0:04

This is Under Understood.

0:08

Hello everyone. Hey, Billy. Hello,

0:11

Billy. Good evening. Oh, Red,

0:13

you okay? I just have a cold. Oh, okay. I

0:16

just, I think this is like my radio voice, though.

0:19

I love it. It's nice. It

0:21

sounds good. Yeah. Welcome

0:24

to the show, everybody. As you

0:26

all know, we've been trying a bunch of new segments

0:28

on the show. Everyone is loving

0:31

the new segments. Except for sexy

0:33

Luigi. Well, yeah,

0:36

except one person on Twitter who insisted

0:38

that we can't call something a segment if

0:40

it takes up the entirety of an episode.

0:43

But it doesn't because it doesn't take up the

0:45

credits. Well, and also like respectfully,

0:48

who's to decide what the segment is a

0:50

segment of? Yeah, it could be a segment of the entire

0:53

series. Yeah, everything's relative, man.

0:56

So, whatever. Are

0:59

you telling us that you're about to do a new segment? Yes.

1:02

How did you guess? Thank God. And you

1:04

bet it's going to take up the whole episode. The

1:08

new segment is called News

1:10

We Can Use.

1:15

News we can use? Is this like service journalism?

1:18

Yeah, are we getting servicey? Well, you

1:20

know, we're not normally a topical show. We don't

1:22

really talk about the news directly. No.

1:25

But if you want to hear about the headlines of the day, there are plenty

1:27

of other podcasts you can tune into.

1:30

I like Up First. Sure, listen

1:32

to Up First. But I often find

1:34

buried inside of big zeitgeisty

1:37

stories, there are little

1:40

details that

1:41

are worth expanding on.

1:43

And I was reading about the Writers'

1:45

Strike. Are you all familiar

1:48

with the Writers Guild of America going

1:50

on strike? Very.

1:52

Yes. Yes, but vaguely.

1:54

Well, yeah, I mean, these people, they're the people who craft

1:57

the foundation of, you know, the best American.

1:59

film and television. And as

2:02

I was reading an article about the

2:04

strike in the New

2:06

Yorker,

2:09

I like that pause as if we were

2:11

supposed to react that you read the

2:13

New Yorker. Oh, I was just reading the New

2:15

Yorker. Do you guys have a tooth bag? No,

2:18

sorry, I was just actually trying to, I was

2:20

trying to remember when I had read it. And

2:23

this was actually like right before the strike

2:25

started. So that context is important.

2:28

Okay, so WGA

2:30

Writers Guild of America, they're striking,

2:33

what are they striking for, basically?

2:35

To not treat writers

2:38

of TV shows like gig workers.

2:40

Yeah. For the first time

2:42

in 15 years, over 11,000 TV

2:46

and movie writers have gone on strike.

2:48

Here's Amy Goodman

2:51

summarizing it on Democracy Now. In

2:53

a statement, the Writers Guild of America

2:56

said writers are facing a quote, existential

2:59

crisis, in part because pay

3:01

and working conditions have deteriorated

3:03

in recent years due to the rise of streaming

3:06

services like Netflix and

3:08

Amazon Prime. The union said

3:10

quote, the company's behavior has created

3:13

a gig economy inside

3:15

a union workforce, and their immovable

3:17

stance in this negotiation has betrayed

3:20

a commitment to further devaluing the profession

3:22

of writing,

3:23

unquote. The Writers Guild

3:25

is basically saying that their

3:27

writers are suffering the

3:29

same fate as so many workforces

3:32

in this country. They've been

3:35

commodified and forced to work

3:37

gig to gig for scraps. But

3:41

unlike many of those industries, they

3:43

have a long standing

3:46

powerful union. And

3:48

so after a period of trying

3:51

to get the studios

3:52

to negotiate with them in good

3:54

faith to no avail, they've

3:58

decided to exercise.

4:00

the full power of their union

4:02

by withholding their labor. Last

4:05

month, 98% of the members of the Writers

4:07

Guild voted in favor of

4:09

this strike. And a lot of the specific

4:12

demands are things you'd traditionally see

4:14

in an entertainment industry strike.

4:17

Stuff like

4:18

higher minimum fees, updated

4:20

terms for residuals, largely

4:23

driven by the streaming model

4:25

for production not applying to

4:27

many of their previously negotiated

4:29

terms. We want to make sure that writers are

4:32

paid the same in streaming as they

4:34

are on television. This is Adam

4:36

Conover of Adam Ruins Everything,

4:39

talking to CNN. My first

4:41

show was for TruTV, my second show

4:43

was for Netflix. The show had the exact

4:45

same format, but on Netflix, we

4:47

had no

4:48

minimums, we had no protections, we

4:50

were paid less. The residuals are

4:52

literally 1% of what they were under

4:56

broadcast. And that's true for everybody in late

4:58

nights. That's true for screenwriters.

5:01

It's true across all of our work areas. In

5:03

addition to that though, there is some

5:05

more forward thinking stuff like

5:08

setting rules and guardrails

5:11

around how the industry can use

5:13

stuff like

5:14

generative AI and

5:16

large language models

5:18

to essentially generate scripts

5:21

without writers.

5:22

Student executives have been

5:25

outspoken and come right out and said

5:27

they believe that we'll have

5:29

the first AI generated script within

5:31

a year.

5:32

This is reporter Megan Cerulo

5:34

talking on CBS News. So

5:37

that's why there are three protections that writers want in

5:39

place. They don't want AI to be

5:41

used to write or rewrite any scripts.

5:44

They don't want to have to rewrite what

5:46

some of them call trash generated by AI. And

5:49

they don't want studios to be able to train

5:51

AI on their work. So they don't

5:53

want studios to give

5:55

AI a prompt, say write a script in this style

5:57

of this very successful. Holly

5:59

Wood.

5:59

which AI has

6:02

shown it has the capability to do. Yeah,

6:04

so far not very good though, but you never

6:06

know what the future holds.

6:07

They talk about it in

6:09

this article. This article is titled, why

6:13

are TV writers so miserable? Yeah.

6:19

And they talk about that. And the AI stuff is

6:21

super interesting. I

6:23

think it's important that they're fighting that fight. But

6:26

there's another detail of something that

6:28

the writers are pushing back against.

6:31

And it's not getting quite as much attention.

6:34

It's something called mini

6:36

rooms. Have

6:40

any of you heard of these? I think it refers to

6:42

a mini writer's room. Yeah.

6:44

Like a hackathon. It is

6:47

sort of like a hackathon for writing. Here's

6:49

how they talk about it in that New Yorker piece.

6:52

It says, one point of contention

6:54

in the WGA negotiations has

6:56

been mini rooms, condensed

6:58

writers rooms that often take place

7:01

before a show is green lighted. Mini

7:03

rooms give studio proof of concept

7:05

while saving money, but they force

7:08

writers to spread paltry

7:10

or fees over longer gaps,

7:13

working for shows that may or may

7:15

not get made.

7:16

So in this article, they

7:18

talk to Janine Neighbors,

7:22

who is an accomplished writer, who is

7:24

showrunner for Swarm, which

7:27

he co-created with Donald Glover.

7:30

She's quoted saying, what you start

7:32

to realize is that there is no advancing

7:35

forward because you're constantly

7:37

in these rooms where you're being paid at

7:39

a minimum. If your contract ends

7:42

and the show's not going to be made

7:44

for another year, all of your work

7:46

could just be erased.

7:50

And not a lot of people were talking about this.

7:54

But it started to gain some traction. George

7:57

RR Martin, who people obviously

7:59

know.

7:59

know is the writer behind Game

8:02

of Thrones. He tweeted, quote, I

8:05

want to say a few words about what I think

8:07

is the most important issue

8:10

in the current writer's strike. And he linked

8:12

to a blog post where he talks

8:14

about his experience getting to work

8:17

on the

8:18

80s revival of the Twilight

8:20

Zone and how even

8:22

as a junior writer without any Hollywood

8:24

experience, he got to be involved

8:27

in

8:28

basically all aspects of the production,

8:31

all of which he says was

8:33

necessary to get to the point

8:35

where he was able to adapt his writing into

8:38

the HBO show Game of Thrones, you know, one

8:40

of the most successful television

8:42

shows of all time.

8:46

This is the essential thing about mini rooms. You

8:48

don't you're not

8:49

part of the staff. You're hired for a very

8:52

temporary amount of time to do

8:54

something that is very disposable.

8:57

You're hired with a small team to write a whole

8:59

season of a show that may or may not be

9:01

used. And that's increasingly becoming

9:04

common practice.

9:05

They really use the scripts created

9:07

by the mini room. They're not just proof

9:09

of concept scripts. No, they're actually

9:12

making full seasons of shows and they

9:14

use those full seasons of shows. It's

9:16

basically like your hackathon metaphor

9:19

where

9:20

the studios are like, okay, let's

9:22

just put a small group of writers

9:25

under extreme conditions in

9:27

a very short period of time

9:29

and see what happens. And if

9:31

we think it's usable, we'll put it out. If

9:33

it's not something we want to put out right now,

9:36

we'll lock it away. And writers

9:38

say this is increasingly the model that they're

9:40

subjected to in this streaming

9:43

era of film and television.

9:46

Okay, Adam Conover actually talked

9:48

about this in that CNN clip. Let me just play a little

9:50

bit of that again. So the

9:52

studios are trying to eliminate

9:55

the writers room. You're probably familiar with the term

9:57

the writers room. This is a room that's existed

9:59

for decades.

9:59

where writers get together and break

10:02

a story and write scripts. The companies

10:05

are trying to eliminate it. They're trying to make

10:07

the room smaller. They're trying to employ us on a freelance

10:09

basis. They'd rather we just stay

10:12

home and email scripts in, and

10:14

they pay us a fee every once in a while, and

10:16

we can't make a living that way. And so our

10:18

proposals are to ensure that

10:20

there's a writers room on every single show,

10:22

and they have refused to even discuss

10:24

that proposal with us. The big thing

10:27

I think is missing in this conversation

10:30

is

10:32

what's missing.

10:34

Like what are we missing out on? Janine

10:36

neighbors said you could be hired to work in

10:38

a mini room only to find out later that all of your

10:40

work

10:41

has been erased,

10:43

or I would assume blocked away somewhere. And

10:48

we talk a lot about missing media on this

10:50

show. Open the vault. Yeah. How

10:52

can we open the vaults? Okay, wait. Wait.

10:56

Is it possible that we're about to really

10:58

understand what's in that missing media vault when

11:01

all

11:01

of the production studios turn

11:04

to all of this discarded stuff during

11:06

the writers strike to produce instead? Yes,

11:09

absolutely. That is

11:11

not a wild conspiracy theory. That is what many

11:13

writers out on the picket lines are saying

11:15

is that they feel like much

11:17

of their work may have been filed away

11:20

so that these companies could withstand a writer's

11:22

strike, which they anticipated

11:24

being sort of inevitable the way that they're running.

11:27

Oh,

11:27

really? That's awful. And

11:29

there was one other thing that stood out to me about

11:32

that New Yorker article.

11:34

Did I mention I was reading the New Yorker when I... Yeah,

11:37

I think we... The other

11:39

thing that stood out to me in the New Yorker article

11:42

is that

11:43

I actually know one

11:45

of the writers

11:47

who the rest of the piece was sort

11:49

of framed around.

11:51

Is it Alex O'Keefe? Yes.

11:56

Friend of mine, former guest on the show, Alex

11:58

O'Keefe. I heard him on another podcast. talking

12:00

about. You heard him on another podcast. What

12:02

podcast was it? Oh, good

12:04

question. I can't believe he's podcast cheating

12:06

on us. No, it was up first. Oh, and

12:08

up first. Well, great podcast.

12:11

Like I said, if you want to hear

12:13

about the news, listen to up first, they'll probably

12:15

do it first. But we might

12:17

have a slightly different angle with

12:20

literally the same person.

12:22

It was a very quick bite. It's wild.

12:25

So I was like talking to a friend

12:27

about this in the back of a cab

12:30

the other day. And we were talking

12:32

about the writer strike. And I was like, just

12:34

go on Google News and search for news

12:36

about the writer strike. And I

12:39

guarantee you, you'll see my friend Alex.

12:42

And they did it and literally

12:44

like for the first five articles or

12:46

something featured quotes from him

12:49

or the lead image was like his face

12:52

real big on the

12:54

article. How

12:56

did this happen? Well,

12:57

he's a writer on a show that has some

13:00

acclaim. What show is he a writer in?

13:02

The Bear. The Bear. The Bear, yes.

13:05

Oh, I didn't know that.

13:07

Wow. Very good show. Yeah, so

13:09

here's a reading again from The New

13:11

Yorker. Here's what it says.

13:14

For newer writers, there's a sense

13:17

of having shown up to the party too late.

13:19

Alex O'Keefe, who is 28,

13:22

grew up poor in Florida and worked as a

13:24

speech writer for the senators Elizabeth

13:26

Warren and Ed Markey and

13:29

as Green New Deal campaign director before

13:31

getting staffed on FX's The Bear.

13:35

Quote, it should have been this beautiful rags to riches

13:37

story, right? He told me, unfortunately,

13:40

I realized not all that glitters is

13:42

gold.

13:43

Alex, you don't need those cliches. I thought

13:45

you were a writer. Oh no,

13:48

he knows when and where to land them. That's

13:50

the writing secret. Okay, I'm just giving you an excerpt.

13:53

Okay. The transition that The New Yorker

13:55

needed.

13:56

That's why he's in all of these articles. Yeah, this

13:58

is why he gets quoted in everything. He knows exactly

14:00

what he's doing.

14:03

So when we get back from the break, we'll

14:05

talk to Alex. We'll talk to him about

14:07

breaking into the industry, how that happened, the

14:10

challenges he faced working in various mini

14:12

rooms, and what

14:14

was lost along the way.

14:17

I forgot what the segment is. It's

14:20

news we can use.

14:23

Oh, oh, right. Yes.

14:36

Showcase

14:38

F可 Enough

14:47

Asian Saint Masterdy Hi

14:52

listener Adrian here. Underunderstood

14:54

isn't in dependent production made

14:56

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underunderstood. One more thing.

15:49

We have a voice mailbox now

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15:59

message. We want to hear from you. Again,

16:02

that number is 212-994-4882. Now back to the

16:09

show. Okay, we're

16:12

back. Hello.

16:15

Hi.

16:18

We were talking about this idea of mini rooms

16:21

and I mentioned Alex

16:23

O'Keefe.

16:24

He's participated in a few of these

16:26

so-called mini rooms.

16:28

One of them produced a

16:30

huge hit,

16:31

The Bear, on FX,

16:33

a show about a sandwich shop in

16:36

Chicago starring Jeremy

16:38

Alan White. That's so cool that Alex writes

16:40

for that. I love that show. Yeah, it's a very good show.

16:43

It's such a good show. So

16:45

I called Alex up to talk about it.

16:47

Hello. Hello, hello.

16:51

Oh, wow. You're

16:54

talking to your microphone, right? Oh, you can feel

16:56

it? Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good.

16:58

How's that? How does it sound? It's good.

17:00

Oh my God. It's like late night AFN

17:03

radio, man. So you're a friend

17:05

of the show. Last time you were on the show,

17:07

you were working for a

17:10

political nonprofit. You were

17:12

fighting for climate justice. Oh, yeah. Now

17:15

you are an award-winning

17:18

writer for a critically acclaimed television

17:21

show.

17:21

Yep. How did that happen? How

17:24

did you make that show? I just went

17:27

off and I just wrote a screenplay,

17:29

which I had told you about years ago. And you're

17:31

like, Alex, you should pursue that. I'm like, nah,

17:34

man. It's just some dumb idea. You're like, no,

17:36

you should do that. I was like, nah,

17:39

I'm doing all this political stuff, man.

17:41

I'm busy. I'm busy, Billy. So

17:43

to back up a second, Alex is someone I met

17:46

because he sent me a weird email about wanting to

17:48

buy me a bagel when I worked at Mike.com. I

17:52

remember the email. I brought him in for

17:54

an interview. He literally had no experience

17:56

doing anything. So he didn't

17:58

get the job. But we've

18:00

remained friends since, and

18:02

we occasionally collaborate

18:05

on something or meet up to talk about ideas.

18:07

And a few years ago, or a little more than a few

18:10

years ago, we were getting coffee

18:12

or something like that. And he told me this idea

18:15

he had for a satire

18:17

about reparations called cotton

18:20

candy.

18:22

And the way he described it to me, I

18:25

thought it was really brilliant. I basically told him that

18:28

I thought he should drop everything else and just write the

18:30

script for that. But he was busy

18:33

doing other important activism

18:35

work. And that was before the pandemic.

18:38

So fast forward a bit later after

18:40

COVID lockdowns, after the George

18:43

Floyd protest, after the 2020 elections,

18:47

Alex had left

18:48

the nonprofit he was working for, and

18:51

he starts

18:52

working on writing cotton candy.

18:55

And he ends up getting it in front

18:58

of

18:59

some people, and

19:02

it catches the eye of Shaka

19:04

King, a filmmaker best known for

19:07

directing the Fred Hampton, biopic

19:10

Judas and the Black Messiah. And

19:13

a week later, he had signed

19:16

a deal to develop the concept

19:19

for FX. Wow. It

19:21

happened really quickly. Wow. But

19:23

it didn't go anywhere. His

19:25

original concept, cotton candy, was

19:28

basically eventually

19:29

turned down. But

19:32

the work that he did on it was

19:34

shared with the showrunners for

19:36

the bear. And he

19:39

says, he talked to them on the phone for an interview

19:41

and they said, can you start

19:44

tomorrow? What?

19:46

This is so magical. I

19:48

ended up writing cotton candy. This

19:51

spec script, it got seen by some people,

19:53

it got seen by these folks

19:55

who created the bear. The bear was staffing

19:58

up its writers room and they felt like the...

19:59

they were missing a certain spice. And

20:02

it was a low budget show, it takes place mostly

20:04

in one location. So it was

20:07

not seen as the national

20:09

sensation launching the sex

20:12

icon of Jeremy Allen White and

20:14

making chefs the new sexy

20:17

beasts of America. It was kind of a happy

20:20

accident. And I was able to

20:22

sneak in through the side door and

20:25

run off with an award along the way too.

20:27

Right, yeah, you won the

20:30

WGA award for best comedy

20:33

series, is that correct? Outstanding comedy.

20:36

And the Writers Guild Award goes to

20:42

the Writers of the Bear. Yeah,

20:46

you know, I remember when David asked

20:48

me, Alex, can you go back through this

20:50

episode and add some jokes? I'd go through

20:52

the episode, I'd be like, damn man. That

20:55

would really happen. I'd be like, can you

20:57

punch this up? Hey, it feels

20:59

like this isn't funny enough. Like, can you go,

21:01

Alex, Alex, you're funny. Can you go add some jokes?

21:04

I'd go read that and be like, damn man, this

21:06

is a depressing show.

21:10

What's the basic premise of the bear? Okay,

21:12

you want the Wikipedia synopsis? Sure.

21:16

A young chef from the world of fine

21:18

dining comes home to Chicago to run

21:20

his family's Italian beef sandwich shop

21:23

after the suicide of his older brother, who

21:25

left behind debts, a

21:28

rundown kitchen and an unruly

21:30

staff.

21:31

Comedy. Right? Clarity

21:34

ensues. Perfect canvas

21:36

for comedy.

21:40

I watched the clip of

21:43

you all getting the award

21:45

and- Renee. Yeah,

21:47

one of the other writers, Renee, had a great line.

21:49

He said, well, we did

21:51

it. We finally

21:54

answered the age-old question.

21:56

Does comedy have to be funny?

22:01

Obviously he's like addressing

22:03

a little bit of the elephant in the room that you're like

22:06

up against shows where like that are jam

22:08

packed full of jokes and like your

22:10

that's that wasn't the show that you worked on. But

22:13

I think that I think that's the funniest stuff.

22:15

I think the funniest stuff is real life. Like

22:17

I think the funniest stuff is when you're so stressed

22:19

and you're tense and then somebody

22:22

farts really loudly. Now that's that's

22:25

comedy. You know some of the other comedy

22:27

writers they have the quips. They have the quick jokes

22:30

but people aren't that funny in real life.

22:31

But the bear that's as funny as real

22:33

life is which is just like it's horrible and

22:35

it's insane and in the moment

22:38

you feel terrible but then when you look back

22:40

right you're just laughing. It seems

22:42

like what makes it unique and special is that it's very authentic.

22:46

That's

22:47

it. Yeah how much of that comes from the

22:49

writers room and your experience

22:51

and your fellow writers experience. You

22:54

know nobody really knows any writers

22:56

in Hollywood. If I asked you to name a famous writer

22:59

I mean unless they are also a director

23:01

or an actor it'd be pretty hard.

23:04

But that's where the characters come from. That's where

23:06

the stories come from. You know when

23:09

you're a black writer like me a lot

23:11

of times they bring you in the room and they want you

23:13

to add dimension to the black characters. Now I

23:15

wouldn't say I just focus on the black characters

23:18

but that's what's kind of weird about it being such a big

23:20

successful show is you pour

23:22

little pieces of yourself into the characters.

23:24

That's what defines them. That's

23:26

what makes them feel more human.

23:31

When Alex was working on The Bear he says

23:33

he was basically

23:35

at rock bottom. It was relatively early

23:38

on in the pandemic.

23:40

It was the winter

23:42

and he was invited to join The Bear's

23:44

mini room via Zoom from

23:47

his tiny apartment in Bushwick,

23:50

Brooklyn

23:51

and his heat didn't work. So

23:55

he kept trying to reach out to his landlord about

23:57

it and he wasn't hearing back.

23:59

He eventually found out

24:01

that his landlord died of COVID.

24:04

Thank God. So he got a space heater

24:06

that he would keep under his desk, but

24:09

it would frequently trip the power in

24:11

his apartment. So

24:13

he'd kind of have to figure out how to isolate at the

24:16

public library often to work

24:18

on the show. Jeez. Like episode

24:20

eight, I wrote that

24:22

from a public library.

24:25

And you know, at the time it was horrible.

24:28

I'm laughing now, but at the time I was like, this

24:31

is horrific living

24:33

conditions. I cannot keep writing

24:35

a Hollywood show like this. Now

24:37

I look back and it's such a big

24:39

sensation and it's everyone knows

24:42

who Carmi and Sydney are. It's

24:44

really funny to me that while

24:46

it was happening, I was just suffering, but

24:48

that's what the writer's strike is kind of about. The

24:51

escapism is, it's

24:54

kind of concealing what happens behind the curtains,

24:56

which like any other industry in this country is

24:59

a lot of exploitation, believe it or not.

25:02

I think in that clip

25:04

I mentioned of you accepting the Outstanding

25:06

Comedy Award, I

25:09

think there were like five of you on stage

25:11

accepting that award, including yourself.

25:13

How representative is that group

25:16

of who actually is involved in

25:19

writing, in the writing process? Yeah,

25:22

I mean, there was just two other people. They're the showrunners.

25:25

So the showrunners are basically in charge of the

25:27

room. They bring the room together, they structure

25:29

the room. They're the bosses. If Chris Stor

25:32

and Joanna Calla were here,

25:34

they're in Chicago shooting the second

25:36

season. If they were here, they'd say something really cool about food

25:39

and restaurants and the gnarly world and the beauty

25:41

of it.

25:42

So writers usually, writers are especially

25:44

in TV because it's such an episodic medium

25:47

where you have these long character arcs. It's really

25:49

important for them to be integrated into the production.

25:52

Now what happens is, yeah, those two

25:54

showrunners, Chris and Joanna, they

25:57

couldn't even be there to accept the award because

25:59

now the showrunners... are the only writers

26:01

on set often. They have to both

26:03

write, manage, sometimes

26:06

direct. They have to run

26:08

the entire show, and they're also

26:10

expected to, when a line is not

26:12

landing, write a new line on the spot.

26:15

That's such an all-consuming job. They couldn't even

26:17

join us on stage to win the highest award

26:20

in writing, which I'm sure they were

26:22

very proud to win. People worked

26:24

their whole careers to win that award. But

26:26

hey, they had to be in Chicago to shoot season 2.

26:29

It was pretty representative of what that writers

26:32

room looked like in season 1. Except

26:35

in season 1, I wasn't in person.

26:38

If it was truly representative, they would have just brought my

26:40

laptop and I would have been on Zoom. I would have waved.

26:42

That's more what it was like. You

26:45

got a little telepresence robot rolling on the

26:47

stage. Yeah, totally. That was more my experience.

26:50

Again, going back to this clip of

26:53

you all getting the award, Rene has this other

26:55

line at the end of the speech where

26:57

he says, we felt so lucky to write

26:59

this show and

27:01

it was really hard to get here for all

27:04

of us. There wasn't a clear career

27:06

path for us and in a lot of ways it felt like we

27:08

won a lotto to be here and a lot of ways it

27:10

feels like we've really earned it. So thank you

27:12

for seeing our work. We really appreciate it. I'm

27:16

sure in certain ways that's true, but also in certain

27:18

ways,

27:18

it's not like winning

27:21

the lottery. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't

27:24

say it's like winning the lottery because when you

27:26

win the lottery, you make lots of money, which

27:28

I did not do on the bear. I

27:32

made a very working class income

27:34

and then once you divide it up between managers

27:36

and agents and unions and taxes, it

27:39

really, I probably would have made more money actually

27:41

working in the original beef of Chicagoland.

27:44

The restaurant on the show.

27:46

The restaurant on the show. So

27:48

I mean, it still was

27:51

unbelievable and surreal the

27:53

entire time and it felt more

27:55

like I won a sweepstakes. You know, it felt like I got cast

27:57

on Chopped. You ever watched Chopped?

27:59

Yeah, you know you

28:02

get there you have the chance

28:04

to win money. It's not like a billion

28:06

dollars I think it's like $25,000 but

28:09

to do it you have to like

28:11

take like a zucchini Just

28:14

one slice of American cheese and chocolate

28:17

sauce and you have to make a like beautiful

28:19

meal out of it And you have like 30 minutes.

28:21

It's so stressful. I mean

28:24

it is It is

28:26

not just this you can't whisk away

28:28

to Hollywood someone's filing your nails.

28:31

It's work I interviewed with the showrunners.

28:33

They said can you start tomorrow? I get on

28:35

the zoom. There's not any oh Here's

28:38

Alex. Hey, we're gonna do a training. Oh, we're gonna

28:40

take it. So it's like no we're in it

28:43

sink or swim Sandwiches

28:46

don't stop making Do

28:49

you watch the show? It's just this crazy

28:52

kitchen that's moving so fast and

28:54

I felt like someone who had

28:56

just You know walked in one

28:58

day got in a job someone threw me an apron

29:01

and they were like cool. Yes

29:03

Fire every single chicken

29:05

we have please. Okay Richie. Do you

29:07

even know how to do prize? And

29:10

hey, I have my recipes I cook at home

29:12

My friends like it when I have people over for dinner parties

29:14

people enjoy it But I never

29:17

cooked that fast with that much

29:19

intensity with that much on the line and

29:22

I learned a lot

29:23

I am I'm doing

29:25

them in five Everything

29:27

fire everything right now. Okay, I'll fire

29:29

everything now. I just was finishing step out

29:32

Marcus and step out Okay, I'm

29:34

gonna talk to mark

29:34

Call my ex motion

29:36

now and it wasn't until Honestly

29:40

after the bear came out after it became successful I

29:42

was at a party and I wasn't

29:44

on Twitter or anything like this and

29:46

someone introduced me like Alex wrote all the bear Everyone's

29:49

like Oh Karma so sexy

29:51

or car me and Sydney gonna get together and

29:53

I just looked around like wait What are

29:55

you talking about? They're like, what do you mean?

29:58

Like you're not seeing the memes. I'm like

30:00

what memes, like what are you talking about? They're

30:02

like, do you not realize that the bear is like

30:05

the biggest show in America? Oh,

30:07

I was told this was a small show. I mean,

30:10

it's the most watched comedy in

30:12

FX history after just one season.

30:15

Oh really? Wow. That's insane. I

30:17

don't, I really don't understand

30:20

it. It's like really,

30:22

it's really bizarre, especially when I

30:25

have like 650 in my bank account

30:27

and I'm just trying to get enough

30:29

money to go

30:30

get a coffee. You know, when I was reading

30:32

the, I believe it was the New Yorker

30:35

piece that you were featured in, I

30:38

got kind of stuck. Sorry, what are you guys

30:41

laughing at?

30:41

I believe it was a little

30:44

magazine called the New Yorker. Yeah. I

30:48

was reading the, I believe it was the New Yorker

30:51

piece

30:52

that you were featured in. I got kind

30:54

of stuck on this concept of

30:57

what they call a mini room. Oh

30:59

yeah. And this is sort of what I want to dig

31:01

into a bit.

31:03

Billy, I worry about you. I worry about your obsessions,

31:06

but go on. You're telling you outlets for this podcast

31:08

and I'm glad you found your people. Well, listen, everyone's

31:11

talking about AI. Like, I

31:13

think that's great.

31:14

I think like the history books are gonna show that

31:17

the Writers Guild of America was on the forefront

31:20

of fighting for workers rights in the context

31:22

of AI. Yeah. I think that's great. But,

31:25

you know, I don't know, I, whatever.

31:27

Everyone's already talking about that. Why would I need to talk

31:29

about it? Yeah. Let's talk about the nitty

31:31

gritty weed stuff. Yeah.

31:35

Yeah. I just want to dig into this because I think

31:38

it's,

31:39

to me, it's a perfect example of like, people don't actually

31:41

know what goes on in a writer's room.

31:43

Yeah,

31:44

definitely.

31:45

So a mini room is a very insultingly

31:48

titled boy to disrupt

31:51

worker rights and pay people less. That's

31:53

all it is. And of course they find a brand for

31:56

it. But basically a couple of years

31:58

ago, 10, 15.

31:59

Ten years ago, Netflix came

32:03

to Hollywood with a dream. Put

32:06

down its suitcase, a dream. I'm going

32:08

to own fucking everything. That's

32:11

what Netflix said to itself. You

32:13

are the co-founder and CEO of Netflix.

32:16

Yeah.

32:17

You're like one of those big new media disruptors.

32:21

Why did the entertainment industry need to be disrupted?

32:24

I think just for the fun of it. Uh,

32:29

that's like saying some men just want to watch

32:31

the world burn. And it had

32:33

a new model of making movies

32:35

and TV shows. And part of their model

32:38

was making high volume of

32:40

television shows. My mission is simple,

32:43

to make you money. Mad Money

32:45

starts now. The

32:48

fang

32:48

names, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix,

32:51

and Google, were on fire. When

32:53

asked about what Netflix's principal competition

32:56

these days was, a seemingly exasperated

32:58

hasting. He just said, sleep.

33:01

That's right. The idea that the only limiting factor

33:04

for growth is how much people sleep. I

33:06

like that, because I don't sleep. So

33:08

they invested billions of dollars

33:11

into making as many television shows as possible.

33:14

And they sped up the process to

33:16

make it more efficient. This is what tech companies

33:18

do. This year went slow. This year

33:20

went slow. It also kind of went fast. It also kind

33:22

of went fast. When you asked, are you

33:25

still

33:25

watching? Well, the answer's always

33:27

yes. I watched a queen take pills and

33:29

pawns. I saw a doggy drink

33:31

Merlot. And Sac said,

33:33

taught me to love myself, even when I'm

33:36

all alone.

33:36

Yes, I scrolled it all. So

33:38

to make it more efficient, now, instead of writing

33:41

a pilot and making a pilot episode and then

33:43

the execs deciding whether they like

33:45

it or not, they would just decide, you know

33:47

what? We don't even need a pilot script. You

33:50

just come and pitch us an idea.

33:52

If we like it, we're going to

33:54

commission a mini room to write

33:56

the entire season of

33:58

the show.

33:59

We'll write all

34:02

the episodes at once and

34:05

if we like it then we

34:07

will produce it. And when we produce

34:10

it, this is what's nice for them, they

34:12

already have all the episodes written. They

34:14

don't need the writers anymore. You're basically fired.

34:18

What writers like Alex are saying is

34:20

that many rooms are sort of a work

34:22

around that

34:24

the media companies have devised in

34:27

order to pay writers the

34:29

absolute bare minimum.

34:32

There is a set minimum rate that has

34:34

been negotiated

34:35

by their union, but the timeline is

34:37

super condensed now.

34:39

They make many rooms for

34:41

shorter time periods than they

34:43

used to commission writers rooms in the

34:45

past. So now you're getting paid for far less

34:48

time than you used to get paid for the bear.

34:51

I worked on the bear for nine weeks. It

34:53

was 52 weeks in the year. It's pretty difficult

34:55

to keep living. And unfortunately, I

34:57

can't pay my landlord in clout. I

35:00

have to pay them. I have to show that I'm employed

35:02

somewhere.

35:03

The WGA says that for staff

35:05

writers, what Alex was on the

35:07

bear, 98% of them are paid the

35:11

minimum fee.

35:12

And that fee is only for a short period

35:15

of time. For lower and mid-level

35:17

writers, the employment period for shows

35:20

that haven't been fully greenlit,

35:22

like in so many so-called

35:24

mini rooms, that employment period

35:26

is only around 14 weeks. For

35:29

the bear, Alex says it was nine

35:31

weeks.

35:32

And that's a show that was going well. Others

35:35

can just feel

35:36

kind of hopeless or doomed.

35:39

I worked on a mini room for Netflix. We

35:42

wrote an entire season of TV. An

35:44

entire season. We talked about,

35:47

we spent weeks in the room. We talked

35:49

about so many details. We built

35:51

characters. We mapped out arcs.

35:54

We sent it all to Netflix at the end. They said, nah.

35:56

And that's

35:58

a...

35:59

whole season of television that

36:02

just lost and no one will probably

36:04

ever see it. But they stockpile

36:06

these scripts because it's like a bank

36:09

for them. They don't need to produce it right now,

36:11

but just like the real estate

36:13

companies buy up many houses and the

36:15

houses just sit there empty, they

36:18

basically buy up as many scripts as possible

36:20

to both be able to stockpile the scripts in

36:23

the event of a strike. They can greenlight

36:25

these seasons worth of television

36:27

that we've already written, but no one's ever seen.

36:29

It's

36:29

never been greenlit. It's never even heard of. I'm

36:33

not even allowed to tell you the name of the show, but

36:36

it does hurt on an artistic level

36:38

to know it's just content to these people.

36:40

Now, the people who have run Hollywood have never been

36:43

renowned for being good people. They've

36:45

never been renowned for being humanitarians

36:47

who care about the artistic process, but

36:49

they were in the business of

36:53

making movies. What's really terrible

36:55

about the six corporations who own 90% of

36:58

the media industry nowadays,

37:00

they're simply tech companies. They

37:02

look at the entire world, especially

37:04

the CEOs, like a machine

37:07

to be improved, to

37:10

make more efficient. The way they make

37:12

more efficient is to remove human

37:14

beings out of the process, to

37:16

remove humanity out of the process,

37:19

and certainly remove any creativity

37:21

or threat to the status quo out of the process.

37:23

We had to lay off a third of the company in 2001.

37:27

This is Reed Hastings, co-founder and

37:30

executive chairman of Netflix,

37:32

talking at Stanford to a class

37:34

about blitzscaling, the

37:37

business practice of rapidly growing

37:39

a company to be dominant. After

37:42

we did this one-third layoff, it was 120 people to 80. We

37:45

had expected to basically grind to

37:47

a halt and really not be able

37:50

to make any improvements because it would take 80 people just

37:52

to keep the lights on. In fact,

37:55

we got more done with only 80 people. We

37:58

tried to figure out why.

37:59

and we realized now

38:02

there was no dummy-proofing necessary.

38:05

And so it was just everybody was

38:07

going fast and everything was right. And

38:10

so we realized with the right density

38:12

of talent, there's very little

38:14

process needed and that that was the

38:16

joyful thing. So at first

38:19

we said, well, let's do a one-third layoff every

38:21

year. That was the key.

38:24

That's a long-term winning strategy. That's a long-term winning,

38:27

it might be. Back to the blitzscaling

38:29

thing.

38:29

And then other insidious

38:32

thing that writers have just

38:34

begun to worry about is that these

38:36

tech companies like Netflix have commissioned

38:38

many rooms to write seasons worth the television

38:41

shows of many different genres and style

38:44

to basically feed all of our scripts into

38:46

an AI machine that just

38:49

studies all of it and figures out

38:51

how to do it all without us.

38:53

The bear, you're still obviously

38:56

very proud of it, it seems. And

38:59

it's a great

39:00

example of something that

39:02

was able to graduate out of a mini room,

39:05

but it sounds like a lot is lost

39:07

to mini rooms. So

39:10

what's your experience with

39:13

that? Or what have you heard from other writers

39:15

in terms of what is lost to

39:17

the mini room

39:19

concept? It's probably shows

39:21

like the bear. There are probably seasons

39:23

of shows that are like the bear

39:26

that are different, that

39:28

are about a type of person that you don't normally see.

39:31

There's probably so many lost

39:34

seasons of television like that. I

39:36

can speak of my experience in a mini

39:38

room for Netflix. I can't say the name of

39:40

it, but it's based on a book. And

39:43

so it was originally, it's bounced around.

39:45

HBO tried to produce it, Amazon

39:48

Prime tried to produce it, Netflix tried

39:50

to produce it. Each time they assembled a room

39:52

of really great writers to write

39:54

an entire season, adapting

39:56

the book. And each time the studio

39:58

said, we can't produce.

39:59

this and they let the rights expire

40:02

or someone else bought the rights and it went off to

40:04

another. So there was kind of this gallows

40:07

humor in the room knowing that, you

40:09

know, there had already been months

40:12

and dozens of writers who had attempted

40:15

to adapt this, I guess, unadaptable

40:18

book because of the content of it and

40:20

the provocative nature of the content.

40:23

Since working on The Bear, Alex has moved

40:26

to LA and while this new model

40:28

of mini rooms has meant that he's

40:30

had the chance to work on multiple projects

40:33

in his short time in the industry. It

40:35

has also meant that it's hard to make ends

40:37

meet. Many writers fear that the only

40:39

people who will be able to sustain a long-term

40:42

career in screenwriting with

40:44

this new mini room model are

40:46

folks who are independently wealthy

40:48

or

40:49

have someone else paying

40:51

their bills.

40:52

As for Alex, he says he went to that

40:55

WGA award ceremony

40:56

with a negative bank account and

40:58

a bow tie that he bought on credit.

41:01

Before this strike, I got to say I was at

41:03

I've told you a couple weeks ago, I was so depressed like

41:05

we were gonna do a project I was just so depressed

41:08

because I was looking at my my

41:10

finances and I was like, I'm gonna have

41:12

no way to make money this year because we're about to go on strike.

41:15

I have a couple hundred bucks left, don't

41:17

have money for rent. And things

41:19

have really turned around for me. This

41:21

is my own mental health census strike, which I could

41:24

have never expected because a strike means

41:26

I can't make money. But what I have

41:29

seen is just such solidarity. I

41:31

rolled

41:31

out of bed, went on a popular

41:33

sports show called the Dan

41:35

Lebatar Show with Stu Goats. This

41:37

is the Dan Lebatar Show with the Stu

41:40

Goats podcast.

41:44

Alex O'Keefe

41:46

is 28 years old and he wrote for

41:48

a really great show on FX

41:50

that was a surprise that won a lot of awards.

41:53

The Bear. I didn't

41:55

think that it was going to

41:58

be a life changing moment in my life.

41:59

life to be honest with you. Basically you're

42:02

having enormous success and

42:05

you're broke and you're broke

42:07

because they're not paying you anything.

42:10

Like you're, I just can't, I cannot

42:12

believe the details of what happened. That

42:15

was really mean. It just landed me. I'm

42:18

becoming famous for being broke it feels

42:20

like. The fans of this

42:22

one radio show sent

42:24

me over $20,000 in donations

42:26

to my Venmo hotel and that

42:29

was never my intention. Right

42:31

off of like what seemed like a very off-handed

42:33

comment. Off-handed comment just as

42:35

a joke man. I was just trying to throw out a joke. Maybe

42:38

we'll be broke during this strike but honestly I

42:40

was broke working on the television show.

42:43

I feel like I'm losing out on much right now

42:45

okay. Like so

42:48

I mean I have a Venmo

42:50

Alex O'Keefe. They were like no seriously give us

42:52

your handle and you're like okay. Okay

42:58

I mean sure. Go ahead give

43:00

it up for real. Give it up for real. He's like oh I think

43:03

our fans are gonna surprise

43:04

you. I said okay maybe I'll get a coffee because

43:07

somebody will send me money for a coffee. Alex

43:10

I think our listeners are gonna surprise

43:12

you. Thank you sir.

43:14

Thank you appreciate

43:15

y'all. Y'all take care. I made

43:17

as much money going on that show as

43:20

I made from the bear after my fees and

43:22

taxes. That's solidarity for

43:24

you. It felt like it's a wonderful life.

43:27

I love that. Yeah I mean I've

43:29

seen screenshots of his Venmo account.

43:33

It got up over $20,000 just

43:36

listeners of this show and to

43:38

the point where he recorded

43:40

a video and sent it to them where he's basically

43:43

like I promise to pay it forward.

43:45

I am so

43:48

moved and confused. When

43:52

I showed this to my

43:55

fiance they

43:57

started crying because we have really experienced

43:59

a lot of

43:59

stress and depression like so many people.

44:02

And so Alex actually set up a website

44:05

where he compiled a ton

44:07

of resources and ways for people

44:10

to actually donate directly

44:13

to causes related to this

44:16

fight, including things like the Entertainment

44:18

Community Fund, Groceries for

44:20

Writers, Motion Picture and Television

44:23

Fund, Behind the Scenes Charity,

44:25

and a bunch of other resources. You

44:27

can find that at hollywoodstrike.org.

44:35

So to answer our original question,

44:37

what's lost to these mini rooms,

44:40

Alex basically says more shows

44:42

like The Bear.

44:43

Fully written seasons of

44:46

shows. Fully written seasons of shows.

44:48

I'm sure there are people out there who listen to

44:50

the show that might have stories of

44:53

shows that they worked on that they think

44:56

are really interesting that should have made it. Call

44:58

us. Yeah, you could talk to us anonymously.

45:00

I would love to know about those. And I think

45:02

it's a perfect time to like highlight the

45:05

kind of work that these writers have

45:07

done that they're fighting to have better conditions

45:10

for.

45:10

Our voicemail number is 212-994-4882. Yes,

45:16

you got it. You got it this time. Wow. Wow.

45:19

Did you look it up? Yeah, I don't even

45:21

know Lerone's number.

45:23

Yeah. Under

45:32

Understood is Adrian Jeffries,

45:34

Regina DeLay, John Lago Marcino,

45:37

and me, Billy Disney. If

45:40

you have a question that the internet can't answer,

45:43

we want to hear about it. You can email us

45:45

at hello at underunderstood.com

45:48

or you can leave us a voicemail,

45:50

212-994-4882. For

45:55

more information on the Writer's Strike, you can go

45:57

to WGAContract2023. That's

46:01

the official website. There's also Hollywoodstrike.org.

46:05

That's the website that Alex set up. It

46:07

has some ways you can get involved if you're not a guild

46:09

member. There are more links to

46:11

things referenced in this episode in our show

46:13

notes. We have a website. We

46:16

have a Patreon. We're bad at

46:18

social media, but we have that as well.

46:21

We're in podcast apps. How are

46:23

you listening to this? Is it in a podcast app?

46:26

Do your friends have podcast

46:28

apps on their phones? Could

46:29

you take their phone and subscribe to us in

46:32

their podcast app? That could be cool,

46:34

if they're cool with it. Thanks so much

46:36

for listening. We'll be back next week.