Dan Perlman: You are so right. Everyone else is wrong or whatever. Or I guess there is this emerging trope apparently I guess of black female therapists more existing on shows to lift up whatever, the white protagonist, and she is totally not interested in me, she’s totally not engaged with anything. She thinks it’s boring, which is the most fun … It was like your problems are boring, I’m not going to enable this as interesting, and it feels like a fun way to do it and she’s also just effortlessly funny as a performer that … I love working with stand-ups because they make every line funnier. They’re going to show up and they may not know their lines or what they’re doing or why they’re there, but they know who they are, and they just infuse that so, so well.
And Hassan Johnson who plays Drew, he was also … I mean he was in … He played Wee-Bey in The Wire and he’s been an amazing actor forever, and he is also so funny and I had no idea. Like I knew he would be really good, we all did, but I didn’t know how funny he was and he’s also so good at very much what is a comics approach where he’s very much, he stays within himself and he’s able to deliver jokes. He could say have this healthy soda or I’m going to kill you in the exact same inflection and you totally believe both. They’re both funny. That’s an incredible skill, and he just nails that. And Kristin Dodson also, who plays Zayna, also just really kills it and brings so much heart and emotion to a character. Where it’s like there’s a version of that character that could be more sad or you could feel sadder for but she has so much warmth and heart and energy and life that you know she’s going to be okay, and you have this faith in her and so yeah. I’m super lucky, we’re super lucky we’re able to sort of surround ourselves with people who are better than we are.
Geri Cole: So actually let’s talk a little bit about stand-up. You guys both came from stand-up. Can we talk about your stand-up there and how you transitioned to screenwriting if that was always sort of in the plan or if it was just sort of like a thing that once you started hanging out, it became the new plan?
Dan Perlman: Well we met doing open mics in 2013. Kevin had just moved from Houston and he’d been doing them for a couple years and I was kind of just starting and just going and bombing at open mics and you sign up and put your name in a bucket and go for two minutes and everyone stares at you.
Geri Cole: And maybe get two minutes.
Dan Perlman: Right. You get two minutes and you try a thing and it was like, “Nope,” and you’re like, “All right. Sorry. I’ll see you at the next one.” But Kev was the first one who … Because I did film sketch comedy in college and liked it and always liked making stuff and have always liked to make stuff at a kind of frenetic … You just want to create things, and Kev was the first one who shared that same drive of let’s just make a thing and we don’t care. It might be bad, whatever. Let’s just try to make a thing, and so we started making a lot of these sketches, almost none of which we stand behind, but maybe a few. We just wrote, shot, threw up, and just did that for like four or five months, and then took a break from it and sort of just burned out.
But that was really the initial thing. It was our first … It was this sort of shared drive just to make stuff, and then from doing that, then we found the whole world that became Flatbush and we were like, “Oh, this is a more fun world to focus on.” Because some of those sketches were set in that more tone and some were just more like set in the business world. Which there’s already kind of a million parodies of and we’re like, “Oh, this is a more fun universe to explore.” Then from there we kind of fleshed out became more narrative in Flatbush.
Geri Cole: So do you still do stand-up? Is that a [inaudible 00:24:28] –
Dan Perlman: Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot what the first question was, yeah.
Geri Cole: That’s all right.
Dan Perlman: No, so I love stand-up so much, and yeah, I’ve taped some stuff for Comedy Central in July that will be out later this year, and I love doing it. It’s just a very fun way to kind of like figure out certain ideas and articulate these thoughts and stuff, and yeah, I’m still figuring out the balancing act of doing the show and stand-up. But the goal has always been or me to be like a stand-up who makes things and to write more shows and films and stuff and have … I like working those different muscles and yeah, it’s fun. It was a very weird transition over COVID because I was doing standup every night essentially for eight years and then you’re doing it on Zoom and it’s not really … You don’t really feel anything on Zoom, even if it goes well, you’re like, “This isn’t fun.”
So you’re just kind of … But it’s truly the best when you’re trying a new thought or idea and you’re tinkering with it and it works. That’s such a cool validating thinking, especially because every other bit of writing, the development and everything, it takes so long to get it out there and have people see and respond to it. But standup, there is that immediacy that is so cool and it’s such adrenaline that it’s so fun to do, and I think it makes you a better performer and more present and more willing to take risks, acting, performing and so yeah. I love it.
Geri Cole: Yeah. That’s one of the things that I’ve always admired about stand-up, because it is like … In the standup that I love, there is a narrative to it, you know what I mean? I do feel like they’re taking you somewhere and it’s just such … It almost feels like watching a sport. Where it’s like the precision with which … It seems like they’re just shooting the shit, I was like, “No no no no no.” I’m like, “All of this is so tested.”
Dan Perlman: It’s super meticulous. It’s very … But then with that, you sort of build the whole structure, and then you get comfortable dovetailing out of it. But that’s the sort of experience that comes with time, it’s like I can veer here and I know how to sort of segue back and kind of Sully land this plan so it’s not just a random deviation.
Geri Cole: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And like I should veer here, because it gives a little bit of air to the performance [inaudible 00:26:48].
Dan Perlman: This thing needs to be acknowledged. When you’re starting, you’re kind of afraid to go off script or whatever, but then you get to a point where you’re like, “Oh no. I would be crazy to just keep book reporting this.” Because this person made this noise or whatever or they didn’t respond well to that, so you have to acknowledge that. Like there’s all these little … I did boxing lessons for a little while and it was okay. I didn’t like being punched, but the other stuff was fine. But I liked … There’s all these elements to it that are helpful with standup because it’s like you look at it and you’re like, “Man, they just punched him hard.” But there’s all this stuff with … It’s like every aspect of your body and how you’re positioned and how you’re angled and how you follow through and how you sort of … Just present in every way, it’s like, “Oh yeah.” And every sort of facet of that goes into someone, when you’re seeing them do standup effectively, it’s the faces they’re making and how they’re leaning into the audience and how they’re sort of presenting it. It’s so much beyond just like the joke or whatever. Which is kind of … It’s just interesting to think about, and then you make the same mistakes over and over. But it is fun to then keep in mind.
Geri Cole: Yeah, and then you learn. Also I love that boxing to do standup, boxing training to do standup is … That should be a thing.
Dan Perlman: I didn’t mean to paint a picture of myself as like a real Rocky character or whatever, but like … But just thinking about all the little nuances of it are funny, even like smiling as you’re telling the joke or all these things where it’s like you’re having fun so they’re going to have fun. They’re looking to you for trust.
Geri Cole: Absolutely. Yeah, I remember my dad used to always … He used to play football and he would talk to me about how he had to take ballet for a period of time and that it was … All the other guys on the team were like, “Ballet [inaudible 00:28:38] dumb girls.” But what he learned was that … It’s actually it’s … I always think of it as like a mantra in my head where it’s like ballet to play football, where it’s like the things that you learn in ballet actually serve you very well, and it’s actually great to train yourself in this different way because it makes you more competitive in this other thing you’re trying to do.
Dan Perlman: Right. That’s really interesting. Yeah, there’s all this probably balance or sort of … Yeah, I love that stuff, yeah.
Geri Cole: So speaking of lessons, what were some sort of like hard-learned lessons that maybe you learned while making the web series that you carried into Season One or maybe you learned while making Season One that you feel like you’re going to carry into Season Two? Anything that you feel like, you’re like, “Well, that would have been helpful to know before.” But now we know.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. I mean for the web series I think maybe … Well one mistake we made with the web series I think, and it wasn’t a massive mistake but we were just kind of learning, is I think we maybe tried to do a thing, some of the things writing-wise where it was like … A couple moments where we put in jokes that we were doing in stand-up, which is a very comic thing, you watch the pilot of a lot of comedian’s shows and they’re just basically doing their act to the camera. Like they’re saying to their wife whatever they say, like marriage is like a blah blah blah, and it seems crazy.
Geri Cole: Yeah, there’s your bit. Yeah.
Dan Perlman: Yeah, yeah. They’re just watching them do a bit in a living room. It’s so weird. So I think we had some version of that and then we’re like, “Oh, this is so forced and not working,” and what’s way more interesting is just being present with the characters, even if the jokes don’t read as worked out or whatever, just living with the rhythm of the characters and the jokes there worked way better for us and for the tone of the show than trying to shoehorn in jokes that are not really fitting to whatever the moment is. So I guess just going with the emotion of the scene first and then plugging in the jokes was better than, “Oh, we’ll get in that bit here.”
Then as far as the show, I think … You just kind of learn how it was such a fast learning curve because we picked up in October and then had to be on the air in May so it was super rapid.
Geri Cole: Oh.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. Yeah. So we kind of ran. But we were so lucky. I mean I guess you just sort of learn. I mean you just sort of learn the collaborative process and it was like a different thing where it was like … It was just very different from the web series where we had to do everything. We had no producer. We’re just like I have to go and print the scripts on my way to shoot the thing and Kevin has to go and get the empty soda bottle that we need or whatever. So it’s a little bit –
Geri Cole: Yeah. Get the props.
Dan Perlman: Yeah, and it’s almost a little bit of an adjustment to even learn to lean on the whole team and then you learn how additive every department is for the comedy of it as well. Like Katie Akana, our production designer who worked on Sesame Street and did the SNL digital shorts and her whole art team was amazing and they were so funny. The episode where Maria Bamford plays my mom and Kareem, you can see their apartment and the level of detail of the comedy of it in their place is like … They did that with every, Joel and the whole props department or Cliff the cinematographer, they were all able to add all of this comedy to it that was stuff that is helpful in the writing that we had never really considered. So to think about it beyond the dialogue as well when you’re writing and to think about all of these little additive elements that often are the stuff people comment on more. So there’s some little physical thing that I’ll do or whatever. People respond more to that, and so I think that’s all helpful to then keep in mind because you’re just thinking about it in a way with more dimensions.
Geri Cole: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and I also really love the idea of like … The truth I think of lean on your crew. Like we’re all the same team, creating that [inaudible 00:32:46], like, “Yes, let’s all make this the funniest we can. Like what do you think?”
Dan Perlman: Yeah, and also, and then going into that is this idea that I think some stuff is maybe not set in stone. I think some stuff you know has to happen but some stuff it’s like you’re just kind of testing it and if you find that the writing is leading it to a different place and this is what I’ve told friends and stuff, if it’s going to a different place, that’s kind of okay and it doesn’t always have to be sort of reverse engineered to knowing the ending, because we kind of don’t know. You’re just playing it out and maybe how you think it goes, it’s like you find organically, “Oh, it should go a different way.” And kind of trusting that and realizing that that’s okay I think is a cool thing.
Geri Cole: Did you guys improvise bits of episode or bits of dialogue or –
Dan Perlman: Not as much as you might think. We might find little moments here and there, but it was pretty script. Yeah, I think you’d find little moments, especially with comics, when you have like Yamaneika or Roy Wood Jr. who plays the principal who in the ninth episode –
Geri Cole: Oh my god.
Dan Perlman: Roy is so funny. I was so glad he was available because he just like … He takes what could be a not funny part and just is incredibly funny.
Geri Cole: Just his presence on screen is funny.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. Yeah, just instantly.
Geri Cole: Yeah.
Dan Perlman: So yeah, you find moments with them. But I meant even more in the story plotting of it, like being able to realize when you’re arcing out the season or if you’re writing a script that you might think, “Oh, it has to end in this place because that’s where I thought it should end for a long time,” but then seeing it play out, you’re like, “Oh. Maybe it would actually make more sense for X I think is like …” It’s cool, that’s like a discovery, and that’s sort of the fun of writing it is you might discover a thing.
Geri Cole: Absolutely. In fact I feel like I’ve talked about that a lot on this podcast because I feel like there’s technically two different types of writing. Maybe it’s not two, whatever. I’m making this up. But that gardening style of writing, where it’s like you either … I mean I feel like I was sort of trained, it was like you have an outline, outline outline outline, outline, outline. It’s like because you have to get a gazillion people to sign off on things. But then there’s also that writing where you’re like, “You have this character,” and it’s like, “See where they go.” You don’t actually necessarily know where this is going to end, and allow for that.
Dan Perlman: Yeah, and I think that’s the fun when you have … You’re not writing the story of you know where it’s going to end and you know this person has to die or they have to end up together or whatever but yeah, allowing it, and you still have to do all the outline stuff obviously but even in whatever stage, whatever stage you’re still allowed any flexibility or creativity, to allow for some kind of discoveries or be open to them I think is definitely like really helpful and also freeing in a lot of ways because you can sort of allow yourself to drift as your interest or as your thinking drifts in how the characters are relating to each other.
Geri Cole: Can we talk a bit about working on this expedited timeline? What did that look like? Was it like, “Okay, we got picked up,” and then what happened? It’s like you just hit the ground running.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. We had two scripts written because it was a two script to series deal and then yeah. We had to write, because we did ten episodes the first season, so we had to write eight more and again we know the arc of the whole season but didn’t know exactly this will happen here and this will happen … There were a lot of details that were not clear. So yeah, I mean we got the room together and we had a 13-week room and then went straight to prep and then had a 39-day shoot I want to say. So we had like four days per episode, so I mean it was just kind of …
Geri Cole: Wow. Yeah.
Dan Perlman: I mean it was helpful because we didn’t know any better. Like they just kind of tell you –
Geri Cole: Like, “Okay I guess, yeah.”
Dan Perlman: It was our first time going through it and so you’re just kind of like, “Okay.” You don’t really know, and when other people are like, “This is insane,” you’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. I’m a little tired.” But yeah, you don’t really know. So yeah, I always liked those in-class essays when they would give those in school, like the blue book. Because you don’t have time to second-guess yourself. You just have to go. Whereas if they give me a month to do it, I’m going to stall and procrastinate and just waste a lot of time not doing it or waste a lot of time not wanting to do it or wondering or whatever, whereas like, it’s like, “Okay, I have to turn in this thing in 45 minutes, so I’ll just go, we’ll go with our gut and we’ll get this and next.” I think that was like … Probably just really helpful going forward and having that be the first time you sort of experience it, because hopefully you can take that sort of ability to make decisions quick into having a little more time, a little more resources, blah blah blah.
Geri Cole: But getting over that hump of self-doubt and … Or not having time to self-doubt.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. There’s no time to be like, “Is this? Is this? I don’t know. Let me just sleep on it for a week.” It’s like, “No there’s no week.”
Geri Cole: Yes, you got to go.
Dan Perlman: You just go. Let’s go. Yep.
Geri Cole: Oh man. I mean I’m a big procrastinator too, and one of my favorite sayings is like, “It’s okay to wait till the last minute because then it only takes a minute.”
Dan Perlman: Yeah. Yeah.
Geri Cole: But I also like to believe that in that time that I’m procrastinating, I’m working things out. Like I’m getting emotionally to the place where [inaudible 00:38:22] –
Dan Perlman: I think that’s totally, I mean this summer I was … Like anytime I sat down to try to, “Okay, I’m going to get this.” I was getting almost zero done for a couple months, and then I was sitting and watching some incredibly dumb show, and then I was just having thoughts of like, “Oh, okay.” So it’s one of those things where it’s like it is a little bit … I definitely always structure that time, but then it is weird that this sort of like … It is a little bit like rain when it comes, it’s just like, “Okay, now it’s raining a little bit.” And you’re getting those thoughts and other times I’m just like … I’m just typing keys, you know?
Geri Cole: YouTube.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. I’m just on a YouTube wormhole that I’ve been on five times.
Geri Cole: Yeah. Actually you’re answering my next question already which is what is your process like? Do you have any rituals or things that you need? Like I need a lot of snacks.
Dan Perlman: I need espresso before I do any kind of thinking. For whatever reason coffee makes me jittery but I’ll get a double espresso, it’s more condensed or whatever, I guess it’s less caffeine. This is what I’ve heard. This is what I’ve heard.
Geri Cole: I’m sorry. I don’t think that that’s true.
Dan Perlman: Someone said that to me. They’re like, “It’s more compressed and so it’s less actual caffeine.” I can’t verify, I can’t verify almost any fact I know because somebody told me it and I never fact-check it.
Geri Cole: Yeah. Okay.
Dan Perlman: So that’s how I’m getting the information.
Geri Cole: I still think there’s science but whatever.
Dan Perlman: Google it at home and then write into us if what I just said is true or if it’s just a bunch of words. But no, so I need that before I do any kind of thinking and then I also … I can do focused work for a little while and then I’ll need to take a walk. For me, I’ll have people I call and talk stuff out to and they may not even be writers or in any kind of creative thing. One of my very close friends, he was actually for years a public schoolteacher in Harlem and so a couple things I took directly, in the third episode there’s a chicken that dies and that bonds my character and the love interest character. I totally took that from him and he was a consultant on a couple ones, so …
But anyway, he’s somebody who I will call and I’ll just talk out stuff, even if it’s not even fully connected to his field, just because he knows me and he can let me ramble and sometimes just having somebody else hear my thoughts in a non-judgmental way, I think it’s very important or helpful for me to have a couple people like that who I can just … I don’t feel self-conscious sending the most … It doesn’t have to be perfect, it can just be totally like me stammering through it and finding the shape that way and sometimes a five, ten minute conversation with a friend will be way more constructive than two hours of me struggling through a Google Doc.
Geri Cole: Absolutely. And it’s also a really nice idea of having just non-judgmental and maybe even not industry feedback. Just like a sounding board that doesn’t have any attachment to the outcome.
Dan Perlman: Yeah. He works some random job in another state and I’ll talk to him. It’s one of those things, if they emotionally get it, I mean whatever. I mean one of my closest friends, and is one of the editors actually on the show, and he is one of the funniest people I know and he just totally gets it, so he’s one of the few people I’ll trust with my writing at any stage, just because I know him so well and he gets the emotional element of whatever and so … It’s just so, like yeah. It just makes all the difference in the world if you could find a couple of those people, and they might not even be your closest friends necessarily but if they’re people who are helpful and get you, I think that’s like … Because it’s so vulnerable when you are sharing the first thing that you’re not fully confident in. Like it can totally go either way, and you could lose full confidence in it. Especially if you don’t have a full backlog of I’ve done this a million times. So having those people that you trust sharing stuff with, I mean if you find them, like yeah. Keep them forever because that’s so huge, yeah.
Geri Cole: Can we talk about you and Kevin writing together? What’s that process like? And your partnership in general. Like what do you think helps make it so successful?
Dan Perlman: I mean it’s definitely evolved over time and I think we share sensibilities, but are definitely not the same, and so I think a lot of that push-pull in terms of maybe we should go … It often might be a thing of we want to go five degrees in a different direction, but sometimes are very strong of what those five degrees are, and I think that’s been really helpful in terms of the end result. Because I think that push-pull has always kind of led it to a more interesting place. So those things where we may find … Where we’re trying to find, like okay, so what is it that is important to both of us to convey and finding the way to convey each of those things I think … We both care a lot about the content of it and we both are very sort of invested in it and so finding that way. I think that also gives a more authentic depiction of their friendship as well. Because like you were saying, they have different takes, neither are particularly wrong, and they’re both expressing it. But it could be frustrating.
Then as far as the actual process goes, we will kind of each take voice passes and stuff and go back and forth in the middle. We’re not sitting in the same room and stuff, but I think we each give each other the space to how we each think it should be and then we might get on the phone and we’ll clear the last few hurdles or whatever. But I think that’s also really fun to depict, any sort of imperfect dynamic that the characters have I think is very fun to play with because I just think that’s also just … Yeah, any sort of relationship in your life that’s like, “This person isn’t fully right. This person isn’t fully wrong,” but you figure out ways to have that connection.
Geri Cole: We’re getting to the hour mark and I want to make sure that I ask you this, my favorite question to ask folks on this podcast, which is about success. I think especially where you currently are, you guys have put in years into this project and then you got it to the … It’s like it’s doing the thing, you’re making it for Showtime. It’s like this is success. That’s always my question is I feel like in creative professions, it’s so hard to know when you’re having success. So I guess the question is what do you consider success and how has that evolved as you’ve grown?
Dan Perlman: That’s a cool question. I don’t know. I think yeah, I mean when you’re younger, or when you’re starting, it’s very delayed gratification thinking of I’ll be happy once this happens, I’ll be happy once I can write for a show or once I can do this standup thing or get this external validation. Then you get that external validation and for some reason it doesn’t fill the void. So then it’s just like adjusting and you’re like, “What is it?” I think the thing that has been really cool for me is when you can sort of find those …
It’s weird. Some of the stuff that I found the most pride in or felt was the most successful, like I made this little short film two years ago and it was just about these two little kids, one of whom I had tutored for a year, and the other I met randomly and I just made it independent on no budget, it’s called Cramming, and it’s these two kids studying for a test and they have a friendship, like a little dispute or whatever and I was so proud of that, and I’m so … And still am so happy I did that thing and it’s a thing that will never turn into a thing like Flatbush did or whatever but I’m so happy about that and it makes me happy any time I sort of think about that and that’s what feels like the most successful thing is … You have this idea or thought and you want to express it and articulate it and you’re not preoccupied with what the end result will be. What will this turn into, what will I be able to parlay that into, and that lets you sort of enjoy … That has let me, a thing like that enjoy this sort of … Has felt like a success doing that.
Because I just wanted to sort of tell that story, and I think that’s maybe a thing that I wasn’t being as present about when I was younger or a thing that maybe you kind of get away from. When you’re young, you just have fun ideas and you want to do stuff or whatever and then you get very preoccupied with the career element of it, which is not nothing. It’s a super important element of it.
Geri Cole: Necessary.
Dan Perlman: But you have, 100% necessary, you need it. But I think yeah, just like staying with it and I think the way to sort of split the two is trying to stay within the stuff that you can control or make, like finding those little things that bring you enjoyment just through the work itself and expressing that stuff I think is successful and also I think any time I find and work with people where it’s like, “Oh, I love working with you and I could work with you forever,” and now I understand why when you see movies by the same directors, it’s all the same names, it’s because it’s like, “Oh yeah, you’re my guys. You’re my people who I love and trust and can lean on like we were talking about.” So I think that’s a success if you can create stuff that you feel like you want to see and also if you’re working with people who you think are making the experience … Not just the end results but the actual experience itself of creating the thing better. I think that sounds successful to me.
Geri Cole: I would agree. I think that that is the dream. Also I think that that’s a beautiful place to end. Awesome. Well thank you, thank you so much. I really enjoyed [inaudible 00:48:28].
Dan Perlman: Thanks so much Geri. I appreciate it.
Geri Cole: That’s it for this episode. OnWriting is a production of the Writers Guild of America, East and is hosted by me, Geri Cole. This series was created and is produced by Jason Gordon. Tech production and original music by Taylor Bradshaw and Stockboy Creative. Our associate producer and designer is Molly Beer. You can learn more about the Writers Guild of America, East online at wgaeast.org, and you can follow the guild on all social media platforms at WGAEast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and rate us. Thank you for listening and write on.
