520: Storytelling & Identity with Whit Anderson (Part 2 of 3): Beating Writer’s Block, Writing RomComs and Space Operas, and Female Representation in Hollywood

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Music.


Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
Hi friends, and welcome back to the podcast. This is part two in our series on storytelling and identity. My guest today is a longtime friend screenwriter whit Anderson. In this conversation, we get into, among other things, how a life changing illness inspired one of her screenplays, the cultural role that storytellers and screenwriters play, how she uses visuals and music when she's preparing to write, plus a really awesome tip on beating writer's block, and one of the, in her words, amusing and devastating things she did to the book work in a male dominated field. Content warning, we do get into briefly suicidal ideation, both in the context of the movie that she's working on, but also in the context of an illness she experienced. We talked about mental health, and wid does say some bad words, most of which we edited out. Wit has written both original and adapted content for HBO Showtime, NBC, Warner Brothers, Paramount stars, Netflix and sky, UK. She's worked on shows like Daredevil Twilight Zone Ozark, as well as the screenplay for her original film players, which is so much fun, and the Netflix hit damsel. Most recently for Netflix, she wrote a feature script for the epic space opera Empress, which she gets into a little bit she's currently in development with Paramount Studios, George Clooneys company, smokehouse, Margot Robbie's lucky chap and Jude Law's Riff Raff. She went to Northwestern like me and as a theater nerd, I hope you enjoy our conversation. You


Hi whit, welcome to the podcast.


Whit Anderson  1:45  
Hi Ethan, excited to be here.


Ethan Sawyer  1:47  
When did you know you were a storyteller?


Whit Anderson  1:52  
Well, I didn't know that I was a writer until Mrs. Holton in the sixth grade. Thank you, Mrs. Holton, but I knew that I was a storyteller from a super young age. I had these really early memories of big thunderstorms coming through. I was I was born in Appalachia, in this little town called Covington, which is right on the border of Virginia and West Virginia, and we'd get these thunderstorms. And this was my preschool age, like three, four, and the electricity would go out, and my parents would gather me and my brother with our flashlights around one of those really large tape recorders from the 80s. And we would take turns telling stories into this tape recorder. And it was like, you know, like our version of telling tales around campfire, right? Like this ancient practice that I think humans have always done. And it's funny that that question was actually really important to me, but maybe not for the reason why you asked it. I have a bunch of acquaintances who have come up to me for various reasons. I mean, over the years, sorry, who are like, a little bit embarrassed to tell me that they're trying their hand at writing and and I can tell that they kind of assume that I would find that silly or be uninterested in discussing it, and I am it is the exact opposite, like I almost always tear up I am so proud of every single person that finds their way to storytelling, because I truly believe it is one of the defining characteristics of being human that we have this ability and arguably the responsibility to try to make sense of the world and our lives and bring meaning to all of this. Yeah, so to anyone listening who has never considered themselves a storyteller, I hope that this is the moment that you realize you are one. I'm curious


Ethan Sawyer  3:47  
to know, how have the stories that you've been interested in telling shifted over the years?


Whit Anderson  3:52  
It's a great question. I'm not sure my interest has changed as much as my point of view on the stories that I want to tell and my depth of understanding. I mean, even just the last four years of being a mother has shifted so much in how I see the world. I think, more than anything, my business tactics have changed. I think in the beginning, I was more willing to consider commercial success when conceiving of ideas, because I understood that, you know, in order to tell the kind of stories that I am really interested in, I had to get my foot in the door somehow. And I it's a hard lesson. It was certainly like a bitter pill for me to swallow. And I know a lot of people, you know, they like to label it like selling out or what have you, but I will say I never compromise my morals, just my taste. And you know, I just kind of came to understand that I had two choices. I could go on writing Exactly. Exactly what I wanted, and my three friends would read it, you among them, and they'd be proud of me, and that would be fine. There's values in that, value in that, right? But, but if I wanted a wider audience for those same things, and I had to figure out some way to get on the stage first. And it's funny, actually, players, the film of mine that just came out this year, is a really good example of that. It's something I wrote that script more than a decade before we shot it, and its purpose was door opening, and that's exactly what it ended up doing. And it's it's been a bit of a wild ride, because I think now sometimes publicly, people think of me as like a rom com writer, and that is the only rom com I have ever written. And I'm not sure I'll do it again. It's very far from what I actually am working on now and the things that I want to explore now.


Ethan Sawyer  5:56  
And I'm curious to know, this is a big, broad question, but I'm curious to know, well, let's just start with players as an example of like, how do you feel, like your experiences slash identity? Identities, I should say, in the broad sense, influenced the writing of that. And then I'd love for you to zoom out and talk about, you know, how identity, in the broad sense, influences what you choose to write about?


Whit Anderson  6:19  
Yeah, players was very, very loosely inspired by our group of friends right in our 20s, we were a bunch of idiots going out, and we were, you know, helping each other figure out how to get dates like we're a bunch of nerds from Northwestern who had no game, none of us. And, you know, we were all a little, could be socially awkward, and we were like, Okay, what I like that guy at the bar? What do I do? And yeah, and so I that's sort of the was, was the inspiration for that, taking our real life experience and then just exploding it into something far more intense, like, far more saturated. And, you know, there were things in it that I also kind of Trojan horsed, like sex positivity for for women and, you know, giving it a little bit of a more modern twist, like, normally, if you if you think about other films in that world, you'd think about maybe, like Wedding Crashers, right? And that's just boys being boys. And so at the time, I was like, Okay, well, what does it look like if a woman is doing this as well. And then also, I was a huge sports fan at the time. It's so funny how how interests change. Like, if you ask me anything about sports today, I could tell you absolutely zero. But at the time, when I wrote it, I knew a lot about sports. I grew up playing sports. They were important to me, and I just thought it was a cool way to look at dating, yeah, so that's how that happened. I think now, you know, I It's funny. So I'm working right now on this project that's really dear to me, that is inspired by a novelt that actually wrote that is not yet published. So I'm adapting it for television with Margot Robbie and June Wah. And it is a story called The Club. And if you imagine a group of people who, for various reasons, want to kill themselves, and for various other reasons, cannot they can apply to this very elite social club, and if they are accepted, they are slotted into line, and person B kills a, and then within 24 hours, C will KILL B, and so on. Now imagine a guy joins this club, he kills his person, but then when he's meant to be killed, his death is flashed, and he survives it, and then suddenly, in that moment, the whole world just snaps into color, and he realizes that he desperately wants to live, and so he's got to go on the run. And how does that relate to me? So so so I struggled with depression a lot growing up, and, you know, suicide definitely occurred to me. Nothing serious. Luckily, it was just kind of the thought floating in and moving on, but more than once. And I think when I was younger, I'm not sure I would have been able to write about that. But then this thing happened. So at 27 I lost feeling in my legs, and I had trouble walking, and I couldn't climb upstairs without help, and I was misdiagnosed with rapidly progressing ms, and I was given. Approximately two years to live, and suddenly that depression lifted, and I got very calm and very clear, and everything was beautiful, right? Like the curve of a banister scratches on an elevator button, an eyelash growing the wrong way, right? I did not have MS, right? Thankfully, rapid or otherwise, it was a very rare spinal tumor that didn't even have a name yet. It was like the third person ever to be diagnosed. But the shaking awake that that brush with death ignited, stayed with me, and I've wanted to write about it since, and that's what the club is about. It's not about suicide, it's about all of the reasons to stick around.


Ethan Sawyer  10:51  
Wow, thanks for that. I remember you going through that, and I remember it's a jarring Ness that happened for me and for us. You know, as a as your friend community. It happened again when this past year, a different friend was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and there was this moment of sort of like vicariously glimpsing the other side of the nothingness or the void or something. And what I appreciate about film and storytelling is that we get to sort of vicariously glimpse that, without actually having to, like, fully go there. And I'm appreciating that on a meta level as you share just that, that retelling of that. Where else do you show up in your stories?


Whit Anderson  11:37  
Okay, so two examples come to mind. One was a moment that ended up in Ozark. So I was in line at a whole foods because I'm a booty piece of garbage, and this woman in front of me was really being rude to the checkout person, and I was getting very angry. And you know, in my head, I'm thinking all of these terrible things, like, You're the problem. Like, I just wanted to yell at her, and then, for whatever reason, I I reached out and I touched this woman on the shoulder, which is a not so thing to do. I touched the stranger's shoulder, and she whipped around at me, and I said, Hey, are you okay? And she burst into tears, and she said, I am so sorry. And she apologized to the checkout person, and she gathered up her groceries and she left, and the checkout person and I looked at each other, and we were like, what the hell I could just what was that? And it just got to me, because you listen, nothing could excuse her behavior, and it's so important to take the time to imagine why that behavior is occurring. And we don't know if she has someone speaking of cancer, if she has someone at home dying of cancer, and all they wanted was this one particular chip, and they were out of it, and now the world is over. And I told this story in the Ozark writers room when we were talking about a moment with Wendy, and it ended up getting in there. She, there's a moment. I don't know what the heck episode it was. It wasn't actually my episode. I think someone else wrote it. But she, she goes to the store to find a specific flavor of ice cream, and they don't freaking have it, and she ends up like yelling at somebody and having this meltdown moment. And when you get to see what leads up to that moment, when we get to show the audience who Wendy is and why she's in this spot, suddenly her behavior is real and understandable, and it's one of my biggest passions, is to show why people do bad things. Because I just think that again, like without excusing it, if you can find a way to understand it that is the only way to prevent it from happening in the future. So there's that little moment so that, you know again, that's just like a tiny experience that got me thinking. And then there was this moment where it was appropriate to use it with a character on a more political level. I just worked on this film. Oh god. It was one of my greatest joys. It was such a beautiful experience. This big space opera called Empress, which is based on this Mark Millar comic series of the same name. I mean, it's a massive sci fi project. And, you know, I'm a character writer, so I'm like, Oh, absolutely fun. And it is riddled with. Yes, with me, with my point of view. You know, I was writing it when Roe was overturned, and I wanted to talk about that. So the lead has been forced into an excruciatingly abusive marriage with this all powerful kind of Darth Vader figure, and she has been terminating pregnancies in secret because she cannot fathom subjecting a child to this horrific man, and then she is found out, and he forces her to carry the pregnancy. And the story is, what the hell does she do? Now, that is not in the original material, but it's something that I wanted to talk about. And then also it's funny she she also has a power in this version that was not in the source material. And, you know, I can't take full credit for this. I was not the first writer in on this project. So there was another draft that I got to read, and it is incredibly different from what I ultimately wrote. But there was this person did, did decide to give her a particular power. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. To give her some something, but the power that he chose felt dangerous to me, because it seemed to mirror disassociation. And for a woman going through trauma to have her power be to disassociate, felt disturbing. And so I thought, well, what could her power be? What is a How would a woman lead differently? Were we not told that the only way to lead is the way it's historically been done? What would it be if I could dream up any power, and I thought, man, what if her power is extreme empathy? What if she's able to feel any amount of violence that is done to someone else, and she's able to harness that and return it so that that person, the person who did the harm, can understand what it is they just did. And if you're able to do that. Violence stops pretty quickly, right? Because then you're like, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to get what I've given. And it's a really, it was really, it was really beautiful to get to play in that playground.


Ethan Sawyer  17:35  
I want to talk about freedom and autonomy in terms of how free you feel and autonomous you feel in order to get to tell the stories you want to tell. So the question is something like, to what extent do you get to decide what you write and how you write on it, and when is it sort of handed to you and been like, you know, this is what you're doing. This is what you're working on. Like, maybe talk about, I don't know, maybe talk about that range of what you've experienced.


Whit Anderson  18:02  
Yeah, so it goes a little bit back to what I was saying about the evolution of business tactics. I think in the beginning, I had to take more jobs that were not something that I would necessarily want to create, but but they were something that I could work on to prove my ability and and learn and, you know, move forward to the next step. Now, I am wildly fortunate in that I really do get to choose what I work on, and I have a couple hard and fast rules. One is, I will not work on anything that is where the where the action is launched by a dead woman or a raped woman, I won't do it. Say more about


Ethan Sawyer  18:51  
action is launched because I know what you mean, but just so the viewer knows, or the listener knows what you mean, or the viewer, in the case of somebody watching one of your pieces, yeah,


Whit Anderson  18:59  
so basically, I don't want the inciting incident or the kind of status quo to be about the brutalization of women. And what I mean is I don't want, especially a nameless woman, to be abused in order to motivate someone else to go on a journey that changes them. I won't. I won't let a woman be an object for someone else's growth. So that's, you know, that's one thing that I that is a pretty hard and fast no for me. Obviously, there are always exceptions. I'm sure someday someone will come to me with something, and I'll go, Okay, I actually think I can do something with this, but generally I avoid things like that. Yeah. So I try, always, also to work on things that push the ball forward, the social ball forward, the things that I'm passionate about. I I try to write about, because I think. Think if I'm not doing that, then, then my job has no meaning. It's literally just a job. So I love, you know, if I am passionate about women's rights and veterans and mental health care, I want to include those issues in my stories, some people think I'm absolutely nuts to do that. They're like, isn't that the third rail? Because at some point people will look back at something you've written that you felt was pushing the ball forward and maybe was at the time, and they'll go, oh, cringe. It's so dated. And I tell you this, I hope that's the case like that is actually the reason why I do it. I hope that one day my kid is like, Oh, Mom, you're so out of touch when you wrote that thing. Like, because then that means progress has still continued. I want to be left in the dust. It's funny, like, I remember there was this industry conference call with Michelle Obama, and I got to be on it. And this was when Barack was in office, and she just wanted to remind us of the power of storytelling. And she said, remember that the LGBTQ plus fight was expedited by television programming. It was expedited by Ellen and, oh goodness, this is Mom Brain right now, moderate family. And, you know, she just wanted to remind us that we, we, we can include things and people and events that that end up in people's homes and the audience that might never encounter that person or befriend that person suddenly befriends them through the television, and their minds change, and that's important to me.


Ethan Sawyer  21:58  
Yeah, I'd love to talk about process a little bit. How do you prepare to write a thing? And then when you're in the writing of the thing, what's your routine like? What's your schedule like?


Whit Anderson  22:08  
Yeah. So I'm a visual thinker, so one of the first things I do is pull visual pull images. I have a massive image bank already in my possession, and then I also search for new things, and I just go through and kind of create a new file with every image that resonates. I do a ton of research on whatever subject or world that I'm in, and I drill into structure. And I also do very intense outlines like I'm known for. I just turned in a 32 page outline for an hour long script to Paramount. So an hour long script is about 57 pages, and I turned in 32 pages for the outline. And that's because by the time I get to actually writing the script, I want to know it so well that I can just watch the show in my mind and take dictation, writing the script ends up being the easiest part of the process. So that's that. And then what on earth was your other question? Well, Ben, before


Ethan Sawyer  23:14  
we get to that, because it's like, what's your routine like? Would you talk a little bit about how you use music your writing process?


Whit Anderson  23:23  
Yeah, so I use it a little bit differently, like my husband, who is also the writer, he has the exact same soundtrack that he plays in his ears no matter what he's writing. I can't do that like I need music that is appropriate to the thing that I'm writing, and inevitably, I actually find one song that feels correct, and then I take all of those images, and sometimes I pull film clips from trailers, and I actually take the time to go In and re edit all of that and create a sizzle reel that captures the tone and the heart and the feeling of the project, so that I can visually and emotionally understand what I'm going for before I begin. And I do that, regardless of whether anyone else sees it, because it's the process of doing it is so helpful to me.


Ethan Sawyer  24:26  
Have you always been a big Outliner, or is that something that you discovered later? And I asked this because I was the type, you know, of writer in high school to just be like, I'll just write and figure it out. You know what I would call like, the Explorer archetype, and I've become more what I would call architect archetype as I've gotten older. And I'm just curious how that progression has gone for you, and why outlining to you has become so important. Yeah, you mentioned it a little bit, but I'm just double clicking. Yeah, so


Whit Anderson  24:55  
no. So I was very much like you. I was an explorer, and I found that I. Finished anything, a lot of great beginnings, and could not complete a single thing. And then I worked for this writer director, a guy named Gary Ross, who was adamant about outlining, and he gave me a lot of grief over not doing this. And so I started and what I and I haven't. I literally have not done anything without an outline since then, and what I discovered when I really started doing it. You know, I think people feel like there's a I think I felt before I started doing it, that it would encroach on my freedom, that I would feel beholden to a thing and then wouldn't be able to kind of improvise in the moment as I was really getting into the details of the story. And I have found the opposite. I find that improvisation in the outlining process, it is much easier to change things, even though it's a 32 page document, it is still easier to change things in the 32 pages than in the 57 pages. And I find that as long as I know where I have to end up eventually, because I've outlined scene by scene, if I'm in scene three, and I know that scene four has to happen, but I get an idea while I'm actually in script form about what scene three might turn into, then I have a guide. I can take that improvisation and I can steer it so that ultimately I still end up at scene four and the rest of the film doesn't fall apart.


Ethan Sawyer  26:45  
Yeah, I love that. It's so applicable to the work that I do with students on the personal statement. And I'm realizing more. I think I'm just getting justified for my bias for outlining. But what I tell students oftentimes is like, you gotta figure out if the middle of the story works. And by middle, I mean, like, I think students often will obsess about the opening, the killer hook. Like, what is that? In some cases, literally killer but, like, what is that opening that's just going to grab their attention? And I'm like, you could fall in love with that opening, but if the middle of your story doesn't work, and I think I mean, also just the story, then you know, you're spending a ton of time on something that ultimately is probably going to shift. And I love what you just said about how it's easier to change things in the outline before you get into the, you know, the actual scripting. You're kind of sticking the landing of scene three before you, you know, move into whatever that next move is for scene four. I had a writer friend tell me once that you have, like, your ideas muscles and your writing muscles need to strengthen both. And it seems like the outline is the place to figure out what your ideas are and how they connect and work on your ideas muscles and that there are processes that we can use to strengthen, you know, both of those. And I see that, yeah,


Whit Anderson  27:57  
I love that. It's that's a really astute way to word it, that that if you cannot, yeah, you got to work both those muscles. Otherwise you're, you're, you're crippled in some way. Yeah, the best stuff is both. Is both,


Ethan Sawyer  28:14  
when you're writing, what's, what's a week, like for you when you're working on, on a project, yeah,


Whit Anderson  28:20  
so it depends on the project. Generally, I drop my kid off at school, and I go immediately to the very same coffee shop every day. They know my order. Not just the first round, they know the first round, second round and third round. They are amazing. Rowan, I love you, yeah. But I have to, I go every single day without fail, and I just can't, you know, a lot of people are like, I have to feel it, or I have to, you know, be inspired. And I'm like, No, it's some it's, I've got to go for my workout. This is my workout. I'm going to go and I'm going to get it done. Show up. Yep, every day, every day I


Ethan Sawyer  29:00  
want to say, I want to ask something about that in terms of because, because so you write, well, let me let you finish. So you're, you're you're writing. How many hours a day are you working before you're tapped out and you've got to do something else.


Whit Anderson  29:13  
And while it's changed since I had a kid, I mean, I am a notorious workaholic, so before that, I would work, I mean, just obscene hours. Now I'm lucky if I get like, five hours of active writing, and then I'm lucky if I get a couple more of thoughts or research after he's asleep. But my writing, I have to get done in the morning. I'm just up that way. I have to knock it out once. I'm in the afternoon, I'm gone, I'm done, yeah. Well, there are exceptions, though. So like, one of the things that I'm starting to do a lot of now is these weekly jobs, which I find so exciting and like such a fun challenge. I feel like Ethan. You would be incredible at it, because there's an element of gaming to it. So what will happen is, I'll be brought on either, you know, when a when a film is already in pre production, or even already shooting, and they realize there are issues with the script and whoever they had on before, for whatever reason, they feel like that, that you know, that person has reached the end of their time, and they need someone else with fresh eyes to come in, and so I'll come in and it and it will be a weekly job, and normally that means like two to five weeks of work, but it is under intense pressure, and all of these pieces are already in place, so you're working within a very strict set of rules and options, and you have to identify the issues and come up with creative solutions. And I just find it so exciting. But what happens there is, I'm a mad woman. I'm working all the time, and that means that my husband has to take a lot on, a lot of childcare, food, all the chores, everything, groceries, if he's on deadline too, then we're then we're calling the grandparents, right, like, and it's, and it's tough, because I it's, it's just so hard to be To be a mom and be doing that too, because I feel constantly torn between two things that I love very much. Do


Ethan Sawyer  31:30  
you ever get writer's block?


Whit Anderson  31:35  
I've only had it once, and I called Ryan Maldonado, who is another guest is yours. And I said, what is happening? I feel wouldn't necessarily block. I was like, I feel uninspired. Like there is. I just don't want to do, I don't want to write anything. And he said, Go back and read the scripts for your favorite films. Just read them. And that was such good advice. The funny thing is, I didn't take it. Didn't take that advice. I ended up reading books. I ended up reading novels. And actually, that like that jolt and something in me just to kind of actually get away from what I normally write, but also, but still be able to see character and story and all of that in a kind of a different form. It sort of really excited me, but I think that it's been so infrequent for me because I have a lot of tools to prevent it. One thing I do I'm very committed to doing, is I stop writing when I know exactly what it is I want to write next. So I have to know what the next scene is and be excited to write it, and then I know, okay, pencils down, because the next day, yeah, the next day, I know exactly when, where to start. I'm excited to start, and then that momentum will inevitably carry me through the next few scenes. And then I do it again. I stop, and it's just been really helpful.


Ethan Sawyer  32:59  
This is awesome. It's reminding me of the Hemingway quote, stop while the writing is good, yes, yes, but it's what you're saying is, I think I like what you said a little better where there's, like, a clear image, and that's so counterintuitive, right? Because we think, Well, if you have a picture for it, go write it. But I love the idea of pausing right there and being like, I can come back to this. That's, yeah, chef's kiss.


Whit Anderson  33:23  
It can cause a little anxiety at night, because you're like, Oh, but I just want to get back to the computer. But yeah, it works. And then the other thing is, I always have more than one thing going at the same time, and the reason for that is if I do get stuck, and I've really only, I'm like, only an hour in to my time at that coffee shop, I'm not gonna stop then, right if I'm stuck on one thing. So what I'll do is I'll switch over to the other and inevitably, the thing that gave me trouble in one will be easy in the other. And by going through that part that's easy. And the second thing, a lot of times, light bulb comes on for the first and you realize how to solve the problem. So it's very helpful to have more than one thing going,


Ethan Sawyer  34:10  
Yes, I can't help but as college essay guy, jump in here and go, y'all students who are listening, counselors listening. There's an easy copy paste for this. I already know some counselors are going to be thinking about this, but when a student is jammed up, now I'm speaking to you, Whitney, like when a student's stuck on their personal statement and they're like, ah, oftentimes they'll just stop, like, stop the press. No work happens. And there are all these other pieces of the application, the activities list, the additional information, the supplemental essays that also need attention and need to be completed in this arc of this process. And so I'm such a big fan of having students have, as it were, separate projects that they can work on to still feel productive. This happened as recently as yesterday with a student where the personal statement idea just wasn't clicking. And I was like, let's pause. Here are some of the things you can do to feel productive. And then I think I'm going to start giving students the. The the idea of, if you have a really clear sense of where it's going next, just pause for the next day. If they're having to break it up for a couple days. I just think that's so good. Okay, I want to be your student for a few minutes. Will you teach me, or teach us something about storytelling and screenwriting that maybe we don't already know?


Whit Anderson  35:19  
So it's funny. So we had a writer strike, which people may or may not be aware of, last year, and during the strike, my husband and I decided we should reach out to the community and volunteer to teach some writing classes. And so we we wound up at a middle school teaching an elective, which was amazing, and I have had used this line graph that I developed for structure, like many, many, many years ago. And I've used, I use it every time I'm trying to teach somebody structure. And so we, we used that. But what I realized in the process of teaching is that the number one thing that we don't discuss. So everybody kind of knows about want and need. They've heard the words inciting incident. They know about the climax, but we don't often talk about what these stories are really about. And I actually don't fully mean themes or motifs. That's a part of it, but we tend to confuse about Ness with plot as a society. So a friend goes to a movie, and they come back and you say, Oh, cool. What was it about? And they tell you the plot. They list the things that happened. They aren't actually telling you what the movie wants to say to the world. And like, you know, just if college students are are listening to this, like, there, I can't recommend more like that. You have a point of view of what you want to say to the world, because that's way more important, even than the plot that you're writing in your essay, I'll give you an example. So et, right? What happens in et? What the plot is, is a boy discovers an alien who has been left behind on Earth. They become friends, but ultimately he realizes he has to help the alien get home. That is what happens in the movie. What it is about is loneliness. A boy, Elliot, who is living in a family and a community in which everyone is siloed from each other, they're all alone, has to find a way to reconnect and bring them all back together, and every bit of plot has to serve that journey. And Spielberg, he's a genius, obviously, for so many reasons, but how he uses opening image in this film? I mean, you think a lot of people don't necessarily talk about that, but when you talk about an opening image. If you're really cooking, your opening image should encapsulate, not just it should encapsulate the aboutness in a single frame. And Good god, does he do it in that movie? So it's a little bit of a complicated example, because et actually has a prolog. So all of the stuff with et itself himself is technically a prolog. So you can imagine the actual opening image. Is the first time we meet Elliot. And when you meet him, his mother is doing dishes, talking to the kids without looking at them. His brother is at a table with his friends, and then Elliot is actually standing in the living room behind a half banquette, so that he is quite literally separate from friends, from family. He is being left out of the game that his brothers are playing. His mom isn't paying attention, and immediately you know whether or not you're thinking of it. You know intellectually your your stomach knows, oh, this child is alone,


Unknown Speaker  39:19  
yeah, I


Whit Anderson  39:21  
like to say, going back to the writer's block thing, I like to say that if you really know who your character is, what their need is, what their want and their need is, I suppose, what their world is like and their status quo is like, and you know What you want the movie or story to be about, then all of your dominoes are lined up. You just flick the first one, and everything falls into place. Like if you're having a problem in the third act, it's because you didn't figure out. One of those five things.


Ethan Sawyer  40:04  
Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you say this. And I realized that part of the way that my coaching of students, when they're working on their personal statements around storytelling is like so it used to be in the screenwriting sense, like someone is going through the change, you are the main character. You're going through. You had status quo, and then this thing happened to you. You changed, and you learned this lesson. What I found over time is that oftentimes students didn't have these sort of life changing moments, or moment where their whole world was turned upside down, and they were struggling to be like, how do I find something meaningful to say about what I'm going to bring to a college campus or community. And I've shifted more over the last, I'd say, for the last eight years, specifically to encouraging students to write more of a montage where they would sort of choose a topic, a theme, you know, something that they love or knew a lot about, like board games or an identity that they connected with and using that to connect to different sides of themselves. And it didn't necessarily have to have this sort of, like classic, you know, filmic, cinematic arc of like, the main character going through a life changing experience. I'm curious if you can think of alternate structures from film or otherwise, that don't necessarily have that sort of like classic arc, but that have maybe more of a theme based thing, but that still are impactful.


Whit Anderson  41:32  
I mean, you're not gonna like my answer, like my answer is no.


Ethan Sawyer  41:38  
And why do you think that is


Whit Anderson  41:40  
because I think that as people who are lost and we're all lost, what impacts us most is seeing someone try to not be lost and either accomplish that or not. And that's the difference between a comedy in the Greek sense, and a tragedy. Do they? Do they get their need or not? But I think witnessing the struggle for the need is one of the only things that makes us feel less alone. So while there are beautiful things, there can be short things, but I don't think you can sustain and I think, by the way, college essays, that's a great form arena to play with montage and moments and sequences and more like something with a little less narrative drive. That makes sense because it's a condensed piece. When you're looking at you I don't believe you can sustain a feature piece of, you know, a lengthy piece, a film, a book, by just doing that. I just don't think it will. It might be beautiful to read linguistically, but I don't think you're going to come away from it changed or motivated or feeling less alone.


Ethan Sawyer  42:54  
Yeah, I'm with you. I don't disagree. I think that even then, the examples that come to mind for me, like Terence Malik films, or things that are a little bit more imagistic, where you're sort of like, you know, or the baraka samsara films. These are films that are thematically based. There's still something in there that's tugging at our emotional heartstrings. I think I'm thinking about it as as you were sharing, I was thinking about orientation. And as it relates to there's this amazing this philosopher, a German philosopher, writing this book on what is orientation. And so I've been thinking about it a lot lately. But I think that in a film, oftentimes the viewer is orienting around this want and this need, whether they know it or not. I think it's sometimes true in a college essay that we're orienting around the main challenge, the struggle for the main character, or we're orienting around, hey, this is going to be an essay about how each move in my life, or, like, moving houses or these different pets that I've had have shaped me in powerful ways. So there needs to be sort of like an orienting device or frame that gives us the thing to focus on. But I think you're right that there's a genre thing where we gotta sustain it for 90 minutes to two hours in a film, whereas it's only three minutes, you know, it's 650 words for a personal statement. Yeah,


Whit Anderson  44:20  
I do think, too that there may be is a hybrid version of what you're getting after, like, going back to your move, example, how it has shaped you. So, so I'll use that. So growing up, we moved every two years, until I was in the seventh grade, we that was our final move before I went off to college. But what's funny is I still implemented moves of my own every two years. So for example, seventh grade, then eighth grade. Yes, I was in that same house, but then I went off to high school, so that the arena changed. Then after my sophomore year of high school, I transferred. Rules of my own volition. So the arena changed again, so I could talk about all the ways that that impacted me, and then I could make an observation about what my need is moving forward, so that the student is hoping that the college they're choosing will help them on their journey to achieving that need. So you don't have to go through the whole, the whole story. You actually just, you know, if you're looking at the structure, you're kind of getting to the midpoint, right? That's where you're going. You're ending up and then, and then, I don't know, for I mean, knowing nothing about the college acceptance process. But knowing a bit about humans, it feels like if you're saying, I know where I want to end up, I don't fully know how to get there, but I think that you can help me. Like that's all people want to hear. Oh, man, you think I can help you? Come you're in.


Ethan Sawyer  46:03  
Yeah, that's another, I think of that as the Theater of the Oppressed structure, where this is really getting into the weeds here, but August of the wall would create these pieces, these theater pieces where, essentially they would freeze the action on stage in the middle of the climactic moment where it hadn't been resolved yet. And they would turn out to the audience and ask them for involvement. How do you think this story should end? And in some cases, bring them up onto stage and like, well, you act it out, and you play a part in the drama as a way of, you know, it's populist theater. You know, let's get the audience engaged. We use this at Cornerstone theater company. When I worked there with worker rights pieces and going to Home Depots and turning to the audience and saying, What would you do in this situation? And I think that there is that move in some cases, that to use, move in a different sense that students can make to say, like you just said, Here's what I've got so far. Here's how far the story has gone. The next step, you're going to have to play a part in either explicitly or implicitly. And if the reader, in this case, the application reader, is on board and is rooting for the student, I think in some cases, that can be really powerful structure I'll share in the show notes. An example essay of this that is called the little porch with the House and the dog, and the student does that at the end in a really compelling way. We're not going to get into it now, but I'm really glad you brought that up. I want to actually rewind the tape so we're 20 to 23 years old. We are in we're at Normandy. We're writing as part of a writers group. And so for those of you who don't know what and I have known each other for more than 20 years, and we are sort of looking, in some ways wide eyed at this, at the Hollywood and screenwriting. This is I was wanting to be a screenwriter then too, and I'm curious to to hear now, 20 years in, what have you learned or that you didn't know then about this industry?


Whit Anderson  48:14  
A couple things. One is something I learned about every everybody, about all adults, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. Nobody does. Nobody knows, and it is the biggest secret. And when you're a kid, you think grown ups know, and that when you're a grown up you'll know, and no one does, and so you might as well just take a swing, because nobody, nobody knows. Like, no, I just Yeah. So even in this business, what I will say is like, you can do the two things that Ethan mentioned earlier, which is like, work on your writing. What was it? Work on your writing, your ideas muscles, your ideas muscles, and your actual writing muscles, if you can do that, and you can have a point of view about what you want to say and how you want to approach things. And you come into a meeting and you offer those you know, three things, the the ideas, the writing ability and your point of view, you're going to get the job because the people on the in the meeting don't have that, they they're looking for someone to have that. And I think what often happens is people go into that meeting and think that the other people have the answers, and they're trying to figure out, well, what is it that they want? What is it that they're looking for? And that's your job. That's your job. So come in with a with a point of view and look, if, if, if it's, I'm I take some really big swings. And sometimes people are like, wait, what? No, and that's okay. Like, at least I came in with a point of view and some big i. Yes, and like, you know, it's fine. So that's one thing I think, just like, you know, nobody knows what they're doing, so get in the conversation, because why not look? The second thing is that I think it actually aligns with that so, so there are a few things that I experienced when I first started, and one it they're both about presentation, and I think it's a little bit unfortunate and it's a reality. So so here, here are the stories. First, my name is Whitney, right. And when I was growing up, the only people who called me whit were my family and my close friends, and everyone else called me Whitney. And so when I started writing, I assumed I would go buy that. And then Ryan malnato was in a program, was in a program at USC, and he told me there was another Whitney Anderson. And I was like, what it turns out, when you join the union, you can't have the same name as somebody else. And I was worried that maybe she would make it before I would and then I would have built up this kind of a very small bit of recognition under the name Whitney Anderson, and I'd be screwed, because I'd have to change it. So I said, Okay, fine, I'll just go with whit Anderson. What I didn't know, what I should have known potentially, but what I didn't at that age was how much that decision would help me. There were countless rooms and meetings that I know I got because I write muscular pieces, that's what they like to call them muscular. And my name was wit, and they thought I was a man. And when I got into this, it was very difficult to get a meeting when you were a woman. It to the point where I would show up at a meeting and put my hand out to shake their hand, and they would say out loud, oh, you're a girl. The word the word girl too. Wow, wow. Yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  52:14  
it was a different time, son, exactly,


Whit Anderson  52:19  
exactly. It's funny, though it's switched right now, my agents go out of the way to actually call me Whitney on the phone. So people know I'm a woman. So it's like, you know, who knows? So the only thing to do in as things are constantly shifting and coming in your favor and coming out of your favor is just to get so good that you're undeniable. Was the only advice I can give you, is that all that garbage doesn't matter quite as much. It will always matter, but not quite as much. So there was that. And then so my dad, my dad, had an office job growing up, and he wore a suit to work every day. And I always assumed that that was what professional meant. And so when I came out of Northwestern and I got to LA and I started getting meetings for writing, I would show up, like looking put together, like looking professional. I would like have my makeup on, and like coming looking like I was coming in for an office, office job, not a quote, unquote creative job, and I was getting nowhere. And I was working for Jim Carrey at the time, and I came back and I talked to our friend Nicole. He was there working with him too. And I was like, Do you know what I'm going to do next time I have a meeting? She's like, what I said, Look, I studied acting. I am going to go in with a fake persona, and I developed this persona that I called Hollywood douche bag. I'm not kidding. I'm not I. And what it was I would I got an old Packer sweatshirt, I cut the sleeves off, I put my hair in a ponytail, no makeup. I wore sneakers and jeans and that sweatshirt, and I came into the meeting, and I sat down on the couch, and I put my feet up on their coffee table,


Ethan Sawyer  54:21  
wow. And


Whit Anderson  54:22  
I started talking like I owned the room. And I'm telling you, the very first time I did that, I got the job,


Unknown Speaker  54:28  
wow.


Whit Anderson  54:31  
And I did that for many years, and now I don't have to do that. Thank God. Now I can just be, you know, my weirdos self, but it took a long time, like I had to just play the part of like I'm, I'm so good. You'd be lucky. Like you're, I'm gonna put my feet on your coffee coffee table. You mentioned


Ethan Sawyer  54:55  
presentation earlier. Connect this persona. Back to presentation


Whit Anderson  55:01  
in terms of the industry. It it? I mean, it's very it's I find the fact that I had to do that both amusing and devastating, because I think it's indicative of our culture as a whole. And quite frankly, I think it's even worse now than it was when I started with image as everything. I was playing the part of a person who had already won. So they were like, Well, if she's already won, she must be qualified. So here you go. There was nothing different about my work, my brain. And so I think we are cursed to live in a time where presentation, at the moment, at least, is everything. And I think I was on the very early CUSP on that. What


Ethan Sawyer  56:00  
would you like to see change in Hollywood?


Whit Anderson  56:03  
So here's the Okay, interesting, here's the problem that I'm seeing right now, and here's the beautiful thing that I'm seeing right now. So finally, I feel like diversity is a priority, at least on the surface, which is more than it has been. I think part of what is happening that is unfortunate is what that means is that people who have not been given opportunities in the past are occasionally being thrust into roles that they are not yet ready for, and then blamed when they cannot execute, and it is not their fault because they have been denied opportunity after opportunity after opportunity and then just launched to the front of the line. And that's not fair. And that's happening to Evan. You know, it's happening to Evan, you know, it's happening to women, it's happening to people of color, it's happening to LGBTQ community. So what I one of the things I would like to see changed is a greater support system to thread us through the stages appropriately, so that we are set up in a position to succeed, like, like, you know, white men have been, in the past, cisgendered. So that's one thing that I would like to see change. I would like also, for, you know, look, it's a business in which so let's discuss about it. Discuss it as two businesses. There's the television business in which writer is king, which is lovely, and that is because when you're writing an ongoing television series, you need someone to be the keeper of the show, because you don't have the same director through the whole process. So as directors are coming in and out, you need one person to help maintain the integrity and of the entire thing on the film side, director is king and writer is pretty dispensable. So the answer, I guess, is that, especially on the film side. What that means is that producers have a lot of power over story, and directors have a lot of power over story, and they can overrule the writer. Similarly, in television, the show runner is going to have the ability to overrule the writers that work for them. What that means is that occasionally, people who women, I'll speak for myself, occasionally my experience, if I if I say, hey, that experience is is not what you're pitching. Is not true to my experience, or would make me feel a different way than you are saying this female character would feel they may or may not listen to me. And so I think what I would like to see is a little bit more listening. It's funny. I'll tell you. I'll tell you another story. And I think, I think he'd be okay with me telling this one of the producers on players who is just a doll of a human. He, he's just, he's great, and I want to work with him forever. He, he had a thought that toward the end of the film, spoiler, if there's a there's a lead is a sports writer, and she is interested in expanding her work to go into kind of a feature territory, and so she writes this feature that she thinks is really quite good, and the man that she's seeing at the time disagrees, and her best friend loves it. And and, of course, she's going to end up with his her best friend. And the pitch from the producer was, why don't we have when the when her confidence is all gone, and she's not going to hand in this feature to try to get it published to her boss, to her editor? Why don't we have the friend who also works at the paper, send it in to the boss for her, and then the boss loves it, and then that's what gets them together. And I said, Ryan, if my husband interfered with my work, and sent a producer a draft of something that I was not certain about. I would not find that romantic, no matter how much the producer loved it. I would, I'm not kidding, most likely file for divorce. And he listened. He was like, Oh, I see. And I was like, also that completely takes all of her power and agency away and gives the win to the man. And to his credit, because he is a really incredible human. He was like,


Unknown Speaker  1:01:13  
my bad.


Whit Anderson  1:01:15  
And so we've we came up with a different solution. That's what I want to see more of.


Ethan Sawyer  1:01:21  
Yeah, this is landing for me big when you talk about power and sharing power, and who's in the driver's seat and who ultimately has final say, I'm thinking about students and writing in this process. And there's this thing that happens sometimes when they come into the process and they go, they kind of go, what do they want? And the they is this sort of ambiguous college admission, college application writer, and they're trying to model, I suppose, with good reason. What is it the thing that they're looking what is the thing that they are looking for? And the way I've described in the past is sort of being like you're trying to, kind of get dressed in a particular way. What you believe is your story earlier, sort of business, professional, and then show up in that way. And if you show up in that way, then you're more likely to get accepted in broad sense, and also in the college. And there's this thing that happens where students kind of need to be given the keys back and be like, no, no, you're driving. Here are some resources, tools, but ultimately you're going to have final say, and that can be, I think, unsettling for students in some cases, and certainly some like, you know, I like to tell students, you're a Batman, I'm I'm Robin, I'm writing sidecar, you know, and you're the one who's ultimately like steering the thing. And yet, there is this delicate dance that's happening in the middle, where we are sort of handing each other over controls when it when it's happening in a writing collaboration, which I think sometimes is, students will work with a mentor or something, and they'll kind of go through this process. And there are moments where it's like, well, where would you go on the map, you know, where would you steer us? But ultimately, yeah, it's, it's, it's such a delicate dance. And it's, it's it's not like there's a final decision maker, but yeah, go ahead. What you're gonna


Whit Anderson  1:03:04  
say. Can I speak to that? Yeah. So in terms of, I want to speak to the part where you were discussing, like, if they've got a someone working with them on the essay. So one of the things, well, going back to this example, on players, he he pitched me a solution that I that I didn't agree with. That doesn't mean that he wasn't truly bumping on what existed. So if a student is working on an essay and the person they're working with goes like, what if you did this thing in this part? Instead, if that doesn't resonate in the core of the student. Don't do it, but do take a moment to look at that section and go, Well, what was my mentor bumping on? Is there another, a third solution that improves this in and adjusts the thing that was bumping but also is true to what I want to do, that is like, the best thing you can do that is how every single note that comes into me, I have never, and I'm very proud of this, thrown out a note or said I'm not even thinking about that. I go, Okay, I don't agree with how you're addressing this, or what you what your bump is in the moment. But if you bumped, I better look at that and make sure that I can either really put my shoulder behind it, or come up with that third solution,


Ethan Sawyer  1:04:34  
yeah. And that's so that feels really wise and feels like a yes and, and it speaks to that, sort of like the collaboration, you know, the relationship and the how the whole can be greater than some of its parts, which is sort of at its best. You know, that's how the process goes, both when we're writing and well, sometimes it's a solo venture, but when we're collaborating, we're coming. Up with ideas. If you had to go back and do college over again, what would you do differently?


Whit Anderson  1:05:07  
Brutally Honest, I would be, I would be in therapy right away, and I would have probably gotten some type of medication, because I'm a desperately introverted person. I'm also like, I have a lot of existential dread, and always have since I was young. And while I am in the middle of that dread, the introversion, the introversion explodes. And so I was not able to have a normal college experience. I was very siloed just to survive and give for the day. So I wish I had known about that as an option


Ethan Sawyer  1:05:45  
earlier. Yeah, same I just hearing that I'm like, first of all, I'm grateful to know that about you, and I think I knew some of that, but I don't think I knew to what extent you to what extent it shaped your experience then, and also when, I remember coming out of college and being like, we it really, it was like, senior year, and my girlfriend at the time, whom you also know, was like, Yeah, I've been going to free therapy. And I'm like, wait, what? There's free therapy. Like, you can do that. That's part of your my you know, in my case, you know, like, that's part of my financial aid package. I didn't know that I could do that. And I thought, Oh, that's really expensive, and it's not, I think it's more normalized now, but for students listening, and for those who didn't hear, we just did this three episode podcast on mental health and the college application process. So encourage folks to check that out. But I want to just like, Put it another shout out for Yeah, for the mental health resources that are available on campus when you go, and most colleges have them, yeah. What advice would you give to young writers? Or, you know what? Let's expand it this time, because I oftentimes ask about young writers, but just there are folks listening to this who are parents or counselors who are who've got that, you know, story idea that they've got in the back of their heads. Yeah, speak to them for a minute.


Whit Anderson  1:07:15  
I addressed this a little bit in the beginning. Go for it. Just do it. We are all storytellers at our core, we really are that is like the one thing that separates us, and this world is so confusing. So if we can organize it just a little bit into a story. I think it helps us get through another day. So get it down and don't worry about it being perfect. I think that so often stops so many people. And, you know, they did this study that that people who spent years working on one piece that compared that to people who did many, many pieces over the same period, and the people who did many were far better than the than the person who focused on one. So you just, I mean, gosh, if you could see the garbage that I wrote early on, you know? And and then you'll write something great, and you'll be like, Oh, I've figured it out. And then you'll write something trash. And that is just the beginning. And what I would say is, like, if that's what's happening to you, you are on the right track. Keep going.


Ethan Sawyer  1:08:43  
Yeah. I remember meeting Guillermo del Toro at a some kind of film premiere, and I asked him, Hey, I'm an up and coming writer. I was probably 23 what advice would you give me? And he was like, make short films. He's like, don't sink all your energy into making features. He's like, make shorts, like a bunch of shorts. Wow,


Whit Anderson  1:09:03  
yeah, yeah, because you, I mean, think about if you're working on one thing, you're worn looking you're learning from one set of problems. And if you're working on 20 things, you know, you have infinitely more teachers.


Ethan Sawyer  1:09:23  
Got one more that I'm curious about. Well, what upcoming projects are you most excited about, and why


Whit Anderson  1:09:30  
I am? Oh, so many. I'm so many that sounds like I'm like, I don't mean that. I just mean I I just am so lucky that I don't do things I'm not excited about anymore. I just like I don't even know how I'm fortunate enough to have gotten to this place, but I am doing a limited bio, bio pic series about John DeLorean, the inventor of the DeLorean Motor, motor, car. From Back to the Future, and I can't talk about who, who is playing him yet, but it is very exciting and and I think the reason why I'm so tickled about that one is that is that it's another door that I feel that I've opened and it's not that other women haven't opened that door. Plenty have, and that's why I was able to open it, but it's still not a common door to open. So I am getting the chance to write a piece for motorheads, like a piece about a man and invent her cars. You know, it's, you don't automatically think, let's go to a woman to write this. You just don't, you know, it's like, that's what, and that's part of why I was so excited about Empress, the big space opera. I mean, how many women get to author a $200 million film? There aren't a lot of us and it and aside from the content itself, of the two things, I'm really proud and excited by that aspect.


Ethan Sawyer  1:11:14  
Whitney, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure. Ethan, you music. Thanks friends for listening. In case you missed it. Check out Episode one in this series with Dave Callahan. He's the guy who wrote Shang Chi in the 10 Rings, Spider Man across the spider verse and more. Next up is the final episode in this little series where my guest is TV screenwriter and executive producer Ryan Maldonado, who also happens to be my best friend, be well and stay curious. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai