds like a multi-level marketing scheme to those outside of it.

So, I want to talk about how to talk about your work with your parents and other people outside the industry, not in Los Angeles. And I also want to help provide language by which you might make even your unpaid work sound like positive movement, so that your parents don’t worry about you. (But don’t make it sound like you’re doing too well, because then they might not slip you $100 as my mom did as I left their house last month).

Good moms.

What They Talk About When They Talk About TV

To most of our parents, “TV” is Netflix, Hulu, and CBS. They probably are aware that NBC and Fox still exist, but they never watch them, which is fine, because nobody else does either. They might know ABC because they watch The Rookie but they think it’s Castle and they can’t understand where that woman went.

So, telling your parents that you had “a promising meeting with an exec at Roku” sounds like:

And that’s just for the non-paid work. Yes, you’re busy, you’re taking a lot of meetings, you’re writing and re-writing scripts and one-pagers (that are three pages long), and pitches and loglines. And all of that eats up your day. But none of that pays the bills.

Not that things get easier when you do sell something. On my recent trip home, I told my family that I had downtime that week because we were waiting on outline notes on a project. (Which is kind of false; I never have downtime).

“Will the notes ruin it?” they want to know. Parents are always braced for the entertainment industry to behave at its mercurial worst. Which makes sense because their references for Hollywood are A Star is Born (the Streisand one) and that season of The Sopranos where Christopher tries to make a movie.

I try to assuage their fears: The notes probably won’t ruin the project because we’ve already been through rounds of notes from the production company and the studio (which, confusingly, has the same name as the buyer, on whose notes we’re waiting). So, the outline has been stress-tested by partners who hopefully have a good idea of what the buyer wants.

This only leaves everyone more confused. “Who of these is your boss?” None of them. All of them are our partners. “Then who pays you?” The buyer. “What channel will it be on?” Maybe none? “Who thinks of the title?” Um… us? Unless someone else thinks of a better one? Or a worse one that they think works better.

At which point I try to distract them by yelling about how good LA’s tacos are and then I try not to cry when they mention the new Mexican place that has opened up in Roslindale.

Omission Possible

A good way to approach talking with your parents about your writing career is to heed the organizational advice of Marie Kondo. Get rid of anything that doesn’t spark joy.

Imagine the pain of having to explain the nuance of any Hollywood deal to someone who only half-cares. Your pain and theirs. In explaining your job to your parents, you’d do well to take the advice on pitching that Bones creator Hart Hanson gave in his first Writers Panel appearance:

In network TV, you have to say your pitch like an old lady in a trailer in British Columbia: ‘I’ma watch that show where the lady solves crimes just lookin’ at the bones!’

Ultimately, the details of your success don’t matter. Keep it simple. Rather than recount the months of incremental development—attachments and rounds of notes and multiple entities involved—give them something positive that they can repeat to their friends: It’s going to be a long process, but the network is really excited about the project.

I guarantee the response will be: What night will it be on?

The Drop Zone

The quickest way to get your parents and other family members to 1. think you’re succeeding in your career, and 2. veer off into a tangent of distraction, is to tell them about an interaction you’ve had with a famous person.

But who is famous anymore? A fair question. You might have been thrilled to run into Maya Erskine¹ at Gelsons, but your parents probably didn’t watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith (it’s on Amazon) and they definitely haven’t heard of Pen15 (they scrolled by it while looking for Only Murders in the Building).

Remember, your parents only watch Netflix, Hulu, The Rookie, and (if they’re from the midwest) the Yellowstone shows.

The good news is that your celebrity story doesn’t really have to be a story! My wife and I are still dining out on the time we dined out in 2005 and saw John Cusack sitting in the corner of the restaurant wearing a trenchcoat.

And every time I see her, my mother asks after Nathan Fillion, who guest-starred in Thrilling Adventure Hour a bunch of times in our heyday.

The important thing about all of the name dropping I’ve done you’ll do is that, rather than be a story itself, the name-dropping serves as a conversational prompt to a more enjoyable conversation for everyone. Your celebrity run-in anecdote leads to a conversation about what they’re watching, and how bad they think TV is right now, and how handsome Nathan Fillion is.

The Monster at the End of this Post

The bottom line is that your parents just want to know that you’re happy. And, in telling them how you’re progressing in your career, you can tell them a story that presents yourself the way they’re hoping to see you. Especially if you don’t see your parents often because they live across the country or prefer their hobbies or friends or job to your presence, why not alleviate some of their anxiety about your well-being? After all, storytelling is your job.

A few ways to go about this:

1. Tell them how much you love writing and thank them for the opportunity to pursue this career. Even if they don’t support you monetarily, or even emotionally, you can find a reason to thank them. They helped make you the writer that you are. (They don’t have to know that it’s because you’re working through your childhood damage or rectifying the warped worldview they bestowed upon you!) A simple “thank you for making me the person I am” goes a long way!

2. Tell them about something you just wrote that you are excited about. Do this in one sentence. Nobody wants to sit through your pitch.² But this is a good way to focus test your loglines on different family members!

3. Be honest about what you love about living in LA. They miss you. You miss them! You made this decision to move far away to pursue a career. And the career part is really hard. Which they already know. So tell them the great parts. Tell them how you can have six amazing tacos for under $15. Tell them that it never snows, that you can hike or bike or walk or just hang out outside for eleven months of the year. Tell them how great your friends are, how you’ve finally found your people. They’ll appreciate that because they knew what a lonely dork you were in high school³. And they worry about you.

   And when you tell them this stuff, don’t worry about sounding like the asshole who spent a semester in Paris and comes back ordering baguettes and forgetting the word “umbrella.” Put your ego aside. Be earnest. Be real. Be honest. They deserve it.

Besides, any way you talk about your LA life, this will be the result:

Good 4 u

While I was home in Boston, my sister was kind enough to drive me around a bit. On one of these drives with the radio on, she admitted that she hasn’t heard enough music released in the past five years. “I barely know a Taylor Swift song!” she cried.

Her cry may as well have been a hat dropping for how quickly I put together a playlist of some of my favorite artists of the past five(ish) years.

A few explanations: I know, some of the songs are older than five years ago but are good gateways to the artists. The BTS and Robbie Williams songs are included because they are perfect pop gems and it’s nice to know those still exist. Olivia Rodrigo is over-represented because I love her two albums. The playlist ends with a bunch of covers, in case anyone’s gotten bored and wants to hear some familiar songs. Enjoy!

1. The most famous person I can think of.

2. This applies to dates, hanging out with friends, and pretty much every interaction except for those with your close collaborators. No one wants to hear more than one minute of story.

3. Honestly, they’d probably love Pen15 if they gave it a chance.