Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat

David Silverman: You need to, assemble, uh, some people in your life who are good writers and usually that could be a person in the screenwriting class that you’re taking. It really helps to have a mentor in this business send your script around too. But if you take their class and you show them really good work, then, uh, you’re likely to impress somebody who can really help you in your career.

Steve Cuden: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative mind. Story explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us, uh, as we discover how talented creators find success in the

David Silverman: worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Well, I’m delighted that my guest today, the prolific screenwriter David Silverman, is back on Story Beat for the second time. David has written for stars like Robin Williams, Bob Newhart, Roseanne Barr, Drew Carey, Sarah Silverman, Pee Wee Herman and others. David has co created five TV series and written and produced on more than 30 different series, including hugely popular shows like Newhart, Roseanne, One Day at a Time, the Jeffersons, Alice Dilbert and South Park. David co created the Wild Thornberrys, which spawned two feature films, the Wild Thornberrys Movie and Rugrats Go Wild. Other feature films David has co written include Stepping Out, Purple Haze and the Flintstones Movie. As a Stanford educated psychotherapist, David’s treated and coached aspiring writers, many of whom who’ve gone on to sell their own feature films and TV shows. David and his wife Rogina, who is also a writer and editor, recently collaborated on their excellent book, how to Be a Rock Star Screenwriter, which contains some of the best advice I’ve read on the mindset that ambitious screen and TV writers need to succeed. Unlike most books on screenwriting, how to Be a Rock Star Screenwriter is filled with solid advice for those dealing with the challenging psychological issues facing writers who wish to work in Hollywood as well as for those who are already successful screenwriters. I urge anyone hoping to make it as a professional writer in Hollywood to check out this very wise book. David and I have known one another for many decades, connected by our mutual friend, the late great Steve Sstarsik. David and Steve were a well known, highly successful sitcom writing team. They wrote and produced hundreds of TV scripts together. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a real joy for me to welcome back to Story Beat the screenwriter, author, therapist and and My friend, David Silverman. David, it’s great to have you on the show for the second time.

David Silverman: Yeah, good to be here.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s great to see you. So, uh, let’s take a look at where you are today. Uh, you already did one show and we talked about your history, so we’re going to skip over that a little bit, as I typically do at the beginning of almost every show. But at this point in your life and career, do you now think of yourself as primarily a screenwriter, a therapist, a nonfiction book writer, or. Or are they all of a piece?

David Silverman: Interesting? Uh, yeah, I think it changes depending on what day it is. You know, right now I’m not working on a book or a script, so I’m a therapist.

Steve Cuden: You’re a therapist because you’re not working on this, but when you are, then you’re that. Right.

David Silverman: So I do have some kind of. I juggle some ideas. Screenplay. Um. Ideas.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

David Silverman: And, um, TV pilot. I did work on a TV pilot recently. I feel like I was a writer.

Steve Cuden: So you’re still working on scripts, just not sort of every day like you did in the past.

David Silverman: Right. And not getting paid for it is the other key?

Steve Cuden: Well, you, you and, um, you know, 500,000 other writers in Los Angeles. So, uh, let me ask you, from a psychological standpoint, why do you think it is that we tell each other’s stories? What’s the purpose of storytelling in the psychological sense?

David Silverman: Yeah, no, I think it’s very integral to, you know, how we communicate, how, how people learn. Probably cavemen were telling each other stories as they wrote those little pictures of buffalo and things.

Steve Cuden: Hieroglyphics.

David Silverman: Hieroglyphics, right. Um, yeah, I think. And I think there’s also a need to be heard, you know, that I feel when I’m doing psychotherapy, people need to be heard. You know, that’s a very big deal. And I try to be there when they vent or rant.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that that was true for you too, throughout your career, that you needed to be heard?

David Silverman: Um, yeah, you know, so, um, I did start out like before Steve and everything, as I used to memorize Bill Cosby, uh, and recite them back to my Boy Scout friends who were like a captured audience that had to listen to me do why is their heir,

Steve Cuden: you know, to fill up volleyballs, David.

David Silverman: And, uh, yeah. And then When I was 12, my brother and I, we used to listen to this, um, program, Loman and Barkley. Uh, it was like a local LA show. And they were funny. They had this contest, Loman and barkley lemonade. They said, uh, they wanted everybody to, you know, anybody who wanted to enter the cocktail for loan and barkley lemonade. And so my brother and I, we had an old woollen sack, uh, tape recorder, you know, reel to reel. And we, uh, did, uh. I think we just. We flushed the toilet, and we, uh, said, lemon and barkley lemonade cleans like a white tornado or something like that. And those guys liked it. And they had us come into their studio, like in Hollywood, and rerecord it with them. And, um, so right away, I got the idea that maybe I could do something with this humor.

Steve Cuden: How old were you at this time?

David Silverman: 12? Yeah, my brother was four years younger. He was like eight.

Steve Cuden: So that was your first real taste of show business then, right?

David Silverman: Right. Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, I used to show up at engineer Bill when he showed up at a sharp shop, like, uh, a Kmart or something. And my parents would take me to meet him. He was a TV personality. Uh, but, yeah, this is the first time I actually created something people paid attention. Probably got it in my head that this was going to be easy street, you know?

Steve Cuden: Yeah, it’s totally easy street, isn’t it? That’s why you have so many clients.

David Silverman: Right?

Steve Cuden: So, you know the old line, the famous line is, dying is easy, but comedy is hard.

David Silverman: It is hard. Yeah, that’s very true.

Steve Cuden: I know it’s almost impossible to define, but you’ve now had also not only years of writing it, but years of talking to people about, I assume, a certain amount of comedy writing can you think of or say what you think makes comedy so difficult to do? Well?

David Silverman: Hmm. M. That’s a very good question. I did notice that, um, some of the smartest people make the best comedy. Writers like Al Jean and Mike Reese went to Harvard, and I think Al Jean was a mathematician. You know, he’s like. He majored in math. And I was kind of like that, too. Kind of a geek.

Steve Cuden: So we should let the listeners know who Al Jean and Mike Reese are. They wrote on the Simpsons forever, right?

David Silverman: Yeah, they were, uh. They ran the Simpsons for a long time. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: So why do you think that being smart is. Then makes you better at figuring out how to write comedy?

David Silverman: Yeah, it seems like there has to be like a. A delay in the thought process. And being clever, you kind of figure out how to be one step ahead of the audience. And once it’s that little step where they catch up with you, I think, is where the laugh that’s recognition oh, yeah, yeah. That’s kind of clever.

Steve Cuden: Someone who I am not remembering at this moment once said that comedy is tragedy plus time.

David Silverman: Yeah, Lenny Bruce said that.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, Lenny Bruce, yeah.

David Silverman: He was among a lot. Probably a lot of people.

Steve Cuden: Well, it seems like that there’s a certain degree of truth to that. I mean, I don’t think it’s true in every case, but a lot of truth to it.

David Silverman: Right. And there’s a certain amount of. Sometimes the biggest laughs come from making fun of somebody. Right. So it’s a. There’s a little bit of, like, uh, twisting the knife. Sometimes it’s you’re being mean, but you’re kind of covering up the meanness by being clever. Some of the biggest laughs come from doing that. Like, you know, uh, what do they call that they roast and star, Everybody gets up and makes fun of.

Steve Cuden: Right. It’s a little bit of schadenfreude. Uh, I think.

David Silverman: Yeah. Okay, that’s a good term.

Steve Cuden: All right. So why did you become a therapist after all those years of writing comedy?

David Silverman: So, you know, I had always wanted to be a therapist when I went to. So I went to a big college, Stanford University, with the best. The best psychology department in the country. And I majored in psychology.

Steve Cuden: As an undergrad or a grad?

David Silverman: As an undergrad.

Steve Cuden: As an undergrad.

David Silverman: And then I did go back to a, uh, different university and get my master’s in. But, uh, you know, so I was. I had honors in psychology and, uh, from a big deal university. My parents paid a fortune for me to go there, and they’re very disappointed when I became a comedy writer.

Steve Cuden: You probably made at least as much money as a comedy writer as you ever would have as a therapist, right?

David Silverman: Yeah. Therapists don’t make a lot of money. Yeah, that’s true. They do these studies on masters, so you get a master’s in clinicals. It’s one of the least paying. Like you’d rather be an engineer or, you know, or a chemist or anything else. So it doesn’t pay very well.

Steve Cuden: So at what point. Going back to when you started to get into the business, at what point. The business of Hollywood. At what point did you think to yourself, I am pretty good as a writer of this comedy thing. Was there a moment where you had

David Silverman: that epiphany, you know? Um, so I also took creative writing classes from this guy who wrote presumed.

Steve Cuden: Scott Turow.

David Silverman: Scott Turow. And he. He was a TA at Stanford, so. Before he was famous.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

David Silverman: So I was hanging out with guys who listened to Fireside Theater Records. And I don’t know if you know what that is.

Steve Cuden: Do you know that Phil Proctor has been on this show twice?

David Silverman: That’s right. I was very impressed to see that.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, yeah, I know Firestine very well.

David Silverman: So we used to. Of course you’re smoking pot in a dorm room. And one of my friends designed his dorm room. He put foil up on all four walls of his dorm room.

Steve Cuden: Okay.

David Silverman: He said it was the. So it was designed as the inside of a hash pipe.

Steve Cuden: That sounds like a Steve Sostarsic idea, doesn’t it?

David Silverman: Yeah. So I used to hang out with Steve like people, even before I met Steve.

Steve Cuden: Right.

David Silverman: And uh, for the listeners that don’t

Steve Cuden: know, Steve Sistarsik was about the most out there human being I’ve ever known. And I’m sure David will agree with me. Steve was on another planet when it came to thinking.

David Silverman: Yeah, yeah. Which made him an original thinker.

Steve Cuden: Very much so.

David Silverman: Very personally bad ideas, but sometimes really

Steve Cuden: difficult to deal with. But he was a, uh, truly unique writer of comedy. I mean he was unique.

David Silverman: Yeah. And you know, fortunately he had made some inroads. Sent a couple of his scripts to people on the new art show, for example. And they weren’t ready to help him back then, but we wrote a couple of specs that were a little bit better.

Steve Cuden: And so was there a moment then where you thought, yeah, you know what, I am trying this, I think I’m good at it, but I am actually good enough. Was there that moment.

David Silverman: Wrote a couple funny short stories, plays while I was still an undergraduate. And then when I graduated after that, I think the summer I decided I was going to make a film, I took some film classes. Dan for also. And then, uh, that kind of changed my uh, trajectory quite a bit because instead of applying to grad, uh, school in psychology, I applied to USC film school and I made a short film during the summer with my sister and some other people. And it was, it was funny enough, it made us laugh. And I sent the script to USC and they, and they accepted me. And that’s where I met Steve and we started working more seriously on commercial.

Steve Cuden: Indeed. Well, that’s where I met Steve too, was at usc. I met him in a playwriting class in the theater department.

David Silverman: Right. Yeah. And uh, you’ve turn. It turned out to be pretty good at that. Playwriting.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that’s turned out to be okay. Yeah.

David Silverman: Yeah, not bad at all.

Steve Cuden: Uh, so I am curious, you have this background in undergrad as a therapist or taking a therapy Degree. Therapist degree. What is that degree? What would that be?

David Silverman: At that point it was just a psychology degree.

Steve Cuden: Oh, a psychology degree. Do you think that that degree has had an impact or had an impact on the way that you thought about characters and writing them?

David Silverman: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think um, like some, some of our mentors had told us to write about the characters, get into some depth.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

David Silverman: And I had that interest already from, you know, being a psychology student. And the other thing about my family was we were in therapy, family therapy from back when I was 12 and on Loman and Barclay. I was, I was in family therapy with a psychiatrist and my brother had OCD and uh, so you know, he was like germ phobic and all. He had all these terrible symptoms. But the family therapy worked and he became like a functional member of society and I was impressed by that. So I think that’s where I got the idea that maybe a valuable service to render would be a therapist.

Steve Cuden: Correct me if I’m wrong, part of learning psychology and dealing in psychology is archetypes, human archetypes, character archetypes. Right, that, that had to have had an influence on the development of script work for you. I assum.

David Silverman: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I spent a lot of time studying the archetypes and how they figure into movies.

Steve Cuden: Can you think of an example of something that you used in your writing that was from some sort of a psychological archetype?

David Silverman: Uh, let’s see. Well, uh, the jester archetype is uh, there are certain characters that work well in comedy. For example, uh, the greedy character like the George Jefferson, the kind of, even a bigoted character like Archie Bunker and things like. So you see that in, in those Jungians. Um, I had some chapters which I didn’t include involved, um, in this book about archetypes, uh, that work that are the most commercial archetypes to pattern your screenplays after. Um, and that’s how partly how the, the book came about is. When I started practicing, I had a private practice. I was working with a lot of writers. I needed some sort of publicity. So I, I wrote for a, A, um, big um, website called Psych Central. Right. And they reached hundreds of thousands of people. It’s kind of like Psychology Today. I showed them some samples of, you know, some ideas of blogs and they, I, I didn’t get paid for it, but they let me write a weekly article, a weekly blog, and I probably wrote about 84 of them and a bunch of them had to do with the archetypes and what sells and that sort of thing.

Steve Cuden: But you were right. I think the listeners should pay attention to what you just said. A moment ago. You wrote 84 or so articles for this publication online, um, and got paid nothing. But you did that as what a marketer would call a loss leader. You were doing that in order to entice people to you. Correct?

David Silverman: Right. And in the back of my head I had the idea that I would put this book together, uh, using those chapters. So I didn’t use all of them. I thought some of them were better than others.

Steve Cuden: Well, we’re going to talk about the book in just two seconds, but I have one more question I’m curious about, uh, screenplays in particular plays and screenplays. Not always books, but books too. Novels and so on usually require a singular character that the audience, the reader, whoever it is, can then relate to in some way throughout the story. That would be your protagonist from a psychological perspective. Why do you think storytelling requires that singular character?

David Silverman: Yeah, I think that people need to identify with something in their script and that’s probably the easiest way to do it. Want to be like, mhm. A good model, like a hero.

Steve Cuden: So the audience has to identify with that character.

David Silverman: Right, right. And then you read like Save the Cat and different books about how you want to make that character like Ripley in the movie Alien Saves the cat. So that’s where. That’s a good book too and has a lot of good advice.

Steve Cuden: It’s one of a, ah, number of pretty good books out there. I would, I would highly urge people to check out Beating um, Hollywood was written by yours truly. But yes, that’s just another kind of book. So let’s talk about how to be a rock star screenwriter. Tell the listeners what the purpose of the book is. Why did you, you, you wrote it? Why did you write the book? What did you hope to express that people would get from it in total?

David Silverman: Right. So I, I was writing these um, blogs for psych central and um, I was trying to come up with good advice for screenwriters and advice that sort of touched on psychology in one way or another because it was a psychology website, it wasn’t a screenwriter. But uh, those chapters seem like they should be helpful to somebody and if I put them into a book, maybe they, they could learn some of the lessons that I learned the hard way.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

David Silverman: That would give them a leg up.

Steve Cuden: Well, of course I’ve read it and there’s no question it’s very helpful. And as I told you, after I read it, I wish that I had had that book before I started my career, because I would have found it very useful. It would have taken some of the psychological burdens off of me, where you just don’t understand what’s going on, especially in the beginning of a career.

David Silverman: Career, Right. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of sort of myths about screenwriting. A lot of people expect that they’re going to write one screenplay and sell

Steve Cuden: it and make millions of dollars.

David Silverman: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, uh, that’s what those are, some of the myths. You know, another thing that you wouldn’t expect to learn is that the writer is, like, lower on the totem pole than you would imagine.

Steve Cuden: You’re saying that the writer is on the totem pole at all?

David Silverman: Yeah. Right. Just barely.

Steve Cuden: Barely on the totem pole.

David Silverman: Yeah. So I tried. So I tried to do it in the most in the book. Try to be as, um, encouraging as possible. There’s a lot of bad news in this business.

Steve Cuden: Yeah. But you express it in which you will present it as. This is what the difficulty is. And here’s how to think about it or overcome it.

David Silverman: Right, Right. For example, when people start out writing their first spec script, which is how you get into the business, you have to have a sample to show around. And somebody did a study, and they said that usually it takes about eight screenplays before you’re at the level where you sell one. And so, you know, it could be very depressing, uh, to sit down and start to write your second, third. You know, realize that this is not going to sell for sure. I point out in the book, and this is an example of me being encouraging, even if you don’t sell one of those screenplays, having a good sample can get you a meeting with the producer. And where the producer. Producer could say, I like the style. I’d like to hear some of your ideas, some other ideas.

Steve Cuden: And, um, it again, is going back to this concept of a lost leader. You’re creating something that may not sell, but in fact, it might lead to other things that do sell.

David Silverman: Right. So I like to point out in the book that most. Like, the reason most people give up on screenwriting is because they get all these rejections. And when you think about guys like Lawrence Kasdan, whose seven scripts before they got sold anything, you wonder, why were they different? Why did they not give up? Uh, but if you realize that you got to write this sample script, it’s your only way in. You have to write something, and it has to be pretty great, actually.

Steve Cuden: It has to be. You have a chapter in the Book that’s about it has to be better than. Okay, explain what you mean.

David Silverman: Right. So a lot of people will write a script that has dialogue and character, beginning, middle and end, and it feels very successful to them.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

David Silverman: You have to really wow the producers. You have to be super, uh, impressive to get them to want to work with you and pay you.

Steve Cuden: So writers that are listening to this right now are asking themselves, okay, David, tell me how to wow people. And I’m going to guess you don’t know how to wow people except to do it yourself.

David Silverman: Right. Uh, well, here’s one key, and I think I have a chapter called the Zen of Screenwriting Growth. You need to, um, assemble, uh, some people in your life who are good writers who can read your script. And usually that could be a person in the screenwriting class that you’re taking. It really helps to have a mentor in this business, someone who’s. So, for example, Steve Starsek and I took classes from Lorenzo Music and Sam Locke. And these were guys Lorenzo Music had created Rhoda. Uh, Sam Locke had written for all in the Family. We took their writing classes. We were looking for mentors. So the other way you look for a mentor is to send your script around to important people who probably don’t have the time. But if you take their class and you show them really good work, then, uh, you’re likely to impress somebody who can really help you in your career.

Steve Cuden: And if they don’t actually hire you, they can actually give you advice and point you in the right direction or maybe even introduce you to somebody.

David Silverman: They did, yeah. So Lorenzo Music was good at that. And, uh, he introduced us to some of his, uh, some of the writers he worked with. Like he was, um, on Taxi.

Steve Cuden: And wasn’t he also famously the voice of Garfield the cat?

David Silverman: Yeah, yeah. And we got to know him so well that he would tell us stories about it. So he would get paid for 15 minutes of doing voices. Uh, he would also do commercials and things too, but he would get paid a fortune. And he kind of bragged about all he had to do was go in and do 15 minutes.

Steve Cuden: Well, you and I both know from doing animation script that, uh, the animation actors who are the best voice actors in the world, they frequently, they come in, they do a whole episode. It only takes them an hour or two, sometimes a little longer, but often it’s only an hour or two and they get paid quite well over time for them.

David Silverman: Yeah, yeah. And some of them do like ten voices.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. So do you consider A Sam Locke and Lorenzo Music to be examples of a rock, uh, star screenwriter.

David Silverman: Yeah. I think anybody who can pay the bills is the rock star.

Steve Cuden: That’s your definition of rock star, is that you can pay the bills?

David Silverman: Yes, as long as you can. So not many people make a living just by screenwriter. Most screenwriters have, like, second jobs and things.

Steve Cuden: So now you probably as a psychotherapist, had you never been a screenwriter, you would not have been able to write this book. You needed to have both sides to write it.

David Silverman: Uh, yeah, because it forced me to look at the psychological side of things. Some of the advice is just about writing. But there’s books like Save the Cat that can give you better advice on how to put 110 pages together.

Steve Cuden: Well, your book is not about, uh, writing a screenplay. It’s about the, um, mental management of being a screenwriter and dealing with Hollywood and all of the things that come with it. I would not turn to how to be a rock star screenwriter to know how many pages should be in a scene. That’s not what’s right.

David Silverman: Yes, it’s not for that. It’s, uh, to help you make decisions that will get you in a career in the screenwriting, which is not an easy. No, probably never was.

Steve Cuden: No, it really never was. Although I think as you look back, it probably was easier in the old days than it is today.

David Silverman: Yeah, I think so. The 80s part of that is because streaming has changed the nature of things. They have smaller writing rooms.

Steve Cuden: Right. Do you think that, um, there are big psychological differences between writing a screenplay and maybe writing a novel or a short story? Uh, does this book apply to that?

David Silverman: This has practical advice on how to break in to screenwriting. Whereas novels. Yeah. It’s not as hard to publish a novel as it is to get a screenplay produced by a million miles. Right. But I do kind of recommend to writers to get a taste of some success. And so if you’re writing screenplays and you’ve written 11 of them, and you might try novelizing one of them and you might see if you get some success there.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s become. I think it’s still quite true that, uh, it’s somewhat easier if you’re an unknown screenwriter. It’s somewhat easier to publish a novel and sell that concept to Hollywood because it’s an existing work versus writing an original screenplay that nobody knows who you are.

David Silverman: Yeah. Intellectual property is a much bigger deal today than it was back in the 80s. Uh, yeah. Uh, studios are less risk. Uh, they want to see some success already. If you Have a novel that sold 50,000 copies or is on the New York Times bestseller list, you got a pretty good shot at getting a movie made.

Steve Cuden: Well, if not the movie made, at least you get an entree where people will talk to you, they’ll meet with you and so on. And that just like a spec might get you where you want to go.

David Silverman: Yeah, no, definitely, if you can. Of course they’re going to look at how many books sold.

Steve Cuden: Well, of course if you sold a hundred books, that’s a lot less interesting than a thousand or ten thousand books.

David Silverman: Yeah. So. But um, yeah, it’s, it’s a way to go. Also writing plays is another way to get some success. And so I, I feel like, you know, that a lot of the psychology behind writing is how do you stick with it for 20 years? And so having some success, even if you’re, you have a one act play or something with six characters, um, and you see it produced and you get a good feeling about it, it keeps you going. So that’s the kind of psychology of it.

Steve Cuden: So part of your book is about how do you keep going, which you’re just talking about now, how do you keep the mental, uh, capacity to deal with basically dry patches where you’re not working at all or not working for pay. That’s the real key.

David Silverman: Right, right. And some other aspects are like what kind of jobs can you get in the business? So I was a story analyst for a studio. And that’s the job where you write coverage, which is a brief summary of a script or a book.

Steve Cuden: It’s like a book report, but it’s not, it’s a little more than that.

David Silverman: Right. And you also grade it, you grade

Steve Cuden: dialogues, uh, characters, action characters, all that.

David Silverman: So every day I would pick up a, um, and this was, uh, I was working as a bartender at that time. I go to the studio, pick up a script or a novel. I would go to my night job, which was Tenny Bar, and I had the kind of bartending job where uh, it was kind of behind the scenes and the cocktail waitresses came in. So I didn’t interact with the public. So I had a lot of free time. So I’d read these things and I’d go home and write the coverage. So every day I got a new one. So that was a good experience in terms of learning story structure and things like that. Then another really good way to go is to get a job as a writer’s assistant on a TV show. So for example, uh, Steve and I worked on a couple Shows where we had um, the kind of writer’s assistant who was in the room as uh, like you have a room full full of writers on a sitcom, like 10 writers and there’s one guy who keeps track of all the pitches. And so we had these uh, two guys, uh, Eric Shaw was one of them. So it was common to give um, a script to the writer’s assistant, just like one script as a reward and they get, you know, paid $20,000 for that. But it also could kick start your career. So with Eric, it helped him start a career in writing, uh, animation mostly. And he won an Emmy for SpongeBob. And the other, uh, writer assistant we had went on to write for Dexter and he. So we gave him that first script.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the big foot in the door. You got to have a little foot in the door as becoming the assistant. And then the bigfoot is when somebody, you’ve done good work and people like you and they award you with a script like that. That’s it. That is a, uh, that’s one of the major ways that people make that leap.

David Silverman: Right, right. Yes, one of the best ways.

Steve Cuden: How does somebody go about becoming a writer’s assistant?

David Silverman: Writer’s assistant. Well, it does help to write a good spec, because they want to know that, you know, screenplay for and all this. And it doesn’t hurt if you’re good at writing jokes, if it’s sitcom they’re applying to because, you know, at some points Eric would pitch a joke, then we would say, that’s pretty good. We put that in, put that in the script. So he wasn’t even on staff as a paid writer. He was getting jokes in.

Steve Cuden: And so. All right, so as you’re writing the book, how did you figure out you had all these articles and you knew you were going to compile them into some form here, uh, how did you start to do that? Did you sit down and lay them all out on a table and decide they were in this order? How did you put the book together?

David Silverman: Yeah, I think I broke it into sections.

Steve Cuden: Well, you do you have it in section productivity hacks, uh, how to survive Hollywood, those kinds of sections. Career strategies.

David Silverman: Yeah, how to survive Hollywood had to do with like some writers. There’s sort of writer’s personality. We tend to be very introspective and um, and we tend to sit in front of a typewriter.

Steve Cuden: You sit in front of a typewriter. What year is this, David?

David Silverman: Yeah, well, at first it was a typewriter, but yeah.

Steve Cuden: Yes it was.

David Silverman: Yeah. IBM’s electric too. That’s. We’re on One day at a time.

Steve Cuden: I have many typewriters that sit in a. Sit in a room. They don’t do anything.

David Silverman: Yeah. Uh, yeah. So the breaking in, uh, writers jobs. The best day jobs for writers. And I, in the book, I talk about some famous writers and what, you know, what they did. I do. I did a lot of research on what famous writers. For example, two well known writers. Um, Stephen King and, uh, Aaron Sorkin.

Steve Cuden: Aaron Sorkin, sure.

David Silverman: They’ve talked about their, um. They wrote their first scripts using cocaine and, uh, it fueled them through the night.

Steve Cuden: I assume you do not recommend that.

David Silverman: Uh, yeah, it’s too expensive for one thing.

Steve Cuden: Expensive.

David Silverman: It can also lead to some bad habits.

Steve Cuden: Yeah. Like addiction.

David Silverman: I think he had to go into rehab. But, um. But yeah, it’s interesting to know how people did it. So I do break that down and then I have. I break it down in terms of older writers. So a lot of people are older, like 40, 50, and they want to get into the business. I recommend they write screenplays. Uh, TV is a young man’s game. You know, your 20s and your 30s is what they’re looking for.

Steve Cuden: Why is it a young man’s game?

David Silverman: Because it’s, uh. There’s a few reasons for that, but. A few reasons. One is because it’s a group thing. There’s such a thing as a writer’s room where they hire 10 writer. The, the guys who run shows might be in their 30s and they tend to hire people younger than them. They don’t want people with more experience above them.

Steve Cuden: They don’t want to be shown up.

David Silverman: Exactly. So. So if you’re, if you’re under 40, I think it’s. You want to write a TV pilot, which is what the, uh, the way you get into writing television is to write us pet. Which means it’s the first episode of a new series. Back when Steve and I broke in, we wrote a taxi spec and a Barney Mill. It shows the people who are hiring that you know how to handle character and write, uh, a certain style and that sort of thing.

Steve Cuden: You write in the book about, um, why writers should not worry about Hollywood stealing your movie or story idea. Why is that?

David Silverman: Right. Because then if you just worry about that all the time, you’ll m. You’ll be reluctant to send your script out. It does happen sometimes. It, uh.

Steve Cuden: But, uh, it’s pretty rare though.

David Silverman: It’s pretty rare. People are savvy and they know they might get sued.

Steve Cuden: Well, and also if you have Written something and you’ve shown it to other people, there’s sort of great evidence. And if you then register it with the WGA and copyright it, well, you don’t really need to copyright it. The WGA is sufficient to say it exists.

David Silverman: Right, Right. So, yeah, you should cover yourself. I do cover that in another chapter on copyright and how to get the Writers Guild to, uh, register your work as you’re writing.

Steve Cuden: Why is it necessary that one be. Which is the way it works in Hollywood. Why should your story be familiar but original?

David Silverman: Uh, yes. So, um. Uh, the studios say we’re looking for original screenplays. Right. They don’t really mean it. Uh, what they mean is, uh, so if you have a script that’s a lot like Lethal Weapon, for example, but you have a different relationship between the two characters. Instead of having the, uh, guy who wants to retire and the crazy guy, you come up with a different buddy relationship. Uh, and it seems like that’s a good formula for, um, cop shows or for cop, uh, movies. Is the buddy cop thing. There have been, like, 100 variations on it. If you can come up with an exciting new one. For example, our. Our screenplay, Stepping Out. We have, uh. The witness in that screenplay is agoraphobic, and so he’s afraid to leave his house. And he’s. He’s in therapy, and he’s learning how to, uh, take baby steps. And so he takes the. He, uh, gathers all his strength and he crosses the street to the park. It’s like a experiment. And, uh, he unfortunately witnesses a murder over there. And, um, he’s interviewed by a female cop who’s kind of fearless. And it’s a little bit like Lethal Weapon, but it has that twist. Anyway, we were able to sell that on the pitch because it sounded original enough, but familiar. Right. So it’s Lethal Weapon, except you get a psycho and a, uh, female cop.

Steve Cuden: So they want an idea that is, uh. They know how to market it already. They know how to sell it, but yet it’s original in some way.

David Silverman: Right. So if you write a completely original screenplay, you know, it could be like a guy, um, moving around on a chessboard or, you know, being shot into space and. And, uh, living in the stratosphere for 100 years. But that’s too original.

Steve Cuden: It can’t be something that they don’t know how to sell.

David Silverman: Exactly. So if they can compare it to a successful feature or successful TV show, then you’re in business.

Steve Cuden: Now, in that line, there’s nothing that’s better than something for selling a script than coming up with what’s called a high concept idea. What is a high concept idea?

David Silverman: It’s something you can sell on a pitch. And that’s what happened with Stepping Out.

Steve Cuden: So sometimes a high concept can be right from the title. The title can be a high concept. I’ll give you the best example I know of a high concept title. Snakes on a Plane.

David Silverman: Yeah. Right. Or Splash. Uh, no, that wasn’t the title really, but Splash was a guy falls in love with a mermaid. Right?

Steve Cuden: Yeah, There you go. You know, Spielberg has been known to say that he knows he has a story he can work with when he can hold it in the palm of his hand. Meaning that it’s. You can say state the idea basically in one sentence or a few words, right?

David Silverman: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: High concept.

David Silverman: Yeah. There’s something known as the elevator pitch, which is like if you’re happen to be on an elevator with Spielberg and you’ve got like 20 seconds to pitch, uh, if you can sell them on something. And that’s what happened with Stepping Out. Well, we had to set up a meeting with a producer who looked for high concept stuff. And I think we pitched 10 ideas, but that one really grabbed him. We ended up pitching that, my wife and I. That too. Uh, he took us around to all these studios. We pitched to some, uh, big shot directors. The guy who directed Lethal Weapon, actually, we went to his house.

Steve Cuden: That’s Dick Donner.

David Silverman: Dick Donner, yeah, we went to his house.

Steve Cuden: And so you’re the ideal person to ask about collaboration. You collaborated on the book with Regina, you collaborated on Stepping out with Rogina, but you spent years and years and years collaborating with Steve Sistarsik. Decades. Um, what is it that makes a collaboration work?

David Silverman: Yeah, that’s very tricky. Well, you have to be able to get along with the person. And with Steve, sometimes that was difficult.

Steve Cuden: I wouldn’t have any idea, David. Yeah, Steve was a difficult person sometimes. Yeah, but I think, I think I’m a difficult person. And I don’t know you that well, but I’m imagining you have your own quirks.

David Silverman: Of course. Yeah, yeah. We had different approaches. You know, early on, uh, we lived, uh, in Orange county, both of us, and he lived closer to the beach and I lived in La Habra and there was a Dunkin Donuts and. But halfway in between, and we would meet there like every day and work on a script. It worked out. It actually worked out pretty well. Um, so proximity, but also having the same taste that can really break, um, you know, one person’s Always thinking in terms of, um, very broad comedy or something, and the other person’s more witty or something like that.

Steve Cuden: It’s very helpful if you are on the same page as to what you’re trying to achieve that goal.

David Silverman: Right. So if you can pitch something, a joke that would, you know, we had a pretty good relationship. We had a rule that. Which I would recommend for all partnerships, and I do like partnerships. Another reason for that is you get. Get through the low points in the career easier because you have someone to talk to and, you know, bitch among.

Steve Cuden: Isn’t it also helpful in comedy writing that you have someone to bounce comedy off of?

David Silverman: Yeah. So comedy writing, a lot of it’s done out loud, and a lot of times you test how good a joke is by saying it out loud. So two people, that’s how you work. We had some variations where he would write act one, and I would write act two, and then we would switch and rewrite acts, which is, you know, it’s a good way to do it too.

Steve Cuden: Did the two of you ever bump into issues when you did that where somebody changed something and you got into an argument over it? Did that happen for you?

David Silverman: Yeah, we had a good rule for that, which I recommend to partners, is that you both have to agree. You like something to keep it.

Steve Cuden: It’s one. In your case, it would be one of two votes knocks it out, right?

David Silverman: Yeah. So that we use that, uh, that’s not easy because m. A lot of partnerships, you hear about the person nagging and nagging. We have to put that back in. That works. That works.

Steve Cuden: You talk about perfection. I love the chapter on perfection. Um, you say that perfection is frequently the enemy of good enough. What is it about people and perfection? You must deal with that in your practice, I assume.

David Silverman: Yeah. So perfectionism can keep you from starting. Vomit draft, for example, where, you know, you have to be able to live with that. Uh, your first draft is, you know, it’s been called worse. This is one of the nicer things they say. But, yeah, the first draft usually sucks. So people who have. Have too much of a perfection issue. It’s hard for them to live with that. But again, like, uh, the rewriting is the key to a lot of this being a good screenwriter and, um, getting better. Like that whole chapter on the Zen of screenwriting growth. You want to have a person you can ask, uh, who can give you honest opinion on your. Tell you what’s up. One that what’s not working and what’s. And that, uh, if you have a Person like that in your life, it’s going to make your growth much more, like, fast. It’s going to be faster. Uh, people who don’t learn like that, they just keep writing the same script over and over and they don’t get better at it.

Steve Cuden: What do you tell writers that come in and complain that they’re blocked, they have writers block? What do you, how do you help them?

David Silverman: Yeah, there’s different kinds of blocks and, um, I have some chapters on that too. But like, uh, one thing that helps me go back and read the script from the beginning and a lot of rewriting I do is just reading it and then putting in a better joke. This and that. Yeah, it’s, it’s, uh. Rewriting is tricky, so you have to, you have to be willing to do it, which means you have to be willing to come up with a better idea.

Steve Cuden: You can’t succeed in Hollywood for sure if you’re not willing to revise, rewrite, revise. Oh, yeah, it’s all about that.

David Silverman: Yeah. Yeah. When they bought Stepping out, uh, they had a whole bunch of notes for us and not all of them were good.

Steve Cuden: So what do you do when you get lousy notes? How do you handle it?

David Silverman: Yeah, well, you get better at that. Uh, but you can’t ignore notes because the people who are giving you notes have the power to keep your project alive or not.

Steve Cuden: Right.

David Silverman: So you have to give them either a good reason why the note, it conflicts with something else that’s going on. And you have to be very diplomatic about how you put it. You don’t want to step on too many toes.

Steve Cuden: If you’re sitting in a room, if you’re sitting in a room with a, uh, producer, uh, or a studio or something like that, and somebody behind a desk is giving you verbal notes, what is the best way to handle that in the room?

David Silverman: Yes, that’s how it usually happens. So if they have a good note you definitely want to make them feel good about. Yeah, that’s a wonderful idea. You know, really lay it on thick. I, yeah, I think I can see how to make that work. And you have to be willing to go back to the drawing board and do it. And that’s, ah, sometimes you agree to things and then you go, oh, my God, I can never do this. And if they give you a really terrible note, you don’t want to say that to them either. You just say that. Well, that kind of conflicts with other things that are going on in the script. Uh, but I’ll try, I’ll try. To work it in one way that

Steve Cuden: I like to think about taking notes. And it’s one of the things I teach. I think the best way to handle a note that makes no sense or is you think is going to be harmful, uh, or they clearly haven’t read something, uh, one of those ways to deal with it is to ask them a question, is to put it back on them. That’s just um, a technique that I’ve used over time where I’ll say, well, if I do what you’re suggesting, then this will happen and how would you think I should best handle that? And then you’re sort of putting the ball back in their court.

David Silverman: Right, right. That’s very smart.

Steve Cuden: And then they feel like they’re contributing.

David Silverman: Right? Yeah, that’s the key. Make them feel heard, you know, so that’s. As a psychotherapist I have to do that a lot.

Steve Cuden: All right, so you also, I assume, deal with a fair amount of, um, writers who have anxiety over their career and their scripts and so on. What do you recommend to clients who are feeling anxious? What do you say to them?

David Silverman: Right. Well, there’s, there’s a whole range of things you can do. Um, you can recommend an antidepressant which is good for anxiety. There’s several good ones. Um, the other thing to do is to help them feel better about their work, which is like trying these things, like try to write this a play and see it done and feel good about what you’ve done there.

Steve Cuden: So to get over anxiety is to get over anxiety, that is to, to, to do work, to do the work and move along.

David Silverman: Right. And um, and give them options. Like for example, this whole idea that even if you don’t sell your script, you know, it can get you a meeting, it can get you, right, an agent or a manager.

Steve Cuden: Right.

David Silverman: And so, yeah, people become very disillusioned after they get 10 rejections. That’s par for the course. 10 rejections is.

Steve Cuden: It’s not only not unusual. I think most writers should go into the business expecting it.

David Silverman: Right.

Steve Cuden: So you can embrace it rather than feeling like you’ve been rejected.

David Silverman: Right. Yeah. I think I use the term take a long term approach. Uh, so in other words, if you don’t sell something right away, don’t be discouraged. Uh, you’ve got to send this to. And you know, I have some practical advice about how to get your script to a, uh, the right person. Uh, There’s a program, IMDb Pro is a good way to go find producers who make movies similar to the Ones that you just wrote and send it to them. And I have a chapter on how to write a query letter, how to

Steve Cuden: get an agent, a manager, that kind of thing too.

David Silverman: Right, right. And how to send your script, what a log line is, and how to create one that’s really good. And those. Those are important.

Steve Cuden: Well, are you, uh, thinking about publishing anything further? Any more books?

David Silverman: My wife is, uh, very interested in detective novels. And she might want to write one

Steve Cuden: of those, uh, with you or by herself, possibly.

David Silverman: Either way. But if she wants to do one with me, I probably would go ahead and try it.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’d be kind of fun. Would that be a comedy or would it be a straightforward detective story?

David Silverman: Yeah, I don’t know. I think it probably would work better if it had some. Some comedy in it.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, well, that’s your. That’s what you’re known for. That’s your forte also.

David Silverman: That’s my approach to writing is I look for the jokes, and that can be a detriment. Also, uh, I often think I wish I had written, like I have a bunch of spec scripts that I have that are just sitting around. I wish I’d been paying more attention to the emotional arcs.

Steve Cuden: Well, I’ve been having just a spectacular conversation with David Silverman and, uh, certainly about his book, how to be a Rock Star Screenwriter. His and his wife Rogina’s, uh, um. They wrote this just wonderful book that I highly recommend to you. Uh, especially if you’re trying to figure out how to think your way through a career in Hollywood, which is a challenge for even the most successful writers, have to deal with some of these psychological challenges to overcome. You’ve told us a whole lot of wonderful tales and stories already, but do you have a story that you can share with us that’s either weird, quirky and offbeat strange, or just plain funny?

David Silverman: Okay, yeah, yeah, I do have a few of those. Um, so this guy, uh, in Las Vegas, he had a radio show. Uh, yeah, I sent him the book and, uh, so he, um. I’m listening. Uh, the radio show’s on. He’s introducing me as one of the co creators of the Simpsons.

Steve Cuden: The Simpsons.

David Silverman: The Simpsons. And also. And also he said that I was a Green Beret. So this is my introduction.

Steve Cuden: And you didn’t create the Simpsons and you were not a Green Beret.

David Silverman: Yeah, but I had a funny story that kind of saved it a little bit because when Steve and I worked at Fox, which we were there for three or four years, the other David Silverman, there’s A David Silverman, who, uh, who was a director. M. And, uh. So, yeah, and I met him at one point, the guys who ran the Simpsons. David Silverman. This is David Silverman. Anyway, so I kept getting his paychecks, so I would get.

Steve Cuden: You kept getting his paycheck?

David Silverman: I would get paychecks for the other David Silverman.

Steve Cuden: Did you cash them?

David Silverman: Yeah, I tried every possible way I could think of. Uh, but, uh, I figured I would get into a lot of trouble.

Steve Cuden: I think you would get into a lot of trouble if you did.

David Silverman: Yeah. So I sent them back to Fox and said, you know, there’s two David Silmans. We both work for Fox. And, uh, this is the other David Silverman’s check. It’s like it was about $15,000 for directing one episode. Then a couple, you know, a week goes by, and I get the same check in the mail. So they didn’t register. What I told them was that I was the wrong guy. So I got a hold of the other David Silverman’s phone number here. I got to give you this check or I’ll mail it to you.

Steve Cuden: It’s a shame you couldn’t just go cash it, you know.

David Silverman: I know. I thought, you know, well, we have different Social Security numbers, but I don’t know.

Steve Cuden: Oh, yeah, that would. That would show up really quick, wouldn’t it?

David Silverman: If I could find his number, maybe I could do that.

Steve Cuden: And then he’s. And he’s banging on their doors. Where’s my money? Where’s my money?

David Silverman: So that was kind of amusing. But, yeah, I had. I explained all that on the air.

Steve Cuden: What was. What was the story that. I know Steve told me that I’m sure you were there. Uh, in which one? A showrunner was getting a suit made while you were doing work in a room.

David Silverman: Yeah. So, yeah, sitcoms usually, like, take place in a big room full of writers, and this particular writer seemed to just want to get away from his family, and he. It wasn’t his, uh. Getting the work done was not high on his priorities, so. And it was very obvious because he would. We would go into the room and just. He would be interested in anything, but, like, he would, uh, go through the baseball score. He would pick games to bet on and things. And, uh, one day he brought his tailor in, and he’s like, having suit made, and I’m not going to say his name because I don’t want to

Steve Cuden: get sued, but he was getting fitted for a suit while you were all in front of him working.

David Silverman: Yeah. Yeah. And There was a couple of, uh, people in the room who nudge him, you know, like, we have to get working here, you know, because these things could go all night and they often did. And I remember this was at the Radford worked a lot and we worked till 6am and we went and got breakfast, you know, and so we’re. Everybody wants to go home except for this guy who apparently doesn’t, you know, his marriage is failing or something.

Steve Cuden: Sure.

David Silverman: So yeah, so he’s, he’s there all night long getting fitted and, and he would say, like, um, yeah, have six suits, uh, have six of them sent to my Aspen house and six suits sent to, you know, my, um, my Beverly Hills house. And we’d be all going like, oh my God.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the way it works. All right, so last question for you today, David.

David Silverman: Ah.

Steve Cuden: Uh, you’ve already given us a gigantic amount of advice. And your book, how to Be a Rock Star Screenwriter is just chock a block filled with great advice. Do you have a piece of advice if somebody comes up to you and says, david, what should I do? I want to have a career in, in Hollywood. I want to be a writer. What should I do? Do you have a piece of advice you can give them?

David Silverman: Yeah. So I have a chapter on how to find a mentor.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

David Silverman: And so you need to send your work to an important writer, somebody who’s well known, at least the further up the ladder than you are and has some more clout. And so Steve and I, uh, we kind of, we kind of got lucky because we took those classes, the one with Lorenzo Music and now the one with Sam Locke, he had written for, uh, all the family and he was in his 60s when we took the class. And Lorenzo, uh, Music was. I don’t think he was that old. He was still working. He was the voice of Garfield anyway. But Sam Locke, he liked our script. He was a Barney Miller or something. Uh, and we had arranged to pitch the Jeffersons. And you know, we were naive and we thought maybe it would be a good idea to bring him with us and we’ll write it as a three.

Steve Cuden: How’d that work out?

David Silverman: So the three of us went in and we had some story ideas. We pitched them and uh, then we kind of left and we got like a phone call later said, come back without the old guy. Which touches on the whole ageism thing also, which is very sad.

Steve Cuden: No kidding. That is sad. I mean, that’s really.

David Silverman: I know it’s sort of sadly funny,

Steve Cuden: but, but I think as you age in Hollywood. That does happen for people. And I, I do think it’s a, it is the, the, the notion that uh, there are a bunch of young people in a room and they don’t want somebody old guy telling them what it is. So that is ageism. But at the same time, um, it’s as people climb up those ranks. Correct me if you think I’m wrong. Uh, they, they drop out of the business too because they, they get married, they have wives or husbands and kids, and suddenly they don’t want to spend all those crazy 14, 15, 16 hour days. So they drop out that way too.

David Silverman: Correct? Right, right. Yeah, that’s part of it. Yeah, it’s true. But the exciting, uh, thing about staying up all night and writing for a TV show, it gets old after 10 years. When you have kids and everything.

Steve Cuden: It might get old after 10 years, weeks. I mean, that starts to wear on you because it’s. Especially if you have a family.

David Silverman: Right? Yeah. We wrote a pilot of another partner of mine, Jack. We wrote a pilot about a 70 year old comedy writer like me. His name is David. And uh, he hasn’t worked in a long time, but he has good credits anyway. So, um, it’s about ages. And he has a, uh, Hispanic daughter in law who um, is also kind of funny. And he uses her as the front. You know, she’s the beard, she’s the beard. She gets the job on the TV show and then there’s episodes where she thinks she’s good enough, kind of break away from the writer that has the Emmys and uh, all the stuff they have to go through, keep their, their partnership together.

Steve Cuden: Well, that sounds like that would be, you’d be perfectly suited to think that one through, that’s for sure.

David Silverman: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Well, David Silverman, this has been a lot of fun for me and I can’t thank you enough, uh, for your time, your energy and your wisdom on this. And for those of you out there that want to understand what it takes, the, the guts that it takes to become a screenwriter of success in Hollywood, check out how to be a rock Star Screenwriter by David and Regina Sillerman. David, thank you so much for being on the show with me today.

David Silverman: Okay, thank you.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to. Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcasts, apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.