521: Storytelling & Identity with Ryan Maldonado (Part 3 of 3): On Code-switching, Photographing Living Rooms, and Growing up Not-Rich in Miami

Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
Hi friends and welcome back to the podcast. On this episode, I sit down with none other than my very best friend in the whole world, Ryan Maldonado, this is the guy I moved out to Los Angeles with 20 plus years ago to become a big time screenwriter. He actually did make the big bucks in screenwriting, or, as he likes to say, the medium bucks. And I decided to become the college essay guy. But in this episode, we get into, among other things, his origin story and what it was like growing up in Miami in the 80s, how he identifies with the roles of Shape Shifter, empathizer and listener, and how these identities have shaped his life and work, what he feels Hollywood's doing well in terms of representing diverse voices, and where he thinks there's still work to be done, advice to students going through the personal statement writing process, and what all this has to do with photographing people in their living rooms, born and raised in Miami, Florida. Ryan Maldonado is a writer and producer who currently serves as executive producer and CO showrunner of AMC crime series, parish with Giancarlo Esposito. Previous credits include death and other details with Mandy Patinkin, hunters with Al Pacino Chicago. PD, Grey's Anatomy and lots more before moving to LA to complete his MFA at USC School of Cinematic Arts. Ryan was a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, the St Pete times and variety. Hope you enjoy our conversation.


Hi, welcome to the podcast. What's up? So thanks for doing this. And for those of you who are listening, I have an exercise that I'm really excited about, and it's called the roles and identities exercise. And I gave you this exercise when you walked into my house and I asked you to pick a few identities that you connect with. And I'd love for you just to let folks get to know you a little bit by just sharing a few of these and how they manifest in your life. So in no particular order, what are some ways that you identify?


Ryan Maldonado  2:13  
It's interesting. This is a great list. It also reminds me of like a list I filled out once doing therapy. So this is kind of already, we're going straight to therapy here. The one that's like, kind of catching my eye right now is like shape shifter, which is really interesting. Does that one you would have put on me? I


Ethan Sawyer  2:32  
mean, I'm making stuff up in my brain already, but I'm kind of fascinated.


Ryan Maldonado  2:36  
Well, this isn't, this has become, like an interesting term for me, because I also associate it with, like, code switching, yeah, and I grew up doing a lot of code switching, and I think we could sort of connect this a little bit to my narrative. I'm my father's from Guatemala. He came here in the 70s, and he married a white woman. So I'm mixed. I grew up in Miami with my Guatemalan with, with his side of the family, so I feel actually more drawn to that culture, or equally drawn to that culture as I am to my American side. Yeah, but I grew up speaking Spanish so and and, you know, Spanish speaking household, but this idea of shape shifting and code Code switching is not just something that I think a lot about, but something that sort of finds its way in my work, yeah, and also finds it winds up being like I wind up being attached to or Like drawn to pieces about code switching, like The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of my favorite movies and, but, so, yeah, I, I, I'm starting here because I thought it might be an interesting way to get into who I am, and I'm not a shape shifter. It's kind of a weird, well, weird, a weird way to, you know, come out here, but, but when you grow up the way I did in a working class, maybe lower class family, and you are, I would say I'm white Presenting there, and there were many instances now in hindsight, where I can remember code switching. I can remember speaking a certain way to my friends on this like in the neighborhood, and then going to school and presenting a completely different version of myself. Yeah, I remember when I got to college, so Ethan and I both went to Northwestern. I actually followed him there. He was a year ahead of me at school, so he had gotten into Northwestern. It turned out Northwestern had the best journalism program. So I follow I followed him there. Applied, got in easily. No so for me, I. Remember going to Northwestern and doing a lot of shape shifting there, wanting to blend in with the rich white kids as much as possible, hide my identity and then deploy it when I needed to. And so, like, when I think of shape shifters, it's like, in like, literature, it's usually like a superpower, right? And so I do feel like that is a superpower of mine. I can sort of deploy my latinoness when I need to, right? So it's a fascinating term, yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  5:35  
Well, I'd love to just stay with this one for a little bit, and I'd love to hear a little bit more and let folks, well, I know the stories, but like, I'd love for you to just maybe tell a bit of your story about what growing up was like in Miami. Give us your origin story? Sure,


Ryan Maldonado  5:51  
yeah, I bet you probably have forgotten some of these details. So I grew up in Miami in the 1980s so probably adults hearing this might have an under a better understanding than some of the your younger audience. But like, you know, Miami in the 80s is kind of a crazy place. It's it the city is being kind of remade, remade by like gangs and the cartel, the Colombian cartels, and like, there's just a lot of drug money flowing there. There's a lot of like, cocaine. And so my earliest memory memories are like, living in a very beautiful house and having some cool cars, and I believed my father was in pest control. Wow, yeah. And that all sort of came crashing down when I was six years old, and I found out he was not in pest control. Trying to be respectful here, because he's still around, but a long story short, he was not in pest control. And we, sort of, my mother was involved with his, his his hustle, and we, I was, at that point I lived. I went to live with my aunt, and then I went to live with my grandfather. And there were some sort of years where I, you know, some time. I really don't have a real sense of the timeline here, but where, you know, I went to visit my father behind class, you know, and her and my mother. Eventually I was the term is, the legal term is emancipated. I was never legally emancipated, but eventually I went to live with my aunt. I went to, like, I would say, like 10 different elementary schools, or eight different elementary schools. I shifted around, kind of like you did, except for different reasons. Yeah. And at some point my my aunt sort of stepped in and said, Look, you've got, somehow, you've managed to be a good student despite all this shifting around, and you should have some consistency, and you should just go to this high school, or you should just try to go to the same high school for all four years. And that sort of saved my life a little bit. And so I went to live with her, I kind of said bye, bye to my parents, and at some point in high school, that's when we met. That's my childhood in a nutshell. I mean, there are a lot of details probably too grim for a podcast like this that I could share, but the way and I think we're trying to sort of connect this to kind of who I became as an adult, the way that impacted me is, I think for one I have always been I've sort of focused my life on trying to get away from that that origin, as much as possible. And that's where sort of the shape shifting comes in, just to sort of bring it back to that right like, for a long time, I couldn't tell this story, because I never wanted to be judged on a curve. Yeah? And I really wanted to. I wanted to. I want. I wanted every relationship, every person I met, every person I impressed, to see me just as me and not as a product of this thing. Yeah, I didn't want any points against me for that, and I just wanted to be it's almost like I've always craved to be part like in a low level playing field, and I just never got it right. And so I would hide this aspect of me so you would not judge me, so you would not feel bad for me, like I never wanted compassion. Or sympathy. And then I eventually realized how empowering it is. And by the way, my whole life, I had people say, Whoa, that's pretty crazy that happened to you. I remember telling Karen Cohen, our guidance counselor, the person who pointed both Ethan and I to Northwestern I told her the story, and her jaw dropped, and she's like, You shouldn't be here. And I had people growing up telling me constantly, you should not be here. This is so crazy that you have accomplished all this despite all that. But I didn't want to hear it. I wasn't proud, I was ashamed. And


Ethan Sawyer  10:37  
it wasn't just to clarify, it wasn't you shouldn't be here. Like, you don't belong here. No, he's like, it's amazing. That's right, yeah, that's


Ryan Maldonado  10:44  
right. A lot of people told me that I remember hearing that as, like, a fifth grader, like accounts, like a counselor, like an act, like a therapy like the kind of like a therapeutic, therapeutic counselor assigned by the school because my father was in jail, whatever, you know, just telling me, you It's incredible that you have these grades despite what you've gone through. And so I rejected that for a long time. I was like, you know, okay, let's move on. Let's talk about me, you know, like talk about them.


Ethan Sawyer  11:18  
When did you start writing?


Ryan Maldonado  11:21  
I've been writing forever, always, but I think that the blessing everybody has a different way into this. For me, I have never been good at anything else. The other, other thing I circled here was dabbler. I dabble in so many things, but this i Don't dabble in. I really have always taken it very seriously. I mean, it's such a cookie cutter. It's almost like the most on the nose story. But really, like, you know, in fifth grade, I had this teacher, Miss Romano, who I really loved and admired. She was the first teacher who she was a vocabulary teacher. She was the first teacher I ever had, and maybe the only teacher who had like pillows on the floor. She had no desks in her room, and she was just eccentric and really got my attention. And for her class, I wrote a poem. This is how it happens, guys, this is the gateway drug. I wrote. I wrote a poem. She really loved it. She loved it so much, she asked me if she could try to get it published. She did get it published, but she made me read it in front of the class, and everybody applauded. And that's it, like, literally, I cannot think of another time where I didn't feel like, Oh, this is what I want to do. Wow, yeah. Now I didn't come to screenwriting until you and I were in college, and we took a class together. But before that, you know, I would say, from like fifth grade on, I said, I I thought to myself, I'm gonna have to make a living with this like and I nurtured it. I mean, I recently opened some boxes in from my in my mom's house and my aunt's house of memorabilia, stuff that she had sort of held on to after I went to school, after I went to college, and she had, well, you know, I found inside there, like a play from sixth grade, you know, I found clippings, or I found a short story I wrote in fourth grade. I found, like a full blown short story inside a it's an awful story, and I would never share, but like, you know, it wasn't even good for a fourth grader, but I was trying. It was the whole thing, you know, it was inside of a binder, so to made to look like it's a book, you know. And I had the, you know, written in front of the thing, you know, by Ryan Maldonado. And so, like, this was already very important to me as a young kid. And then, you know, in seventh grade, I had a column in the middle school paper called Ryan's corner. Every time the paper was published. I had a, you know, a column in there. And again, all this stuff is like, cringe. But the point is, I had my eye on this forever, yeah, which is to say, what's to bring it back to what I was saying is, like, is a total blessing, like, somebody who has five talents, to me, I feel so much compassion for because if you have five talents, like, how, what do you do? You know, like, it's, it's almost a curse, right? I have no other talents. I'm not good at anything. Your wife, actually, recently at Disney World, was like, what did she ask you? She was asking me about something. She was complimenting my voice. And I'm like, oh, no, oh, she was asking me about my guitar playing. I was I've been taking guitar lessons. She's like, so how's it going? I mean, you're getting. Better, right? I'm like, No, I'm awful, and I'm never going to be good. And like, that's fine, you know? So, yeah, I think that's kind of is that, yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  15:10  
I'm curious to know me in a nutshell, yeah, I'm curious to know how what you've been interested in writing has shifted over the years.


Ryan Maldonado  15:20  
Well, to bring it back to my personal story, into the shape shifter stuff. So I when I first got into this industry, and when I was first trying to break in, people would say, Well, tell me who you are. And I'd say, Well, I went to Northwestern. I grew up in Miami. I went to Northwestern. I worked at the St Pete times for my internship, and then I had another paid internship at the Detroit Free Press, and I worked at The Daily Variety, and I had this exec, Julianne, tell me, she's like, nobody wants to hear that. That's your resume. And I said, Well, no, no, that's me. Like, are you kidding? Like I'm a journalist, you know, and she's like, but who are you? And I literally had to go to therapy to be able to talk about the stuff I'm talking to you about right now. Like there was just so much. I just didn't know how to unpack it, and I didn't know how I didn't believe that it was affecting who I was. And in therapy, you know, a couple sessions of therapy. I mean, this is not, you know, years of therapy. This, this therapist asked me, kind of shows you like, have you told me this, like, what kind of like, what like you want to be a TV writer, like, what shows do you like? And I was like, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, you know, the sopranos, you know, those are my favorites. And she's like, Oh, and Nurse Jackie, it was the other one I'd listed. And she's like, do you know, like, all those shows are about people who are pretending to be one thing, but have a double life. And, and then I was like, and she's like, Here's a pen draw that, you know, draw a line back to your life. And I was like, Oh yeah, that is completely a story that, like, is inside of me and like, I'm at, you know, they're, you know, seeing my father in this work, you know, and the stuff that I was writing was also sort of that as well. I mean, Mason Dixon, which is one of the first scripts I wrote out here, and dog Road, again, about people who are sort of purporting to be one thing and have, like this sort of secret thing that they're doing, which is kind of how I felt, what I that was what I thought was happening at home for me, so that really being able to sort of see myself, not just in my not just in this, the like the work that I was attracted to or drawn to, but also in my own work, really unleashed something for me, and, like freed me, and I feel then I started for the first time, feeling like I could tell my story, and realizing that it was, this is a powerful story. This is not a shameful story. This is a, this is a victorious, you know, kind of tale. Yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  18:20  
So I'm interested in two things about this. One is, I'm interested in how did being able to tell your story in this new way, in this different way, how did that impact first, you know, or it doesn't have to be first, but the things you were writing, and then, how did it impact the ways that you were showing up in these rooms for, say, interviews, or when you were going to meet people, and they were saying things like, Hey, tell me your story. Who are you?


Ryan Maldonado  18:46  
It was, I would say, the most crucial moment for me as a writer to be able to see in plain view that my own personal history was something I could that was something that could show up or something that needed to show up in my writing. So from then on, every single time I approach a project, especially a project that's from me, like an original idea, I have to find myself in there. I have to find doesn't have to be, you know, any of the it doesn't have to be about my parents. It doesn't have to be about the my upbringing. But I realized that you can't tell, and this is really a rule for me, like, you can't tell a story that you're not in. You know, before we get to the second part of this,


Ethan Sawyer  19:47  
I want to hear, I'd love to hear a couple examples of this, because we talk about this sometimes, where is Ryan in the pieces that Ryan writes? In other words, where do you show up in movie? Films that may look on the surface very different from the details the circumstances of your own life. Where are you in these pieces? Maybe you can think of an example. Yeah,


Ryan Maldonado  20:11  
sure. So like one of the rules Eddie and I have when we approach a new project is we always try to find ourselves in the material, even if, as you said, it's very different on the surface from our own lives. One example of that, I'd say recently, we adapted a biography on Kurt Cobain, who, you know, My Life couldn't be any more different from rock stars, but we wanted to tell this story about Cobain and Nirvana, and we did this on spec, which is to say we're still trying to find a home for it, and there's tricky stuff with the rights. But we I gravitated toward this specific one, because Kurt was when I read the biography, had some really striking similarities in his life that I did not know, but specifically I remember as a kid loving the sound of that music and and finding that as a teenager, and I was pissed off as a 13 year old, and I think, I think that's like mandatory for every 13 year old, but I was very pissed off, and I just glommed on to that music. And I don't even think I knew the lyrics of what I was singing and hearing, but I could feel the vibrations of that like I could feel the anger in the music. And so I was surprised to sort of discover that there were some really cool parallels in his life. And I, you know, I think when you start looking at the biography, you know, you don't sort of come in thinking, Oh, well, I'm going to see myself so clearly in this man. But then I I did, and I was like, whoa. But for example, he, like me as a teenager, was sort of jettisoned from his house, from his home. He, in his case, he had, like, upset his parents, and had, you know, upset his parents and upset his household so badly his his in, you know, he went back and forth from each parent, and each parent finally decided, like, we can't have you. And for me, I was like, Whoa. That completely resonates with me. At 12 years old, I moved in with my aunt and started anew. And I had the same feelings he must have had, which is, like, will I be accepted here? Like, can I survive here? Like, what happens if I upset this person and now I have no home? But the other thing that I think really kind of struck me, and again, when you're writing these stories and writing these characters, you really want to try to get in their heads as much as possible, is the fact that, you know, Kurt was from, really nothing. I mean, like he came from a a very he was, I think, born into the poorest zip code in America and became the biggest star in the world, you know. And that, for some reason, is, like a theme that resonates with me is this idea. It's a very American, a very American idea of like, you can be anything, you know, and I think that's always been a value of mine, specifically because of my story. So that's an example of how I show up in the material.


Ethan Sawyer  23:36  
It's an amazing example, and it reminds me of the trip that we took to Washington just with our families and going to see his old house. And I had no idea that this was like Kurt's old house, and I had no idea that this was like at work in you. I knew that you were interested in this story, but I didn't know why, until, actually, right now. And like hearing this, the impact for me is like, Oh, I feel more empathy for him and more, well, I should say, compassion for him, and more compassion for you, knowing that that was at work. And I think that's just such a powerful thing that that you do, and that writers do, is sort of go, Hey, here's this tender part of me and and I'm seeing it connecting or mirrored by this other human out there, and bringing life to that essence, or that, we'll call it, the tender part of vulnerability, is the part that I think connects us. And I think, yes, this is definitely true in personal statements and college essays, but I think that this is sort of what it takes on a mythic level for us to be able to, like, get into these stories and to see, oh, wow, this other person who I think is not like me, is actually like me. So it's interesting to think that that's at work throughout, you know, literature and throughout film is writers who are going, you. What's the human what's the universal aspect here that because that feeling of like, I don't know if I belong, feels like, not only Yes, familiar, like I can get down with that, but also we see an extreme example of it, and we think to ourselves, wow, what if my feeling was the circumstances are just a little bit different, just pushed a little bit further. And it's like, that could be my life.


Ryan Maldonado  25:22  
I'll just add that. Like, the challenge, when you're looking at material like that, right? If you're adapting something or it's but yeah, specifically adapting a biography, right? It's like to sift past the the actual biography, the facts of the biography, because he and I grew up on opposite sides of the country, like, you know, he grew up in a snowy hellscape and I grew up in a hot hellscape, you know, in Miami, a hot, humid hellscape. But, you know, my point is, like, biographically, we couldn't be more different, right? Except there are all these other truths that were part of his life, and kind of part of his thinking, and you have to find those connections. I like the mythic element you just brought up, because there is a that is a component.


Ethan Sawyer  26:12  
So I'd love to come back to this question of you mentioned, and we talked about this when this happened, but you mentioned that something shifted for you when you started to be able to tell your story in this different way. And the reason I want to talk about this, I think, is that I think sometimes students who are going through, for example, the personal statement writing process, they think that it's quote, unquote, just about the college essay or just about getting into college. But one of the things that I've found to be powerful over the years is the way that being able to own your story in this different way can shift the way that you show up in in rooms and conversations with people. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that, how that went for


Ryan Maldonado  26:52  
you. Well, it's almost the same, right? So it's like, I think, when you're writing in a group, which sounds very intimidating, and I think can be intimidating, what? But when you're writing in a group, in a setting like that,


Ethan Sawyer  27:09  
and say more about writing in a group, what you mean by well, so right, a writer's a writer's room


Ryan Maldonado  27:14  
is typically, you know, in these days, it could be any, anywhere from, you know, three to literally, 14 people, 14


Ethan Sawyer  27:23  
TV writing, TV writing.


Ryan Maldonado  27:24  
That's right. So like, Grey's Anatomy. I was there for season nine, and I think that was 16 people, including, you know, one of the best writers alive right now, Shonda and so, and I've been in rooms with three people, and sometimes it's just me and my writing partner. So it's two people, but the requirement is that you show up with as as sort of willing to be as vulnerable as you is, as you can be, because what you're looking for, especially when you're pitching drama. It's different with comedy, but what you're what you're looking for, is authenticity, and you're looking in to tell authentic authentic stories. And in order to tell those authentic stories, you need to sort of build off of authentic moments. So yeah, there's a lot of pitching of plot, but when we're talking about characters. To be able everybody sort of needs to be able to draw from their own lives and share some of that stuff, some painful stuff, you know, some of the stuff we've talked about today. But doesn't always have to be painful. Just the Share, share the truth unvarnished and that, I think the people who can do that and can find patterns in their lives or moments in their lives, that they can sort of enrich the story that we're all sort of trying to tell, but really kind of makes a, you know, makes A big, a big difference, and makes you invaluable.


Ethan Sawyer  29:02  
So I'd love to go back to this question of how knowing your story and being able to share your story has impacted how you show up with people. Let's say, for example, in a potential work setting, even before you're you're working with them. How do you balance sharing your story with, you know, what some people call like, pimping your trauma. Like, how do you avoid, sort of, the, the, I guess, temptation, or the sort of, you know, expectation, in some cases, to, you know, someone might say, for example, well, you got this amazing story, you should just tell it. But how do you, how do you balance that,


Ryan Maldonado  29:40  
you know, it's interesting. I think that I benefit from sort of being a simple man in this way. I don't think about those things. And what I what I mean by that is this, all I can do in a job interview is show up authentic. Basically, I don't know what's going to come out. I don't know what questions are going to be asked, kind of like this one. I tried to not, I try to not prep. Because I think when you prep and you sound over polished, people understand, people see what's going on. Yeah, and that, for me, authenticity is a very high value. I want you to get the unvarnished version of me. So I don't think about, for example, let's bring it back to the trauma porn. I'm never thinking about that. I like, I if I'm worried about that, then I go back to that place where I started, where I'm like, oh my god, am Is this gonna be? Like, are you gonna be ashamed of this? You know what I mean? Like, I can't go there, yeah, what I can do is try to speak the truth. Sometimes we'll talk about some of the stuff we talked about earlier. Sometimes a lot of times we won't. I have a whole 44 years of life that I can draw from, right? But all I really want to do is be me, and part of being me, and if there's anything instructive here, is to look inward and look inside. Find your patterns of behavior. Find why you are who you are. Look at this, you know, identities, exercise that kind of thing, and sort of find those things that you do will you those terms that you are, that you feel, embody who you are. And like, I can't. I have to put the other stuff out of my head. I have to put, you know, judgment out of my head and just sort of just show up. And I think that gets us a lot of work. I think that helps us. I mean, we've we're doing well, right? Because Hollywood is full of people, sort of faking it, you know what? I mean, like, it's got a lot of people because there's so much money, right? Like, there's so much money in this business that you can sort of see the veneer, and I think that turns a lot of people off. One of my favorite bosses in this business was David Weil, who created hunters, and he's doing very well. And I wish he could hear this, but, but David just is David, and that's so cool. And it's kind of like when you show up at a date, you know, like, Do you like me? If you don't, that's fine, right? What's gonna happen? I don't I have to go interview somewhere else, right? But, yeah, taking that into account, and probably this is not useful for college students, but maybe it is like, I think just trying to be yourself, but really kind of but being yourself also requires you to know yourself, and I think that part is very difficult, right? Looking inward and finding the little ways in which you became you is tough, yeah, right, that's the work. All right,


Ethan Sawyer  33:00  
let's talk a writing process a little bit. I'd love to know, first, how do you come up with ideas? And then part two, what's it like when you're working on a thing and you can decide to talk about a movie or a TV show?


Ryan Maldonado  33:14  
Okay, it's complicated in my business, and I usually never get in depth with anybody. I don't think I get in depth with you about what the process of coming up with ideas is, because when I say it's complicated, it isn't what a lot of people think it is. So for example, my business is really IP driven, right? IP driven meaning, like there are books and comics and existing stories that the people who pay the money want to adapt because they feel safer doing it. So half of the things that we half of the ideas we have are ideas that have been thrown to us, and we are being we're considering pitching on it, right? I know what you want to ask me about, and I can't bring that up right now, but yes, some very cool ideas. The other part is original ideas. Original ideas are tricky in my business, because rarely will people want to take a chance, a big chance, on an original idea. But I'll give you an example of my process, personal process, and what's cool about my partnership with Eddie, who's my other half. He and I sort of have carte blanche to pursue our own individual ideas and then sort of bring it to the team, to suss out. But I'll give you a great example, and I don't think you know this. This is a great one that might surprise you. Yeah, so we were working on Hunters Season One, when we were, I think, done, mostly done. We were done with our episode and sort of done with the writing process. I was on the Paramount lot. And I love the Paramount lot. It's just, it's like classic Hollywood stages, all the, all the sound stages have placards with the List of films that they've shot there. So you're walking by a sound stage where the Godfather was shot. It's just, it's just a film. Nerds dream we were in Lucille Ball's office. They're like, I mean, there was just, it was just a great place to be. The energy is incredible. And I would walk around at lunch, because you're as a writer in a writer's room, you're just sitting all day around at a round table, pitching ideas. So you really, kind of, you know, walking is a lot of is very nutritious. So I'm walking around and I'm listening to the news, and at the time, me too, specifically, the Kavanaugh hearings were explosive, exploding on the scene, okay? And so those two things were happening in the news. And I felt like a lot of people so helpless, right? And helpless in that all this bad stuff was happening in the world, happening to women, and I could do nothing about it, nor did I feel empowered as a writer to take that on myself, right? It's and let me just sort of explain that, right? Like, I'm a dude, right? Like, that's not my story to tell. Yeah, it doesn't mean I can't try to tell that story, and I don't have like, strict rules about that, but I just don't think that, like, I should be the one going around town being like, let me tell you, like, this incredible me too story. So but I I had this urge to tell a me too story, and to tell a story about victimhood. And I called Eddie after work one night on the way home, and I was like, what if we could tell the story a different way, right? Like, what if we told a story about, like, what if the story, so, the story that I want to tell is about a person who's experienced an incredible trauma and a horrific trauma and isn't believed. Okay, can't be believed. And at the time, Ronan Farrow had written this New Yorker piece about all these me too, stories, all these people who had gone through this terrible thing. And he was a guy going around this journalist, going around talking to women who had gone through, who'd been assaulted, and who people who that had not been believed. And he said, Hey, I believe you. I believe you, because some of that happened to me too. And so he was coming forth with his own sort of trauma and saying giving people something they'd never heard before, that was the crux of what I wanted to tell and and so I called Eddie on the way home, and I said, Well, what if we did this? What if we told that story through aliens? And he laughed. And here's something that you might not know about me, or I think you do know about me, when you laugh at me, like all I want to do is prove you wrong. That's an example of something like an itch that had to be scratched, right? That project was not for nothing. We once you write something, it becomes a sample, and it gets circulated. And so people, we still get meeting, great meetings like, Oh my God, we love this piece. And they always ask what inspired it. And so I just told


Ethan Sawyer  38:50  
you interesting, yeah, I'd love for you to give folks a sense of what it's like working on a TV show. Maybe you could do sort of like a an early experience, let's say Grey's Anatomy, where you were sort of like the the new guy, or then you were the new guys,


Ryan Maldonado  39:04  
like the intern, essentially, right, right? And then what, what is, what it was


Ethan Sawyer  39:07  
like, more recently, show running and working on parish,


Ryan Maldonado  39:11  
well, the distinction of those kinds of projects. So, like, you know, Gray's Anatomy Chicago. PD, I worked on another show, a medical drama called Code Black versus like hunters and parish, right? Like in my business, the distinction there is the first shows I mentioned, like grays and Chicago PD, are procedural television, and the other ones are sort of serialized, you know, character based TV, you know, there's no, you know, I'm learning this now because I'm sort of back in the wolf world, the Dick Wolf world. You know, a lot of times with the procedural TV, like, people don't want to track stories. They want to be able to just sit down and watch a story and like, if they miss next season, next. Week, that's fine if then, you know, they walk away for a month. They don't have to see the next one, right? So it's a very different skill set, procedural TV versus, you know, sort of character stories. I think you could sort of tell which one I prefer. I can do both procedural storytellings, like,


Ethan Sawyer  40:18  
what's the plot? Give us an example of what a procedural is or looks like. Just so folks know what you folks know what you mean.


Ryan Maldonado  40:23  
I mean, it's any show that has sort of a formula case of the week, and the you know, it's typically network TV. There's not, there are not a lot of procedurals in regular and in streaming right now, great. And sometimes they'll have sort of small character stories that they take you from week to week, but they're not the driving force, right?


Ethan Sawyer  40:49  
Yeah, what's the key to making a great procedural drama episode work?


Ryan Maldonado  40:53  
Okay? A lot of twists. Okay, so what you want to do is present. You want to, you sort of want to play a game with the audience. We talk about play along, right? Sort of the best procedurals, like Law and Order give you just enough fodder to sort of start to fit. You're playing a game with the writer you know, to try to figure out who did it. Right? So for police procedurals, there are a lot of rules. And it's, it's, it's very hard. I would say it's like, I would say it's hard, harder than the other stuff, because it's plot driven, right? And so you're it's a and b and c, and what's the, you know, what's the thing that you weren't expecting?


Ethan Sawyer  41:36  
And you say, there are a lot of rules. What are some of those rules that you have to follow when you're writing something like, you know, FBI or something like that, yeah,


Ryan Maldonado  41:45  
one of the rules I try, this is a rule for myself, is try to make it so the answer to the mystery is not something is something you you could see coming. You know that it's not so far fetched or out of nowhere where you're like you feel cheated in any way, surprising but inevitable. Surprising but inevitable. You know, there's a joke about law and order that you could tell from the the guest star, if the guest star was famous, that it was probably that person who did it, and audiences sort of started the key into that. But, yeah, you know, making it satisfying in a way that you know, the you never want the viewer to feel cheated. Yeah, there are so many rules that's like, you know, it's like minutia, but there's so many rules and procedural storytelling, the way you organize information, it's going so fast, you know, especially the show I'm on now, it is like a bullet train, and people don't understand that. You have to organize the information so the viewer can process right and then understand, like, okay, we're looking for x and y and, no, sorry, now we're looking for for z, you know, it just has to sort of be organized in such a way so, so your your brain doesn't melt, whereas


Ethan Sawyer  43:06  
it sounds like, on things like parish, or


Ryan Maldonado  43:10  
Yes, hunters, sounds like there's a bigger arc. There's a bigger arc an episode, you know, the, you know, typically on those shows, you'll start, you'll the like the show will start off with a problem that the character is dealing with, and that problem is dealt with throughout the entire season, sometimes multiple seasons, right? And so it's not that those stories are easier to tell. In fact, a lot of people think they're harder to tell, but I have, the way my particular brain works is I like to think from the perspective of the character, but that's a rule that I would I apply to, I think should be applied to both procedural storytelling and regular storytelling, which is like, here's a rule. There's a great role for me. When you're in a scene, you have to go inside the mind of every single character, even if there's another, if one character is driving it, you still have to ask yourself, what? What's this person's POV, even if it's the bad guy's POV, and understand why the bad guy thinks that he's not a bad guy or she's not a bad guy or bad girl. Bad girl doesn't sound right, but that's, I think, easier and more potent in serialized storytelling when you're sort of writing scenes between a husband and a wife, or writing scenes between co conspirators, really kind of capturing you get in serialized storytelling and streaming like parish and hunters, you you can really build out a character's problem and really understand a character on a way more microscopic level. With procedural storytelling, you just have to give the audience enough to get their fangs in, yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  44:53  
to wonder what happens next?


Ryan Maldonado  44:55  
Yeah, yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  44:56  
I'm curious. So I have really fond memories of being 20. Three and living in LA and so for those who don't know, because I tell this story sometimes, like Ryan, I was working in midtown Manhattan, a job I didn't like, and I Ryan was applying to grad school at USC for screenwriting. And I said to him, I was like, if you get into USC, I will move there with you. And he did, and we got in his 92 Corolla, and we drove out to, you know, la from Chicago, drove across country, lived together. We were living in an apartment in, well, actually a house that our friend's parent owned. And we would basically, in the day. We would, you know, you would go off to school to USC, I was, I got a job helping students with college essays that eventually side note, Ryan ended up doing this as well, but you would come home with really cool stories and structures and ideas. I'm curious if, as you think about the early sort of screenwriting study days, is there anything from those days from film school USC film school days that you find yourself still applying in your work.


Ryan Maldonado  46:06  
Yeah, so this is one of the things that you and I have talked about, this idea of story structure and specifically about want and need that USC really kind of drilled into us that still is very, very, very much alive in the work that we do, especially with features. So the thing that I think is like most useful for me is this idea of kind of isolating what this, what your main character wants, and what the need is. And if you zoom out a little bit, it's really fascinating, because it's really what I'm talking about is dramatic irony, right? And the way dramatic irony works when it's done done well, is you witness a character in his or her status quo, and you're watching that character interact with the world, and you can identify that character's problem. Okay, so a really kind of well done movie, and Pixar like nails it every time, right is you spend the first few minutes with this character. You know, it used to be 15 minutes, like now it's gotten shortened. You know, it's gotten truncated because audience members, I think, are smarter, also just don't need, like, they can. They don't need the play along they used to. But, and also, storytelling kind of sucks compared to the past, but, but, like, you know, you spend the first five to 10 minutes with a character, and you're watching that person in the world, and you're like, Oh, that guy, or, you know, that guy needs X, that guy needs to chill out, you know. Or that guy needs to love himself, you know, or appreciate his family. Why isn't he? Doesn't he appreciate his family? And the rest of the movie is about you, watching that character try and fail to hit that need, to get the need, and sort of like graduate to this other version, this wiser, more alive version of his or herself, a Realized version of his or herself. And I think that's like, the that, like, that's the first place we try to go to when we're writing is, like, really kind of identifying, wow, what that want is, and letting the want and the need really impact what that journey is. Because now you're now you're sitting and you're like, Oh, I can't wait to see how this character is going to get it. And there's some play along there too, right? The Best Writing is when they can get you, when they can get the character to the need in an unexpected way. Yeah, right, like, so you know it's gonna happen. You're just like, oh, I had no idea was gonna happen. Like that. For


Ethan Sawyer  49:07  
those of you who aren't familiar with this concept of want versus need, it's the idea that the character is sort of pursuing this one thing that they think they want, that they think is gonna make them happy or better, or, you know, whatever you know, up level in life, but that actually there's this other thing, this deeper thing, that's sort of hidden from them, but that's visible to us, that they really need in order to up level, be happy, etc. I wonder if you can think of an example of this, so that we can kind of ground it


Ryan Maldonado  49:36  
for many examples. But the one, I mean, look, I'll talk about, I'll talk about a TV one, and I'll talk about a feature. One. Do you want us to which one do you want to start with? Either one, let's do the TV One, Breaking Bad's a great example of a want and need that's, you know, super potent the first episode, he is a hapless. Uh, you know, I, I'm struggling with this term, but I'll use it like a beta male. I hate, I hate people who use beta but I'll just say He's like, he's a beta male who can, he can barely keep his family afloat with his job. He's a teacher. He's a chemistry teacher, and nobody respects him. There's a really painful scene where, because he's broke and surprised, he has cancer and is gonna die, a really painful scene in the pilot where you see he's got this other job washing cars, and one of his rich students comes by and makes fun of him. It's like, what are you doing here? Mr. White, you know, and when you're watching that, you're seeing the character and his status quo, and you're seeing you immediately start to to project well, this person needs to find the backbone. This guy, you know, find the backbone. This guy needs to take, take charge. This person needs to to feel empowered to be, you know, a provider. You know, to be tough, to not be. You know, walked on. You know, what you don't see coming is going to become, you know, a drug kingpin, you know, but over the course of those six seasons. And look, that's a that show is a tragedy, right? Because he is


Ethan Sawyer  51:33  
a spoiler. Yes, I haven't seen Breaking Bad, so you might be ruining Breaking Bad


Ryan Maldonado  51:36  
for me, you know? Wow, it's too late.


Ethan Sawyer  51:40  
Are you gonna watch Breaking Bad stuff? I'm listening to you top pitch it. I'm like, Oh, this kind of sounds like a good show. Maybe I should watch Breaking Bad.


Ryan Maldonado  51:47  
It's probably the best show.


Ethan Sawyer  51:49  
Is there a way that you can explain without, yes, ruining Breaking Bad for me and everyone? Well,


Ryan Maldonado  51:54  
I'm not gonna Okay, I won't ruin it. But when you see his driver, well, look, you know, he becomes a drug kingpin, right? And so that in itself is a tragedy, right? He didn't, he didn't end up in a great place, right? But he wound up being the cup, becoming the antithesis of where he started, right? He like he his need was to step up and take charge. He just, it's tragic because he stepped up in the wrong way.


Ethan Sawyer  52:22  
Give us an example from film. What was the want for the character? What was the need?


Ryan Maldonado  52:27  
So, character? Okay, so in Coco, he wants Miguel. You start off, you have this incredible little montage where you find out that his family hates music, and his want is to pursue music despite his family, right? Okay, so everybody watching that, especially even little kids, can know, like, No, you can't just do the thing that your family doesn't want, and also, you can't tell your family to f off, right, right? This character then, against his family's wishes, goes and volunteers at a like a talent show in town square, and he steals a guitar from his idols grave. And lo and behold, the guitar you didn't see this one coming. You take them into the underworld, right? And so this so his need is to, despite his wish to be a musician, needs to, his need is to accept his family, be closer to his family. And in this journey and trying to find out, find his legacy. You know, he believes he's the descendant of a great musician. He finds out that he's, in fact, not that that's not his legacy. His the real musician is this person who was kicked out of the family and is the reason why the family hates music. And so he brings his family together with music, and it's super satisfying. Yeah, right. What I think is fascinating is, believe it or not, it is very hard to cook up that kind of want and need. If it were easy, all the movies would have it, right? But it's not. It's very challenging and it's vexing, because when you think about it, on its face, it seems it's, it's almost such a simple it's like a simple exercise. But it really is not easy to just weave a story like that.


Ethan Sawyer  54:33  
So I'd love to talk about representation for just a minute. You know, speaking of Coco, for me that was a really exciting film to come out, because it felt like, you know, Latin American culture and Mexican culture was being represented in a way that hadn't been before. And I feel like there's some evidence, you know, counting up from zero, that there is more diverse representation, but there's certainly, you know, evidence that things. These aren't where they they they could be yet. I'm curious to just hear from your perspective, what's going well. Like, if you not if you were to give a grade, but like, where do you see things improving, and where do you still feel like Hollywood has work to do?


Ryan Maldonado  55:16  
So let's just talk about Coco and like, Encanto and reservation dogs, right? Like, these are so crucial because they're successful, right? These are successful franchises. Reservation dogs is, like, critically acclaimed, right? And like, why that's important is the change that you've seen in Hollywood. And this is like, Look, I'll I'll admit this is a little bit of a cynical take, but like the change that I have experienced in Hollywood, and there has been a change, there has been a desire for more diverse voices. You're seeing it in the writers room. You're seeing it on screen. That's true, but the fear is that it's but a gesture, and it can't be a gesture like Hollywood's. Hollywood should film and TV should mirror the you know what you see in America and for decades or 100 years, it did not. It was very white, right? And, and, and so we're getting closer. But to bring it back to those franchises, the fact that those were successful was a way to signal that to the people who make these decisions. No, you can tell a, you know, a story about a Mexican family that's going to bring you a bajillion dollars, right? So we need as many of those as possible to really bring home, like the actual change that we need. And so one of the things that when I just from a writer's perspective, something that I noticed as a younger writer, and now has really is very clear to me, is, like, you know, for, for, for a long time, if you were a creator, you know, of like, you know, Latin descent, a black writer, Asian writer, like, you just get one shot, and if you do it right, great, you keep going, but if you mess up, it's Over. And that's not the same experience for white writers, you know, for a long time, because if they were sort of running the show so you got to see, you would see people get second and third and fourth chances. And I think we're getting closer to living in a world where that is that ability to mess up and get a, you know, get a second chance to figure it out while you're there, is more ubiquitous and more fair, and I think it's going to bring really great art. But this is an interesting moment. This is like an inflection point that we're in right now, because, I'd say the last 10 years, we've really seen the the door open for writers of color, for different voices, and as the industry shrinks, is it's shrinking In the middle of shrinking because money, right? What's going to happen? Are those voices going to be kicked out again? Or did the initiative to allow those voices in? Was that gonna is that? Does that have staying power? So it's an interesting moment. I hope that, I hope that, like projects like Coco, and there are a million of them. This Sophia Vergara one on Netflix, which was like mostly in Spanish, ruselda is another example. I hope those kinds of projects remind the decision makers like, no there. There's plenty of still plenty of room, even as our industry contracts, for these diverse voices and for shows and features of films to thrive.


Ethan Sawyer  59:23  
Yeah. So I'd love to come back to this roles and identities exercise. You shared a little bit about the shape shifter identity. What are some of the other roles that you identify with, and how do they manifest in work or life?


Ryan Maldonado  59:41  
Well, the two things I'm looking at are like empathizer, which I circled, and listener, and then i i The other one is protector, empathizer and listener. It feels like that goes hand in hand, but I, you know, on from the work perspective. I think empathizers like my secret weapon, right? Like I rarely will read something or encounter anybody in the world who I just I don't understand, like I even if this is a fault of mine, right? Like, even really shitty people, I just try to get in there because it fascinates me. Like, well, what made you that? All right, I see you do this. Maybe it's compassion as well. It's Listen, empathy. It's not like, okay, I get you. You get a pass. But it is sort of an attempt to sort of put myself in your shoes. And the reason I say it's like a secret weapon is like, I feel like you as a writer sort of have to inhabit people's identities, people who are different from you, sometimes people who had it had a different experience, or, you know, people who you dislike. You know, there shouldn't be, uh, you know, somebody said this to me. I forget who, but like, you know, there are no bad guys, you know. I mean, like, the bad guy doesn't think he's a bad guy, right, you know. And that's so useful, right? The way that plays out in my, like, personal life is, like, you know, I feel like, with my group of friends with the people around me, like, I'm easy to access, because I try to not being, you know, being somebody who can empathize means that you're not somebody who's going to judge. And I feel, I think, I hope, for the people who know me well, you know, they can come to me and share something that is embarrassing, share something that is kind of shitty that they did, you know, and feel like you know. Not that again, not that I'm going to give them a pass, but that I'm not going to sort of judge them in the way they might be judging themselves. You know my sister, I cannot tell you what she told me, but my sister confessed something to me the other day. She just got a kidney transplant, and we've been hanging out a lot, and she just confessed something to me like that she did on her worst day. And I really, you know, she's like, you know, don't, don't judge me. And I'm like, you know, I'm not gonna judge you. And you could, you know, it was something that she could, she could never tell anybody, you know. And I walked away from that conversation like feeling really good that I could be the recipient of that information. She didn't hurt anybody, like, don't, don't get a warrant on her. But, yeah, I think that that plays out in my life in so many ways, and it's just but it's just also who I am. I don't know what made me empathetic. Maybe growing up with people who had a different moral compass than I did made me try to understand them. But yeah, I hope you feel not judged.


Ethan Sawyer  1:02:59  
Well, yeah. There was this essay that we were looking at yesterday, Hannah on my team and I, and there was this line that said the student was saying, I judge, but I listen, and I think that it's hard sometimes right to turn off that part of our brains that's like not evaluating and going is this, does this feel aligned with the person's values and with my own values? But it's the staying committed to the connection that I see with you. It's fun.


Ryan Maldonado  1:03:30  
It's funny, because when I say it's like a fault, I really do catch myself. I I feel like I'm wishy washy sometimes, and where I can relate to, you know, relate to people that really kind of don't deserve to be related to. And in that way, to bring it to another word, you know, I think that I am also a diplomat. You know what? I mean, like, I feel compelled to bridge people who, like, really don't, might not like each other. And I'm like, wait, no, this person, look at this guy, you know? And it's not out of like, this is not like, it sounds like, I'm like, a love of humanity or something like that. I think it's just simply like, Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't like, hate each other? You know,


Ethan Sawyer  1:04:31  
first of all, when you say people who don't deserve to be related to


Ryan Maldonado  1:04:34  
you, might think, yeah, something you might not, you know, somebody on one side might be like, oh, like, Screw that


Ethan Sawyer  1:04:39  
guy, right? And you don't literally mean that there are people who don't deserve to be related. No, I don't mean that people who you might look at and find difficulty relating to. I see this in you, and I it's interesting, because I see this as connecting back, in a way, to this shape shifter identity. Because it's like you're not only shifting shapes within your own beingness with people, yeah, but. Like you're popping into their perspectives. And I also see this as being connected to the thing you said about this. Your big rule when you're writing a scene is that you're going all right, what is the protagonist thinking? What is the bad guy or bad girl thinking? And what is, what are the minor characters thinking? And so there seems to me, like an interesting thread of, like, this perspective taking, yeah,


Ryan Maldonado  1:05:29  
yeah. And I, again, I wish I could tell you where it was from, but, like, I just find other people's lives, like, endlessly fascinating. I think this assignment, or here where we're, like, literally talking about me is like, dreadful, like, I hate talking about me. I like talking about other people. Like, there was a guy who, this is weird, but it feels connected. There was a guy who photographed people's living rooms, like, all shapes and sizes, all up and down the socio economic ladder. And I was just riveted, yeah, like, I want so fascinated. How about how other people live, you know? And I guess there's some like, altruism in that, I don't know I like, I think that, that I wish other people felt the same way. But, yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  1:06:22  
it seems to me a really clear metaphor for the work that you do. Because I think what you're doing as a writer is it seems like you're putting us in other people's living rooms. And I mean it literally in some cases, but I also mean that, you know, as a metaphor, like the spaces that they're inhabiting emotionally,


Ryan Maldonado  1:06:48  
yeah, because if I could, if I had, if you had, if you asked me, like, like, what's your like dream with like, in terms of your career, like, what's like the and what, and if I'm not talking about, like, my dream project, but more like, like, what I aspire to do. Like, the biggest compliment you could give me is like, Hey, I saw something you wrote, and it made me sort of think differently about it, right? Like, what an incredible gift to give somebody to shape their perspective, or, you know, change perspective. That's hard. That's like, I think that's impossible sometimes, but like, brought you a little closer is really, really like a dream. I think that's why I do this. So I think that's what brought me here. That's why I probably wanted to be a journalist. You know what I mean, like, it's, it's, it's a lofty goal, but I think there are so many examples of stuff out there that kind of can get you there. You know,


Ethan Sawyer  1:07:54  
you answered a question that I was gonna ask, which is, why do you do this work? Yeah, and I think that you are this photographer.


Ryan Maldonado  1:08:03  
Oh, that's cool. That's a really nice gift. Yeah, I'd like to be invited to more homes to show you more homes, you know? Yeah, I mean, I feel like I can be a vessel, right? And like, there's, there's a chance to really, you know, to take me out of the equation and just sort of, like, let my view of certain of like, my viewpoint, my view of someone, like, transfer that to you. And just say, like, do you see what I see, you know? And so, yeah, I think that that that's a nice that's a nice thing to say. Thank you.


Ethan Sawyer  1:08:44  
Yeah, so as we wrap here, you spent some time before you made it big in screenwriting to you made it. You definitely made


Ryan Maldonado  1:08:53  
it. I made the medium bucks.


Ethan Sawyer  1:08:56  
Before you made the medium bucks, you helped students working on their personal statements. What advice would you give to students who are going through this process?


Ryan Maldonado  1:09:06  
You know, goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, which is, like, you know, in lieu of a interview, right? Like the, I think the ideal way to get into college would be if everybody could be interviewed, right? Because then you could really show sort of show who you are, but so you can't do that, and because most schools don't offer that, so the way they get to know you they being the these colleges is via that essay. And I think that the best advice I have is to spend some real time trying to understand who you are and what makes you tick. And the more specific you can get, the better your essay is going to be, right? Like, if you spend an hour thinking about those questions, you're probably not going to be as specific. It needs to be because I think the specificity is what makes it, makes you an individual. So trying to find a way to be authentic, to show your voice, showcase your voice, and also showcase like, the best of you, right? Like, I think that that's important. And to find, you know, to find what somebody who's not you might like about you, right? And like, might say, is a strength of yours. Sometimes it's really hard to identify. I mean, if you're like me or like, I don't know what's good about me. You know what I mean, push yourself to find out, like, why a college would want you, you know, and what you have to offer. And the other thing is, and this is something I forgot. I used to talk about this, but I think this is very useful. So when I got to Northwestern my freshman year, that was in a very small dorm compared to the other dorms. It's called Chapin Hall, and there were, I would say maybe 60 people. And it was just one floor of the boys, so the third floor was us. And I would say there were like 20 people. And it really kind of was, for me, a microcosm of what the idea of the university really is. And it's really special if you really think, if you stop and think about it, what they want, what these colleges want, like the ideal is to have all these diverse perspectives come together, to intermingle, influence each other and do sort of what I've been talking about this entire time, which is like, Learn to sort of empathize with each other and understand each other. And I think when you're writing your essay, trying to figure out who you are in that small dorm of 60 people, and what you might have to say that somebody else might not have to say, what are the specific things that you grew up with, ideas you grew up with that you can showcase so the university can see you and say, oh, yeah, that's a voice I want in this little dorm of 60 people. And I remember feeling distinct in there and feeling how other people were distinct. You know, I had a college my college roommate could not be more different than I was, you know, he was from Pittsfield, Illinois, you know, a small town. He was very Christian, and he, I remember Zach, he wrote, he never, since fifth grade, missed a journal entry, you know. So I hell bent on documenting his life, you know.


Ethan Sawyer  1:12:36  
But down you were different in some ways and also maybe similar in some ways too. Oh, sure,


Ryan Maldonado  1:12:41  
yeah, yeah. But that's the thing that's, you sort of find those commonalities, right? But, you know, down the hall there was another kid who had spent two summers in high school going to Stratford to study Shakespeare, you know what I mean, like? And then you had, you know, this person, that person, I think what, what's interesting, is ask yourself, in that through that lens, like, Oh, what do I have to bring to the table? What am I? How am I different, not in a bad way, but in a good way? And can contribute to this conversation, this idea of like the university, the universe, you know, universality, bringing a perspective to the table. That might not be one that school has, you know, and I think that's why, you know, the kids who've had crazy stories that the essay is easier. You know what I mean, if you if you were, you know, living in Venezuela when the government fell, and your family, you know, migrated, you know, 1000s of miles and then wound up in New York City, like, that's an it's an incredible story, and like, a perspective, I'm sure, on life that other kids might not have, right? So it's easier to tell your story if you're that kid, right? But that doesn't mean that you're not interesting, right? If you don't have that story, how the goal is, mine your life and find the ways that you are interesting, right? Yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  1:14:04  
I mean, I hear you doing that in this conversation and in such beautiful ways. And I just want to, like, track back and like, say what I get about you even more in this conversation than I think I have in other conversations we've had. But what I hear is like, in your life, you had these big challenges, you know, these big struggles related to family stuff. And then coming out of that, you sort of developed the superpower of, like, shape shifting your calling and in needing to do it. And you mentioned, sort of like being surrounded by people that you loved, and in some sense, were your caretakers, and you sort of had to empathize, or you found yourself wanting to empathize with them and to figure out, how do I get wrap my brain around why this person is the way they are. Like, why is this? What is motivating this person, a good person who maybe, in some cases, is doing some bad things. Like, how do I you. Wrap my brain around that. And it was, it seems like this. There was this, like an adaptation that you were like, that was coming online for you from a really young age, and it found its voice, it seems like in storytelling eventually, of like, Oh, here's how I can take this thing this, you know, my friend Duncan calls it a cup stacking skill. It's the thing that you've practiced 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of times, and you turn it into something that eventually becomes a creative expression, yeah, in high school, and then eventually College, and then, as you said, it's like, sort of like the only thing. And that's not true, by the way, you're also good at other things, but this perspective taking became something that you were able, you've been able to like now monetize,


Ryan Maldonado  1:15:43  
monetize, right, support your family with, create,


Ethan Sawyer  1:15:46  
you know, stability, certainty for yourself and the people that you love and and there's this, it's not just sort of like a greedy thing to just keep, you know, to buy diapers, as it were, and keep Lights on. But there is this, I think, this real altruistic element, and it's and it's purpose driven, and I feel this about you where it's we're not just, you're not just trying to, like, keep the lights on. You're actually trying to, and to use your phrase, like, to bring people just a little bit closer to one another, to invite them to to bring online their empathy, to awaken that in them, because that can be so powerful.


Ryan Maldonado  1:16:25  
Yeah, yeah. I have another metaphor for you. In a way, it feels like that understanding of yourself that's like the undercurrent in all our lives is a little bit like a bucking bronco and like, Can you, can you get on it? And, like, harness it, right? And in a lot of ways, I think I go back to that moment that we I brought up earlier about just really understanding the revelation that I could use my life to tell stories, and that I needed to actually, not that I it was a choice, but that I that's the only way I felt like I got on the I got on that Bronco, you know, and like, fortunately, haven't been kicked off yet. But I do think people get kicked off, yeah, truly. And that is the crazy thing about this business, like you can forget and be brought up monetizing. We talked about your, you know, brought up, like, making money off of this. I think that's so hard. It's really the part that, if it's it's not something I enjoy, because there are many instances where you catch yourself taking a job for money, as opposed to taking a job to tell a story you want to tell that you feel so passionate about. And that's the sort of like, you know, I joke, I do make the medium bucks that that's real. There are people who, and there are few of them who can do both, who can tell the most powerful, important story to them, and also, like, everybody wants to see it, you know. And like, that's, that's the aspiration, right? Like, it's like to be able to even tell one of those, you know. So, yeah, it's tricky. It's a very tricky. It's very tricky to take something that you enjoy so much and that you lose time. And what do you call it when you're losing time? It's like, slow state, yeah, like, that is my experience. I still every day when I every time I sit down, the right experience, flow state, but it's tricky to now put a price tag on it, you know, and try to sort of build, make that price tag higher, you know. So, yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  1:18:49  
I feel really proud of you. I feel really proud of us. Because, like, even though so, to track back for just a second at 23 we were both pretty hell bent on becoming screenwriters. And then I was like, Nope, I'm gonna go do this other thing. And you were like, Nope, I'm gonna stay with this thing. And just like when you decided you were gonna run a marathon, and you were like, I'm gonna do this and stay with it and do it like you did. And I think it's really cool. Yeah,


Ryan Maldonado  1:19:15  
I don't think I had a choice, though, and I think that this is, I think if I had to figure out what happened, where we where we split off, like, I don't think I had a I was stuck. I was just in a and that was what I was talking about at the beginning, where I was just like, there was never a reality where I did something else, you know, like I just, I corner, I put myself in a corner, right? Like, I painted myself into a corner, and I was like, This is it? Wow, yeah, and that's scary. That's scary, but happy that I felt I did what I did


Ethan Sawyer  1:19:52  
me too. Thanks friends for listening. In case you missed them, check out the first two. Episodes in this series. The first is with Dave Callahan. We talk about what it's like writing Marvel movies, Asian American representation in Hollywood, and how to find your voice. The second episode was with my friend whit Anderson on beating writer's block writing romantic comedies and space operas and female representation in Hollywood. You'll find all the show notes at college sa guy.com/podcast and you'll get news of upcoming events and webinars and courses and lots more if you subscribe to pretty much anything on our website, college. Sa guy.com thanks, friends and stay curious. You.


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