This Transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors
Jed: Well let's jump in. Let's jump in.
Linda: Sure.
Jed: Stacy.
Stacy: I'm gonna give you like a fake Joni Mitchell thing. Okay? The question is how high is too
high? All right. It's the, yes. That might be too high. It's the yes. I've purposefully left out the W
in. I gotta start again. I clue. I'm closing my eyes outta shame. Ready? It's the
runner Show. I purposely left out the W in the showrunner show.
Drew: showrunner.
Jed: That's so
ridiculous. So ridiculous. Oh my God. Well done. Safe.
Linda: Well done. Yep.

Jed: All right. Welcome to the Show Runner Show where every week we demystify some aspect
of the Java show running for anyone who works in tv, who wants to work in TV or just wants to
know how it's all made. Uh, this week we're talking with Linda Ambry about the two types of
television budgets that you need to have some sense of.
It is a little in the weeds, but it's important to have some sense of this because, uh, it can really
mess you up if you don't have any. Idea about this? Um,
Stacy: And let's introduce ourselves too.
Jed: oh yeah.
I'm John Eric Dole.
Drew: And I'm Drew Doll
Stacy: And I'm Stacy Shabos.
Linda: And I'm Linda Ambre.
Stacy: Yay. Woo.
Jed: Yay.
Drew: guest, guest of the week. And for some of you that know, you know, film budgeting, you
know, where it's all just one budget, you know, and I think a lot of people are f uh, familiar with,
you know, the feature side budgeting and, uh, whereas TV is distinctly different in, that's the
thing we want to get into today is how does this kind of, you know, two-pronged budget process
of tv, uh, work, uh, you know, as it differs from from movies.

Jed: Linda, you wanna talk us through the two different kinds of budgets and why? And um,
Linda: a good question. Why? I mean, honestly,
Jed: maybe not. Why?
Linda: there's no real answer for that one. It's, it's funny because every show, even within the
context of a, a series, sometimes even every season, it changes, uh, as far as how you figure
out where your budget. Sort of your, um, way that you package it goes. So studios will
oftentimes come up with a, Hey, you're getting here.
Let's throw a nice number at it. $7 million. Who would that be? Nice? $7 million in episode.
Jed: Mm-hmm.
Linda: Yeah, and that's what they wanna spend. So the first thing you're gonna do is say, Hey,
is that net or gross from tax credits? And you go, Ugh. It's all the boring stuff, but you need to
know how much you really get to spend.
I, I don't really care which way they want you to do it. I just wanna know how much I actually get
to spend. Tax credits are a big part of the financing though now. And so in the old days, um,
Where tax credits either didn't exist or they were something that the studios networks looked
forward to. Getting later on and chipping away at what it spent on a show.
We didn't have to monitor in production the tax credits, but we do now. And so what that means
is, is that while you're monitoring how much you're actually spending, you're also monitoring
what the impact on where you spend that money, how that changes the tax credits that they can
anticipate they're going to get back because it's the financing.
So if you're, um, thinking that you're gonna be spending. Let's say a hundred thousand dollars in
Alberta, and you're counting on Alberta tax credits as part of your financing, and then you spend
that a hundred thousand dollars somewhere else where you don't have access to tax credits.
You don't have to account for just that a hundred thousand dollars, but you have to account for
the loss on the tax credits they were gonna get as well.
Drew: Wow. Yeah,
Linda: It's a lot. It's a lot to manage, and so every little decision. You know, whether it's a crew
member, where they come from, you know, piece of clothing, things like that, that all matters.
Um, so it's, yeah.
Stacy: So if you bring in crew from Toronto, that affects your tax credits.
Linda: yeah, if we'd originally budgeted for it as an Alberta person, um, then we don't get the
Alberta labor tax credit. We would still get our Canadian federal tax credit because they're still a
Canadian, but we would not get the Alberta. So, yeah, there's, there's a whole pile of extra
numbers that you have to constantly juggle all the
Jed: crazy making. I, I can
Linda: It is spends a Yeah, we spend a lot of time on it. It's, it's actually, it's, it's quite time
consuming. So that's the first thing you have to figure out is what you really are working with.
And then, um, translating to say that 7 million per episode, what's your total budget First? 10
episodes and you, you got yourself 70 million to work with.
And so for me, I like to look at it as just 70 million because there's a thing called a pattern
budget. Okay. And a pattern, um, just as that it's a pattern, but scripts don't fall into patterns. You

will have maybe, you know, typically you're gonna spend a little bit more juicing up, episode one
through three in particular to catch your audience, get everybody hooked and hook, line and
sinker.
Go on in, you know. Six and seven. You've got, you know, somebody who's going, ah, you guys
are spending too much money. You gotta have some, you know, less expensive episodes. And,
um, drew had mentioned like a bottle episode in, uh, our previous week's podcast, and that
might be where the, um, you know, a bottle episode comes into play so it's more contained and
things like that.
And then you might have a little bit more money spent at the end on, uh, nine and 10 or just 10,
but that's not always what happens. But, So scripts don't follow a pattern. It's, but the budgets
have to, and so we have two things. We have what's, um, and again, there's different systems,
um, around the world and different studios approach it differently.
Some will still use just that overall big one, big number, which is so hard to manage. 70 million
not broken down into little chunks. Um, managing 70 million over 10 months. From the start of
prep to when you're wrapping and then continuing in post, that's, that's a lot to be tracking
because we have to, we have to report back to studios and networks every single week where
we're at financially.
have to be able to report to them. But most importantly, we have to know where we're at on any
given day so that we can make smart decisions about where it is best spent, uh, to get the dollar
on the screen.
Stacy: I didn't realize. I thought there had to be a pattern budget and there had to be a, what do
you call that? Amort, the
Linda: Amort. Yeah. So
Stacy: exist the whole time, but you're saying maybe not so much. Maybe it's
Linda: some studios don't. Yes, it's, yeah, some don't, but most of them do. So then this is
where sometimes the studio has very strict policies on what they consider to be amortized items
and what they wanna see in pattern. So, And sometimes they give you the flexibility as a
producer, uh, to make the decision about what you want to put into pattern and what goes into
amort.
So Amort, uh, the simplest way to look at that is amortized costs are the things that you are
going to spend money on, resources on that will go over and span the entire season. So, for
instance, uh, you might be prepping, uh, the series for eight weeks, and you might be wrapping
it for four weeks at the backend, all of the labor, all of the people, all of the rentals, all of the
purchases and things that go into that period of time, they're not really specific to a single
episode.
Yeah, because they're not about making that script. They're not about making that episode. So
those things go over into amortized costs because that's the best way to capture that part of
labor. But once you are shooting, let's just say that we've got a, a generous schedule of 19 days
per one hour episode because.
That's what we all like to do. Um, so let's, let's just say 19 days is, uh, what we have, uh, for
each block to shoot two episodes. Uh oh, let's do 20 instead. I'll tell you why in a second. Cuz
19 doesn't divide even Levi. Two. Uh,
Drew: Um,

Linda: so what you're gonna do is, is the labor of, let's say 20 days for a block of shooting is
equal to a pattern of 10 days per episode.
Okay. And so every day that we're shooting, that day of labor can be attributed to whatever
episode you're shooting on. And if you're shooting episode by episode, which is not in my
opinion, the best way to shoot, you should always shoot two episodes minimum together, uh, to
make your resources go further and give you more locations and buy you more of all the good
stuff that you can.
Um, If you've got 20 days, that 20 days of, of labor each in single, each one of the 20 days is
attributable to a pattern. So that pattern of block one. And so the, the labor is the thing that fits
most nicely and cleanly into whether it's an amortized cost or whether it's pattern.
Drew: mm-hmm.
Linda: We also have to report back to the studios, not just weekly on hot on our cost reporting,
but we report every single day.
On a hot cost.
Stacy: What's a hot
Linda: cost. I know, right? A hot cost. A hot cost is basically we take, when we go into, say, day
three of shooting, we have a call sheet that gives us a map of what we're going to shoot that
day. On day four, the ad department, along with the production office team are putting together
and it has to be delivered usually by noon of day four.
A summary of what happened on day three. Okay, so taking a look at that call sheet, uh, we
were the in times the same as what they were on the call sheet. What was everybody's out
times? How many meals were served? Were there delays? What were the reasons for those
kinds of delays? Uh, did you have overtime?
Was there meal penalty? Uh, all of those, was there a unit move? All of those kinds of things get
captured into a written document that's quite similar to a call sheet only. It's a really important
legal document as well, because it captures. Everything that happened on that shooting day. It
then goes over to the finance people and the finance people within production accounting world.
They dissect that and ideally within 12 hours have turned around what the cost of that day of
shooting was and yeah, and, and
Stacy: the third ad stays up so late?
Linda: It is
Stacy: so the third ad is doing all that paperwork and that's why she's dragging home like four
hours after everybody else has left.
Linda: Those lucky dogs. Yeah, they are. They, they have to report every single person's out
time. So typically the Jenny op and your first aid craft surface people are the last people out,
and they can be out as many as three hours after we've wrapped on set.
Stacy: yeah.
Linda: And so there's, there's a cutoff point in my world. I send the third DS home and say,
capture the rest of the stuff in the morning. I don't, I, I need you to be. Safe and not exhausted.

Stacy: Oh, So
it's not like a standoff between them and First Aid just staring at each other, like, who's gonna
leave first? You
come back the next day. They're still there in a
Linda: it is on some shows, it is on some shows.
Jed: oh man.
Linda: Not, not, not on ours ideally, but yeah. So it's. It's super tricky because we have to, um,
everything fits into these neat little boxes and yet scripts really don't. So other kinds of things like
a location, for instance. Um, when we were doing Joe Pickett, we created those mini back lot
situations with a couple of our major locations, or certainly our Jackson Ranch location is
something that we.
We pay for by the month. We don't pay for by a shooting day. And so that kind of a location will
go up into the amort cost versus if we are going to, um, uh, a restaurant for a fine dining the
evening or we're going to, um, Uh, I don't know, even deer days we're, we're going to um, uh, a
place that we're only gonna be there for three or four days and it's specific to a scripted block of,
um, of time.
Those types of location piece generally will go over into a pattern budget.
Stacy: Am I right in thinking that the pattern, it seems like it's okay for people to spend less than
the pattern. Of course it is, but you get into trouble if you try to spend more than the pattern. Is
that, I know John, you had talked about that of like, go ahead and blow a lot of money on the
things you're gonna need all year in your first episode or two because say, say you're gonna
have crazy gun battles and tons of animals and visual effects in episode nine, but you don't
really need them in episode one and two. Well, if they don't, will you explain that? If they don't
set the pa, if they're not part of the pattern that's established, you don't get that money later
Jed: I have an example for this. Uh, so Drew and I in, you know, season one of Waco was the
first television we had done. And so we didn't have any set, like, you know, in our mind, you
know, budget is budget, you know, um, and uh, and our big kinda gun battle happened in
episode three. And there was none of that stuff.
And so the pattern\ all those episodes were built off of. The pattern is typically your first episode,
and all the other episodes follow the budget of your first episode. And so in that first episode,
there was no gun battles. There was no, you know, so by the time episode three came along,
they're like, well, we don't have any money.
For the helicopters, the, you know, the stunts, the, you know, the time, all the, stuff you need to
shoot this
Stacy: a lot of tanks. Nope.
Jed: Yeah. And in episode three and six there was all this crazy stuff that weren't in the pilot.
And so for Joe Pickett, you know, we were like, oh, the pattern is gonna be built off the pilot.
Let us make sure we have animals, let us make sure we have puppets, let us make sure we
have mountains and we have, you know, like anything, you know, and I would, I would say, you
know, as you're. If you have your big set PC things deeper in the season, it's smart to have
something in the pilot that, um, that gives you that, uh, budget item that you can then pattern out

down downfield.
And if you aren't using that kind of stuff, then you're saving money. But if you're adding like,
elements that aren't in your first episode, um, that'll, that'll end up, uh, potentially hurting you.
Downfield.
Linda: Yeah, it's, it is interesting cuz uh, you know, from a, a creative perspective, I mean, you
guys, you guys know how much I love the Bible and Bibles don't get written very much anymore,
but they are the biggest tool to make your resources go the furthest and appear on screen. On a
series. And so with the absence of a overall arcing bible, at least you need to have outlines and
a story string line through line for what's going to happen through all season long.
And the reason you need that is so that like when we were making our decisions of, of whether
we, when we're looking for location, do we need that location? Every single episode. Do we
need that location only for the first three episodes? Do we need it for the entire season or just
maybe episodes one, six and 10?
Uh, is it something that we're going to go in and make no changes to? And we're not worried
about, gee, what if they don't want us back after we've been there the one time and they go, oh
no, that was, that was too much for us.
Drew: us.
Linda: Yeah, yeah, you guys sounded great, but no, we we're good on film. Um, if, if there.
Are places that you really are going to need for the whole story point of the season. Need to lock
those down. And so you need to set the money aside. And so we don't know how to spend that
money if we don't know what's coming at us. And so that's where the bible or outlines or going to
help. Same with casting, right?
When we're doing, you know, here you, you got, how many millions of dollars for casting? We'll
just say and how are you gonna spend it? Which characters do you spend it on? Well, you gotta
know. Is character, even though they're character 17 down on the list, maybe we need them for
six outta 10 episodes, and so we need to contract them accordingly or seven, which puts 'em
into a whole different bracket with sag.
You know? Um, so those, those kinds of things are, are really important. If you don't have that all
established, it's really tricky to know how to spend your money the right way. I, I personally hate
the way most budgeting is done as far as. Separating out pattern and amort. I prefer the pattern
to be a reflection of generally the technical aspects of
filming, of the whole process, and I prefer.
Amor to be more about the creative spend because that, because what I've seen a lot of time,
um, this has happened over series where, to your point, John, when oh, you didn't spend that
money in episode one, we just didn't think you were going to need that. So we took that as a
savings,
Jed: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah.
Linda: or gee, we didn't count on, this is something that you were going to want to do later on
down the road.
And so that money disappeared. Or they didn't protect for it because they didn't know it was
coming. That's where keeping all the money in one block. So if, if for instance, um, animals has

a budget of $500,000 and it sits in Amort, you know, as you chip away at it script by script, by
script, that's all that you got left.
But if it was over in Pattern, sometimes they'll take it as a savings and then they'll, lets go off.
We took it as a savings. We didn't. Well, what'd you do with that savings? Now, the way I
generally work, as soon as there's a savings in an episode, I put it into a little piggy bank. Little,
piggy bank,
Drew: secret Piggy Bank.
Linda: ciggy, secret piggy bank.
And we'll let our studio executives, if they're nice, which they were on Joe Pickett, um, we'll let
them know where that secret piggy bank is, because we need to be completely above board
with them. So that they know where we're at because they also wanna support us and make
sure that we're giving them the best product.
And so if we have savings, we wanna create this little account that goes over into the amort side
of our. Um, tracking and it is building up this little piggy bank so that then when you guys come
to us and say, Hey, we'd really like to do this, and it's episode six, we can go, Hmm, how much
is in the piggy bank guys?
Do we have enough money to do this? You know, or, um, gee, we didn't use drones on episodes
one, two, and four. Uh, But episode three is gonna be a dandy, and we're gonna need the
money for all four. For drones. We can say, yeah, sure. It's not a problem. It's already saved, it's
set aside, and we can do that. And so
Stacy: you're talking about, you, you have to crack it open at the end of the season, don't you?
Like, you don't get to take that piggy bank, tuck it under your arm and, and run it into season
two, is that right? Do you have to?
Linda: generally, no, I, there, there are, there's a few exceptions where I. Yeah, in the old days
they would let you do that, but that's, that's going back when you had, you know, the glory days
of 22 episodes for a season and, and they went, oh yeah, well you're only taking six weeks off
and you're gonna be up and going again.
So sure if you got a little money left over, we'll let you move it over to the next season if you
want. You know, because you already knew you had another season. You know, you, you knew
you had a season when you were rapping. Um, but yeah, generally you don't get to do that, but
I, I prefer to. Crack it open as early as I can if cash flow isn't an issue.
Um, which can be problem with, um, indies or where you're having to finance your tax credits.
It's usually not as much of an issue with a larger studio or network. But if cashflow isn't an issue
and you have a trusting relationship that with a track record with a studio, they will let you start
spending that piggy bank early.
Because they trust that when you say, yeah, I know this is gonna be expensive here, but I can
tell you right now from talking with our showrunners, we know that we can cloth this back in
episode eight. Uh, we know it's contained. We know what it's gonna be, and, and. Guarantee we
will do that. Um, sometimes you can crack open that piggy bank, but you also wanna leave
piggy bank for post.
I like to leave that for the, the post folks as well because, you know, there's so much that comes
up in post and even if it's just that you guys wanna add a sweet piece of, you know, licensed
music in there that you otherwise couldn't afford, you know, it's, it's, you don't wanna spend
every dollar you wanna leave.

Some money in the Kitty for, for down the road. In, in Post as well. Yeah. It's, yeah. The whole
discussion of AM Morton Pattern is, is really, it does change every single show, show by show
season by season. Um, I, in, after season one of, uh, picket, when we started season two. Uh, I
talked with our production manager and accountant and location manager and said, look, I, I
don't wanna have pattern location fees at all.
I hate it. I hate it, hate it, I hate it. I just wanna throw it all over into one big, massive lump, and
this is what we're gonna work with for this season. So let's carve out all those things that we
need to guarantee for the whole year and see what we have left. And we know that yes, it's
gonna fall into kind of a pattern of.
A five, but it inevitably doesn't because you're gonna have some blocks where you need to be at
10 different new locations that are one-offs that you're never gonna see again, and then there'll
be another block where you're only going to all the locations that you already own. So that's
where I like to just have it pooled together.
The other place that it really makes a ton of sense is the construction of those sets, and also in
other creative endeavors like costume department. How can you possibly, as a costume
designer know, Other than if it's, say, a, a wedding, a ballroom scene, something significant, that
kind of a dress, how do you know that that cute little, you know, blue dress isn't gonna be worn
in eight episodes at some point, or is it only gonna be worn in one?
So how do you possibly know? You can create the, what we call a closet for each cast member,
and that goes into amort and then, The pattern money that you have left over is just for your
guest cast who come in and out. And that's what I tend to like to do as well, is I'll, I'll work with
the costume designers up front and say, Hey, all of our recurring casts that we know are gonna
be here for the season, let's just create closets for them.
And that all goes over into the, into the amort. And then let's just keep what the only thing left in
pattern is just for those. Hey, there's a waitress in this scene, or, Hey, there's a DJ in this scene,
or, you know, that kind of thing. It's, it is just for truly the, the one-off type performers.
Drew: smart. That's smart.
Jed: That's very smart. And I gotta say too, drew, drew and I, like, in our experience, we like
playing the game of like, okay, how, how much can we, you know, trick the eye on screen
instead of, instead of just throwing money at everything, like, how much can we, can we do?
Like how economical can we be? And we tend to find that about. Halfway through a project, a lot
of money is available as opposed to like trying to grind out everything. Like I, but I want it all like
by doing that, money just dries up, you know what I mean? Whereas, um, I feel like, you know,
by the time, like, and sometimes you know, you're in episode three and you're like, oh my God,
this one actor is amazing.
We didn't budget for them to be in eight episodes, but we should pull that, you know, actor
forward in this one, we've already paid. For 10 episodes isn't doing a great job. How do we, how
do we trade some of their real estate? And, um, if you've spent dumb money up top on
everything, um, you may not have that kind of flexibility.
Whereas we, we tend to find there's more flexibility, uh, as we go. Uh, Because we tend to be
economical and we love, you know, working with, uh, you Linda, and, you know, we, we love
this, this kind of game. Like, oh, how do we write ourselves outta trouble? And,
Drew: Yeah.
Linda: It is a puzzle, but, but you're, you're right. How do you write yourself outta trouble? And
that's, that's the thing when the currency of the actual dollar that you have to spend on

something or.
Drew: or,
Linda: I mean, some, sometimes you can't spend all your money because you don't have
enough time. You know, we've run into that problem where we can't buy ourselves more days
because there's just no more days where crew and cast are available to keep shooting.
Um, but if you don't have, if you can't change how much money you have to spend, that's where
writing is the other financing tool.
Drew: Yeah.
Linda: And it's actually very powerful. Right. It's a powerful tool as far as finance goes, because.
You can control very specifically through words what you can afford,
Drew: Yeah.
Linda: and so you can, you know, you can write yourself into trouble, but you can write yourself
out of trouble too.
Drew: It's true. It's true. And speaking of like, you know, just kind of that dumb money, I feel like
in every single show, when you're budgeting block one, you're, you're, no matter how generous
your studio is, you are over budget and you have to find money.
And like one, one of the biggest disconnects I feel like between the writer's room and then
actually, you know, rubber meeting the road is in the, um, uh, and Linda, you really, you know,
kinda, uh, Really beat this into our heads. It's just the actor deals and like, you know, you're
forced to make actor deals at the top of the show.
You know, before you've started shooting. You may not have, you know, more than four scripts
out of 10. You know, and we, you might have outlines, you might have, you know, even just a
loose idea of like the back end of the, of the season, but, You have to make those actor deals in,
in the writer's room, you kind of write as if you own all these characters and they can be there to
show up whatever you want, you know?
And, and that's just the way the writers', writer's room isn't really thinking of, you know, number
of episodes per character and, and your, you know, your lead leads are gonna be, you know, 10
outta 10. They're gonna get paid for 10 episodes no matter, you know, even if they don't appear
in one. And so you don't have to worry about them.
But it's kind of that next. Tear down that you know, you hate to make a deal. My point is this, if
you hate to make a deal for an actor who makes a hundred thousand dollars an episode, uh, for
eight episodes, cuz you think you might have that person in eight episodes, you know, early in
the season, before you have all those scripts and then end up using them in five episodes and
you basically just give it away $300,000 and that.
That's is very real money and it's very hard to find that savings elsewhere. So, you know, the
more you can kind of have clarity on your cast in exactly the number of episodes you need from
them when you're, you know, at the, at the top of the season when you're making those deals
like that, that probably is the most money we've just given away for nothing, uh, on a show has
been related to actor deals.
I think.
Jed: Yeah.

Linda: Yeah, that, I think that's a common problem. It really is. It's, and, and sometimes it's, it's
because you don't have the opportunity to have a. A really good guide on the whole season of
where things are going. Season one I think is really tricky because you don't also know where
those on-camera performances are gonna gel and mesh.
And, and so sometimes you need to pivot and, you know, some, a performance, or not even a
performance, but the character itself is just falling flat. It just doesn't feel like it's going
somewhere. Or something else is just so stunning that you just go, oh, I, I wanna refocus. Um,
that's, That's the hard spend.
It's it's cast and it's, um, it's sets that you've built. It's, it's, it's those kinds of things, right? Where,
oh, we're gonna spend so much time in this place, let's build it, let's build it. And then you go,
yeah, that's great. We saw it four times for, you know, total of 10 teens. That's great. Um,
Drew: With cast, with cast two, there's, we find yourself in this situation too, where you might
have, an actor has one line in an episode and you don't think about that in the writer's room, but
you know, when you're actually making the show, then you're like, wow, we, we just paid a
hundred thousand dollars for that actor to show up to do one line.
And we flew them in and they had an apartment for a week and like, you know, probably spent
closer to $130,000 for that line and shit. If we could go back and, you know, redo that, we might
have given that line to someone else. And you know, so I guess. My point is, you know, the
more deliberate you are with your characters from the outset, from the writing phase, knowing
that each one of those characters, every episode they're in is real money.
I think that that can be really costs, you know, can save you a lot of money ahead of time.
showrunners.
Stacy: thing for a showrunner to communicate to the writer's room, cuz you guys are a hundred
percent right, like, as you're saying this, I'm like, oh yeah, I do. It's like little kids when they see
their teacher in the grocery store and like, but wait, I thought you lived at the school.
I'm like, I have the same thing. Like, but wait, I thought you were really that character. You don't
need to fly back and forth to your husband. You don't need an apartment. You're that character.
Like, oh no, they're, they're actually a human being. They actually have to be put up
somewhere. Um, you forget that.
And I feel like sometimes, you know, the showrunner can almost either forget to say that or
almost, uh, treat it like a secret of like, oh, you don't need to know. But it's actually very helpful
for the showrunner to be like this. Character. This actor has a seven out of 10 deal. We gotta
use 'em for seven.
We can't use them more. Maybe we could, but maybe not. You know this, it's kind of nice to
know how often you can use people, cuz honestly, I mean I do it all the time and I see my fellow
writers do it all the time. We'll definitely have somebody pop up from the couch, say one funny
line, go away, and then they're not there for another two episodes.
I think nothing of it. I really do think of them as, as like as though they live in the page, you
know?
Drew: Yeah. And I think there's always those supporting actor or supporting characters that
when you're writing you think are like, okay, this is probably someone we'll find in, you know,
Alberta or, or Vancouver or, you know, and, um, and then inevitably you get into casting and you
get your couple leads, and then everyone's like, Hey, you know, um, You know, David Allen
Greer might wanna do this, or, you know, it always ends up becoming someone much more

expensive.
And now you've, you know, have all these episodes of that character appearing for a hot second
and you're paying a, an enormous amount of money every time you see that character. And it's
like you're, your total budget isn't going getting higher because you cast a more expensive actor.
It's just basically, you know, cannibalizing other things in your budget.
And I think, uh, you really have to kind of be cognizant of that early.
Stacy: that
Linda: using that tool. But you wanna use that tool again? You want to, it's, it's in final draft. Use
the program. Like really, the one thing I would say to writers, especially writers who have the
aspiration of being a showrunner, really get to know final draft. It's, it's like,
I could do budgeting in an Excel boring old document to our God by hand.
You know,
Drew: know,
Linda: but you guys wouldn't sit down and, and use a typewriter to do a script anymore.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Linda: So use the program for everything. Get to know it because you can print out all of the
cast and how many pages they're in, how many scenes they're in, you can look at that kind of
thing. Cuz that does impact it. And, and it's like if, if.
It doesn't need to be that person delivering that line in the coffee shop to, uh, your, your
characters. Could it be somebody completely different? You know, it, could it be a, a one-off
person or could all of that dialogue go to somebody else who's already there?
Stacy: Linda, you should 100% come back and actually guide us through it. Cause I hear what
you're saying of like, use those tools, do things like pull up the number of scenes or pull up the
number of characters. I'm like, great. Uh, and then what, cuz I'm literally like, well, I don't know.
Then I have a list of characters.
I don't know, but obviously you see some, some juice in this orange. It'd be fun to, to
Linda: Well, as we're,
Stacy: talk us through it.
Linda: it's so nice to have somebody in the writer's room, like a writer's coordinator who
understands that kind of thing too, who can sometimes help the showrunner with that process.
Jed: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, one thing to note too, you know, as a short, like some of
those things, Like if you do one of those reports and you're like, oh, this character only says this
one line in three episode, you know, in three episodes, you know, that's money in the bank that,
you know, when you're really like, Hey, we really want this, you know, to have a moose, you
know, show up on set.
You know what I mean? But I, here's what I'll do. I'll cut out the, these three lines like. You can,
you know, those are ways you can bank a little bit of, uh, money in the scripts for things you
really want.

Drew: That is
Linda: there's, there's still not a trained, there's still not a trained moose.
Drew: Yeah, there does. There does not exist. A trained moose.
Linda: I know it's Canada, but they don't exist.
Drew: That actually shocks me. I'm usually, uh, shocked in the other direction of like, I can't
believe that you guys can do this. You know, like, I'm actually surprised that, uh, they haven't
figured out how to train a moose or that moose are untrainable.
Stacy: twinkle in your eye. You've gotta, that'll be your late career passion.
Linda: Oh God.
Jed: be trained?
Linda: Um, not, I mean, they can be, they can be rode, like you can ride them like I. A horse,
you can saddle them up if they're trained from very young.
Drew: From young. Okay.
Linda: but it's not, it's not like teaching a dog to sit where, you know, in two weeks, Hey, look at
that.
The dog can sit. You know, it's like, yeah. Bison are not necessarily food motivated, right? Like
Stacy: click. You got that
Linda: Yeah. Yeah. The clicker.
Jed: you're, you're hearing it here. If we get a season three of Joe Pickett, we're gonna ride a
bison.
Linda: I knew you'd say that.
Stacy: Mm-hmm.
Linda: I did not say
Jed: Okay. We've all agreed. We've all agreed. We can
Drew: we had that
Jed: a bison.
Drew: We had a seat. We ha we did have a
Stacy: We did have, we cut it, but now I want it to be child actors at night in the rain on a bison,
and I will not settle for anything less. I quit if you don't do that for me,
Linda: That's fabulous. Fabulous. I love it.
Stacy: let's put it in episode one so that our budget is 25 million.

Linda: Yeah, let's start with that. Yeah,
Jed: That's amazing.
Linda: that is good.
Jed: Every week we like to do, uh, something we call the Rapid Fire four, where we ask, uh,
four questions the same for every guest. Um, we'll start with what is the first television show you
truly loved and why?
Linda: To watch, I'm assuming, um, Can I have one for different periods of time? Uh, okay. Little
h Little House on the Prairie, uh, because I identified with both Laura and Mary, and they really
were, it, it was a show that I felt was actually on air for me. Like I felt like they'd made it for me
Stacy: Oh.
Linda: and I loved Michael Landon
Drew: yeah,
Linda: who couldn't.
It was just like, ah. Um, but yeah, no, it was, it was. For me, that would be the first thing I ever
really loved. And then I would say Mary Tyler Moore. It was reruns, but Mary Tyler Moore, I was
just like, when she's spinning around and she throws that hat up in the air, wanna be her. That's
the first time where I can say, I watched a show and I went, I wanna be that person.
I could be that person. I could, I could be that sassy person in a man's world, in a newsroom.
Like I, I can do that.
Stacy: She was a producer too, right? Wasn't she? Or was she, she wasn't a journalist, right?
She was the producer or like
Jed: We actually just watched the pilot. We watched the pilot of that recently, and
Linda: Oh, I gotta see
Jed: for the, she's applying for the secretary job. They're like, sorry, we filled that job, but if
you're willing to take half the pay, uh, we'll make you a producer, and if you're willing to take
even half of that, we'll make you an executive producer.
I'm like, oh my God, that's so
Linda: That's so for so forward thinking. No.
Jed: Yeah, totally.
Drew: still exactly like that. Yeah.
Linda: Yeah.
Jed: Yeah. Yeah. I
have to say too little house. I loved Little House too as a kid to a point that my friends would
make fun of me for. Like, that's kind of a girl show. I was like, but it's great, you know? So I

Drew: I loved Little House too.
Linda: See we're all secret leaves. And I was so lucky because I got to be involved in a reboot
of a little house. It was a, um, mini series and, um, yeah, it was, um, first time my line produced
and I was so excited to be able to do that. It was, it was pretty cool.
Drew: cool. That's great. I be, they're, I know Mary Tyler Moore is Minneapolis, but Little House
is Minnesota too, right? I know the
Jed: Yeah. Both Minnesota
Linda: Hey,
Drew: both Minnesota shows. How
Linda: what? See, I'm meant to be a doubt. What can I say? See?
Stacy: Question two, what is your favorite part of your job?
Drew: job
Linda: This the people I, I cannot imagine, cuz I started off, you know, in bookkeeping and
different stuff and I cannot imagine being four walls without a person, uh, that I'm working with. I
love the collaboration and the puzzle and putting, it's, it's a different, it's a different job every
single day. And the people are what really make the difference in that.
Drew: I agree. I think being in production for anyone who's not spent time on set in production, I
just couldn't recommend it more highly. It really, it's such an experience and by the end of it, you
feel like you've been, you know, through it together. It's, you know, people say it's like summer
camp, but it's like summer camp if it lasted for nine months, you know, really, it's really an, like a
great human experience and the human connections are, are just the best.
Stacy: So many people too. That's something I have to say when you're in the writer's room and
you're like, oh, you know the people like the four or five or maybe six people, and then you go
on set and you're like, my God know they, they made so many people, they're everywhere.
Linda: 180 lunches every day.
Drew: Yeah.
Jed: Wow, that's amazing.
Linda: Yeah.
Drew: All right. Question number three. Uh, what is the part of the job that costs you something?
Linda: Caring too much.
Jed: Well,
Linda: Um, I can remember a series before, it wasn't our series, it was another series before,
um, our daughter was getting married in Jamaica, so full on destination wedding, and, We had a
major situation on the show that we were shooting and, uh, one of our very key crew members
had a medical emergency and had to go in for emergency surgery.
And, um, it was like, okay, what are we gonna do? And I actually rescheduled my flight to
Jamaica. Uh, so I flew in just a day and a half before the wedding and I missed out on some

really important stuff that I would. You know, loved to have been part of with our daughter's
wedding. And, um, but I just, I, I couldn't leave the show high and dry like that.
I felt like it was really important that I'd be there to solve that problem. And, um, yeah, I get really
invested. And so that's probably, um, what cost me the most is being that invested.
Drew: Yeah,
Jed: Yeah.
Drew: that. I do get that a lot.
Jed: I, I see it like, uh, in the office too. It's like I'll, you know, be leaving the office like way too
late and I'll see you still like 10:00 PM and you're still there. Like, you know, I, I see that, that
care really. And then number four, if you had a time machine, what one piece of advice would
you give yourself when you started your television journey?
Linda: It's all gonna be okay.
Drew: ok.
Jed: Yeah.
Drew: Don't
Linda: you know, don't get caught up in it. Don't take it too seriously. Take it just the right
amount as serious. It's a, the end of the day, it's an occupation one that we all love, but we're
making entertainment for the audiences and our own relationships and the relationships that we
work with.
That's actually a satisfying part of it. That's the important part. And you know, when I think about
what we achieved in the two years of working together on picket, and hopefully there's more,
um, but the importance that I think we collectively feel on finding that work-life balance and, um,
Creating an atmosphere of respect and thinking about the crew members, um, who get, you
know, to work an hour or two before us and an hour or two after us at the end of the day when
we're all thinking about that.
I think that because we were on the same page, we had important cast members who were on
the same page as us, and we had a studio said, who's. You know, go for it. If it fits in your
money box, try whatever you wanna do. Just deliver us on time and on budget. Um, I think that
for me, that's the advice I would give myself is, is it be creative, not just in the words on the page
and what you're doing, but be creative about all aspects of the job.
And, and remember that it's, it's it's entertainment and the rest of the stuff is really, that's a
priority.
Drew: yeah.
That's
Linda: And everything else will look after itself. You know, like if you look after your crew, your
crew is your biggest asset. If you look after everybody, they're gonna look after the show with
you. They really will.
So,

Drew: so well said.
Jed: And they'll show up, uh, for the next season when you really need, you know what I mean?
Like you really
want the
people who know the world and you know who you loved working with. Um,
Stacy: Not just show up, but show up with heart. You know, because a lot of people can drag
themselves with increasing resentments to something and like punch the clock, but to show up
with ever-growing heart of like, we have this thing. It's so great. We have such a great family
and a great culture here, and yeah.
Drew: the reality is no, no matter where you're shooting, if you're shooting in, you know, Calgary
or Atlanta or whatever the location you're shooting in, you're gonna have competition. There's
gonna be other shows. Crews are gonna have other options, and you want to be their top
option. You wanna be their first choice, you know, all the
Linda: You, you wanna be the unicorn and.
Drew: And
Jed: Yeah.
Linda: I take great pride in that. We created that with Joe Pickett. Everybody who was on
something else was like, oh, you were on Pickett. Oh, wow. You know, like,
Jed: Yeah.
Linda: it's, yeah, but it's, I, I think that that's just it. I was lucky. I had some fabulous mentors
early in my life who were people first, and I think that that's just it.
It's, it's about the people.
Jed: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Linda: Yeah.
Jed: Okay. Well, Linda, thank you so much for taking the
Drew: Thank you, Linda.
Jed: it's
uh, so
Linda: Thanks for inviting me.
Jed: so nice seeing
Linda: nice.