T Cooper: Yeah. I love to hear that you had this budget. You did so much with it. It does not look cheap as they say. There are moments both just texturally. And even what you were just saying about the almost life or death thriller aspect of it, I think even the wardrobe and setting had something. Set dressing had something to do with that. Like Matt Bower’s, I don’t know, his hat. There were certain ways that certain scenes were shot that actually amped that up and made it feel rich and old fashioned in a way that it’s hard to make stuff look on present day budgets.
Ron Nyswaner: Yeah, again, it has a lot to do though with, it is the budget, but also with Dan Minahan also being an EP and setting the tone and look. He did the first two episodes and then he went on to do a movie that’s going to be coming out.
But with Simon Dennis setting the look and the tone, and also just everyone thinking the same way. The Joseph La Corte, who did Fosse/Verdon. Anastasia Masaro, who was our genius production designer and thoroughly researched and all this stuff. So it’s in selecting those people that you’re all trying to do the same thing. And no one is trying to show off with their department. And they’re beautiful, but it was all about, if you asked any of them, “Why did you make this choice?”. They would give you a story reason not a, “Because I want people to see what a great designer I am.”
T Cooper: [inaudible 00:21:14].
Ron Nyswaner: So we’re all on board, and that’s key. And we all know that sometimes not everybody is thinking the same way. And then there’s extra strife where you have to wrestle it out now.
And I might just say that one thing I think. I only had another writer with me for a short time because the scripts were basically set. What that means, and I think the strike has tried to, we tried to address this, is that, so the younger writers in my room where they don’t have the experience of being on a set. So I find sometimes when you’re working with writers who haven’t been on sets or haven’t been in cutting rooms, is that is like you have to explain in a writer’s room, “Well actually, the audience isn’t going to care about that. You’re being too detailed about something that,” because you’re on the set. Or, “Well, we can’t really do that set piece for a three minute scene where nothing important happens. We can’t travel to a football field for something unimportant.” When you know that, but they haven’t seen, they haven’t seen all the trucks and all the extras that have to go, so they don’t have that weight on them of the reality of shooting.
I mean, I was so afraid. One of the things when we went to Toronto, there were two things that just drove me crazy with fear and anxiety, which is how in the world in Toronto am I going to shoot Fire Island? A half of episode seven takes place… Or San Francisco, which is the other half of episode [inaudible 00:22:46]. And then how are we going to do the AIDS quilt? We’re not going to take over Washington Mall, the National Mall. And both those things worked out with people, with ingenuity. And that’s again, the location department being so on board.
And T, I thought it was really important to go to every department and explain the stunts. In episode seven when the police invade the Elephant Walk bar, I had everybody quiet on the set. I said, “So let me tell everybody here what this is.” And I described The Night of Gay Rage, The White Night Riots, while the police chose this bar to get revenge on these people. And the stunt people are so moved by it and everything. So it’s just bringing everybody into the storytelling, I think is really effective.
T Cooper: Yeah, I love hearing that. That’s one of my favorite parts. Just going back to the nuts and bolts of it is that that’s what I love being on sets so much, and as exhausting as it is, but that moment of rewriting to a situation that just pops up that is out of everyone’s control, while trusting that every department is just doing what they do. And that’s the best part of it is that are these incredibly talented people at these little things that I know dick shit about. And good, empower you to make the best decision to figure out to solve this problem in this moment.
And to be honest, I look at often a studio like that or a network like that too, because it’s not my damn network. It’s not my money. If they’re like, “Hey, this needs to be this way.” You have to work with that. And to your point, the audience doesn’t care where that hearing was. They cared that… I’m sorry, I can’t remember the name of the character, but the one that Roy Cohn was protecting.
Ron Nyswaner: David.
T Cooper: Yeah, him rattling his drink for Tim to fill it. That’s what matters. That little character moment. That’s all that matters, not how many cameras there are or how grand the room looks. So it’s something you can’t teach, and that you learn being on set, and then posting what you shot each day, or at the end, and really seeing, “Oh, look at all that time we spent on that one thing, and we literally used two seconds of that shot,” or whatever it is. From whoever’s lips to whoever’s ears, there will be experiences for all of us, but especially younger writers, to get on set and be able to be empowered to be successful.
And again, I hope that it’s more folks who are not the usual suspects, because unfortunately, those folks just, even if they get room at the table to contribute a little of their experience to a script, or a story, or whatever, if they don’t get to take it on set and then take it across the finish line, it’s not as valuable. And again, obviously that’s partially what we went on strike over. But.
Ron Nyswaner: Definitely, definitely. And also I think you learn about acting, watching the great directors that I had and watching them, and having to be there. I was there for almost every scene. In many ways, because we went through four decades. You don’t shoot in order obviously. We moved up episode seven because we wanted to get the good weather. So there were days, weeks where we were in three different decades. And then maybe the director after Dan was somebody coming. It was really [inaudible 00:25:56] there to say, “No, no, no, wait, wait. This is 1969, ’68,” that sort of thing.
But to watch, to know when we write some things that we want actors to do, just know that you can’t ask the actors to do that. Not that it’s like too provocative or anything because obviously I didn’t hesitate to ask my actors to [inaudible 00:26:16]-
T Cooper: No, you did not.
Ron Nyswaner: [inaudible 00:26:18]. And those sex scenes were written. I’d love to talk about that too, but that’s-
T Cooper: Yeah, I have a couple of questions about that myself.
Ron Nyswaner: But sometimes I think what scenes get, people are trying to write scenes. They’re too complicated. That the actors and the scene is supposed to do these five things, and they’re this and they’re this. And I have this belief at this point in my career, that character is not a set of characteristics. Character is like one thing, one essential thing, and one thing that opposes that essential thing. That’s all you need to know. I don’t need to know, does he like to walk on the beach at sunset, and eat pizza, and he’s allergic to nuts. That doesn’t matter. The audience cares about the essential thing. Who are they, essentially? And I think the actor cares about who am I essentially.
And I also have learned to trust actors. These great actors that I had, I didn’t get involved in their… I didn’t need to sit and explain who their characters were. They knew. At some point they could explain to me. And that was a joy.
T Cooper: Speaking of this cast of yours, I’m wondering about the process of, did it happen in the writer’s room…? Well, generally, I’d love to hear a little bit about how you were in these other two rooms and then boom, you’re running your own room. So I’d love to hear a little bit about how you run your writer’s room, but then a little bit more specifically to the story. Did that process of widening the storytelling as far as character, even just straight up demographically, and different experiences that were obviously concurrent but not, say a part of the book, or not part of the common story, that the received history that we have of these eras, how did you all come up with these… Who pitched which characters, and how many did you end up with that… How many did you cut and leave on the chopping block? And I’m just wondering about how that process came about. And was it intentional, let’s hit this demographic, let’s hit this experience, et cetera?
Ron Nyswaner: Well, I think by the time we got to the main writer’s room, the characters had been established. Throughout the process of writing the Bible they had been established. I added Marcus and Frankie very, very early in the process because the novel, for whatever reasons, I don’t think this is intentional, there weren’t black characters just in that particular story that Thomas Mallon was telling. And in 2023, I just morally was not going to have an all white show. And also, when we did start doing research about the black community in Washington in the fifties, it was so vibrant, and exciting, and facing, allegedly desegregated, but not at all. And that was a really interesting thing.
And so it was useful. So the characters were there. I think maybe it was a diverse writers room. I had one of, D. Johnson, who has run shows, and has been around almost as long as I have. She was the other veteran writer in the room. And then everyone were younger writers. Two of my staff writers had not been staffed on a show before. I knew them. Well, I knew Jack really well. And Brandon Hines, I got to know in the interview, I got to know by reading his scripts. Robbie Rogers, my producer was a writer in the room.
So the room was run… I think maybe I said this, I hope I say these things with a sense of humor when I say them, but I think I declared right away that this isn’t a democracy, sorry, because we don’t have time for that, actually. And I’ll hear everybody. And that a certain point, I will take the liberty of saying, “I’ve heard you. I’m making the other decision, and now we don’t need to discuss any further. Let’s move on.” And I think that’s what works. It’s just what you have to do because we could discuss things forever.
Writers, I don’t know about you, but I’m tortured, and like, oh, I don’t want to wrestle. Maybe it could be… So I needed them actually to remind me, “Ron, we should move on,” sometimes. We didn’t assign characters to certain people. We didn’t do that at all. Everybody, we broke each episode as a group, and then I started knowing fairly on who was going to write, I was going to assign pretty in early the process, and then I let them know. So then when we were breaking those episodes, I would encourage them to speak more, to be more part of that process. But everybody was welcome to join in on every episode.
T Cooper: And did everybody get a script at in the end?
Ron Nyswaner: Oh yeah. Everybody, yes, co-wrote a script or got their own script. Yes. D, the veteran, assigned two scripts on her own and boom, boom, banged it out, and was brilliant, and all that stuff. When you’re doing something for 30 years, you know how to do it, actually. But those scripts were wrestled with as well. Everybody’s script was treated as… Nobody’s script was treated as perfect or a religious object. And we didn’t have really any arguments. It was a pretty pleasant writer’s room. And I think, again, I came into this, we weren’t with years of thinking about it. I had a authority that comes from just having thought about something a lot.
Also, we were blessed by, because our show is, much of it is historical. So research was really important. My researcher, Lewis Grotman, was the researcher, was other than myself, was the longest employee on the show. He stopped working a week before I stopped working all the way to post. Because the rules on our show were that everything that the historical characters like McCarthy and Cohen say in public, they actually have to have said it. We’re not going to put words in their mouth. And so everything was really, really deeply researched in that sense. And the research then provides a lot of great material. So I think research is an essential part. Now, even a fictional show that isn’t based on specifically on historical people, I think research could really, I think it is really helpful.
T Cooper: Yeah. Did you say you were neurotic or OCD?
Ron Nyswaner: Well, is there a difference?
T Cooper: I think so. I have a OCD question, which is I hope that you can speak to, even if it comes from your neuroticism or your OCDism, or whatever, wherever they intertwine. But the checkerboarding storytelling, also while I was watching this, was exploding my brain. I just can’t imagine, first of all, how you all made the decision. And I’m sure this is something you had thought about for years, but the percentage of storytelling in this era versus this era as they start braiding and intertwining and then colliding. But also just the checkerboarding process, I can’t even imagine the board and what it looked like, and how each little thing from the past pushes ahead something from the present.
And I just did a Netflix mini room on a show like that. And a lot of shows are built like that, especially shows with multiple seasons, not necessarily miniseries. But I think a lot of us writers are trying to do that kind of storytelling that propels you to the present, or whatever the present of the story is. But it is so hard to do that on screen, making every scene, do what it needs to do in the present, but do something else in the next, future mostly timeline. So I’m curious about that. Did that just drive you crazy?
Ron Nyswaner: No, it was really fun. It was [inaudible 00:33:55].
T Cooper: Well, lucky for you.
Ron Nyswaner: Sorry. Really, really, really fun. The eighties sequence… Let me back up. We knew early on. I knew early on, I think maybe even in a pitch. Early on, we knew that the fifties story would be A story for five episodes. Then we go to the sixties, then we go to the seventies, and then we would go… The finale, we would go back to the fifties, but it would be the B story, the fifties and the finale would be the B story. Whereas the 1986 story would be the A story.
So the first five episodes we knew going in, we said, our A story is the fifties, our B story, our framing device, but I didn’t want it to just be a framing device, although in some episodes it turns out to be that. And then so we would break the A story and then say, “Okay, what’s happening in San Francisco? What’s our B story?”. “Okay, so what if they have a big fight and Hawke goes to a sex club and gets beat up?”. So we would just pitched, so let’s do four beats in the eighties, knowing what the beginning point was, Hawke shows up, the end point, he’s at the AIDS quilt by himself.
We would nail the A story. And then you just find those moments where you felt, like if it was network TV, that’d be a great place for a commercial break. Something happens in the A story was like, that can rest for a minute. Now you go. So actually it was really fun and it changed in post of course.
T Cooper: Oh yeah. Yeah, and editors can do magic to make even pop that stuff out even more. But yeah, I was just thinking even just choosing that as your little four beat runner of him going to the club and this guy trying to top him. But then that choice of that thing happening then is resonant to what you then see later when he allows Tim to take that role. That’s all so resonant and has to be, it can’t just be, he goes and looks at the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf. Is that where those fucking sea lions are? Whatever that… Know what I mean? It has to be, whatever, the resonance of it. It’s just where are those seals?
Ron Nyswaner: But actually I have to give credit where the credit was due. That very thing that you mentioned, that was Gary Levine, the President Showtime’s note, suggestion.
T Cooper: What?
Ron Nyswaner: Yeah. He said, “The eighties story is a little dull.” Now, he didn’t say sex club. That was me. That was me and my co-writer, or Anya who wrote the episode, but made probably the room. He said, “What if he goes out and gets rolled? He gets mugged.”. It was just like it was too-
T Cooper: Yeah, it’s a good note.
Ron Nyswaner: It’s Showtime, they like, we, sex, violence, let’s go for it.
T Cooper: Yeah. Well, speaking of sex, since you just said the word sex. Yeah. Was there any limit that they were like, “Yo, this is real explicit. We’re trying to get straight ladies to watch this shit. If we’re lucky, a couple straight guys will watch this shit.” Were there any times where were like, “What are you doing?”.
Ron Nyswaner: So Dante Di Loreto, the president of Fremantle, his advice on the sex was, “Ron, let’s make the sex so hot that straight men will want to have gay sex.” So there’s the first note. And Showtime, you do have to… I’m sure you know. There’s the call from, I don’t know what department it is, the legal department.
T Cooper: Yeah, whatever [inaudible 00:37:08].
Ron Nyswaner: They say, “So these are the Showtime rules. You don’t see bodily fluids, but these are the rules.” I’m just going to say, I’m not going to mention any names. I got a call from an executive after that call who said, “Ron, those are the official rules, but if you push it a bit, we can always change, fix it in the cutting room.” So I was encouraged.
T Cooper: That’s great.
Ron Nyswaner: So we did that thing. Speaking of in episode four, again, there’s a sexual act. And Hawkins services Tim. It’s what I call a dirty kiss, meaning Hawkins has something in his mouth when he kisses. And we weren’t allowed to, but I just said in post, Steve, I said, “Make his lips really glist… Look wet.” I wanted people to know what was going on.
T Cooper: Yeah, that was good. You got your fluid in.
Ron Nyswaner: Do you know what, again, it goes back to that thing, a writer’s conversation, which is that the actors loved it too. Every scene in the show really comes down to power. And Dan Minahan and I decided this on the set actually, that every scene is going to be about power. And so the sex scenes that, and Matt, and Johnny, and Jelani, and Noah, they love that because that gives an actor something to act. They’re not just showing their body so that the fans can go crazy. I have power over you and you have power over me.
T Cooper: Well, speaking a little bit, this is something I think about the time. You probably don’t know. I don’t know why you’d know, but my wife and I, she’s a journalist. I was novelist. I published 10 books. That’s what I did. But when a bunch of us were migrating into TV, we were like, “Oh my God, look, you can make a money. Amazing.”
Ron Nyswaner: Writers can make a living.
T Cooper: I was like, “Wow, that’s so great. You can get paid to write. Cool.”
Anyway, we came up with a show, and this was in, I want to say 2009. I can’t remember. But we came up with a show that was about, it was a love story between a man and woman, and the guy just happened to be trans. It was loosely based on our love story in our life. It was a New York neurotic Jew coming down south and meeting a woman down there.
We sold it in the room to Showtime. Not only was I like, “Oh my God, TV writing is so easy. I’m always doing this.” The last time I’ve ever felt that. At any rate, we sold it in the room.
Ron Nyswaner: That wears off really quickly.
T Cooper: Oh, one meeting down in the agents in the garage that I already lost, I was disabused of that.
Anyway, no. So we sold it. We had a couple offers. This was well before Transparent. This is well before any trans shows were on or even being made. I think there was a Ryan Murphy one.
Ron Nyswaner: It was after Soldiers Girl, I’ll just say.
T Cooper: Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I meant in the premium TV space [inaudible 00:39:57]. But it was Bob Greenblatt who bought it, and obviously he left. But we did get to continue developing it. We had sold it as a comedy, like a Dramedy. And Showtime at the time, our execs were great. And they were like, “You know what? We feel like this is an hour. Let’s make it a little more involved and whatever.” And we did that. And it didn’t get made obviously. I don’t think it was of the post Greenblatt era.
But will say, and this is something I would love to talk to you about and have us have this conversation, because I do think that, especially for trans stories, I feel like the trauma-based stories… And this can be related to a lot of other communities, gay, black, whatever. The first, as far as our underrepresented stories go in mainstream storytelling really feels to be about stories about us and our loved ones suffering as a result of us.
And thinking about Boys Don’t Cry, and Crying Game, and even Soldier’s Girl to an extent, obviously, I think folks are interested, like, “Oh my God, the collateral damage of relationships like this.” And even Transparent, which was obviously the first mainstream trans character was everything was a mess as a result of this trans character coming out. She was a mess. Her family was a mess. It was a result of the transness.
At any rate, I think that, I feel like for our show, I just don’t think folks were ready for a… I don’t don’t even think we are now, but I don’t think that we are ready for just someone who happens to be trans and is not the source of the conflict or drama in the show, and that they can have, say Larry David moments or whatever, that have nothing to do with being trans. And there can be conflict, and drama, and mistakes, and fuck ups, and falling, and falling in love and out of love, and all that stuff, but it doesn’t have to be about being trans.
And so yeah, it’s in a way, we just started having steps forward of getting to be real people who aren’t constantly suffering because of our transness. Maybe we can, I don’t know, put out a fire and save a cat from a tree or whatever all that stuff is. But then now, look what’s happening now. It’s an era that is akin to what you portrayed the end of Fellow Travelers, which is a government that is literally trying to squash us out of existence in a lot of states, as in the eighties with AIDS, is just perfectly happy to watch a whole community just die. And a lot of these laws and a lot of these states, the backlash to the visibility about trans people, many people think, “Oh, oh my God, all these trans people, suddenly now they’re allowed to be trans, and there’s so many of them. It’s spreading like a disease.” And so now the squashing backlash is happening.
And I just find myself just constantly, because I’ve been telling trans stories since the nineties in various forms, whether on stage, or in books, or journalism, scripted stuff. But I just find myself really struggling with the need for, I think people who have the money and the resources, and the green lighting power to see some trauma unfold for these characters. And I don’t think they know in their heads, oh, I got to see this person suffer as a result of their quote “choices” or whatever. But I do feel like there is still this prevailing thought that if we are suffering, that is how we get straight or whatever mainstream folks, or cis folks, or whatever it is, white folks, to care.
So I just wonder, there’s just a lot as far as educating an audience versus allowing us to just be cool, interesting, flawed characters. And yeah, I struggle with this stuff all the time, and have a new project that is a film that was funded and wasn’t funded because it’s about a real trans person. It’s a biopic. And I think people are really scared of it because this character’s not suffering. There is a problem with it, that I’d love to tell you about the project in a minute, but I’m just saying-
Ron Nyswaner: Yes sir.
T Cooper: … Talk about this space that I just [inaudible 00:43:52] this [inaudible 00:43:52].
