This Transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors
Stacy: Okay, Nick, I'd love something in a little three, four time, maybe a little Hery. Gerdy sound
goes like this. Why don't we go to the Showrunner Show? Show Runner. Show Runner Show.
Let's all have fun at the showrunner show. S h o w r u n n r s h o w Show. Oh,
Drew: Well done
Jed: Yeah. Ho, ho is, know,
Linda: Lovely.
Stacy: stolen straight from the ladies of, uh, my favorite murder.
Jed: yeah.

Drew: Well, everyone, welcome to the Showrunner Show, where every week we de demystify
some aspect of the job of show running. For anyone who works in tv, who wants to work in TV or
just wants to know how it's all made, um, I'm one of your hosts, drew Dole.
Jed: And I'm John Eric Dole.
Stacy: And I am Stacy Shabos secretly doubted.
Jed: And th
this
Linda: I'm the not doubt.
Drew: Yeah, we have a
Jed: yeah, yeah, yeah,
Drew: dole.
Jed: yeah. So this week we're talking with our, uh, collaborator, Linda Ambre, who we've now
worked with on. Two, two series Joe Picket, season one and Joe Picket season two. And uh,
you know, like once you have your show green lit and you're going to location and you're now
like taking this, you know, these scripts, you know, and you have this vision for it, and you, um,
Linda is where the rubber meets the road.
She's the one who helps you figure out like, How to do what you've set out to do. And you know,
she produced with us and she's such a wonderful collaborator. She's, you know, so helpful
creatively looking at story and saying like, you know, she doesn't come at, come at it with like,
you can't do this, you can't do that.
It's more like, you this may not work for these reasons. What if we tried something more like
that? And she was such a helpful mentor when going from, uh, script to screen, uh, that we, we
thought it would be really valuable to talk with you here.
Drew: Yeah. And I just want to add one thing about Linda before she jumps in is that, you know,
she was, she's our on the ground producer. Just to make that totally clear to everyone that she's
a producer on the show. And like at, you know, at some point sooner or later in your show, you'll

have, you know, your script's ready to go.
The studio and network will love them creatively. You'll think they're just ready to shoot. And then
you'll sit down with your producer and you know, like John said, the rubber meets the road. You
have to really make some decisions when you want to, and then implement those scripts and
they'll be.
Inevitably, a lot of changes you'll make for production that you know, are not for the, not for
studio creative, not for network creative that are simply to make it shootable. And, uh, and that's
what Linda does. And uh, and so we say like, you know, even when we're on a show that.
Linda's not working on, we still call it, uh, the Linda Pass.
We gotta do the Linda pass sooner of the scripts sooner or later.
Linda: The Dream destroyer? No, not at all.
Drew: No, no, no. It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have
Linda: It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't. Not at all.
Stacy: Linda, before I met you, um, when I was just hearing about you through John, cuz John
and I are married, and he would talk about you. He was always like, oh my God, she's so
creative. We had this problem with this and she's the one who came up with the location change
or she, he spoke of you, uh, not as a dream crush crusher.
Drew: Yeah.
Jed: Yeah. Yeah.
Stacy: you're a dream weaver. That's who you are.
Linda: Aw.
Drew: And I've,
Linda: and I have a doubt will crush cuz man, you guys, no, I mean there's, I think there are
people who take great. Um, Almost joy in being a dream crusher. That's, that's not me, that's not
my background. My background comes from independent filmmaking and it doesn't matter
where that is, whether it's in the us, whether it's Canada, where I am, or anywhere in the world.
When you come at it from an indie sort of perspective, you want to get every part of the
imagination from the script that you can. Um, you know, it's, for me, it's about spending every
single dollar that your financier gives you. Right. Like there's, there's no pride in giving money
back. It's, it's like, no, no, no, no.
Let's, the pride goes in what shows up on the screen. That's, that's
Drew: important, important point. I love that.
Linda: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah, and I think on the flip side, there's, I think showrunners probably who. You know,
are too prickly about changing anything and that it absolutely has to be this certain way. And I
think, you know, on our side of things, we found, you know, the more you kind of surrender to
the process a little bit and realize, you know, okay, we have this one orphan location, you know,
we're gonna have a whole move, you know, to go do this one.

Page scene in this one location that we're never going back to again. Like, can we find a way for
that to exist somewhere else? You know? And I think, uh, being really open to that and it, it can
just give you more time to shoot the important stuff, you know? And I think time is always the,
the critical and, uh, most limited resource in shooting.
And so anything, you know, um, you can do in terms of flexibility and location or which
character, you know. Divulges this information or you know, whatever that may be. I think just to,
um, you know, Linda's so brilliant at like reducing the number of moves, reducing the, you know,
the time that you're paying people that you're not shooting.
I think that's really it.
Linda: Yeah, that's the important part. If you know, if you are moving or you know, midday, you
moves. Hate them. Hate them. As you guys know, um, sometimes they're. Unavoidable. But,
um, most of the time you can, you can make some different choices. And it's, it's not that you
have to get rid of everything, you just have to prioritize things.
And that's where you guys are so receptive to that. And, and I think that that's where, um,
partnerships finding the right partnership, um, as a showrunner, it's important to spend the time.
In interviews, spend the time in prep, getting to know each other and making sure that you've
got the right people because you want to have somebody who is going to collaborate and, um,
and, and not be afraid to tell you when this just isn't gonna work.
Right? Like, and, and do it early enough so that you have time to pivot and, and rethink it.
Because I think the biggest thing is, is that the writers, you know, you've all been. Writing with
something in your head, sometimes for months or even years on some projects. And so you've
been living it and breathing it, and you only feel it a certain way.
And so when somebody comes along and says, eh, well, you kind of can't, or That might be a
problem. It's, that's a big thing because you have to have that time, I think, to, uh, absorb that
information and go, okay, so. What's the real problem I need to solve then, and still get the
creative that I'm looking for.
But
Stacy: I think, I think that puts a, a, a spotlight on the difference between just a writer and a
showrunner is just a writer. You can live in that daydreamy world of like, I'm picturing a scene,
it's Will Ferrell, he's on a mountaintop and we see him from, you know, a mile away and then we
zoom in to just his face on this mountaintop.
Wouldn't that be great? You know, I have this very clearly in my head, and then you're like, oh,
but that's actually gonna have to happen, and somebody will have to lug all that stuff up to
another mountain to shoot it across to that mountain like that. That whole idea of this is actually
happening, you know, I think a lot of writers, you can stay in the room, you can stay on the page,
you can stay in your imagination and you forget that at some point, ideally.
Yeah, all those ideas will actually happen. You know, I know that seems so obvious if when
people work, uh, in production all the time, they're like, yeah, every day is making something
happen. Of course it's actually happening, but I think some writers can get stuck in that writer's
room world where, ah, maybe they're always in development, but stuff doesn't really go, or they
stay a writer.
They don't ever get to be the showrunner or an onset writer, so they don't actually get to see it
happen.
Linda: Yeah.

Stacy: that make any
Jed: Or, or they see a change or they see a changed in post and they're like, why'd they change
the mountaintop to, you know, a bar or what, you know,
like, I, I think, I think there's a lot of that, well, I'll say like, Linda, like, what, what do you see
when you're reading a script? What are red flags that writers could know to avoid?
Because, you know, I, I think a lot of writers. Don't end up on set and don't see like, you know,
lots of night work, you know, is, uh, very expensive. You know, for example, like what, what are
things you see and you're like, oh, that's a, that's gonna be a problem.
Linda: Well, you know, the first time I read a script, I read it just for entertainment, right?
Because that's what we're doing is we're making entertainment. So I just read it just from that
and then the next time I start really dissecting it. And I think that the writers, I think my advice to
writers is use the tools that you have, your most of your writing and final draft.
And final draft is a great program that has a lot of robust tools built within it and other writing
programs do as well that have those tools. Get familiar with it. It's not just something for you to
tippy tap away at. It's something that actually, um, you can spit out. And what you can spit out of
that is a list of locations.
Uh, a list of, uh, your page counts, a list of your sets, a list of your writers, all of those kinds of,
sorry, your cast. Um, and so those. Those are all really valuable tools because that's the first
thing that I do is I go into it and I start analyzing it and I go, okay, how is this going to fit? I've,
you know, what, how many scenes have I got?
So the first thing, if you've got way, if you've got twice as many scenes as you do pages, that's
not gonna be a suitable script.
Jed: Oh yeah.
Linda: That's, that's not gonna work. Cuz every single scene needs to show up as a strip on a
schedule and needs to be scheduled to be shot. And so it's, it's really taking a look at at those
kinds of things.
To start with and then looking at your locations, are you going to locations? Um, just once in a
TV script if you're going there just once, unless it's something that has a significant enough page
count where, or the scene itself is just a long. Scene like the Calvary coming over the hill, one
eighth of a page.
Um, then that's fine. You can write a location for that one eighth page, but really dissect that
because that's, that's going to be a problem, that's going to be a problem down the road if, if
you're going into a coffee shop for, uh, a five, eight scene, um, with two people and you're never
going back to that coffee shop again.
You probably should take a look at that scene and what is trying to be conveyed. What story
point is being driven forward and where else could I put that? Do they have to be in a coffee
shop? Is there any significance to that coffee shop? Can we put it outside? Could it be
something that, so I can talk, could it be location that we're already going to?
So I, I, I think that the, you know, using the tools that are already available is a big thing.
Jed: I love that. I love it. And I would say, like, I, I know, you know, from, you know, working with
you that, uh, page, page length or, you know, the number of the like density of the scripts, you're
like, the scripts aren't too long. These are like, you know, in season one we were kind of on the
longer end of what we were allowed to shoot, and season two we're like, oh, we could save time

and money if we are on the shorter end of, you know, what we're allowed to shoot and.
You know, drew and I learned that lesson in a big way on, uh, Waco season one. Everyone was
like, the scripts are too long. And we're like, no, they're not. No, they're not. And you know, we
had to have 45 minute episodes and our first cuts were, you know, 72 minutes each. And it was
like, oh, like the pain, the pain we went through to shoot all of this, to then have to grind it out in
post as opposed to.
It's a lot easier to cut the, you know, to find those economies in the script when things are really
malleable and,
Linda: It's so true. And then you don't lose your story. Like, because again, sometimes when
you're so close to your material because you've been eating and sleeping with it for so long, um,
you lose sight of the fact that you know everything that's gonna be happening, even if scenes
are cut out of it. But does the audience.
If those scenes are cut out or those, you know, beats are missing because they don't know the
backstory you do because it's been in your head for so long. And, and I actually had a situation
where, on a TV movie where, um, the writer was so close to the material that, um, we ended up
having enough for almost two movies, um, movie and a half anyways, and then it became that
significant challenge in the editing suite.
And, and that's the sad part is, is that there's only so many hours you get to shoot and. All I
could think about was those scenes that weren't there, and how many hours and days did we
shoot that didn't end up on the screen. And, and that's the sad part of it. Right. Um, so yeah, it's,
it's paying attention to some of those things.
It's, it's, where I see that there's been a shift is that streaming is, is very freeing, but streaming
doesn't have the same structure and so it doesn't. Actually have the built-in as writers are first
learning to write if they've started writing in streaming times versus in the more traditional, um,
method of act breaks and, um, a, a closed, it's, it's 43 18 is what you're delivering.
Um, you know that that discipline that comes along with that structure is sometimes missing and
it's because of the fact that we've got so much. Freedom within streaming, but sometimes it's
too much. It's, it's, um, it can get you into trouble, but writing can get you outta trouble too.
Jed: it can, it can, and, and I, I have to say too, like what you're saying about one-off locations
and how difficult, you know, a company move, You know, the reason that's expensive is
because, you know, 200 plus people and trucks and cars and everyone has to move to a
secondary location, that that traveling time is dead time, that nothing is happening.
Whereas, you know, one of the tricks, uh, Linda found, uh, in season one, There was this, uh,
this kind of standing location area that, uh, from an old TV show called North of 60, uh, a
Canadian TV show, and we used. We built, you know, and used like maybe a dozen locations in
this one place. It had a parking lot, so you could come in and out.
There's woods there, so you could have horses riding through the woods and shoot it from the
parking lot, you know, the 10 feet away. Um, but it looked like you're in the woods. Um, we had
the emu farms, we had Joe's childhood home. We had the Ken Zinger's house. We had, you
know, You know, 10 locations all in this one space.
And because of that, we were able to shoot a lot of these one-offs by just turning the camera
around, not moving anything, doing what's, you know, a slush move or a, you know, a cart
move,

Stacy: call it spin and win. Let's spin and win, right
Drew: and win.
Jed: spin and
win. Yeah.
Drew: Spin and win. And I mean, moving in the, in the middle of the day is obviously the biggest
problem. But even moving every night is, is an issue. And the more you can pack, you know,
three or four, you know, or five days, a whole week in one location is just a dream scenario for
your, for your production, for your crew, you know, for how much time you have to shoot.
I think that's, uh, any. Like John was saying, we, we did that over and over. That was one
location. We had two others that we, uh, you know, would find six or seven different scenes that
could be shot in the same, uh, location within that block. And that really is the, the, the winning
move in tv for sure.
Linda: Yeah, it's creating those mini back lots for yourself, you know, because especially when
you're shooting out on location, presumably you're out on location because you want to show off
those locations. So you wanna see as much as you can, but you also want your cover sets and
your interiors that you have to run to for weather or for dark when it's.
You know, 18 hours a daylight like it is here in the summer. And, and so you need to create
those mini back lots to save yourself. And I think that that's the difference with the showrunner.
You know, like you've, the writers should write as much as they can to, you know, get the best
creative that they want.
The director's gonna come in and be trying to do that as well and honoring the vision and, and
putting their spin on it. As a showrunner, you've gotta have that creative. Process in your brain,
but also the discipline of the reality of, you know, the, unfortunately the other side of the
equation is the financial side of it.
And the financial bottom line will dictate how many hours you have, how much money you have
to spend on locations over the course of, if it's a series over the course of the whole season.
And, and so when we had those mini back lots, we were able to secure those places for six
months. Where it's like, you know, it's one, one check that's getting signed to, to a place for six
months, where then you can, you can find all of those different things just by, like you said, spin
and win.
And it, it makes a big difference because, because you can, uh, have the freedom of jamming in
little tidbits and, and you know, not having to move an hour down the road when you can move
10 minutes with a cart roll is a big difference,
Stacy: a little obsessed with, uh, I'm a little obsessed with like, glossary of terms. I love terms,
especially when they're new to me. So there's not to nerd out on you too much, but there's
company move, there's slush move, what's the other one? There's like two others that like, are
sort of official things and you'll see those.
Linda: Cart roll.
Drew: Cart roll.
Yeah. That's like a less than a slush move.
Linda: yeah, yeah. It's, it's truly, yeah, it's truly, we got the carts on wheels and, uh, you know,
it's like taking your, your little breakfast trolley around from room to room. Here you go. You

know? No.
Jed: Yeah. Or company move is trucks. Trucks. That's, that's the one that hurts ya, you know?
Linda: that hurts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Especially midday move, midday company move. You never
wanna see that on a call sheet.
Drew: I know.
Stacy: But sometimes you have, sometimes you have a company move, but circus stays the
same, right?
Linda: Uh, company move means that the circus is, is moving as well, because that's, yep.
That's, that's the whole shebang.
Drew: A slush move would keep like a, some nucleus, you know, that stays the, the circus and,
you know, trailers will stay, but the, you know, but you have to move, you know,
Linda: equipment.
Drew: the equipment. Trucks Yeah. Yeah.
Linda: Yeah.
Drew: But like you're saying, Linda, like writing can, you know, ultimately solve, you know, A lot
of problems and one move that you see people do a lot is like a bottle episode when you're
really, you know, behind it and you need, um, you know, you have an epi.
I don't know, we have too many locations and everything. A bottle episode that exists all within
one location that's usually referred to a whole episode kind of in one place like that, is typically
something that takes quite a bit less time to shoot, um, the episode. So, I mean, I'm thinking of,
uh, Um, you know, in succession, for example, they had a, in season one, an episode that took
place on this massive yacht, this, you know, extremely expensive location to shoot.
Uh, um, but the whole episode took place there, so they probably shot it in, you know, three
days versus 10 days. So, um, by shooting an episode in that, Short of time, you can afford
maybe this massively expensive yacht to shoot it on. And, um, you know, so that's one move
that people typically use to, to really take a big chunk of time out of, uh, your schedule
Linda: Yep. No, it's true. The, the word you don't wanna write as a writer montage,
Drew: montage. Yeah.
Jed: Oh.
Stacy: What is it? It's French for expensive.
Linda: it is very, very,
Jed: money. Yeah.
Linda: yep. They both start with, one is montage, one is money, and they go hand in hand.
Yeah, no. The other thing is, is that, The crews, nothing will make, uh, a head of department's
eyes roll more than montage. Cuz it's like, uh, the lazy writers, they couldn't even take the time
to spell out what they really wanna see, you know?

Jed: Yeah. That's
Stacy: we Tricky when we just call, when we just call it an around the world? Does it fool and
confuse you?
Linda: No, but it does make me chuckle though.
Stacy: Oh dear.
Jed: Or, or don't put in the slug lines. Like that's, that's a big, you know, you know, to not do slug
lines, just have a list of things like, and then we see this and this and this and, uh, then you get
into,
Stacy: the Himalayas,
Linda: Yeah.
Jed: yeah.
Stacy: the bottom of the ocean, various exteriors, the bottom of the ocean.
Linda: Awesome.
Jed: What are some other things that, writers may not realize are super expensive? Um, that,
are, you know, not necessarily things to avoid, but things to know. Like, just note to self, if you
have a bunch of these in a script, you're, it's things are gonna change
Linda: Weather. Writing specific weather because if, you're relying on it, inevitably it's not gonna
be that on the day, or even if it is, you have to have gone into the planning and therefore
spending resources in the form of time and money, uh, to create the guarantee of that weather
for that scene. So really think about it.
If it's something that you absolutely have to have that torrential downpour because it is. Life
altering. If you don't have it in that moment, that's great. Um, write it. You need to sometimes do
that. But, um, if you're writing it over the course of many scenes, many locations, that's a
problem because as your script gets dissected and gets scheduled by locations, which is how
it's generally going to get scheduled.
And so if all of a sudden you've got. All these different locations that are over the same script
day that are all shot over 10 different actual physical days. Good luck on trying to recreate
something that the audience is really going to buy into going, oh yeah, I believe that. Because if
you got brilliant sunshine like this glaring out my window right now and you got the rain coming
down, You're not really fooling anybody, so you know if, if you really want that weather, keep it
for that isolated moment where it is really important because so much has to go into, I'll use rain,
wind as those elements as really good examples.
Hair and makeup and costumes, they all have to be redone over and over for every single take.
And that's gonna take up a lot of time. So if it's really important to the story, um, and that seems
as if that significance, then that's great. But you have to know that you're gonna be setting aside
a big chunk of your scheduled time to be able to achieve that and keeping your cast comfortable
during all of that,
Jed: Yeah, I, I can say from experience,
one of the hardest things in the world to do is to get an actor. To put wet clothes back on after
lunch to go back into a wet environment. They,

the
Linda: It's so true.
Jed: that, and they get so cranky.
Stacy: are you thinking of Owen Wilson on American Thanksgiving in Thailand at 3:00 AM
having, having to put on soaking wet clothing over and over and over
Jed: Oh, and the script supervisor kept saying like, he's not wet enough. He's not wet enough.
Drew: is not wet enough.
Jed: I was like, okay.
you tell him, you tell him I'm not, I'm not, you know, asking anyone to dump more water
on my lead
Stacy: family on Thanksgiving and we're springing him down with a hose at 3:00 AM You do it?
Jed: I
Linda: Oh yeah.
Drew: not.
Jed: Oh, at some point, uh, Cobra came outta the water and they had to like, I mean, it was just,
it was like in the mud getting dumped at the water. It was horrible. It was just, I
felt so bad for him, you know?
Stacy: Linda, the thing I think about weather too, is so often it's just for a mood. The writer's
putting it in because the kiss is gonna be sexier in the rain or the, the reveal is gonna be scarier
with fog rolling in. But really, who gives two shits about fog rolling in? You know, but when you're
writing it again, like I'm saying, writer spend most of their time in a daydream, and then you're
like, oh wait, you're actually gonna have to make fog.
And what do you boys call it? You call it, uh, specific writer bullshit. What is it? No, no, no. Not
that there's a term when people come up to you and they go, do you really want this? Does the
writer really need this? Or is this just, and you guys have
Jed: yeah. Does it need to be an apple birch tree specifically in the, it's like, no, that's just some
writer specificity bullshit. You know,
Stacy: Yeah. Writer specificity. Bullshit. Because as a writer you want to be specific, right?
Because it's fun and it makes, I mean, specific is better, right? Until somebody has spent 10
days of the location scout looking for a birch tree, you know, or looking for an apple tree, and
they're like, oh, I, I don't even know the difference.
I just looked it up on Wikipedia. I don't know, just a treat.
Jed: Yeah.
Or there's no Belgian malises, you know, there's

no we can't find a Belgian mal malise and like, we're like, oh, that's, that's just a dog. Just
change that to dog.
Scary dog, you know? Yeah.
Stacy: the Casos, right? One of it. Was it Sarah?
Yeah. Somebody wrote in the Can Corso.
You know why? Cuz that's a sexy sounding dog. Kane Corso. That's cool. And then somebody's
actually looking for it and you're like,
Linda: Oh yeah, words on the page matter. That's just it. Like the words on the page matter.
Drew: Well back to,
Linda: They really
Drew: line pass, like when we talk about the line pass. That's exactly right. It's like, okay, how
you really do have to determine, and not that we just, you know, kind of disregard all writer
specificity by any means, but like that's the pass where you start to say, okay, is this writer
specific, uh, you know, specificity that's.
Meaningful or not, and you know, this is where it becomes reality and this is an actual dog that
we need to then find in Alberta and and so on.
Stacy: I have an anecdote, uh, for this, which is John and I have been traveling with the kids
and we went to this ostrich farm and it was a lot of fun. And then, or maybe it was an emu farm, I
can't remember. But anyway, that led to going, Hey, we should have like a fun emu farm and
some fun funky sisters for season one of Joe Pickett.
Let's do that right? Only later did we discover that emu are very delicate and sensitive, and if
you. Move them from, say, Vancouver to Calgary. They will die. And you're not allowed to do
that. You wouldn't, you wouldn't want to anyway, but you're not allowed to. So it would've been
so much easier to do ostriches, which are quite a bit heartier than emus.
Unfortunately, by the time we discovered that, we'd already written in all these puns, were like
the gate above the place says, you know, where we second that? Emus. We had all these emu
puns that we had gotten very attached to. So then we're like, no, no. It simply can't be ostriches.
It must be emus. So then it turns into a puppeteer, and then like I said, that's where it's, oh my
God, this is actually happening.
You actually have to hire a puppeteer who actually has to build some emus and move them
around, you know? And that's how he ended up with Michael Doman, with an IMU puppet on his
hand. Poking his own face, you know, is, which is which. Um, sometimes when it works out and
you can afford it and it works out, it's magical and it's fun and it leads to the best days on set
where everybody has a lot of fun and, but when it's not, you know, my God, you've gone to
these extraordinary lengths just so you can include a pun on the gate that maybe got cut outta
the scene anyway.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, good example.
Linda: true.
Jed: the puppets. That was the Linda idea. That was the Linda idea. Like, okay, we can't have
emus. It was like 10, you know, emus can't travel, you know, and then, you know, ostriches

aren't
quite the same thing. Yeah. I was like, you know, yeah. The 10th thing on the list, like, what
about puppets?
You know, there was frale rock or something was shooting in Calgary. Linda's like, there's.
Puppeteers all over the place. Let's, let's hire some and, and make a an e. But then we had to
like ship in feathers, right? We had to
ship
Linda: was crazy. We're so lucky. We, we have a local guy, Leo Weiser, bleeding art. They are
just absolutely phenomenal and he takes his job super seriously. Um, talk about words on the
page matter. If, if it's emus, then those feathers that are going to be going into the making of this
puppet, they are, they're not real emu feathers to be clear.
They're, but they're going to be emu feathers that look just like an emo's feathers. They're not
gonna be just. Some, whatever. They're gonna be looking exactly like an emo because he's got
to make sure that as he builds his puppet, the way that the puppeteer then jumps into it, it's
going to have that believable look every time it moves and, and just shimmers and the light
picks up on its feathers and all that kind of stuff.
And I mean, the, the move over to that. The only reason that we could actually do that is
because we had our scripts early enough with those details to, to go Okay. First of all, let's
honestly do the research to see if we could get IUs and what they actually are like to work with.
And we had enough time to then go, okay, do we have time to make this this pop it?
If if we didn't have, um, those earlier script drafts, there's no way that we would've had the time
to, to build the emu. Same as, uh, in season two. Can we talk about season two material
Jed: Yeah, I think so. As long as we're not talking about like big story reveals or anything like
that.
Linda: There's, there's a critter that's really important in that story that we had. Sometimes,
sometimes it takes four months, five months to build, uh, uh, real life acceptable on camera
looking animals. And to do it in a way that is, um, making sure that you're meeting all of the
requirements from the studio or American Humane or all those other perspectives as well, and
just doing it the right way.
But it can take months and months to do it. So, um, yeah, having the early script versions, that's,
that's the biggest tool for me. Showrunners, is having, being included. I'm not your enemy. I'm
your friend. And so, so having those early drafts, even if all you have is seven pages of. Of
notes, this is what we think we're gonna do.
Those notes are really revealing because you can right away strip out and say, this is
achievable. Is this really what you're gonna focus on? Because we need to get moving on this
right now because it's, it's not about we can't do this. We wanna be able to do this for you, but
now we need to make that decision this far in advance and, and get moving on it and, and
commit that time and, and money set aside for it, right?
Stacy: It's also probably knowing about where, where things are headed. Like I took some show
running class. It was like I couldn't get into the, uh, showrunner program, which part of the
reason we're doing this podcast of like, oh my God, there's such, there's such demand to know
these, these little gems. Uh, but the example the fella gave was he, there was a car and it was
in, you know, episode two, and then it turns out in episode three, the car got totaled.

Right. And, but then when they bought it, they didn't know that. So when they got it, they got this
pristine, very expensive car. It was gorgeous, it worked great. And then they just crunched it in
three and he's like, Ugh. If I had known that, if I had known it was gonna get destroyed in three, I
wouldn't have spent all that money on this perfect car.
Linda: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah, that's Scripts early is really helpful. And you know, Linda, you just said something
that I think is like the key takeaway of maybe this whole episode is, uh, you know, as a
showrunner, the Linda on your team is your friend and you're, you are, you are trying to
accomplish the same thing. And I think a lot of times that relationship can be adversarial of it if it
starts that way and.
It is gonna make the whole experience, you know, really painful. And I think, you know, like you
said earlier, like interviewing people, making sure you have a good chemistry there is really
important. But you know, the more you're on the same team trying to accomplish the same thing
is, is is really where you're at.
But I think a lot of times there's a lot of room for that relationship to become adversarial and get
difficult because of, you know, sometimes, you know, the budget and the vision can compete
sometimes. And, uh, Uh, but that would be my, you know, advice to anyone out there is to keep
that relationship as cooperative and friendly and positive as you possibly can.
Jed: Well, and to be flexible. I mean, I, I think that's when you take scripts and then you, put
them against reality. Like, there's going to have to be, like, if you're not willing to change, uh, it's
gonna break and, you know what I mean? You're gonna spend all, you know, all your money on
all the wrong stuff.
Um, if you try to force reality to bend to your scrape, like in Calgary, you know, the weather
changes like second by second. You know, it's like you may wake up and everything's covered
in snow, and by the end of the day it's all green. You know? And, and you know, what do you
do? Like we, we kept, you know, saying, you know, let's just play through.
We had one scene. We're on one side, you know, one character in the background. Everything
is like white snow. And in the background of the other person's side, it's all grass. And we're like,
nobody even notices that. Nobody like, we're like, let's just play through and just let's make the
weather, you know, you know, part of Saddle String and Joe Pickett is, you know, it can be
raining and then sunny within minutes, just like real life can be.
And to not try to balance that. You know, we've tried to embrace that, but maybe we talk about
dear days. Dear days was a scene. Oh, Stacy's wearing her Dear Days shirt. That was from,
Linda: Ah, if I'd known, I would've had my mug.
Jed: yeah, that was, yeah, from, uh, episode four of season one, which Stacy wrote and it was,
uh, It stripped out to like a four day scene, um, that was supposed to be like a parade in the
middle of town.
Um, and then Linda, yeah, you wanna talk through, uh, what you flagged as a potential, uh,
problem with that.
Linda: Oh.
Jed: Do you remember?
Drew: A list of problems.

Linda: Well, originally
Stacy: Where do I start?
Linda: Originally it was going through town. So that means that we're shooting in a practical
town who is letting us, uh, you know, oftentimes take over the streets, their businesses, their
sidewalks, uh, usually just proportions of it at a time. Uh, we were gonna have to shut down.
What, uh, for resets and everything for the parade, it was the equivalent of four blocks and to, to
be able to have complete control over that from the community for four days and that just wasn't
going to happen. That
Stacy: too expensive to pay them off to be like, close your coffee shop for four days.
Linda: Yeah, expensive. And also, you know, it's the whole good neighbor policy because cuz
we're there for the whole season and hopefully many seasons.
You know, when you go into a series, you're, you gotta treat it as though you wanna be there for
10 years. And so you wanna be that good house guest. You don't want to be the one who's, uh,
you know, you're, you're, you know, a month into maybe years of an experience and you're
already ticking them off and you need their support.
It's, it's, So important to remember, and, and we always forget this when we're out surveying.
We look at, uh, film immunity. We can walk out in the middle of the street when we're surveying
or we can do whatever we want. And, and we have to remember that we're in somebody's
actual home where they, they live, where they have businesses, where they, you know, they,
they carry on their day-to-day activities.
And so we have to remember that we're a guest and, um, trying to do that the right way. And
frankly, if you, if you're not doing it, the. You know, way that's gonna make it happy for them.
You're, you're not gonna get the creative that you want out of it in the end. You're just not gonna
be able to control as many things as what you want to, to be able to give you the best creative.
And I think that's the big thing is, is it trying to come up with scenarios where you can end up
controlling the environment. For sure. And so then off we went to a different place.
Jed: I love it. Well, and part of what I love too is the idea that, you know, if you're shooting over
the course of four days, people are gonna be soaking wet, then dry, then wet, then like, you
know, if you're out in the middle of, you know, the open, there's nowhere to hide from rain, from,
um, weather, you know, in, in, you know, incremental weather.
And, and,
Linda: especially with the parade and.
Jed: Yeah, so you came up with the idea of like, there's those big hay, hay loft things that cover
hay from the, the elements. And what if we took all the hay outta one of those and we used that
as our stage, and then we always have that place to duck into and the parade could go right by
there.
And in fact, we got, you know, killed with weather a couple times with rain, and we were able to,
it was just the, the perfectly um, the perfect idea for a way to. Creatively solve a problem that
they just didn't seem to be a good solution for. But yeah, that was,
Drew: I was gonna say the switch too, from like a parade through town to a, a fair, you know,
this is a location that everyone has come to versus the heart of town. I think that that simple, you
know, flip that, um, that Linda came up with, I think was brilliant as well, because then we can

take that whole, that whole long four day shoot and put it at a location that's not in town.
And like you said, John, it's covered, you know, for rain. And we can have some consistency and
we can just bring everything there and act like it's a destination versus, uh, you know, townie
parade. That, that changed everything.
Stacy: and I'm gonna jump on for one more, which is you even Linda, you knew the story so
well and you knew the script so well and the characters that you even made the storytelling a bit
better and more specific because I wrote it as like a generic, like the gen, the general town of
Saddler holds this general parade and anyone can come.
And you were like, well, it would be better if we did it, you know, at a location that we own and
control. How about we put it at the Scarlet Ranch because they're the richest people in town,
right? And we can sort of make it their big thing. And that's so much better to make it. So instead
of just being a general parade through town, it becomes this opportunity for a rich family to lord
it over the other families.
It became a a character piece.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Linda: Well, I, I think that's what it is, right? Is that we take a look at the script of what the
writers. Trying to convey to the audience and, and what do you wanna get at, what do you really
wanna achieve with those, that scene. And there's other ways to look at it. And I think that that's
where, as showrunners, you guys are so flexible and, um, you know, anybody can approach you
and say, you know, Here I have this weird idea, you know, and people aren't afraid to approach
you with those ideas because as you guys have said several times, the, the best idea in the the
room wins.
You know, it's, it's like, just let us percolate over this and, and then you guys can. Massage it into
something that makes sense for, from a writing perspective. And I, I think that that's the big
thing, isn't it? Is everybody working together? It's about a team. It, it really is that, that team
effort and just always going, what is the heart of it?
Is the most important part about the scene and how can we achieve it? And, um, yeah, it's, I, it's,
it's the difference between writing a book and writing a script. A book, it, it is what it is and
people are reading it and it stays the same. It's only different in every single person's mind, but
the script has to come to life.
It's gotta be a visual life. And so that's where we have that flexibility to be able to, to change the
visual and still get the same messaging across cross.
Jed: Yeah. Or even make it to Stacy's point more specific, like Yeah. Either reality, you know,
when you, you know, challenge reality with your, you know, script and vision. Like either I. You
know, you can let reality, like help you make it more specific and more like, you know, this could
only happen in this show, in this town, in this, you know.
Or, you know, it'll slowly break you. You know what I mean? Like, like I have a little post-it that I
keep on my drawer, like, uh, surrender to what is, you know, it's like, there is, you know, it's, it's
supposed to be a big sunny scene and it's pouring rain like today it's pouring rain. Like let's,
let's, I guess that's what this scene needs, you know?
And, and it's,
Stacy: Your child actors will pumpkin out and you will be shooting at the back of a a tiny adult's
head.

Linda: Yep, you will.
Jed: Yep. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally.
Linda: those children.
Jed: Yeah.
couple other expensive things I'd say, you know, children, especially at night, you know, chil like
episode nine, like, you know, we, you know, we had children at night with animals, you know,
and like it was
all
Drew: rain. And rain and stuff.
Jed: He had special facts.
Linda: And visual effects. Yep, yep, yep.
Drew: was tricky.
Linda: Yeah. The other things to gags, don't write gags just for the sake of. A gag. Oh, that
sounds good. You know, it's like, no. Yeah, it sounds great. That's the book version. Let's talk
about how we're gonna execute it. Like, um, oh, special effects gag. So, you know, in, in things
that are more violent, do you really need to have that many guns firing or, you know, Smoke,
fire, any of those, those kinds of gags where you're or prat falls and things.
So, you know, sometimes the, is the whole less is more in television. You've got, you've got this
box and so you've got this much time to fill and you've got this much time to shoot it and this
much money to spend on shooting it. And so if, if you want to, um, Less is more meaning in
terms of, let's just say battles rather than having, you know, three micro battles or getting battled
out.
Zombie shows are a really good example of, of this kind of thing where eventually it's like the
zombie impact. It, it's just like, oh, it's just, it's just boring because you've been watching zombie
feast after zombie feast after zombie feast. So when you get to this big climactic thing, you
know, 38 minutes in and there's this big zombie thing, everybody's like, oh, okay.
Great. It's, it's another one. It's like when you're watching fires. Yeah. It's, it's like, it, it doesn't
mean anything anymore. It's like watching fireworks on the 4th of July, right? If, if it was, you
know, going on for, for, you know, three hours, you'd be, oh, wow. Look at that. That's great. You
know, but 10 minutes into it, you're like, whoa, that's awesome.
And so, you know, really thinking about the impactful moments and saving them for, again,
making a really great one time event, sometimes outta things is, is the way to go.
Jed: Yeah, that's really good. Like I, I feel like Drew and I like our, you know, first half of our
career was basically going into, you know, when we'd come in onto a project, we'd look at it and
basically pitch like, okay, right now you have the macro climax where like everything happens.
Like, what about the micro climax?
What about everything gets really quiet as one thing is happening and it's super tense as
opposed to like a noisy, you know, 50 things are all happening at once. Like going micro climax,
you know, is always, you know, yeah. Doing one thing really well instead of five

Linda: Yeah.
Jed: Decently is, is always better, especially in TV.
And you know,
TV is really a good challenge to get very specific and really drill down on, you know, what's the
heart of this thing and how do we get there in a way that doesn't, you know, unnecessarily like
waste a lot of time and energy.
Drew: I would just add one, you know, one thing here too, in, in talking about, uh, just time is
just, um, using visual effects and knowing what visual effects is really helpful for, you know,
obviously it's the big visual effects elements you think of are, are, you know, you know, the
mountains or the, you know, whatever, like the big, you know, creations that they make.
But what they're, you know, really good at in terms of time saving is, you know, resets, you
know, if your visual effects is very good at, you know, blood continuity on. On clothing, for
example. And uh, you know, we used to try to get that all practical and make that all perfect. And
then, you know, actors have to change clothes a lot and the blood has to spread and then
there's stunt doubles needs to match and, and you, we waste a lot of time doing that kind of
thing when, uh, we always end up either touching it up in post and visual effects or just, you
know, it becomes purely visual effects and it really, uh, that works well.
Or like, uh, breaking a window sometimes, you know. That might be a half hour reset every time,
every take of breaking a window, where if you commit to doing it in visual effects, you can shoot
all your takes and be moving onto the next thing before you've reset that window one time and,
and, you know, so really kind of in prep, defining where, uh, you can save time by us, you know,
using a visual effect versus practical is super
helpful.
Jed: Waco season two, the, the latest, uh, like we had a window like, uh, buses driving away
and, you know, someone shoots out the windows and we like, literally just had a guy in the back
with rubber glass, just everyone ducking and someone just throwing rubber glass and it, it was
like a.
The simplest, you know, no reset, like super cheap and very effective. Got the point across, but
spent zero time on it.
I feel like that's helpful, that kind of thing.
Linda: Oh yeah, for sure. Uh, for me, the thing that always pops up to what I think about where
it's really helpful because we live in winter climate, um, snow, you know, when, when you have
to, like the, the number of hours that we've lost to the greens department and special effects
department going in and resetting footprints in the snow.
Stacy: Oh.
Linda: unbelievable, right? You got these long chasing sequences. Imagine episode nine from
season one if there had been snow all over the ground,
Drew: Oh my God.
Jed: Oh Yeah.
Drew: Nightmare to shoot everything for the waist up.

Linda: Pretty
Jed: we, we did have that one scene where it was a continuous scene from one night to one
day to the next. And it snowed a bunch overnight. And seeing in Calgary, like they literally
shoveled and blowtorch the world. Like they shoveled, like we, you know, it was like expanses
and they like, it was unbelievable.
They made the snow on everything disappear from the trees, from the rooftops, from the like
it was
Drew: flame throwers. They had flame throwers to, to melt the snow. That was the coolest thing
I've ever
Linda: Oh, they were on. They were on standby. We, we pay attention to the weather here.
Jed: Yeah. Yeah. That was
amazing. So, well, well, let's wrap this, this week up and then we'll come in, uh, next week. We'll
talk with Linda some more. A bonus episode talking about the two different kinds of budgets,
which might sound a little in the weeds, but is really, really important to have at least a basic
understanding of.
Thank you, Linda, for talking with
us
Linda: pleasure.
Drew: Yeah. Thank you Linda. We'll see you next week.
Linda: See you next week.
Stacy: you next week.
Drew: Okay.