#48 - John Zaozirny, Literary Manager on The ‘Magic’ That Makes a Hollywood Script, Screenwriting Lessons from Tony Gilroy, How He Finds Clients, Network Building, and Why Not to Write for the Market

Hello and welcome to Red Carpet Rookies, today’s guest earned his early entertainment industry stripes working at Village Roadshow and Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way, later transitioning to the world of literary management, where he has since set up his own management and production company Bellevue Productions.

There his clients have had projects set up at Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Fox, and more, some of which he has taken to producing himself, for example, Infinite starring Mark Wahlberg and Netflix’s Eli. My guest is John Zaozirny. 

Transcript

HOST

Every great film and tv maker began as a red carpet rookie. In this podcast, each episode provides a new conversation with a leading film and tv industry professional deconstructing their creative career and delving into the life lessons and stories they've picked up along the journey. My name is Mike Battle, a film crew member turned screenwriter, and I'll be your host. And this is red carpet great rookies.

HOST

Hello and welcome to red carpet Rookies. Today's guest earned his early entertainment industry stripes working at Village Roadshow and Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, later transitioning to the world of literary management, where he has since set up his own management production company, Bellevue Productions. There, his clients have had projects set up at Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Fox, and more, some of which he has taken to producing himself, for example, Infinite, starring Mark Wahlberg and Netflix's Eli. My guest is John Zalzerni. How are you doing today?

GUEST

I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on.

HOST

Thank you very much for being here, John. Now, I ask all of my guests the same first question, and that is, what did your parents do and did it affect your career choices?

GUEST

Moving know. My mother was a teacher, although after she had my middle brother, I have two brothers. She kind of focused on taking care of us, but she was a primary school teacher prior to that. And my father was a lawyer. I guess he's retired now, mostly a lawyer, and was in politics for a little while and focused on working in the energy and gas industry in Alberta, up in Calgary in particular, up in Canada where I'm from. And in terms of impact on my choices, no, not really. My father and mother were very supportive, which was really nice. And they were able to kind of help me go to film school, which is, especially for someone who's not from America, very expensive. So that was certainly helpful in terms of giving me the support emotionally and financially. That kind of helped launch my career, which is very helpful.

HOST

When you were at a film school, you mentioned it a little bit there. Is it a bit different then being from another country? Is it more like, wow, I'm really investing in this, maybe as opposed to some of the US citizens that are there?

GUEST

I mean, look, I'm canadian, so it wasn't a radical culture shock, the way that it would have been coming from. I don't know. Another know, Canada is very similar to America, other than we have health care, free health care and other things. Hockey. But what I would say the difference a, it's much more expensive to go if you're not. That's a barrier right there. But I would say the other major issue or difference, I suppose, is that you get what's called a. I believe it's an f one visa. It's been a long time since I've been. God, I can't remember, I think, an one visa, which is a student visa, and then you have what's called an opt, which is a year of practical training in the industry. And so what that means is by the end of that year, you have to have a new visa. So I graduated in, like, I forget, sometime in January 2 or something like that, because you have to do five semesters at NYU, which is where I went to school, New York University undergrad. And by the end of, let's say, I graduated January 2, I want to say by the end of January 3, or whenever the visa paperwork was filed, I had to have another visa to be able to stay in the country. And so that really means there's not a lot of time for fucking around. So I think other people kind of, like, took vacations or figured it out or tried this or tried that. And for me, I had to go out to Los Angeles as quickly as possible to find a job. And the reason I chose Los Angeles, and it's pretty obvious, is that the industry is based there. I remember looking at this thing called the UTa job list, which is a job list that the agency United talent artist puts out. And there was about one page of jobs in New York, and there was, like, 18 pages of jobs in Los Angeles. And I was like, okay, if I have to have a visa, I've got a better shot in Los Angeles. So if I was american, maybe I would have stayed in New York for another year, or maybe not, I don't know. But when you are an immigrant, you do not have a lot of time to mess around because you've got to get someone to sponsor you for a visa. And that is very hard because they have to put their own money and they have to take a chance on you when they could hire an american and not to jump through any hoops. So that is a pretty profound difference, I would say.

HOST

Was it while you were at NYU that you learned some lessons from Tony Gilroy?

GUEST

Yes. So I took a class from a writer. It was a very small class from a writer called Emacs Fry, who most famously wrote something wild, great Jonathan Demi film. And so he had become friendly with Tony Gilroy, I think, because their kids went to the same school, which is very good way to get to know people, I suppose. And so Tony came in. Tony at the time had his credits were like the cutting edge, which isn't really demonstrative of normally his writing. The big one he'd written was devil's advocate, but he'd also written Dolores Claiborne, I want to say proof of life. At the time, he had a good collaboration going with Taylor Hackford, who had directed Dolores state table's advocate and proof of life. And he had written born identity, but it had not come out yet. And so he kind of regaled us with stories about the process of born identity and all that kind of stuff and also how he wrote. And he kind of came up under William Golden. Tony's father, Frank Gilroy, was a super famous playwright. I believe he wrote a play called the subject with roses, I think, or days of wine and roses, I can't remember. And so he and his brother Dan had come up under that and I think gotten to know Goldman through that. Or maybe they just got to know. I don't know how he got to know. And so Tony writes in a very similar style to William Goldman style, which is very literary and very different from how screenplays, for the most part, were prior to that. And so that was really interesting. So often, unless he has to, Tony would not put a subject line like interior office day. He would just do cut tos. Obviously, when it gets to production draft, if you go and read the porn identity script of production draft, it has like interior office day because you need that when you're doing scheduling and breakdowns and et cetera. His original draft he turned to the studio does not have any of that. So it's just a very different way of working with the reader, working with the writing, and kind think some things that Tony said that really stuck with me was something to the effect of, it's his job to get you to keep turning the page. That's the job as far as he's know. And that he tried to have as little black on the page as possible. So a lot of dialogue, a lot of his description was very literary, very fluid, and just making it for a reading experience. And I think often in film school, I didn't really have this in film school, but people often do because I hear about know they're like, oh, a screenplay is a blueprint, and so don't write. We see. Don't do this. Don't do, don't. Tony Gorilla didn't give a fuck about any of that shit. His whole thing was, I want the reader to keep turning the pages. And so I think that really stuck with me, that philosophy and has very much stayed true through my career. Trying to be a writer, being a producer, and then eventually becoming a manager and working with writers is the job of a writer, is to get the reader to keep turning the page.

HOST

Absolutely. And learning from him was very helpful for you because you did, as you mentioned, want to be a screenwriter, but then you turned away from it. Was it hard to do that and move towards literary management and production?

GUEST

It was a process. When I was at NYU, I applied for and won this thing called the Sloan Foundation Fellowship, which is a scholarship oriented towards science screenplays that are science related. And so I'd heard about this famous mathematician and kind of like this brilliant guy called Alan Turing. I'd read a biography of him when I was, like, super young. Weirdly, because he committed suicide by dipping an apple in cyanide and taking a bite of it. Alice Snow White. So I was like, as 13 year old, I was like, that's so fucking cool. Oh, my God. And then I read the biography, and I was like, oh, interesting. And I didn't think much about it until I was, like, 19 or whatever. When I wrote the script about Alan Turing called deus ex machina was the name of it. Yes. Got out of the machine because Alan invented the idea of kind of artificial intelligence and the Turing test, which is for that. So I wrote this screenplay, and I won this competition. And it's funny because I'd written it, but I was like, I don't think anyone's going to ever going to care about Alan Turing. Why would anyone care about Alan Turing? And also, I took a lot of it from this book, and I didn't get the rights to the book because that seemed too big time to me as a 1920 year old kid. And then obviously it since went on to become the imitation game. And by the way, Graham Moore, who I'm friendly with, not super close, but I knew him when we were both kind of coming up as writers and stuff. Graham Moore is a phenomenal writer and his script is way better. And they actually also went to the extent of getting to the rights to the book. But it was one of those cases where I was like, oh, wait, that was a good idea. I just didn't think anyone. I had no conception that you could go and get rights to a book and do these things and whatever. And I also just didn't think anyone would care about Alan Turing, even though I cared about Alan Turing. And so I had a couple near misses like that in development. I was one of the earliest people to see infernal affairs, the Hong Kong movie that eventually became the departed. Couldn't get anyone. I worked at Appian way at the time and I couldn't get anyone interested in it. And so plan B ended up optioning know, although Appian did eventually produce it. But that had nothing to do with me. That just had to do with them going to Leo or Marty or whoever it was, know things like, I read Superbad early on. I mean, Jod Apatow was already involved, but I was know it's a few years and I was like, that's just amazing. And so you're kind of reading these. Like, I had good instincts for that stuff. And then I went and worked for a married couple of writers, Andrew Marlowe and Terry Miller. Andrew had famously written Air Force one, hollam, end of days. And Andrew went on to create the tv show Castle. And so I worked on that as a writer's assistant. And all along I was writing. But I was just not very diligent, really, about my writing. I think I'm a good writer. I'm not a great writer, but I'm a good writer. But I think to make a living, certainly you have to be great. And I was good, but I wasn't great, but I understand it. And so I worked on Castle and I saw all these different writers and it was really helpful because I kind of had this idea in my mind that there was like one school of writing or if I could just find my one way of writing, whether it's writing in the morning, writing the afternoon, doing this, I was always trying to find the way. And the reality is working on all those writers and their different styles and their different habits, I realized there is no one way. And also, it's kind of like, okay, I don't think at that point I'd started producing because a friend of mine came to me. A guy called Bobby Sablehouse was, know you have all these great ideas, but you don't write them again. Because I was like, slow writer, lazy writer. And he's like, what if he had other people write them? I was like, oh, my God. Other people writing something, and I don't have to actually write it myself. That sounds amazing. And so I started doing that and working with other writers and working with other writers. In particular, a guy called Ian Shore. I was like, oh, wait, this guy's amazing. I'm not this good, but I am good at working with him and bringing him ideas and coming up with ideas with him and shaping the screenplay. So that's interesting. And so after three seasons on Castle, I left, and I formed Bellevue Productions, surely as a production company at the time, back in 2010, working, doing stuff like that. And we set up a bunch of projects at studios, including a script Ian wrote called Capsule, another script called Christo. And then we eventually made a really small, million dollar found footage movie called Always Watching, which is the first movie ever produced. But setting movies up at studios, if you're just the producer, you don't really get any money out of that. And so Ian came to me and was like, hey, I think you would be an amazing manager. I think you could be my manager. And I would let my manager go and go with you. And so that was really the vote of confidence I needed. And so in 2015, I turned Bellevue, and I did kind of make sure it all worked. With immigration. I turned Bellevue into a management company. And so Ian came and was one of my first clients. And some of the other writers that I'd worked with, a guy called David Churcharillo, a few other people went and were like, hey, I'd love. You're a great guy. I'd love to be a client of yours as well. So that was working with. I hired a colleague called Jeff Portnoy to start working with me that year. That was great. And then the next year, we had the number one script in the blacklist, which my wife, Elise Hollander, wrote, a script called Blonde Ambition. It was about the early days of Madonna, which I'd kind of learned my lesson that if we were interested in kind of stories of true life people, then other people would be interested in them, even though I actually didn't think there was any chance we would ever sell that screenplay because I was like, well, Madonna's life, we don't own that. But we did end up selling it to universal, which is pretty wild for.

HOST

The listeners that don't know. Sorry, John, would you be able to explain what the blacklist is?

GUEST

Yeah, so the blacklist is an annual list. The tricky thing is, okay, so Franklin Leonard, who, not ironically, but funnily enough, I worked with briefly when I was at Appian Way as an assistant, he created the blacklist as a list every year of the best screenplays that hadn't been made yet because he went out to all his friends who are other executives and said, hey, what does everybody like? And then they all gave him suggestions and he kind of compiled them and said, hey, like five people like this one, two people like that one. Because at the time it was very informal, the first one, and he kind of let everyone know what it was. And so that was the blacklist. And it's obviously kind of a turn on the Hollywood blacklist and all that kind of stuff. And so that became an annual thing. And eventually, by the way, Franklin turned it into a great website called also the Blacklist, where writers can pay for evaluations and upload their screenplays. And I found many clients through that blacklist website. But they're two separate things. There's the annual blacklist, which is voted on by executives, by the way, not managers or agents. People sometimes think for some reason that Franklin would let, because I was voting, I'd just vote for all my own stuff. But no, only producers and studio execs who've been vetted by Franklin and his team can vote in it. And then every year they say, here's the screenplays and et cetera, et cetera. And then there's separately the website where people upload the script. And by the way, I've had clients who I found via the website whose screenplays I found, either the screenplay I found or a different screenplay that we then worked on that have gone on to be on the annual blacklist. So there is crossover. But if you get a really good score from a reader on the website of the blacklist, it does not mean that you're going to be in the right. It doesn't work that way. But if you get a great score and I forget what the number is, like seven or eight out of ten, it gets circulated to a bunch of executives on a weekly email. And then I read about it and I hear about it. And if it sounds interesting, I'll go read the screenplay. And then if I like it, we meet and start working together, and then it could turn into that. So that's kind of that. But the two things I do all this explaining because I know how often there's a deal of confusion around it. But going back to my wife in 2016, she had the number one script, the highest voted script on the 2016 blacklist. And that really changed her life and I think changed and changed my life and my company. And so that kind of really helped kind of boost the profile of the company, which was really cool. And since then, we've added my colleague Kate Sharp, my colleague Zach Zucker, and we just recently added a new junior manager, Maddie Weiss, who joined the company. And we've also had the number one script on the 2020 blacklist, the 2021 blacklist, and the number two script in the black 2022 blacklist, which is course 17, which I know you and my good buddy Andy Horowitz discussed in a previous podcast. So, yeah, so that was kind of my thing. And the joke I always make is I became a manager because I failed at everything else. Fail is maybe a harsh term, but it just wasn't clicking for me in my career path. And so by the time I became a manager, I was in my mid 30s. FYI, I had been a producer in my early 30s. Before that, I'd been an assistant on tv shows and production companies and screenwriters. So, yeah, it was kind of like I had a long journey to get to. My wife is still younger than I was when I started becoming a manager. So it's funny, people are like this that, but life kind of takes funny turns where you wouldn't necessarily expect it. But I think working in development, working on a tv show, working for screenwriters, working as a producer, I learned different things from all those different experiences that made me the manager I am today. And I think I'm a really good manager. I found the thing that I am best suited for, in my opinion.

HOST

It sounds like it, absolutely. And I've seen you described, which sounds about right, as a bit of a wizard of the blacklist, could you speak to the ideas that you're reading and what makes something, I guess, sellable in Hollywood? Because you clearly have an affinity for it, going back to your picking out Alan Turing, which went on to be a huge movie in another writer's hands later on, it's clearly something that you understand when you're reading these scripts. How do you approach the know?

GUEST

Honestly, it's very simple because I think if there was a science. I remember a friend of mine was like, hey, can you make, like a one or two pager of how you know a script is good or not? I don't know, man. It's like if you listen to a song, right? Like, if you're listening to a song and I'm like, is this a good song or not? Do you like this song? I'm like, you might be like, yeah, this is a great song. I'm like, okay, why is it a good song? Tell me why. And you're like, you're not going to be like, well, the bass line syncopation is. I'm sure if you were really technical, you could figure it out, but you can't mathematically make a good song, right? There's something magical there. It's funny. Like, blade Runner is probably my favorite movie or certainly one of my favorite movies. And from a mathematical point of view, it's a failure as a movie in the sense that the main character at the end of the movie doesn't do anything, is saved by the bad guy, doesn't do a lot through the movie. He kind of does bad things, really. The romance is not great and all these other things, and yet somehow it works as a movie, and it's just one of those ineffable things where you can do every. I think that's the frustration that happens for a lot of people, is they think there are rules for screenplays. And they're like, I did all the things that it said, and no one likes my screenplay. And I'm like, it's not math. It just doesn't work that way. And I think the reality is I just have to trust my instincts. I have to listen to, does it speak to me? I put up a tweet recently. It was something to the effect of, like, if you don't love your screenplay, how could anyone else? It's just because people write those screenplays and like, yeah, I don't know, man. It's a horror movie. I don't know. It's good enough, right? And it's like, good enough is not good enough. It just isn't. And look, I've taken out screenplays that I love and they didn't sell, and that was disappointing. And so I'm not some genius that is always right. It just doesn't happen that way. But I'm right more often than I'm wrong or I'm right or conversely, I'm right enough to make a living at it. And I just have to think if I love something. Hopefully other people will love it. I have to live by that. And I think one of the ways that the company has grown in a good way in a relatively short amount of time is that when people know, when I reach out to them and my colleagues reach out to them about material or a writer, that we really believe in it, that we don't take stuff out every week. By the way, to note, the strike has made this a very crazy time. So I'm certainly not taking anything out. But in normal times, when I take out material, I'm not taking out a screenplay every single week to producers. People know that when I take something out, I really believe in it and it's worth taking seriously, and it may not be for them. I always think the screenplays I take out and my clients material, it's not going to be for every single person. But at a minimum, you're going to enjoy the read and it's going to be interesting to you. And so that's kind of the bar and the threshold that I aim for. But yeah, going back to it. So, like something like court 17, which you previously discussed on your Andy Horvitz podcast, that was something weird. Coming through a query email. I read it. I was intrigued by it. A friend of mine, Matt Misedic, runs script pipeline. He also read and wasn't. He was doing some work on it, and he's like, hey, I'm going to do some more work on it. Read the next draft. So I read the next draft and it really stuck with me. And the idea had stayed with me since. I remember literally taking a shower and being like, the idea of a time loop tennis movie is so interesting. That idea of like, if I was to play the best tennis player in the world, if I played them a million times, could I figure out one time out of a million to beat them? Is there one way that I could finally beat them? By learning their tricks and their gives. And that idea, I thought was very sticky and very interesting. And it was interesting to me. I mean, look, there have been times when I haven't been interested in a screenplay and other people have been, and vice versa, right? So I can't say I have some perfect track record. I don't think anyone does. Even Steven Spielberg has made movies that didn't connect with the audience. But not that I'm Steven Spielberg. I'm just saying if he's got the golden touch, even he is not right 100% of the time. But I have to believe in my taste, and that's it. And I think the mistakes I've made in my career have been when I've listened to market forces or when someone else been like, oh, this guy's a great writer. And I'm like, I don't really think so, but everyone seems to think it. So that's the mistakes that I've made in my career and that's when I've kind of learned it. So I think it was like a Kendrick Lamar line. I'm paraphrasing something of if I'm going to fail or I'm going to succeed, I want to be on my terms or be on my way. And that's my thing is like, if I'm going to take out a script and nobody really loves it, okay, but I'll take it out. I'm going to take it to 100 people so I can hopefully find that one person who loves it. Like I love it. And if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen. But typically it happens. More often than not, it happens. Brilliant. Yeah.

HOST

So you mentioned there your Twitter, which you're very active on at John Zalzerni, where you tweet lots of advice. Yes, I've learned it where you tweet lots of advice there for screenwriters and creatives generally, I guess. Would you say that that is the place to build a network these days in Hollywood?

GUEST

I mean, I don't think you can really build a network. If I'm being completely honest with know I'm friendly with people on Twitter, that doesn't mean I'm going to represent know the people I've met through Twitter who becomes some of my closest friends. They got managers. I'm not looking to do that. And I've read other people through Twitter and think maybe there has been one or two people who certainly read people through Twitter who I've been friendly with, but I could just as much have read them on the blacklist website or query email or script pipeline or whatever. I think it's really what you make of it. And I think rather than thinking of as a network, I would think of it as friends, to be honest with you. And I think if you think of someone as a friend, there's less of a kind of like give and take relationship to the thing. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. Yeah. Transactional. And I think if you're someone early in your career, you should make friends with other people early in their career. When I first came out, I would meet with people who were know vps or presidents because I did a bunch of internships, and the executives I interned for were kind enough to make introductions, and that was cool and all. But the president of Lionsgate isn't going to be, like, helping me out. Someone who's really helpful is going to be someone at your level or slightly above an assistant. I was an intern. They were an assistant. We got to be friends, or they knew about jobs. The president of a studio doesn't know about assistant jobs. It's not the business. And why would they? In the sense of, like, if you're an up and coming screenwriter, John August does a lot of great things. I don't know him personally, but John August is. Is not going to probably become your best. I don't know. Maybe he is. I don't speak. I don't want to speak out of turn about what John August might or might not do, but I guess I would focus on people who are at the similar level of your career, which is kind of up and coming, and hopefully you can lift each other up and learn from each know. That's more likely to happen than someone who's very established. I don't know, maybe very established people do that. That would be fucking awesome if they did that. But I think if you come into it with that angle, it can feel transactional. Whereas if you're friendly with someone who's at the same level as you, there's probably nothing they can do other than help make you a better writer by reading your work and giving you notes on it. And you can read their screenplays and become a better writer through that. That's what I'm trying to say, I guess, is as opposed to someone who's like an A lister, who's like, I'm sure there are times, though, when a listers have read something and really helped someone out. I'm sure that just, I think you get better bang for your buck in focusing on people at your similar level. That was my experience.

HOST

That's certainly the experience I've had as well. Yeah, you grow up and you think it means going to events and meeting people with business cards, and then you're like, no, no, this isn't how it works at know.

GUEST

Like, me and Andy Horowitz became really close friends when we were both assistants. A lot of my closest friends were people. I met them when they were an assistant and I was an assistant. It just happens that way. And I actually go out of my way nowadays to take assistants out to lunch, get to know them, things like that. So I like to do that because I like to get to know people early in their careers, I think that's the focal point. But the people I'm really close with are people I met when I was an intern or when I was an assistant, and they were similar. I still make new friends now, but for me, at this point in my career, that's when getting to know vps of studios is helpful, because I have something to offer them and they have something to offer me. We're probably the same age and probably have gone through similar experiences. And honestly, we probably already know each other or like, one degree away from each other.

HOST

Absolutely. Now, as one penultimate question, before we go on to our little wrap up quickfire, I'd like to ask, what does film producing look like from your position on the project? Because for the listeners, they well know that there are millions of different kinds of producers, and everyone does different things. I presume that you're not on set every day. John, could you talk a little bit about perhaps, your own involvement with something.

GUEST

Like, know, there have been movies where I've been on set all know. I would say at this point in my life, I love someone like Andy, who is more. When we say physical producer, what we tend to mean is a line producer. So someone's literally, that is their focal point. They don't really do a ton of development. They come on when a project is moving towards production, not before, typically. Maybe they'll do a schedule or a budget or something, but they're not necessarily giving notes other than related to budget or scheduling. But Andy, I guess Andy is a development guy, but he's also a boots on the ground guy. He's been boots on the ground for movies. I have done it, but I haven't done it a ton. And to be honest with you, that's not really my add value to a project. Typically, when I produce, the general rule of thumb I have is it's something that either my original idea. So, like, Eli was an original idea of mine, or know, a piece of ip that I brought to a know or an idea, that kind of thing. So, like, infinite, that was a book called the reincarnationist papers that I optioned and that I brought to Ian Shore. So where I entered the process is very clear. I spent my own money to option a book and then bring it to a client. That project would not exist without me in that sense. So, like, cobweb, my client, Chris Devlin's movie, which is coming out this Friday, the 21 July. I am not a producer on that. I did give a lot of notes on it. But that's my job as a manager as far as I'm concerned. But I'm not producing it. I am producing Chris's new screenplay because it's an idea that I brought to him. But his two previous. All the other scripts before that, I didn't produce Ian Shore and I, unless it's an assignment or something, we typically tend to work together because we're very good at coming up with ideas together and doing things like that. And so blonde ambition, which my wife wrote, that was idea that I brought to her, because when I was at NYU, same time as when I had the class with Emacs Fry, where he brought in Tony, one of my teachers, a guy called Nelson George, a music writer and journalist, producer and director, brought in Jelly Bean Benitez. And so I heard about his experience Madonna back in 2000 or 2001, and cut to like 15 years later, or whenever it was Elise and I were talking about it, I was like, oh, this was an interesting story I heard back in the day. And so that's where I kind of came. And obviously, I helped develop and give notes on it, but I do that on all my projects, all my clients projects, whether or not I'm producing them or not. But that's kind of the rule we stick to with producing. Or at least I more often than not stick to with producing. Sometimes there's something where I've been involved and I've helped shape it so intimately, even though it wasn't my idea, where it's gone from one idea to very much something else, and I brought in something very. That was not an element there. But my go to is generally not to produce unless it kind of hits those categories. That's just how I do it. Different managers do different things. But I would say in terms of my role in the process, I tend to be either the originator of the idea in terms of being my idea, or a piece of IP, an article, a book, a fairy tale that I bring to the client say, hey, I think there's a movie here. And we keep working on it until it gets really great. That's how I do it. And there have been movies where I've been boots on the ground for them. There's been movies I have not been that involved in at all. And to be fair, that was not necessarily my decision, but that's how it goes sometimes. But, yeah, it varies on the project. And to be honest, you also where your life is at that point. So I have a brand new baby, so I'm probably not as super psyched to go beyond set every single day. And so I partner with people like Andy, or, not that I'm producing for 17, but like Andy or other producers where they are more boots on the ground. Yeah.

HOST

Amazing. That's really great insight. Thank you very much, John. Now to wrap up on red carpet rookies, I do my own little quickfire questionnaire, which is my own ode to in the actor studio. So the first one is, what is one of the best pieces of advice you've ever been?

GUEST

I, my old boss, Andrew Marlowe, had this saying, which, I don't know that was necessary, his original saying, but it was always look for the note behind the. So, like, they might give you a note like, oh, the first act is too slow. We need an explosion. That's not about the explosion. It's about, okay, why do they feel the first act is slow? And how do you fix that? So what's the note behind the note? And so that's been something that when you get notes or when you give trying. I always try to think of it that way. So that was a really helpful piece of advice that Andrew Morley gave me.

HOST

That's an awesome one. Number two, do you have a favorite film or one that really impacted you a lot?

GUEST

I would obviously say Blade Runner, which I spoke to earlier. That's probably up there for me. Also, bottle Rocket. I would say, I absolutely love that movie. That's when I've gone to back time and again.

HOST

What gives you a reason to get out of bed for a day of production? Literary management. Not an easy way to say that one.

GUEST

I mean, got to pay to put food in my daughter's mouth, and that's certainly where I'm at now. But, yeah, got to make a living. And this is the only thing I've turned out to be really good at. So that's typically. That's the so good.

HOST

Number four, which job in the industry would you do if you weren't doing yours?

GUEST

Probably be an executive at someone's company or something like that. Probably be doing something like, something related to development. More often than, I don't know, that I would be an agent. Maybe I would either an agent or an executive, either in development or representation in some other capacity, I'm sure.

HOST

Cool. Number five, if you could work with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

GUEST

I guess I'd say Billy Wilder. That's probably the answer that I would.

HOST

That's a cool one.

GUEST

Yeah. I mean, he's the greatest.

HOST

He is indeed. Number six, what is a book that everyone should read can be career focused to make it easier.

GUEST

I would say know, given the topic of this conversation, and know probably aimed towards screenwriters or people in the entertainment industry, I would say writing for fun and profit by Thomas Lennon and Robert Bengarant, who are probably most famously as the guys from Reno, nine one and one and the state. But they also write Ned, the museum and a bunch of other movies. And they have this amazing book that's all about being a screenwriter. So it's not like write this, act one, write this, act two. It's all about literally a career in screenwriting. And it's also one of the funniest books I've ever read. And so I highly recommend that it's a book that you'll read in one day, but there's a lot of great truths in there in terms of a Hollywood career.

HOST

Amazing. I've got that one on the shelves and I haven't actually read it yet.

GUEST

Oh, dude, do me a favor and start reading it and let me know how long it takes you to finish it because I think you'll finish it fast.

HOST

Amazing. And finally, if you won an Oscar, who would you thank, John?

GUEST

I'd thank my wife, my wife and my daughter. And then whoever wrote the movie, gotta make sure the writer gets the thank you, but I gotta go with my wife and my daughter, first of know.

HOST

Perfect. Thank you very much for your time today, John. And make sure everybody checks out his Twitter at John Salzerni for amazing advice on the industry. Thanks very much.

GUEST

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER C

Thank you for listening to another episode of Red Carpet Rookies to help us grow and be able to interview more amazing film and tv professionals. Please do subscribe and drop us a rating on the Apple Podcast store, on your iPhone or online if you're an Android user. If you're interested in regular updates, the best thing you can do is to join our mailing list@redcarpetrookies.com, or alternatively, find us on Instagram at red carpet rookies or Twitter at RC rookies pod. I also tweet regularly about my own learnings in the business at Mike fbattle on Twitter, so please do come and say hi. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.