Breakfast With George
Emmy weekend reminds me of the time in 2013 when I was invited by my agency to an Emmy party at the Beverly Hills home of one of the partners. EXTANT had just sold to CBS in a package deal with Amblin and our showrunner, Greg Walker, so I guess I earned a spot on the list that year.
It was still a month before I would get my first check. We were broke so we put new cocktail attire on our credit cards, figuring we’d pay them off whenever the check came in.
I was expecting a small cocktail party inside someone’s home but when Julie and I pulled up in our seventeen year old Mercury Sable with one busted out head light we saw there was a red carpet, paparazzi, and valets out front. We were too embarrassed to valet the car so we parked a couple of blocks away.
On the walk back to the house we wondered if we would maybe see a couple of celebrities that night. At the crosswalk we stopped for a guy on a vintage motorcycle. I wanted to save him from coming to a stop and having to put his feet down so I waved him on and he gave us a nod as he rolled past. I said, “Was that —“ Julie said, “Jay Leno.”
He was not the most famous person we would see that night.
Once we got to the party we spotted Matt Leblanc, a couple of Kardashians, Lawrence O’Donnell, LL Cool J, and it just kept going. Everywhere we turned there was someone more famous. It was so surreal and so much fun. We felt out of place all night, like at any moment someone was going to escort us to the exit. We spotted Ben Affleck talking to Larry David at one point and quickly perched on top of the stairs nearby so we could spy on them. For the record, Ben Affleck is the second most handsome man I’ve ever seen in person. (Jeffrey Dean Morgan is first)
At some point I spotted George RR Martin sitting by himself and thanks to the internet I knew that it was his birthday. I worked up the courage to introduce myself and wish him happy birthday and we ended up talking to him for fifteen minutes or so. When I told one of my agents how excited I was to meet him she told she’d try to set up a meeting for me with him while he was still in town. The next day she called and said, “George is open for breakfast at his hotel the day after the Emmy’s, can you make it?” I said, “Of course!”
We were still living in Orange County at the time so to get up to LA for a breakfast during rush hour I had to leave Santa Ana two hours early. That day there was a huge crash on the 5. Even though I had given myself an extra forty-five minutes to spare I started to see my arrival time click upwards. When we finally got moving again there was no way around it. I was going to be a HALF HOUR LATE to breakfast with George RR Martin. That was one of the longest rides of my life. I felt sick to my stomach, sweating it out, with no air conditioning in the Sable.
When I finally got there I apologized profusely. George was very sweet about it and made a joke about having “second breakfast.” Like we were hobbits. I loved him even more after that. He told me about his time living out here and trying to get his own shows off the ground and how eventually he decided to pack it up and move to Santa Fe to write books. I remember him saying, “I’m an entertainer. I need an audience.” Before we parted ways he suggested a couple of friends for us to look at for the staff of EXTANT and I drove back to Orange County on top of the world.
Two years later, I was working with a producer friend on a feature pitch based on one of George’s fantastic short stories. We’d been working for months and we finally had a pitch we felt confident about taking to George. It took weeks to set, finally the assistants found a small window of time for us to meet with him. The catch? We had to do it in Santa Fe.
No problem.
The day comes for my flight to New Mexico. The producer and I plan to meet at a hotel that night and run through the pitch before we meet George the next morning. I’m driving to LAX, plenty of time to catch my plane. Then… there’s an accident on the 405.
I start sweating it out, this is really cutting it close. I get to the airport, I park, I check in while my plane is boarding. I race through security, take off for my gate on a dead sprint. I find the sign, I rush downstairs… only to find that I have to take a shuttle to the actual gate. That shuttle runs every ten minutes or so and it’s long gone now. I beg, I plead, it’s no use. There’s zero chance going to make my flight.
I go to the gate agent, they tell me there’s another flight that night but there’s no guarantee they can get me on it. So I’m standing there in the middle of the terminal, kicking myself for having gotten into this situation.
I keep thinking about how I made George RR Martin wait a half hour for me at breakfast. I can’t be late a second time. He might never take me seriously again and I really want to write this movie. Not to mention, if we cancel the pitch there was no telling when we’d get another chance. I can’t risk not getting on the next flight.
So I drove to Avis, I rented a car going one-way, and I drove fifteen hours straight to Santa Fe, stopping only for gas and food.
I listened to music, I burned through a bunch of podcasts, I kind of sort of blacked out in the desert for a bit, but I kept on going and made it to Santa Fe in the middle of the night.
I barely slept because I was so paranoid about being late for that meeting, especially after everything I’d been through the day before. I rallied in the morning, my producer and I had breakfast, we ran through the pitch, and we walked a few blocks to George’s theater where I was on goddamn time to pitch my heart out to Mr. Martin.
And it went great! I had one of those out of body experiences where I realized I was sitting in a small office in his movie theater, kicking around ideas for a sci-fi/fantasy story with one of the living masters. On the way out of town the producer and I stopped at Meow Wolf, the immersive arts gallery that George was funding with the windfalls from his book sales, and we took pictures with giant robot statues.
Unfortunately, the movie never happened, but before it fizzled out there was one really cool thing that happened. I told this part of the story in an early newsletter, but for the newbies, in the summer of 2016 I got a call from WME telling us they wanted us to pitch the movie to Robert Downey JR’s company. Oh, and by the way, George is going with you.
The night before the pitch I got a message telling me that Iron Man himself might sit in on the pitch. Driving to the office that afternoon I was a nervous wreck. This is super cringe in hindsight but I put “My Shot” from HAMILTON on repeat.
We get into the lobby, I’m standing there with George RR Martin, his producing partner, and my producer, when Iron Man walks up. And he’s just like, “Hey, how’s it going, I’m Iron Man.” Not really, but that’s what it felt like. And we stand around talking in a circle for a few minutes. Then, I swear to God, David Attenborough walks in. And I realized that for some reason I’m not nervous anymore. I don’t feel out of place like I did at the party, like I don't belong. I just feel like another colleague making small talk before a meeting.
So, why am I telling you a story about another road trip? Why am I spraining my wrists dropping all those names? It’s because I watched a YouTube video on The Moth Story Map where they break down the fundamentals of storytelling. It’s a simple but super effective diagnostic tool to get you looking at your story in a new way. I wanted to see if I could follow it and entertain you, make you laugh, cringe, worry, etc. And then I wanted to break it down to show my work. It goes like this:
The World As It Was: This is the foundation, the Who? What? When? Where? In my story, that’s me going to my first real Hollywood party with Julie, feeling super out of place, and getting to meet one of my heroes. I made a series of conscious choices in the details here to try to get you to identify with us in the hopes that you would root for me later. I'm also dropping these names to make it more fun and exciting.
And Then One Day: Something happens that turns the story in a new direction. I was invited to breakfast with that hero and I showed up a half-hour late. In this section I was really working to get you to feel bad for me. We’ve all been late for important things, hopefully you related.
Raising the Stakes: I get the chance to pitch him a movie based on one of his short stories but I miss my flight and there’s a good chance I’m going to blow it by being late again. Hopefully, I made you feel bad about me being late for breakfast and now you’re really invested in me getting to New Mexico on time. You know how important this is to me.
The Moment of Change: I don’t give up. I take EXTREME MEASURES to make sure I get there on time in the hopes that I’ll win his support. As I was writing it I was picturing you smiling or shaking your head at this insane hail Mary. Let me know if it worked.
The World As It Is Now: Having gone through that trial and earned his support, I feel like I’ve earned my place in that circle. At this point, I want you to feel good about seeing how far I’ve come. I want you to feel the rhyme with that opening scene at the party.
That’s it. That’s the breakdown. I’ll link the video below.
And now, I’ll be totally honest with you.
I didn’t really feel like I earned my place in that circle. Truth be told, I drove back across town feeling like I pulled off a heist. But that would have been an unsatisfying ending. “Three years later and I didn’t feel any more comfortable around these people. Weird. The end.” I made an artistic choice for the sake of the story (and story map). I wanted you to feel good.
A couple of addendums:
Iron Man didn’t join us for the pitch, so some of the pressure was off.
Julie and I have since seen Jay Leno in Burbank, driving next to us in a car with the steering wheel on the passenger side. I’m worried that the third time is like a Candy Man thing.
I may have told you this before but we were so busy people watching at the party that we forgot to eat. Afterward we went to In & Out, starting something a tradition where we end every fancy get together by going to a burger joint and eating burgers in the car.
Nine years later I do feel a lot more comfortable in those situations. But now that I’m 49 years old there’s zero chance I would drive fifteen hours straight to any destination for any meeting. Jesus, as I'm typing this I realize the whole thing would be on Zoom now anyway.
The Moth Story Map
Chris Bianco on Chef's Table: Pizza
I talked about Mr. Bianco in a couple of issues. I called him "The Michael Jordan of pizza," Jimmy Kimmel referred to him this week as "The Yoda of Pizza." You get the picture. He's the first episode of this new season of Chef's Table and it's an inspiring episode for anybody. No matter what you do, if you want to master it, if you want to go as deep as you can into it, something in this episode will speak to you. Listen to Yoda.
Watch Chef's Table: Pizza | Netflix Official Site — www.netflix.com Dig into the best pizzas from around the world, prepared by renowned chefs who bake passion, creativity and hard work into every slice. Watch trailers & learn more.
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