1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling

1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:02] Michael Arndt: individually, they're idiots, but collectively they're a genius. You know? And I think that you have to respect the genius of your audience, right? Your audience is smarter than you, and so you have to be humble, and you have to listen to the feedback you're getting.

[00:00:21] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional former cult member, arms trafficker, rocket scientist, or Russian chess Grand Master.

And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show. I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiations, psychology and Geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and Cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today. A really fun conversation. It's a little bit different since Gabriel and I actually co-host this one together, which as many of you know is quite rare. We're talking with my friend Michael Arnt, acclaim screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine toy story, three Star Wars, the Force Awakens.

Michael won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for Little Miss Sunshine. If you remember that smash hit back in the day, he was also nominated for best adapted screenplay for Toy Story three. He's also the first screenwriter ever to be nominated for both the Academy Award for best original screenplay and best adapted screenplay for his first two screenplays.

That's a lot of me saying the word screenplay, but whatever. I met Michael at a dinner party in New York City. We just clicked right away. He's a great guy. He's unbelievably creative, obviously, yet totally relatable and just fun to be around and to talk to, as you will experience for yourselves here in just a minute.

And he doesn't do much media at all. So we were actually quite lucky to land this interview, in my opinion. In this conversation, we dive into screenwriting and creativity, working in Hollywood, ai in the creative fields, creative career paths and more. But even if you're not a screenwriter or you're even a creative at all, I think you're gonna find value here in this conversation.

Alright, here we go with Michael ARNs. Do you find that creating. Meta content around like, here's how I do screenwriting stuff. Does that clarify your thinking about screenwriting? Is that gonna

[00:02:28] Michael Arndt: Totally like I think that, you know, I'm doing a new thing about first acts, how to write a good first act, how to get your story started off with as much sort of emotional rooting interest as possible.

How to kick things off. You know, I had, I'll just say I had a script that I wrote years and years ago and I sort of did three drafts and then it sort of petered out. 'cause I always knew the first act wasn't doing the work that it needed to. I gave it to people and people were like, eh, I'm not really into this character.

Yeah. You know? And it was a really short first act. First act. First act was like 17 pages. So I just put that script aside. And then in the process of doing this video about first acts, like I go, oh, now I know what's missing. And I went back and I rewrote the whole first act of that story. Now it works.

Like I don't know if I'm ever gonna go back to that script. 'cause it was. So long ago. But it is interesting how just studying, studying, studying, storytelling and story, you know, it's very humbling and it always makes you a little bit better. There's always more stuff to learn, always more stuff to learn.

So, do

[00:03:19] Jordan Harbinger: I have it correct that you went back to a script you wrote years ago and fixed it and you're just like, okay, that's done, and you just put it back on the shelf in a binder where it'll never be seen

[00:03:26] Michael Arndt: again? Well, I would say that script is probably like eight or nine in line in terms of like things that I wanna make.

So, uh, you know what, actually I won't say it's probably fifth or sixth. Okay.

[00:03:35] Jordan Harbinger: In line because I'm, I'm just thinking like, I would never go back to like episode 500 of this podcast and go, I really need to edit this part 'cause I didn't say that. Correct. It's just, it's out there. I'm done. I'm never gonna hear it again unless somebody straps me to a gurney and makes me listen to it.

[00:03:49] Michael Arndt: Yeah. I mean, I'm at this point where I have. More scripts than I'm gonna have time to make into movies. But, and it's helpful, like I was just saying, working as a script doctor, like I went out and they gave me the script and I read it and I was like, oh, like based on the fact that I've been obsessing about first acts for the last couple of months, like I know exactly how to fix a script.

I know exactly

[00:04:08] Jordan Harbinger: what to do. Tell us what a script doctor is. 'cause I think a lot of people, well first of all it seems like it should be self-explanatory. But I also lived in Hollywood and maybe that's not self-explanatory 'cause it sounds like somebody who fixes a script that has problems. But like, I don't think people understand the screenwriting process enough that most people don't understand the screenwriting process enough to know that I might write a script and someone goes, I like it.

I don't love it, but I like it enough to send it to somebody who's better at this than you. And then we're gonna make it into a movie.

[00:04:34] Michael Arndt: Yeah. I think that writers tend to be kind of seen as disposable. You know, you can bring different writers in that have different strengths for things. After I wrote Little Miss Sunshine and then especially after Toy Story three, I was working at Pixar and Disney feature animation was bringing scripts up.

To Pixar and screening them. And also some Disney Live action films were being brought up to Pixar and they would screen the films and then we'd have a big story meeting and, and we'd talk. And I was very vocal. I have lots of opinions about how stories should be told. So based on that, I started getting hired to come in and do a week or two of work on a script.

So script doctoring is, a lot of times it's, the script is, you can be writing the script is about to go into production or it's you're writing reshoots. So they've already shot the script. You're gonna watch the whole rough cut of the film and go, oh, this story needs to be fixed here or there. So, and usually you're brought in for, it can be one week, it could be two week, it could be three weeks on catching fire.

Catching fire was actually a script ing job. So I was brought in for four weeks. So I did four weeks of work and most of the time you don't get any credit for it. Most of the time you're just working kind of anonymously. And working as a craftsman, you're taking the story, putting up on blogs and going, what's working with this thing?

What's not working with the story? How do I fix it? How, how do I optimize it? Right. The movie's trying to do something, how do I make it work better? It really is just sort of just trying to optimize what the story itself is. You know, sometimes you'll be brought into punch up characters to warm up characters, get the audience to like a character.

Sometimes you'll just Brian to fix up the whole thing. Wow. So catching

[00:06:01] Jordan Harbinger: fire, by the way, hunger games for people who are not totally immersed in, in that particular world. So they might bring you in and you might watch a scene and go, ah, yeah, you're trying to make what's her name, Kaus Everdeen, or whatever.

You're trying to make her likable, but this falls flat. You actually need to reshoot this entire thing with this new dialogue where she seems more vulnerable and this other person reacts in a different way and they'll do that.

[00:06:24] Michael Arndt: Yeah, no, totally. I mean, usually the script is heading towards production.

Usually there's a consensus that the script isn't working. Sometimes it's already in production. Sometimes it's in post-production. I've been brought in for, you know, the longest job I did was on Hunger Games, catching fire. That was a four week job. The shortest was, I, I was brought in for one day on a movie and just told to warm up the, the lead character a little bit in a character's introduction.

And that was in post-production. They had already made movie. You're expensive

[00:06:54] Jordan Harbinger: though, man. Not just your fees, but like if you come in and go, Hey, this scene really not working, they're like, oh, that took us like three days to shoot that. And was, there's all kinds of stuff in there and it's really, you might cost them a million dollars, but it's better.

Is that how it works?

[00:07:07] Michael Arndt: Yeah, I think that, I mean, a lot of times you're, you're very cost conscious. You're just trying to figure out like if they're doing reshoots, what's their reshoot budget? How many days are they gonna be able to reshoot? And then you're picking and choosing, you're going like big problems, medium sized problems and small problems and trying to like address the big problems or not.

So, and then I'll just say that I won't name the film, but I was brought in one time, there was a film. Big budget film. It had a full cast, full crew. They had rendered the sound stages. They were just ready to start going, and the studio was not completely happy with the script. They thought the script could be streamlined a little bit, and the director said to me, he said, we're spending $3 million a week not to make this movie.

Oh

[00:07:42] Clip: God.

[00:07:43] Michael Arndt: Wow. You know, I come in and I'm just like, cut 15 or 20 pages outta the script, but cutting 15 or 20 pages outta the script is like cutting 15 or $20 million out of the budget. Oh, wow. You're always trying to be cost conscious. You're always trying to find very efficient ways to make the script better, but a lot of times what you're just doing is it can't be cost conscious if you're just.

Making a script better. My joke is that there's nothing more expensive than bad writing, and there's nothing cheaper than good writing. Hmm. Right. Because if you make a movie and it fails, that's much more expensive

[00:08:11] Jordan Harbinger: than just spending the extra 2 million bucks to reshoot the scene on the train or whatever.

Totally,

[00:08:14] Michael Arndt: totally, totally. And if you can come up with a dynamite ending, I'm just telling you like four or five good jokes, and that's gonna get you an extra $20 million like at the box office. Really? Wow. It's that sort of simple,

[00:08:25] Jordan Harbinger: eh? I mean, simple. I, it's sort of direct is what I mean, like. I guess if you put the jokes in the trailer like a, you know, will Smith movie and then people go see it because of those and then, then they're, that was all the good jokes in the whole movie.

Sorry. Will,

[00:08:37] Michael Arndt: uh, yeah, so I mean, sometimes you're brought in to do a humor pass. Sometimes you're brought in to do a page one rewrite, start, finish. We'll rewrite the whole thing and then sometimes you're, you know, brought in to just fix certain characters or certain scenes.

[00:08:48] Gabriel Mizrahi: So being a script doctor sounds like an incredible job, but a lot of your career has been actually writing original stories in one of your video essays where you break down the philosophy of your storytelling and all the lessons that you've learned in your career.

You say that the best metaphor you have for coming up with a story is you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded. It's hard because you don't know where you're going. You don't know where the top is. You can't see what's below you. But actually you say the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is that you just can't find the mountain.

That applies to working as a screenwriter in Hollywood as much as it does to like entrepreneurship or parenting or discovering your purpose, really anything in life. So how do you find the mountain?

[00:09:25] Michael Arndt: That's an excellent question actually. I think that when I think back on the films that I've written, usually there's a single moment in a story that was the inspiration for it.

And I'll give you two examples. One was Little Miss Sunshine, and I was just looking for a good ending to the story and I wanted to write an ending that I made videos about like an insanely great anywhere. It seems like the worst thing is about to happen. And then the best possible thing happens. I spent six months just like trying to figure out what an, what a good ending should be.

And I was like, how can you engineer it so everyone in the audience thinks the worst possible thing is gonna happen? And then in one second you flip it open, the best possible thing happens. Mm-Hmm. And I was thinking like, you know, should it be a, a sports movie? But that's kind of a cliche. Should it be like romantic comedy?

It's hard to avoid cliches with that. I couldn't figure out. And then I was watching this little child beauty pageant on TV and there were all these little skinny blonde girls and I just thought, God, wouldn't it be great? If a little chubby girl got up there and you totally thought it was, she would be humiliated, it'd be the worst moment of her life.

And then the music came on and she just rocked the house and just blew everybody away. I was like, that's a good ending. I know that's a good ending. So that was the beginning. And then you go, like, if that's the ending, like who is this little girl? What is this pageant? How did she get there? Who is her family?

Et cetera, et cetera. There's other scripts that I've written that have been based on the inciting incident of the story. I go, oh, that's a great beginning. I know where I can go with this. 'cause that's a great beginning. Sometimes it's like a speech that a character gives and you go, oh, I want to hear a character give this speech.

And then you're building the rest of the story out from it. So a lot of times you're finding the spark of inspiration just in a single moment, and then you just elaborate on that universe out from that single moment.

[00:11:01] Jordan Harbinger: This reminds me of, I, I think I was watching America's Got Talent. I was in Howie Mandel's office and one of the, there was a little girl who came on and she was very timid and she had like an Irish accent or a Scottish accent or something, and they were like, what are you gonna do, honey?

She was really young, like 10 or 11, like sing. What kind of music do you like? I don't know. What kind of music are you gonna sing? I don't know. And everyone's expecting this to just be horrendous, right? Right, right. But then she rocks out this Janis Joplin track and just absolutely nails it and everyone's on their feet and laughing and screaming.

And I think she got a golden buzzer, or at least Howie Mande was like totally blown away. I think you might have even said something about Little Miss Sunshine at that point. 'cause it was like so, so dead on and it really was shocking. What she meant by, I don't know, was I don't know how to classify this music.

Not, oh, I'm too shy to actually give you the answer, but of course that's how everybody interpreted it. Right, right, right. And it's just absolutely, you're right. Like that's sort of gap between your expectations and like what actually happens is what makes it so, it makes you kind of like emotional, having that emotional response.

[00:11:59] Michael Arndt: I feel like the low moment before your climax is actually the centrifugal center of your story. Like a lot of times what you're doing with your story is trying to drive your character down to the place where the worst possible thing is gonna happen to them. And. If that becomes the focus of the rest of your story, right?

You're just trying to go to the worst possible place. I'll just grab off the top of my head an example in, in Fellini's eight and a half, right? Like he's trying to figure out a story that he can make into a movie, and he is failing and failing and failing, and finally he goes to this press conference.

And they're like, what's your next movie gonna be about? And he just doesn't have an answer, you know? And people are mocking him and making fun of him, and he crawls onto the table and has this fantasy about shooting himself in the head. And then, God, it's such a great, that is such a great ending. That ending is so great.

But the first two acts of that story, and half of the third act is just getting your character to this lowest possible moment where they are feel exposed, humiliated, the worst thing is happening. And so, um, yeah. And then the Houdini trick for screenwriting is to be able to turn things around in a second.

And, and Fellini does that really, really well. Yeah. I'm working on that in my real life. It's not

[00:13:04] Jordan Harbinger: working out so good. I think you're only supposed to do that in movies, folks. Don't try this at home.

[00:13:09] Gabriel Mizrahi: But it's funny because you seem to be interested in a few common themes in all of your movies, but one of them is failure, like Olive family, the brink of disaster in a number of ways.

Woody and toy stories constantly at risk of losing. Andy, are you particularly fascinated by failure? Is that a Michael RN thing, or is that a theme that makes every story interesting?

[00:13:30] Michael Arndt: Yeah, I think it makes every story interesting. I mean, you're looking for the worst. Again, like knowing what the worst possible thing for your hero is.

What is your hero desiring, wanting, and the best possible thing, but what is also the worst possible thing for your hero? It's interesting. I mean, this is something that I've thought of that that's really new, is that not only do you have a low moment in your third act or a lowest possible moment in your third act, what I call a moment of despair in your third act.

So it looks like at the end of your story, your character has failed externally, failed internally, failed philosophically, just failed in every possible way, and then being able to flip it around. The thing that I am talking about in this new video that I'm putting together about first acts is I think a lot of times it's really, really helpful to have a moment of despair in the first act of your story, and you see this over and over again in, well, just example of a little Miss Sunshine, is you build up all this emotional rooting interest, all of wants to go do this beauty pageant, right?

And they've gotta somehow get her. To California, what you want to do is build up all this ahead of steam. Basically you want like audience, emotional rooting interest that I wanna see this thing happen and then you shut the door. So it seems like your hero is never gonna get what they want right at the end of the first act.

There's no way forward. And then just cracking the door opens. So there's one possible way for the character to get what they want creates this sort of maximum rooting interest, this huge audience momentum in the story. So it's interesting that like a mo, you can have a moment of despair in the third act of your story, but having a moment in of despair in the second act of your story, I think is really, really important too.

You once said, the

[00:14:51] Jordan Harbinger: craft of screenwriting comes down to being aware of playing with a set of audience expectations. And there's that classical three act storytelling thing that we were just sort of alluding to that everybody learns in like, I dunno, probably third or sixth grade or whatever it is, little Miss Sunshine you said is finally almost embarrassingly conservative.

And I, I thought that was quite interesting. 'cause it seems like a lot of times you gotta be really creative, right? You gotta be out of the box, you gotta make something new. People want something new, but like not really. They kind of want. Their expectations taken into account in really crucial ways. Or the movie fails and you can get somewhat creative.

Like there's a movie Memento, which turns out to like be backwards or something like that. And you figure it out at the end. Yeah, yeah. But you can't really do too much of that, and you can't go completely off the deep end. Or people just go, what did I just watch? And it was, it's like those, some people love these, I think his name is David Lynch, but when I watch one, I just go, I have no idea about anything that just happened and I'm completely lost and feel stupid and I don't need to see any more of these.

[00:15:44] Michael Arndt: I mean, I grew up in New York going to see indie films and being really into, you know, David Lynch films and, and all that stuff. I. With screenplays. Yeah. The stuff that I read, I think what I finally decided is that the thing that you're going for is the emotion at the end. How do you want the audience to feel when they walk out of the theater?

And I made a very deliberate decision on Loma Sunshine that I was, I was like, I'm gonna write a happy ending, but not just a ordinary happy. I'm gonna write the happiest ending of all time. My goal was I'm gonna drive the audience insane with happiness. And I think that what works about that is, the one smart thing I'll, I'll say about Lo Miss Sunshine is that you're creating a false binary at the end where Olive walks out on stage.

You don't want her to lose the pageant, right? 'cause that would be horrible. But you don't also don't want her to win the pageant because that would be just cheesy. Right? And you, you wouldn't really believe it. Right? And so one of the tricks at a climax is instead of having it be the good guys win or the bad guys win, which is just this sort of thing we've seen a gazillion times before and, and usually the, the good guys win, right?

Is to create a third option that nobody saw coming, like a third door that you didn't even know was there. You open it up and I see like in Little Miss Sunshine, it was just having Olive come out and like she loses, like she rips her pants off and is disqualified. But that's something that you're, you're misleading your audience to think that the only choices are two choices, winning or losing, right?

And then you go, no, no, there's a third option, right? That's gonna exceed the audience's expectation. The other example is in Toy Story three, like we did a lot of work to fool the audience at the end so that they thought that Woody was still in the car, in the college box, he was going to college with Andy.

And there's even a few shots, POV shots from inside. Box so that when Andy opens up the box, give Bonnie his choice and then finds Woody at the bottom of the box, it's a surprise. Not just Andy, but a surprise to the audience. Right. And so I feel like humor is depending on surprise, like you gotta catch your audience by surprise, but also emotion, like that sadness.

I think the, one of the reasons the end of Toy Story three is so emotional is because you don't expect Woody to be there. You're not expecting Andy to give him away. I feel like you can't be too clever about this stuff though. Like I feel like you can't sit around and play a chess game with your audience and go, oh, I'm gonna miss with them here and do X, Y, Z.

But if you can, you just have to be aware of, try to create something new and surprising, you know? Especially at the end of your story.

[00:18:01] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That it seems like it would be tricky. I, this is smart, right? 'cause you can balance that original thinking. With the audience expectations so you're not just writing, like when I watch Paw Patrol with my son, there are no surprises.

Everything is really obvious. It goes exactly the way you would expect. And even when I think, oh, there could be a plot twist here, they're like, this is for five year olds, man. There's not gonna be any twists at all. No twisting 'cause my son's expectations for what needs to happen in PAW Patrol are like very basic.

And if you turn it up to 11, you end up with a film that you could enjoy at a theater. David Lynch style, and I would come out and go, I need to read a whole article about what I saw, and I'm still not gonna understand it. And so it's like less of a draw. You really have to fall somewhere in between Paw Patrol and David Lynch, which it seems like a wide area, but, but, and yet here we are with most scripts never getting made.

So what do I know?

[00:18:50] Michael Arndt: Well, it's, yeah, no, it's a balance that you have to walk and I You wanna avoid defining expectations for the sake of define expectations. Yeah. Right. You wanna defy expectations in order to create emotion. That's the goal, right? You don't want your audience to be bored. You don't want your film to be trudging towards some sort of obvious conclusion.

So you wanna keep things sort of up in the air and, and like. How is the hero gonna get this thing to work? But yeah, audiences, expectations, I dunno. I just don't think about it too much. I'm going for emotion. I'm trying to like figure out like what is the most emotional story I can tell?

[00:19:19] Jordan Harbinger: How do you manage to say something new while, I mean you're working with a tradition, not film necessarily, but, or I guess writing, is it thousands of years old or tens of thousands of years old?

It's old. There's a, there's been a lot of this. It's very old. So how do you kind of figure out something new that hasn't been done before in something that's got that much history? That seems very difficult to me.

[00:19:39] Michael Arndt: You know what? This is something that I learned making this new video that I'm halfway through making about first acts.

I talked about two things, like how to get your audience on board with a character, and then how to get your audience on board with that character's story. And when I sat down to think about like what makes a great character and what is gonna make a character memorable or a character last, this was something completely new that I, that I just sort of figured out or thought of, which is a lot of times your character in the world they live in are two sides of the same coin.

So the example I always go to is Robinhood, for example. Like you start off in Robin Hood and King Richard is the king. It's the fair just universe, right? Robin Hood is actually just Robin of Loxley. He's his noble man. He lives in his castle. Like everything is cool. It's only when King John usurp the throne takes over England, right?

Starts this reign of abusive taxation, right? That the world tilts, like the world becomes unjust, right? And now Robin of Loxley can either live in an unjust world or he can go screw it. Like I'm gonna rebel against King John. I'm gonna go into the woods. I'm gonna gather with band of married man, I'm gonna rob the rich and give to the poor.

So the world itself, the world becoming unfair is the thing that creates the hero, right? The hero becomes the antidote to the negative values of the story. I think that when I started thinking about it a lot, I was just like, a lot of times what makes a hero very memorable is not the hero themselves.

It's the world that they live in. Right? And if you're describing the world and a problem in a world, that's something that makes it interesting. Jordan, this is a really good question. And so the examples that I use are, well, for example, Thelman Louise, like in Thelman Louise, those are two, like when you start the movie, they're just kind of two ordinary women.

They're going on a a weekend, they're gonna have fun, right? You create this huge like doozy of an inciting incident, right? Which is Thelma almost gets raped in the parking lot and Louise comes along and kills the guy, right? Oh, right. And then they realize that they're living in this misogynistic, sexist, hostile world that no one's gonna believe them and they go on the lamb.

I think what makes that story resonant and what makes them great characters was that nobody had seen two women in a Hollywood movie fighting back against. Sort of this universe of sexism and misogyny and male violence. So defiantly, so sort of in your face blowing up that trucker's rig and stuff like that.

And that was a thing that like made the movie click with people is that sense of like the character's defiance. Lemme give one more example, which is I think that what made the graduate such a resonant film for audiences back in the sixties was not really Ben Braddock. Like Ben Braddock's a nice guy, but he's a bit of a nebbish.

Like he's not that interesting a character. What no one had ever seen before was the world like we'd never seen Mike Nichols showing us this world of sort of post-war on we and shallowness and materialism. So you're creating this sort of tilted universe world of postwar America, and the sense of alienation and the sense of conformity.

And then Ben is the person who's swimming against that tide fighting against it. And so when you're trying to create a character, a memorable character, one of the things, obviously you want your character to be just interesting and be flawed in a certain interesting way. What you're also doing is creating a universe that that character is reacting to.

And so in order to find something. Interesting to find a new story. To finally get around to answering your question, one of the things you need to do is think about like the world that your character lives in, and how does that world that you're showing on screen reflect the problems in the real world?

Yeah. Outside the theater in a way that feels resonant to the audience. Does that make sense? It does. I'll never freak the

[00:23:12] Jordan Harbinger: graduate with, was it Dustin Hoffman in, they're throwing this big party, I'll never forget the scene where they're like, come on, I got him this gift. It's amazing. And he comes out in like a full scuba suit and he just sort of like totally bored and embarrassed, jumps into the swimming pool and just comes up and yeah.

I'm like, man, this guy's going through his midlife crisis. But he is like 18. Yeah. It's like, it's like so, it's so depressing when you see how just bored he is. And he is got this dumb scuba thing and he is like, whatever. Just shoot me now.

[00:23:38] Michael Arndt: Yeah. And he

[00:23:38] Jordan Harbinger: Plastics.

[00:23:39] Michael Arndt: Plastics. Yeah. Yeah, plastics. Like plastics is the line that makes you jump on board with him because he says like the very first scene in the movie, his dad comes up and talks to him.

He's sort of hiding up in his bedroom. And his dad goes, what are you worried about? And he goes, I'm worried about my future. I want it to be different. Right. So the whole movie is this allegory of conformity and non-conformity. Like he wants his his future to be different. Then you just create this whole tilted universe of conformity, right?

And then when he finds Elaine Robinson, she's the one person that he can stand to be with, the one person he can stand to talk to. That's what makes it interesting and resonant. Lemme give you one more example, which is I, I talk about this in my new video. Like the dude in the Big Lebowski. What makes him interesting is that, you know, he's introduced in the screenplay as being like the laziest man in LA County, right?

Which makes him pretty high of the running for laziest man in the world. You know, he's not this traditional hero who has big dreams and big aspirations and is super competent or anything like that. He's just the dude. So why do you like this guy so much? Why is he such a beloved figure? The way you get your audience on board with a lazy bum who does nothing but smoke pot and go bowling is that you surround him with this universe of like super competitive, stressed out.

Men, right? You have Walter, you have the Big Lebowski himself. You have Jesus the pedophile bowler. You have the sheriff in Malibu, 8-year-old dude. You create this whole universe. You create this whole universe of people who are not chill, who are not laid back, right? And then the dude becomes heroic because he's so cool.

He's so laid back. He's not trying to achieve anything. He's not trying to become anything different, he just abides. And that's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him like him. So it's a really interesting question of like, how do you find something new? You, you identify some sort of problem in the real world and then you create that kind of universe, a tilted universe in your movie,

[00:25:20] Jordan Harbinger: that movie's so damn funny.

There's a beverage here. Man,

[00:25:25] Gabriel Mizrahi: it is interesting 'cause he, he on the face of it would not be a character you root for because he doesn't seem to want very much. But as you put it, hero and world are two sides of the same coin. In your new video essay, you say that film maybe better than any other medium, gives us characters who embody new ideals for how to live one's life.

Now I don't know if the dude fits into that category, but. What ideals do you think we need to live our lives? Well, at this moment in history, are there any movies or characters that are embodying those values really well right now?

[00:25:55] Michael Arndt: Well, let me just, I'll bring up something which I don't think a movie has addressed yet, right?

Which is, I mean, I think one of the problems that we all are dealing with right now is screen addiction, right? Like you walk out on the street, you walk down the sidewalks of New York and everyone's sort of staring at their screen. And there's a way in which we live in this world of self-consciousness where we're performing our lives, right?

We're performing for this invisible, unseen audience, literally in our case right here, literally in our case right here. And there's a way in which all of us are negotiating two selves. There's our digital selves and our analog selves, right? And there's a way in which the digital self in the digital world is a very seductive thing, right?

It's where a lot of work takes place. It's where you can make a ton of money and it's all clean and frictionless. And like the thing with screens is, you know, there's no touch, there's no smell, there's no taste. Like it's just very. We have this new problem, which is like we are haunted by our digital selves and haunted by this sort of generalized other that we're performing for.

I don't think I've seen a movie yet that sort of addressed that problem. I. And turned it into a story that can be compelling and and interesting. Does that answer your question? I sort of does.

[00:27:05] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you have some work to do, my friend. Uh, so get on it. But yeah, you're saying that there could be a hero who embodies the values of authenticity in a world where this digital realm is kind of, I don't know, creating an arena, but also destroying us.

[00:27:21] Michael Arndt: Yeah, rebelling. You're just swimming against the tide of like, if everybody's staring at their screen, everybody's obsessed with their digital selves, right? Then you would just want to create a hero's swing against that tide and is. Privileging the the world of Atoms over the world of bits, basically.

[00:27:34] Jordan Harbinger: And now for a sneak preview of my movie, which is a story about you buying a mattress so my kids can go to college, we'll be right back.

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[00:28:46] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. Alright, let's be real. If you ever thought about hosting your place on Airbnb, but felt like it's a lot of work. I get it. I mean. Who wants to add another job to the list, right? But here's the good news.

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So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Alright, now back to Michael Art, I'm curious sort of the journey that your career took. I was surprised actually to learn that one of your early jobs was working as Matthew Broderick's assistant.

It's war games, you know, was like, that was the thing where I was like, I need to get a computer now because I'm also going to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union or something. He had that phone modem thing that I was just like obsessed with that. I was like, this is a gateway to another world. I wanna play chess with a supercomputer.

It sounds like that was kind of your big introduction to filmmaking into Hollywood, was working with Matthew Broderick, and I wonder what you learn as someone's assistant. I mean, a lot of it's probably like, can you pick up the groceries from Target or whatever, but there's gotta be some access to like

[00:30:48] Michael Arndt: Hollywood industry stuff too, right?

Totally, totally. I think that, you know, I went to film school, I got outta film school. I wanna be a screenwriter, so I wanna get jobs where I could read screenplays. And the thing that people, I young people know, I think don't appreciate is how difficult it was to find screenplays before the internet.

Screenplays were really hard to get your hands on. There were vendors in New York that would sell screenplays on the sidewalk. 'cause it was just really hard to find screenplays. Now you go on your computer and like every screenplay in the world is available. And you know, I got out, I got a job at a production company, then I moved on and got a job with a producer and that producer was working at Columbia Pictures and her job was looking for material for Matthew.

Ah, so after I moved on from that job, Matthew knew me and, and hired me to be his assistant. And it was a great job. Matthew's the nicest guy in the world, like best boss in the world. But it was a great job because back then it was really hard to get your hands on screenplays. His agency at CAA would be sending him scripts all the time.

So I, and one of my jobs was just to read all the scripts that came in, write coverage on them, recommend whether he should read them or not. And so that was great experience. Like that was really great. You see what's out there in the marketplace, you see what the agencies are sending out. You see what scripts work or not.

You see how actors are responding to a piece of material or not. So it was a very, very humble position to begin with. We all have our humble beginnings, but it was great training. Because again, it was really hard back in the nineties to just get access to screenplays. So it was a great job in, in Matthew's total sweetheart.

Do people

[00:32:14] Jordan Harbinger: just yell Ferris Bueller quotes at him all day when he walks down the street? I feel like that's gotta happen. It's such a iconic movie that ev literally everybody knows, even different generations.

[00:32:23] Michael Arndt: I had been with him. When people go, Hey, Ferris, is it your day off? You know, that kind of thing.

He sort of resigned himself to, uh, that's gonna happen, you know, once a week. Once a week for the rest of his life. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:34] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, look, it could be worse. He wasn't like a bad guy that people didn't like or something like. Right. He's just like this beloved character. Beloved character. Beloved is exactly like everybody.

Save Ferris. Everybody wanted to support Ferris except for his sister and the principal. What was your childhood like? I mean, were you compelled to want to, for the movie thing, early in the game? I know you kind of grew up abroad. Did you just watch tons of movies

[00:32:57] Michael Arndt: and you're like, I wanna make one of these?

Yeah, not really. I think I, I grew up, my dad worked in the foreign service. I grew up as a toddler in India and then when I was 10, 11, and 12 years old, we lived in Sri Lanka. Beyond that, we lived in suburban Virginia and no connection, like the idea that you could make a living making movies was just, it never even occurred to me that you could do that for a living.

It just happened somewhere else, you know? And my dad loved comedy. He would take us to go see Mel Brooks movies. He would take us to go see every new Woody Allen film together. And I think, you know, watching your dad laugh at something is always this very. It's just great when your dad just relax and laughs at something.

But I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. It was really, I was in high school, I was very unhappy, but I had always kinda loved films. I remember, uh, as soon as I found out there's this thing called film school, I was like, well, that's it. That's what I'm gonna do. That created the ladder, or at least the bottom rung of a ladder that I could put my hand on and start climbing.

So as soon as I found out there was a thing as film school, I was like, that's what I want to do. Were you

[00:33:52] Jordan Harbinger: thinking I'm gonna make big blockbuster movies, or were you just like, I'm gonna just do whatever and I don't care how much money it

[00:33:58] Michael Arndt: makes? I'm That's fine. You know, it's funny that the thing that I really fell in love with with movies was, I remember the moment it was my whole family went and saw Apocalypse Now when it was first released.

And I remember that opening scene where you do a triple exposure of like the jungle panning across the jungle, Martin Sheen's face upside down, and the ceiling fan going, and that music from the Doors is playing. And I was a kid. I was like 14 or 15 years old. I'd never seen movies do something like that, you know?

And it was so lyrical and so beautiful. I was like, oh my God, this is art. Like this is art. I had been raised on Multiplex Fair. Right. And when I saw that and that whole movie just blew my mind, that's just like still one of my favorite movies. That's when I fell in love with movies and I really fell in love with the poetry of movies, the visual, the cinema of movies.

And I think it's a little ironic that I have ended up being this sort of story guy. 'cause when I started out, I kind of didn't care about story. I wanted, I, I loved Beautiful the Black Stallion, like these lyrical art films. But just like my first job out of film school was reading scripts and, and writing coverage on scripts.

That's how your brain gets trained, I guess. How many scripts do you think you read in your career? About a thou? I think about a thousand. I think I read about a thousand. Yeah. Wow. You know, most of them. Don't work. I think that, I mean, it does get very soul crushing to read one screenplay after another.

People have devoted six months a year of their life to writing this, and it's just gonna get read once and then get put on a shelf. And there's almost no field of human endeavor fraught with more disappointment and failure than screenwriting. And so, you know, when I started writing my own scripts, I was really determined that that wasn't gonna happen to me.

And I think that that's why I came up with this very rigorous, sort of analytical approach to story. I mean, there's two sides of, of storytelling. You, you wanna start, anytime you start writing, you're starting with the sort of intuitive emotional side of your brain, right? You're always connecting with something that's very, very instinctive, right?

But as you go through five drafts, 10 drafts, 15, 20 drafts of your story, you're gonna make this transition from the quick thinking, fast, intuitive, emotional part of your brain to the sort of more analytical part of your brain. So I think that, I mean, my training, reading a thousand scripts taught me, yes, you need great.

Dialogue and you need grade jokes and you need all the stuff that comes from your instincts, basically. But I also feel like you can use the other part of your brain to sit down, put a story up on blocks, sort of x-ray it, you know, in formal terms and going, why is this script working? Or why is it not working?

[00:36:25] Gabriel Mizrahi: Right? Because you said it's much easier to get your script read. And I was surprised to read you an interview where you said it's much easier even to get your script made into a movie than it is to write a really good script. Oh my God. So 99% of your effort, you said, should go into writing a good script.

You wrote what, 10 screenplays before you sold Little Miss Sunshine? Yeah. And my understanding is that from the time you seriously decided to be a writer till you sold your first screenplay, it was like, right. Yeah. It was about 10 years. It was like 10 years. What kept you going during that time, and why does it take so long to become a really good screenwriter?

[00:36:59] Michael Arndt: Delusional optimism, uh, was the thing that sort of kept me going. I think that the one, one thing that kept me going was that. I was told in film school that if you wanna be a writer, if you wanna break in, it's gonna take 10 years. And of course I thought, oh, I'm smarter than everyone. It'll, it'll only take me five years.

You know? But it almost, yeah,

[00:37:14] Jordan Harbinger: that sounds familiar.

[00:37:16] Michael Arndt: That's like running any business,

[00:37:18] Jordan Harbinger: delusional optimism and then like more delusion on top of that where you're like, everyone says it's gonna take a decade, but I got this. I've, I went to college for two years. I'm,

[00:37:26] Michael Arndt: trust me, I got this. And then also I got to enjoy the process of writing.

Like I got to enjoy, like there is an exhilaration to come up with an idea going, oh, this is gonna be really great. I will say that I had written 10 screenplays. Nothing had happened with any of them. None of them were, were especially great. Although I had written a little bit sunshine at that point, I just hadn't quite finished it.

And I was sitting down to write screenplay number 11 and I was in my thirties, like at this point. And I was just like, what am I doing with my life? Like, is there something else Yeah. That I can do with my life? 'cause like this isn't working out. And the one thing I'll pat myself on the back for is that I just kept going.

I sat down, I thought about it, I was like, you know, I love movies. I love being part of the community of movies and I just wanna be part of that. However it is, it was about six months later that I finally sold a Little Miss Sunshine. Wow. Wow. It's hard, right? Because you wanna tell

[00:38:13] Jordan Harbinger: people never give up on your dream, but then you're also be like, but sometimes you should because your dream is unrealistic and you should like actually get a career so that you can have a family or support yourself, or you don't have to work at a job you hate to actually make money.

It's a tough balance 'cause you could have quit then, but then you wouldn't have, of course, be where you are now if wouldn't have made Little Miss Sunshine and all these other amazing movies. Then there's also like a thousand other versions of you that just like never really cracked into it and are still totally picking up target groceries for Gwyneth Paltrow or something, right?

Like that's all they do. Do

[00:38:43] Gabriel Mizrahi: you think Gwyneth goes to Target? I don't think so. No.

[00:38:46] Jordan Harbinger: I know that was ridiculous. That was ridiculous. Whatever the equivalent of Target is for Gwyneth Paltrow, they're picking stuff up from there. Wan,

[00:38:53] Michael Arndt: I thought a lot about this. 'cause I feel like when you are a young person, what you're, one of the things you're choosing is you're choosing to enter a field and that field is gonna represent your values, right?

So if you wanna be a Marine, you go off and join the Marines, right? And you go from being a civilian, you become a Marine, right? Or if you want to be a Buddhist monk, right? You go off and join a monastery, that institutional monastery is gonna change you into the sort of the ideal of Buddhism like, or the ideal of being a marine or the ideal of whatever.

And so when I chose to be a screenwriter, it's not just that you're trying to get movies made and make money and be success, you're also just joining a community like, and you're finding people who are. Share your values. Share your interests. I think that if I hadn't ended up being a screenwriter, I would've been a development executive.

I would've been a producer, I would've been something else. Maybe a, I dunno, work as an editor or something like that. I would've done something just 'cause I love filmmaking so much. Yeah. I feel like I've been very, very lucky. And I think you have to acknowledge that like luck plays an enormous role in whether you're able to break through or not.

So I mean, I was very persistent. I worked for 10 years. I failed a lot, you know, 10 years of failure and disappointment. But I also felt like I was very deliberate in doing due diligence on all my screenplays and trying to figure out like, does this work or not? And you know, I wrote a hundred drafts, a little Miss Sunshine, like trying to get it to a point where it was gonna work massive and overwhelming force.

Like there was no way you can say no to this screenplay. So it's a big risk, you kind of jump off a cliff. But I also feel like I did it in a very methodical or kind of cautious way. Like I feel like no one's gonna be helped by. Putting another mediocre screenplay out in the world. And you've gotta be hard on yourself.

Like you've gotta be hard on your own material. You've gotta let it be judged by other people and you've gotta accept their judgements, right? Because if nine outta 10 people don't like your screenplay, it's pretty good bet that nine outta 10 people are not gonna like your movie. When I

[00:40:45] Jordan Harbinger: first started this show, 18, whatever years ago, I remember people listening and going, it's interesting stuff, but you talk way too fast.

And the other person talks way too slow, and I'm pretty sure it's you. That's the problem. So you need to slow down and the other person needs to speed up a little, but you really need to slow down. And also you have all these filler words that are distracting. And I remember being like, okay, I'm gonna fix all that.

And I told my friend about the criticism, and he is like, those people are just being mean. Like, you shouldn't listen to that. And I was like, no, I, I'm pretty sure I should listen to them because multiple people have told me the exact same thing. So they're probably right. I thought, oh, this might be the difference between people who like fix the problem.

Yeah, totally. And people who go and take it personally and are like, well, screw you. You

[00:41:29] Michael Arndt: don't like me, like you don't support me. I feel like screenwriting requires almost a degree of masochism. Like it still doesn't work. It still doesn't work. You know, everyone goes, oh, it's great. It's fine. Send the script out.

You go, no, no, you're all lying to me. Like, tell me what still doesn't work. Like you've got to really, really kick the tires on your story and you've got to be hard on yourself, like you're hard on yourself. So it makes everyone else's job easier. It's gonna make the actor's job easier, the director's job easier.

The harder you on yourself, the better your screenplay is, the easier everyone else's job is gonna be. And so you've got to just kick the tires on your story. People can be peevish, like people can be assholes about your story, right? But you've gotta suck it up. Like those are the people that are gonna be sitting in your audience.

Billy Wilder had a great quote where he was talking about the audience and he said, uh, individually. They're idiots, but collectively they're a genius. Ah. You know, and I think that you, I love it. You have to respect the genius of your audience, right? Your audience is smarter than you. And so you have to be humble and you have to listen to the feedback you're getting.

That's what Pixar really taught me was being at Pixar and the big feedback mechanism they have there. I have questions about that masochism, Gabriel,

[00:42:35] Jordan Harbinger: you hear that? That actually explains a lot about your

[00:42:36] Michael Arndt: personality, Gabriel.

[00:42:38] Jordan Harbinger: Um,

[00:42:39] Gabriel Mizrahi: gotta keep taking it. Hmm.

[00:42:40] Jordan Harbinger: It's all clear to me now. The genius of the audience thing is really interesting.

'cause Gabriel and I, we look at a lot of feedback, email, dms, there's a subreddit for the show for people who are on Reddit. But a lot of people go, I really don't like this. But then the beauty of Reddit is people will go, actually, I really like that about it. And then 20 people will say, I like this, but I kind of don't like this other thing in, in Gabriel and i's collective brain.

We have this giant. I don't know, spreadsheet of this is kind of working and we love it, but maybe we need to tone it down 20% and see if people still complain about the way that this sounds. Sometimes there's 10 of those irons in whatever fire we have going. I'm mixing metaphors, as you can tell. I'm not a screenwriter, and those are always kind of getting fine tuned at some level, and that's been happening for like a decade or whatever by this point.

[00:43:30] Michael Arndt: There's a certain point where you just recognize you're not gonna make everybody happy. Well, that's for sure. Yeah. There's just a certain point where you're just like, fuck it, this is the script I wanna see, or I think this joke is funny. I don't care. I'm putting it in there. Like I think it's funny.

There's a certain point where you just have to. You can't please everybody if you try, you'd never make a movie, right? There's a certain moment of madness where you just have to jump off the cliff and go, okay, we're doing this. Like, or I'm sending the script out or whatever. It's,

[00:43:55] Jordan Harbinger: you mentioned Pixar. I gotta imagine, and I, I think, I feel like I've heard this as well, working at Pixar is kind of like you mentioned the Marines before.

It's like the Marines of storytelling. It sounds really intense, brutal at times. How did you end up at Pixar and what did you learn there?

[00:44:09] Michael Arndt: It was completely outta the blue. I had written the script for a little Miss Sunshine. It was being shot actually in the summer of 2005. So the movie hadn't been released yet.

It had, they hadn't even finished shooting it yet. And Pixar had gotten their hands on a copy of the script and they read it and they really liked it and they brought me up and interviewed me and they were looking for someone to work with the director, Lee Unrich, on an original idea that he had. And so I met with Lee at sort of three interviews.

I made it over the bar kind of each time, and they hired me. And then that was right before the merger with Disney happens. So when. The Disney merger happened, that was when they sort of asked Lee to take over Toy Story three and do it. And my joke is that they all go into a meeting and they're like, okay, this is it.

We're gonna make Toy Story three. And then at the end of the meeting they're like, wait a minute, we need somebody to write it. Uh, you, yeah. What is it you do again over here? So bro's assistant, get over here, you're writing the script.

[00:45:04] Gabriel Mizrahi: Target bags and hands.

[00:45:05] Michael Arndt: Exactly. The guy standing in the hallway was like, we need some, some Porsche to write this thing.

Uh, how about you? Yeah, like I just gotta drop off this milk. I'll be right back. Yeah. So I feel like I was really lucky to be at Pixar from Oui to, uh, toy Story three. It was Rati Wally up and then Toy Story three, and then I worked on Inside Out while Toy Story three was still being finished. I mean, it's just a great, great experience.

They really had this great. Collaborative culture. I was credited with writing Toy Story three, but it was really like co-writers were Andrew, Stan, Leon Critch and John Lasseter, and then about 20 other people that were all helping to get that script. Wow. To where it was. So it was probably 10 people for three years working full-time on that script.

So 10 Man Years of Labor. Wow. For 93 minute movie.

[00:45:52] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. You call it collaborative. It sounds collaborative and loving, and it also sounds absolutely brutal and unforgiving because with that many great storytellers in the room, it sounds like everybody is putting every story element under the microscope and pushing it to the best possible version, which would explain why Pixar movies are so good.

But what is it like to be a creative in that environment? It's,

[00:46:19] Michael Arndt: my job is that it's the greatest job in the world except for the soul crushing anxiety that comes along with it. Yeah, sure. Because, uh, I remember I had been hired to do a Toy Story three, and after like six months I was like, Hey, I wonder what the Rotten Tomato score for the first Toy Story movie is. So I go Look it up.

It's like a hundred percent no pressure. And I was like, well, I wonder what the rot tomatoes. Yeah. What's rot tomatoes for Toy Story? Uh, two. And it was a hundred percent, you know, so it's just like, okay, you got your work cut out for you. Also, leading up to that. Rat, oui, Wally and Up had all been nominated for Best screenplay and then Up had been nominated for Best Picture.

Yeah,

[00:46:52] Gabriel Mizrahi: no big

[00:46:53] Michael Arndt: deal. Don't

[00:46:53] Jordan Harbinger: get a 98 or you have completely failed everyone here at Pixar and in the United States slash the entire planet.

[00:47:00] Michael Arndt: Well, and if you don't freaking get on Oscar nomination for your screenplay, you're like, what a loser. The last three guys got a nomination. What? What's your problem like?

Like this one was in the Bag Pal. How did you blow this? The

[00:47:10] Gabriel Mizrahi: pressure?

[00:47:11] Michael Arndt: Yeah. Yeah. How do you blow it? Listen man, it was so much anxiety and stress for like three years. I felt like, 'cause it was also building on the first two movies like, and so I felt like I was the guy. They sent the wide receiver down to the end zone and they threw this like Hail Mary.

And I'm sitting there in the end zone going, please don't call this. Please don't drop this. You know, like,

[00:47:28] Gabriel Mizrahi: right.

[00:47:29] Michael Arndt: Oh my God. The other thing was that like we were figuring out the story as we went along. Like it wasn't like we had this super clear idea right from the start. I mean, we had a beginning of middle and end, but there were tons of adjustments.

I. That were made along the way. It's like having a story problem that you can't solve yet. You know, the script is not working, but you don't know how to fix it. It's like having this itch that you can't scratch. It's just, it can be really, really, really, really agonizing, but also like totally exhilarating.

Like some of the best, happiest moments in my life where in those Pixar story meetings where you have like 10 smart people in a room and like the ideas are clicking along and it just like is really, really exhilarating. I feel very, very lucky. I was there like when I was

[00:48:07] Gabriel Mizrahi: so torturous, but exquisite in certain moments.

It sounds like I'm

[00:48:12] Jordan Harbinger: imagining him winning this Oscar and everyone's like, oh my God, what are you gonna do now? And he's like, I need a nap, so I'm gonna go take a nap.

[00:48:19] Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm quitting the business.

[00:48:20] Michael Arndt: They asked me like, you know, do you want write Toy Story four? I was like, I, I feel like I just put on a blindfold and ran across the freeway and I didn't get killed.

And now like, you're going, do you wanna do that again? I was like, you know what, I did it one time. No, exactly. Where's the nearest target, sir?

[00:48:34] Gabriel Mizrahi: Take me there. But look, I mean these are some of the most beloved franchises in history, toy stories, star Wars. I mean, I have to imagine the pressure you described is stressing me out.

I didn't even have to do it. But also you're trying to honor the history of those movies by. I imagine offering something new and unexpected while you also take into account those audience expectations. You talked about, do you think a lot about nostalgia and honoring the past while you're pushing things forward?

Is it intense to deal with the expectations of these super diehard fans?

[00:49:06] Michael Arndt: It's funny. It's very important to have fidelity to the universe that you're setting up and to those characters, right? And I remember every once in a while when I started working on Toy Story three, someone would say like, oh, that doesn't sound like Woody.

Like Woody would never say that. Yeah, I mean, there's big guardrails on the story, but I think that the danger on something like Toy Story three is you're gonna resort to sort of cute blandness, or you're gonna be sort of repeating yourself a little bit. And I remember my resolution was that I want the script to be funny, not just sort of ah, chuckle, chuckle funny, but like really funny.

And I want it to be weird also. Like I want there to be sort of unexpected, strange things that make sense within the logic of a toy universe, right? But that you would never think of yourself. So like. You got, Lazo is the bad guy. Big baby is the heavy who,

who, who is his enforcer. And um, you're trying to elaborate on what, what's come before, but remain consistent. I think that it's just a balance. They're always trying to walk to remain true to the spirit of the original stuff and still expand on the universe and the characters.

[00:50:08] Jordan Harbinger: I read that you sometimes don't take credit on certain projects that you're hired to rewrite.

I guess I'm jumping back to some of the script doctory kind of stuff, or you use like a pseudonym, a fake name. Why is that? What's going on there?

[00:50:19] Michael Arndt: Yeah, it's, I, thanks for asking. I guess it's kind of a stupid thing, but I remember I, man, I worked at Little Miss Sunshine for like four years to get that movie made major investment in my life.

I wrote a hundred drafts of that script for Toy Story three. I worked on that script for three years and was very happy. That got my name on the, on the movie and it came out. And then, this was at the beginning of my script doctoring career. I was hired to work on the film Oblivion as a script doctor, and I went and I did two weeks of work, just not expecting to get credit at all.

What I did was I changed it from the opening and the ending. The script I got made it out to be a war movie. It was like an alien invasion, you know, we fought back against them, blah, blah, blah. And when they sent me the script, I was like, this is actually a love story. This is about a guy who's haunted by dreams of a woman that he's never met.

So I sort of, I rewrote the beginning. I rewrote the ending, and that changed the nature of the movie from being kind of just this war movie to being a love story. And very surprisingly, 'cause I only worked on that script for two weeks, the studio elected to give me credit on it. And I was just like, man, these aren't my characters.

This isn't my story. I only worked on this thing for two weeks. It just is a different kind of writing. Like Little Miss Sunshine came out of me, it came outta my personal experience. It's an expression of who I am. And I worked on it for four years, right? And then with Oblivion, I'm just coming in to somebody else's script.

I'm making little adjustments here and there. It just felt like two completely different kinds of writing. And so I thought I'll just use a pseudonym for stuff that I'm doing if I'm not hired to do the full screenplay, if I'm only coming in and making adjustments to someone else's work. I just wanna make a distinction between the writing I do as, as sort of an artist and the writing I do as sort of a craftsman.

It does make sense.

[00:51:55] Jordan Harbinger: It makes a lot of sense. Do you think that quality, maybe humility, generosity, do you think that's helped you in the industry

[00:52:00] Michael Arndt: at all? Yeah. You know, there've been scripts, a couple of scripts. I mean, star Wars was one of them where I was given first position in the credits. You know, when they arbitrate what the credits look like, whoever contributed the most should be in first position in the credits.

And I was offered first position in the Force Awakens. I think that that final screenplay has maybe like three lines of dialogue that I wrote, and the rest was rewritten by Larry and jj. So, I mean, I think that the whole structure that we came up with is, I mean, again, like the studio decided, I had contributed more to the final script than Larry and jj, but I thought, you know, it's, it doesn't feel like it's my story, like it's really theirs.

It's their characters, it's all their dialogue. So I, I. Elected just to step back and take second position in the credits. They probably appreciated that, I would say. Right, because they probably agreed with you, I would assume, right?

[00:52:50] Clip: Yeah. I'm not, because

[00:52:51] Michael Arndt: guys, I feel like I was being a credit hog to, to try and be in first position when the sensibility that's reflected in the final film is more, I mean, the story was what we all came up with together, but the sensibility reflected in the final movie is, is more Larry h jj than it is me.

[00:53:05] Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of keeping your audience on the hook and wanting more, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Audible. If you wanna understand how we can actually stop mass shootings, trigger points by Mark Fullman is a must listen in our audible FULLMAN dives into the world of forensic psychologists, FBI agents and experts who are actually preventing these tragedies before they happen.

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It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Michael Arnt, one of the big conversations in the industry, right? Well, every industry right now is ai, right? What role it should play in movies and TVs freaking out. Everybody in LA right now, or at least in Hollywood.

Broadly speaking, it seems like there's two camps. There's people like Justine Bateman who are like, get this technology away from our art. It's unethical. It's dehumanizing. And then there's other people saying, Hey, okay, maybe, but you can't stop this technology. It's gonna make our stories better. It's gonna make the industry more efficient.

Where do you land on the AI in

[00:55:58] Michael Arndt: Hollywood debate? It's a very sensitive subject, so I'm treading carefully here. I think that within the spectrum of optimism and pessimism, we'll use AI to make you sound better, so, so whatever you say now, we'll just redo it with ai. Don't worry. Good, good, good, good, good, good.

I think as a screenwriter, you kind of have to be an optimist. Here's an argument that I'll make, and this may turn out to be, not to be the case, and this may turn out to, I could be completely wrong, but I think one of the arguments that you could make is that I had a meeting with a guy who was running a generative AI company, and he said like, production costs are gonna come down like 90%, 95%.

Wow. And I was just like, oh, you mean like in 10 years? He's like, no, in like two years. And I don't know if that's true, but I think that there's a lot of screenplays, including a few of my own, that don't get made because the budget doesn't make sense. I had a script about two years ago that made it up to the top of the decision ladder at a studio and I wanted to direct it and they said to me, we would make this movie if it costs half of what the budget is.

I

see.

[00:57:04] Michael Arndt: I wrote this comedy, it's very dark, very spiky comedy. It's like the darkest comedy of all time. And they were like, we love this script and we wanna make it, but it's just too expensive. We can't justify it. If AI can cut the cost of, of making movies just even by 50%, right? It's gonna allow a lot more movies to be made and I think it's gonna allow sort of fresh voices, sort of spicier or stranger stories to get made.

I think it's going to give writers, actually, I'm hoping more control. So I think that in the optimism and pessimism debate. I totally realize that there's a dystopian alternative, right? There's a way in which like Amazon and Apple and whoever else just start cranking out the McDonald's of, of storytelling and you're just getting Yeah.

Bland, homogenous product. You could argue that we're kind of already at that place, like we're already seeing a lot of superhero movies, stuff that's not super adventurous. I think that if AI is actually gonna fulfill the promise of bringing down costs, to me, what that hopefully promises is that it's gonna lessen the importance of the money people, the gatekeepers, the people who are providing the money, and it's gonna empower the creative people, right?

If films become much, much cheaper, it's just gonna take away power from the money people and give more power to the creative people.

[00:58:23] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I was thinking earlier I. I wonder what he thinks it's gonna take for Hollywood to stop making sequels or reboots or IP based stories and start prioritizing original screenplays again.

And the answer is, make it cost 5% of what the other thing. And so that it doesn't have to make $98 million to break even. So it has to be like this name brand thing. It could be like, Hey, we can totally experiment with this indie offbeat designed for the Southeast Asian market thing because it's gonna cost $3 million instead of $30 million.

Here's

[00:58:58] Michael Arndt: the most optimistic take, right? Which is I have a, let's say a science fiction film. In the current climate, it would never get made 'cause it's a big science fiction film that costs a hundred, $150 million if I can use AI to make that film for a fraction of that. There was a story about a guy, I won't say his name, but he made a independent film, cost $200,000.

He just invested his own money into it. It was a big hit, made a hundred million dollars worldwide, and he, as a director, who owned the copyright, owned the negative, made $40 million. And I think that there is an opportunity, again, like if AI can bring down costs, again, I recognize this is the optimistic scenario.

It may not work out this way. To me, the Holy Grail is having writers and directors be empowered enough that they can make their own movies and own the copyright, right, and control it. And so we're not renting our talent out to these giant corporations that control the purse strings, right? If AI can bring costs down enough, it's going to a let a thousand flowers bloom like the, it'll be a lot easier to get movies made.

And yes, there'll be a lot of mediocrity. Like there'll be a lot of stuff like movies that shouldn't have gotten made and just got made because it was possible to get them made. I think it's gonna allow for, again, sort of spicier Otter stranger stories to be told, or movies to be made. And I think that there's a possibility, and this may be very utopian of me, but there's a possibility that by.

Cutting costs so much, it's going to again, disempower the money people, empower the creative people, and even the Holy Grail would be leading to artists owning throughout work. Yeah,

[01:00:34] Jordan Harbinger: that's an interesting take, right? It's really gonna be interesting to see how this plays out in every single industry. I like the idea of disempowering the money people, because, especially with the Hollywood stuff, because it really.

The more I learn about it, the more I'm like, it's all risk, it's all connections and it's all, does this already make money? And it's like, that's just like the opposite of creating something new and interesting.

[01:00:53] Michael Arndt: Right. I think that, I think that, listen, I know I'm afraid I'm gonna get blow back because I'm being pangalos and I'm being too optimistic about this stuff.

And I, I totally recognize like there's a way in which if things go wrong, right? It, there's a way in which you just have producers hitting buttons. Gimme a mystery thriller, gimme a Superman era movie, give me whatever. And that's what we're gonna get. And I think that the general, my take is rather contrarian.

I think most people tend to be siding on the side of pessimism. And they could be right. And I could be completely wrong. Well, time will tell. Time will tell. I just, or both could be right. I think that there's a case to be made for the fact that it's gonna hopefully end up being a tool that empowers creative people rather than disempowers them.

[01:01:33] Jordan Harbinger: More likely. There's just gonna be so much content that yes, some of it's gonna be like AI produced this entire thing. There's gonna be some app for your television that's just AI created cartoons for every single age, every single language, every single genre. But most people won't wanna do that. That'll be like the crap you put on when your kid is trying to fall asleep or something.

Right? It won't be like, I'm gonna sit down and watch all this. It'll just be like, crap that's out there, like junk tv. And then there'll be the good stuff. Like hopefully the good stuff that actually, you know, humans have worked on in concert with AI to make it really spectacular, but not cost $150 million to get out the gate.

[01:02:08] Michael Arndt: There's already software out there where you can just, you hit a button and you go, give me a song that's, uh, mid tempo, blah, blah blah with lyrics about blah, blah, blah. And you hit the button and you get that song. But I don't think people are, are using that. Like people don't wanna listen to just like bespoke songs that only they know.

Part of the function of art is creating a community, right? People wanna go see Taylor Swift, they want to see her sing her own songs. They want to know that she's written her own songs. That's based on her experience, her life, her human experience, right? It's gonna create a community where everybody can go and sing along, right?

So we all know these songs. Like that's what Art does, creates a community around us. And I think that there's this weird Silicon Valley thing that like now we're all gonna get to make our own individual movies that are gonna be custom made for us. But I don't think people want that. I mean, this is what happened with Barbie, right?

Was it became this cultural phenomenon. Like you went to see Barbie 'cause it was the Barbie movie and you were gonna be able to take part in this broader cultural conversation. And I also feel like, like Warner Brothers could have just had a synthetic Barbie in a synthetic Kent, right? They come out of a computer, people don't want that.

People wanna see Margo, Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Playing Barbie and Ken, they want to see human people. So I think there's a lot of panic now in sort of actors being replaced, writers being replaced because you can just hit a button and have this stuff happen. I mean, maybe there's people out there that are just sitting there like making their own music and only listening to that.

But I don't think that's the reason that people take art. Like they want to take in something that they feel a human connection to. And that also creates a community. That's true. And

[01:03:34] Jordan Harbinger: also like the more niche and hipster something is the smaller that community is, but they're still, it's not cool if you're the only one in it.

Right? If you're a club, get a club, you're the only person in it. That's no fun. Right. You want some people in there. You just wanna make it exclusive and that's the trick. Right? That's the Before it was cool. I've heard you say that you often write the ending of a movie and then you work backward, or you find a point in the story you're really excited about and you figure out how you can believably get there.

I'm curious, have you applied that to your career at all? I mean, and by the way, y'all like how I asked that question at the end. Very meta, very mindful,

[01:04:08] Michael Arndt: man. My career is just stumbling blindly, you know, from one obstacle to another and like a series of near disasters and close escapes. I think that I didn't know how I ended up with a career I ended up with.

The goal was always to be a director. I think I have two or three scripts now that I feel like are ready to be shot. I'm hoping I'll be shooting sometime next year. You know what the honest truth is that I feel as though I've only recently really mastered the craft of writing, and I think that I only recently felt really comfortable that I know what I'm doing.

That just only a couple of years ago, and I think for the first 30 years of my career, I was still a student. Like I was still figuring things out. You know, I'd written a bunch of scripts and it was a little bit like throwing darts at the dartboard, right? And when Little Miss Sunshine came out and was such a big success, it felt like I had thrown a darn, it hit.

Bullseye. But I was like, wait a minute, how did I do that? Like, how did that happen? Because I feel like I, I was not, I still didn't understand stories and how storytelling worked. And I think that a lot of my career, I mean, this is what was so great about working at Pixar, was that I was still learning, I was still figuring out how stories work, watching Wally get made, watching up, get made, watching all that stuff get made, and then doing it myself, and then making these videos.

Like the videos have been helpful to me just in sort of clarifying, articulating like the organic logic of the story. How do stories really work? And so the truth is, uh, it is, maybe everyone else is smarter than me and I'm just a dumb guy, but for me, it's really hard to write these. Oh yeah, that's definitely it.

Right? It's really hard to write a great screenplay that, that you really love. And I think that when I wrote Little Miss Sunshine, I wanted to direct it. And that didn't happen. It took me a long, long time to write it, another two or three original screenplays that I love as much as I love that movie. And so I feel like I'm, I'm knock on wood, I'm ready to, to start directing those things now, but I think that what's been guiding my career up until this point is.

Kind of the sense of like, I'm still figuring this out because storytelling is so difficult and so mysterious and also powerful. Like I feel like movies have huge influence on your lives. Like movies can change your life, right? I think it's an enormous responsibility also. And you don't wanna be putting crap out there.

So I think that, you know, when I look back at my career, I could have been more bold. I could have been more, what the hell? I'm gonna try it. But I think that, uh, I was really still invested in trying to figure out sort of how stories work. I watch, I'll make my next movie, I'll make a, I'll direct it and the script will be terrible and people will go like, like what were you thinking?

You know, you wasted 30 Oh man should have stuck with Toy Story four. Exactly. There's been no logic to my career or the the direction of my career other than work with good people. Take the opportunities when they come along and always put yourself in a position where you feel like you're learning something.

I love that. Michael Arn,

[01:06:50] Jordan Harbinger: thank you very much. This is awesome. I know we are kind of. Stuck in a weave in between scheduling and stuff and it's, it's really cool to have you on. Oh

[01:06:58] Michael Arndt: listen, thank you so, so much. And if I can just put in the plug for my screenwriting videos, like you can go on YouTube and I think just put in my name, Michael Art and Screenwriting videos.

We'll link to it in the show notes.

[01:07:08] Jordan Harbinger: Definitely. Because we want people to check that stuff out. 'cause that's, that'd be great. They're great resources. Gabriel's devouring those probably has all of them bookmarked. And it's cool that you make those. For other people, but also sort of secretly, not so secretly for yourself.

So you can clarify your thinking. It, there really is something to creating things and clarifying your I, I'll read a whole book by somebody and I'm like, okay, I kind of get it. And then I do the show and I'm like, oh, every, it hammers down every nail in that hatch.

[01:07:33] Michael Arndt: Totally, totally, totally. And also, I feel like this is, I'm making the videos that I wish I had seen when I was starting out.

Like I'm making the videos that I wish somebody had made for me. Right. And I think that figuring out, like the knowledge about like external stakes, internal stakes, and philosophical stakes, figuring all that stuff out took me a long, long time. I would hate to have all that knowledge just for me to get hit by a bus and have all that knowledge disappear.

Yeah. So I wanted to just like, just sit down and make these videos, put them out there, and hopefully people can find them helpful.

[01:08:00] Gabriel Mizrahi: They're such a great resource and I'm very, very grateful for them. Thank you for making them.

[01:08:04] Michael Arndt: Thank you. And I think that I'll just say like, I'm making this new thing about how to write a good first act.

It'll probably be about 60 minutes long. The examples I'm using are from the Godfather, Cinderella, tsi, and, and the bicycle thief. And all those fur acts are just totally dynamite. Totally great. And they all work in sort of the same way. If people are wondering if I'm gonna make a new video Yeah. There's one that'll be out in, I dunno, I'm very, these things take a long time so it'll It'll come out when it comes out.

[01:08:30] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, no problem. By the way, you said you're gonna direct something. Is there, and I'm putting you on the spot live because this is ensuring my success here. Is there any way for people to come visit film sets while something is being shot, or is that super annoying and distracting and not cool at all?

Because I've never seen a movie get made at all, and I'm like, I want to check this out.

[01:08:47] Michael Arndt: You're invited, man. You're invited. If I'm making a movie, it's uh, hopefully we'll be shooting in New York. If you're gonna be in New York while we're shooting, come by and you can go to the craft service and get all the free food.

Yeah, that's what I'm, I want free food and I want

[01:08:59] Jordan Harbinger: to see how a movie gets made. Brownies. Not necessarily a matter. Brownies and m and ms. Right. Perfect. Michael, thank you so much, man. Really good to see you. Really great to talk with you. Okay, take care. Thanks so much. Take care. You guys. If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to check out, we talk to legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone on why the American media is partially culpable for the state of the world interviewing Vladimir Putin and so much more.

Here's a quick bite.

[01:09:26] Clip II: I went to Vietnam because as I tried to say in the book. Partly suicidal. It was a death instinct. It was like, I have no place in the world. I come out of Vietnam and I'm completely zonked and I'm back in civilian society. I'm free. No one's telling me what to do. I don't know his soul.

So I go over to Mexico, get bombed, laid all that stuff, get crazy. Few days, come back in a zoned out and come back at midnight trying to cross back the border in midnight, carrying my Vietnamese grass, which I'd smuggled back from Vietnam. Of course, I get stupidly busted. Federal smuggling charge five to 20 years.

Oh my

[01:10:01] Clip: God. Yeah. Serious. That's a crazy punishment. How much grass are we talking about? That's two ounces. That's ridiculous. Maybe less. I heard you once put LSD in your dad's drink at a party. That's a bold move, man. Yeah. Why not? Because he needed it.

[01:10:16] Clip II: What? What do you mean? His attitude on the war was fucked.

I put a heavy dose of orange sunshine into his scotch. Man. I really dumped it in and he

[01:10:24] Clip: got so fucking high. He never knew what hit him. Do you think you could make a movie like Platoon Now? Do you think an American studio would touch a movie like that these days?

[01:10:32] Clip II: No. No. Not with friendly fire and killing civilians and, no, it's impossible now.

National Security Cinema read it. He goes into detail on some 800 movies the Pentagon has worked on. You have no idea the influence how deep they've gotten. What I've said to you at this interview is important. You know, if you think about it, listen to it again, you'll see why it's suffocation is in order here.

[01:10:59] Jordan Harbinger: I. For more, including the lesson Oliver Stone Learned when he was a cab driver prior to becoming a world famous director. Check out episode 4 1 1 on the Jordan Harbinger show. That was a lot of fun. Co-hosting these with Gabriel's is always just so fun. I love doing that. We should do more of these. I say that every time.

I should probably listen to myself at some point. All things Michael La will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter wee bit wiser.

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Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute Networking over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn where the mostly sort of sane people seem to be these days. This show is created in association with Podcast one.

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