YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Koppelman

lines on the record: 93
first: 2019-03-16
most recent: 2019-03-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thank you. And by the way, people may not know. I actually play on the show. I actually play Wags under a rubber mask. And so that's why you never see me on a cameo. I thought we weren't supposed to have speaking as spoilers. Oh my God.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I was thinking of another thing. I have not seen this movie. Oh, you haven't. Well, okay, you guys have to describe it.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is my question. So talk to me as a practical person who's interested in performance and not particularly interested in introspection. I do two simplest”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've never, I've never, and I'm not philosophically anti meditation. I'm personally anti meditation. I cannot imagine sitting still with my own thoughts. Longer than about 30 seconds. I couldn't do that.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I look for the way I think about it. I look for as many chances as I can to let him make the decision. Right. And then to your point, like if I really feel, and as a consequence of that, I build up so much trust. That's right. That's what I'm saying. If I'm still strong about something.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you get in the positive version of the deadlock, which is totally right. No, let's do it your way. Okay, now we have a healthy competition right.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, so the way I describe it, the way I this comes up a lot in our business. Ben and I have this kind of partnership lucky for me, but also that, you know, there's a lot of founder and then CEO. Like sometimes we have founder CEOs, which is like your showrunner model, but sometimes we have a founder and then there's a CEO who's brought in or promoted inside the company. And then they have to be part, you know, if you want the magic of the founder and the company well run, they need to have that kind of partnership. And so what I always tell them, I kind of try to put a point on it and kind of say it has to be more important to each of you that it has to be more important to each of you that the other one has to be more important that the other one gets to make the decision than that you get to prove yourself right and you have to both have that attitude like if one of you has that attitude then that person's just going to run over the other one but if you both have the attitude where your reflexive view is you know what this is a debate it's an argument it's 50 50 it's a toss up which a lot of these things are we're going to do it your way if both people have that as their default point of view then you can navigate through these things”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not the other guy's fault. That's right. It can't be the other guy's fault. Don't you think it that way? I actually am”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, how do you, if somebody comes to you and says, like, I want to have a partnership like that? I want to have a career where I have a partner like that. Well, do you remember when the four of us first do?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, Beth and I have the kind of partnership where we're able to, you know, compliment Actually, I wanted to ask you that was the other question I wanted to ask you. So, you have been partners now with David for how long?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was thinking my answer to Mark's question. I'm trying to make him watch this movie Gully Boy. I haven't seen it. It's a Bollywood movie that's produced by NAS, but to me, the point is that technology is democratized the access to watching all this visual literature”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have the luxury not to think about the 560 shows or to appreciate what Langraff says and know he's a brilliant guy without having to be cowed by that or feel any way about it because I just want to I still go back to the same thing. I just want to get in the room and get the feeling I get when I'm making the thing. I want to be walk on the set and see Damian and Paul and Maggie in Asia and be able to work with them. And we've just found a way to make decisions still based on our curiosity and our obsession. So if we're interested in the US Open in 1991 and Jimmy Connors, we'll go make a documentary about it because we'll really enjoy the process of making it and we have faith that there will be people who will want to see it.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have no idea. Okay. Or maybe it's the love of television, so it perpetuates itself. We might be in a golden age where artists are apprenticing in some way for other artists and learning and figuring it out.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, where is all this talent coming from? I have no idea. Okay. So were there just all these geniuses out there who just never had the opportunity to do it? And now they do, or is there something happening in the industry where people are being trained?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He doesn't leave me. So here's my question let's assume it's not a bubble. Let's assume it is the medium of our time and let's assume it kind of keeps expanding so that this all makes sense. But the amazing thing is it seems like the more shows get made. It seems like the average quality level is rising. And you would expect, I think the opposite. You'd expect the average quality level to fall because you'd expect to run out of talent at some point.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can give you the language by which to watch it. So I'm totally not interested in monarchy. I hate it. Nothing about that is interesting to me. The show is just the most beautifully written and I agree with you.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and so, and he's been calling this a bubble the whole time, but like it keeps it keeps expanding. And I mean, we all get to, you know, you get to make it, but like we get to watch it. And it's just like, just, I like routinely see shows now where I'm just like, you know, 20 years ago, this would have been the best show in the entire history. The fact that Mindhunter in the”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You completely laugh. So I fully, I'll just confess, I fully expected the same thing was going to happen to TV. Like, you know, you use Napster for music, you use BitTorrent for TV. It's just like, it's just obvious. Same thing's going to happen to TV. It's just going to get run over. And then the most amazing thing in the world happened, which is the exact opposite thing happened. The opposite happened, which is like the creative explosion of all time. And you've probably seen John Landraff runs FX is always talking about brilliant man, right? Great programmer. But he talks about the content bubble, the TV bubble. And it's like, I don't know, every year now it's like 500 original scripted dramas are getting made.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love that term. So you came up in the music industry. I watched music, I was involved in the internet, I wasn't involved in Napster, but I knew the guys really well. And so we both watched from various professional purchases kind of the music industry confront digital distribution and basically just like implode, right? Yeah”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's actually the best shows. They are novels. I think we all think or a series of novels. I call it visual literature. The movie's still more like a play. These shows are like thousand pages. We definitely think of it that way.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you would have pitched the world of the underground card rooms for television because I think a lot of that, that's where this stuff lives. And that would have been, I think, a fascinating thing to see also. David and I grew up watching movies. We loved television, but our shared language, our lingua franca, was movies. We were quoting movies at each other from when we were little kids. We would watch movies. 20 times. You know, we watch stripes together at least 20 times. And Diner and many more movies where they became the way we communicated. And so it made sense to us to go make movies. Since then, you know, things like The Sopranos, West Wing, Larry Sanders, Madman showed up and showed us the way they lit the way, sort of, for us to think about television.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was my question. Would you pitch today, Young David and Young Brian show up? Would you pitch rounders for television or for a film?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those sort of mid budget 14 to 25 or 30 million dollar movies, though Netflix does it, right? You can do it at Netflix now, which is probably where it would happen. Or you would try to tell the story in a novelistic way and tell, you know, would you?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Yeah, they put the top end. They put the top end people, but it was still they had to make it for like a million and a half bucks, a million two maybe. It's much harder to make those mid”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We made round Spacey, they had Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto was in it when he was starting to become fans. That's right. So they had top end.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's like a very fictionalized version of even browser. Goldman. Well, it's Goldman, right? Because they survive. Because it's said at Goldman and it's about the willingness of Goldman, and they never say it's Goldman. It's about the willingness that Goldman Sachs made to get rid of their toxic assets. But I think that movie is really analogous to Rounders because it is doing a bunch of the stuff that we did. You have to just catch on to the lingo and you have to understand what the stakes are. But he had to, look, they made that movie for a tenth of what we made around it. They had”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“23 years ago. To roll with it's kind of the definitive movie of the September 2008 financial meltdown. It kind of takes place overnight, effectively in Lehman Brothers. And it's like a very fictionalized versionized version of Lehman Brothers. And it's actually a very chilling. People in finance look at it. Well, it's Goldman, right? Because they survive.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People constantly ask me how to break in to the business. And my answer is, I have no idea. I did it 23 years ago. I can't help you. I wish I could help tell you how to break in. The conditions on the ground are entirely different. The last thing I want to be is some general back in thing, ignoring what the sergeant says. Like, I have no idea. I do know that what I know is that, well, I think it would resemble a movie that I love and that launched many careers, which is Margin Call. But whereas Rounders was a 14-5, I think Margin Call was made for a million too and scraped together by commercial director and they had limited sets. Now, because Margin Call has a lot of similarities to Rounders, it's set in an insular world with a language of its own. It's really, it doesn't spell anything out for you. Like you have to be willing to, you have to be willing to roll with it.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, yeah. And then, and then, as you said, like it had the thing, it wasn't a huge commercial hit out of it, but then it had this long, long life, you know, kind of, you know, plays out through now and probably long into the future. If that movie had not gotten made, and if a movie like that had not gotten made, it just nobody had made kind of the definitive poker movie and you and David entered the industry today at age 25 or 30 or whatever it is and decided to make that movie or that project today, what would be different about the process.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to be ready to So, one more question about rounders, which goes to the kind of current state of the industry. So, Rounders was made in when 97. So that was the heyday of kind of the high status independent movie, like medium budget, but like super high status. Yeah, 14.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're gonna get somebody saying to you, here's what doesn't work. And so you have to know that this is now your entering. This is, we're in the major leagues here. We have no choice because we're playing the Red Sox tomorrow. So we have to be ready to get in there and play the Red Sox. So that has happened twice.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're great in the way that our show requires, right? Someone may kill it on another show and just not kill it on ours. I mean, the other thing is they get to be on set, watch how a show is made and be a part of it. I'll say one thing, though, to answer, another thing to answer your question, which is some people have come into the writer's room talented and I found out they came into the writer's room because they like my podcast. But I've had to say to them, I'm this incredibly nurturing and encouraging voice on the podcast. And I want you to know, I am that for you and your life, and I'll like help you get your next job and I'll be, but you're going to turn in a script and you're not going to get the voice on the podcast.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure. Well, Adam was somebody who had a lot of job offers when he came on our show in the second season. He started on the second season, came into the room as just a producer level, which is kind of a low-level position in terms of the hierarchy. He wasn't helping to be a showrunner, but he came in the room. He had incredibly good ideas. He then wrote his first script that he wrote was very strong enough that when someone's script came in that was not that strong and Dave and I had to work on three other things, we called him in and we said, hey, take a shot at rewriting this. Here are the things that matter. We made extensive notes, Adam, go try to rewrite it. He rewrote that script. We then sat with him and talked about how we were going to now rewrite it, but he did a really good job. We kept being able to go to him. And by the next season, season three, he was running the room when we weren't there. We bumped him three positions. We bumped him up to co-executive producer really quickly and said, like, look, you're our creative partner now. Like, help us do this. So if you're really great.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you got a young hotshot writer and they have an opportunity to write on a show. This may be not as, let's say, critically respected or whatever, but maybe it's like they know that they'll actually get to write scripts. What's your pitch to them of why they should come work for you, given that it's in some more constrained environment?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On our show, though, David and I end up writing most of the show. And we have a great room of men and women who help us really break the story arc of the season. And that is an invaluable process. Tons of stuff comes out of the room about how the big arc of the season should occur, about the twists and turns, about where characters are. And that's a months-long process of talking. We haven't yet found, and then when it comes to writing the scripts, David and I, and then we have a writer named Adam Perlman, who's now a co-executive producer. He's on numbers two person. And Adam writes a good amount of the show too. But the truth is, it is mostly us writing it. And I'm not saying that's the way it should be on every show. The voice of our show, the way that our show is can't, whether you like our show or not, our show is canted in a certain way. It has a very clear voice that somehow the two.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Her writer's room is you get, let's say, six people in the room plus a showrunner. There's a whiteboard on the, and you start at the beginning of the season, and it's like, where are we? And how do we fill that in? And then each, but then it's really hard to describe a writer's remark because writer's rooms become extensions of the way the showrunners see the world and the way they see the world of their shows. So in theory, it's...”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. We've been talking a lot about kind of managing hierarchically, so to speak. Now, turning it the other direction, like managing down in the writer's room, you've got like a lot of writers working with you. So how do you now navigate debates with all those writers in the writer's room? Like essentially you're the showrunners. And how do you make it collaborative yet not a democracy at the same time? Well, it isn't a democracy.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's being in a situation where we are not the final voice doesn't make us chafe against it. I have plenty of that over here. So I don't have to chafe it against it over here. Totally. I'm happy to play this role in this situation. This is why we're good producing other people's movies when it's someone else's vision. We're great at just helping them achieve their vision. Like Neil Berger, who's an incredible, incredibly successful director, director of the pilot of billions. We produced his first three movies. And it's like, hey, Neil, we're here to advise counsel help. It's your movie. Go run with it. We're comfortable in any of those different modes creatively, but I think the reason for that is that we got comfortable early on with just doing the work and failing.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but also the girlfriend experience, and then he produced Solitary Man. I mean, if Stephen called tomorrow and said that he wanted us to just be screenwriters on a movie he was directing, we would jump at it because he's going to make our stuff better. But if you're comfortable taking the blame, if you're comfortable in a position of control, it makes you incredibly comfortable to then cede that control or to share with somebody else. And so you can pick your spots then and decide. And also because we're able to make our own stuff.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you're comfortable, if you can find a way to be comfortable with failure, which as a writer you have to, or comfortable in your mistakes, then you can be comfortable in wanting to be the final voice on what the product is going to be. And we very early on decided, and I'll say this, when we work with Steven Soderberg, we are so glad to have his voice. If he's directing them, man, what a thrill to work with a genius, right? And what a thrill to have Soderberg make us better to this day.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's learning to be a producer. We have 150 people who work with us, but who we're in charge of. And so it is quite different. But, you know, as you know, David and I directed movies and we produced movies. So for us, it was quite a natural thing because we'd already, you know, at Rounders was as good an experience as you could have as a writer. And there were still areas in which we didn't have enough control over the voice. And what we also knew was we're probably never going to get that exact situation again. So we'd better learn how to do these other parts of it. We better learn how to gain control of the mechanisms of production. It means production. That means of production. That's exactly right. And so we realized that we ought to do that. But again, this goes back to.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Right. But for Hell Street Blues. Hill Street Blues was one of the first shows that sort of combined these elements for a cop show, I think, for sure. But the answer to your question is about Dave and me and about anyone who wants to be a showrunner, which I'm happy that showrunners officially in the dictionary now like two years ago it became, I love that word. Because it's a real job title now. What do you do for a living? Showrunner.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because most shows up to those successful shows have been more like Law and Order was like the apotheosis of the other way around, which is each episode is independent. Yes. Right. But before Hell Street Blues, Hill Street Blues was there.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right, the Sopranos and the Wire. But he goes into the history of it, and Hill Street Blues is when this first, because they were making this kind of serialized show. And Stephen Botchko started having meetings with the directors. When the director would come in, he would start having meetings saying, let me set the tone. He was executive. Nobody named him Showrunner, but he decided that he was going to had to because of the nature of that show exert upon the situation a kind of tone, a control of the voice and tone of the show. Because most shows up.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The director. So there's this great book called Difficult Men by Brett Martin that's about five showrunners that David, Simon, David Chase, Vince Gilligan, Sean Ryan, and one other I'm not remembering right now.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figured this stuff out. So, for people who are unaware, there's a very interesting kind of split in how movies are made and how TV shows are made, at least these days, which is movies are made. Generally, the writer writes the script, turns it over, and then other people run with it, and other people being presumably the producers, and then particularly the director. The director. Director ends up actually running the project in a lot of ways, right? Maybe with a line producer or something. For TV shows, especially, it seems like in the last couple decades, you have this concept of showrunner, and the writers are often or usually at this point the showrunners. And I'm picturing, I don't know, Louis B. Mayer or, you know, Jack Warner or somebody being told that the writers should run the project and probably screaming and being very upset, like that would be impossible. And so two-part question. What was the left turn in the industry that caused the writers to get in a position where they could be the showrunners? And then what did you guys do as writers to make sure that you specifically were able to do that?”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, those are hard one lessons over a career. You know what I mean? We were 20 years in by the time you learned that. I think we sold rounders in 1997 and we made the pilot of this in 2015. So that's a long period of time over which we figured this stuff out.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then there's one message you're delivering is like here's an incredible product. The meta message I think you're delivering is you guys are professionals.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's easier to offload those decisions to the someone else, the people who are paying for it. Instead, we said, you know, we're going to make these choices and we're going to show them that this is the vision we have for the show. And our structure, I think I put the pilot script online. I think I put it online at the blog. And if you go look at it, I put rounders up there too, which people have really been reading a lot lately. But if you look at it, structurally it's quite different than the pilot that got on the air, difference scene starts it. And because when we got in the editing room, we decided, well, now we have the opportunity to make the show be the best version of itself. We were able to gain objectivity, even though it was all of our hearts in there.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard, right? It's actually when you're in the situation, you understand why everybody turns in at 67 minutes because you don't have to, it's much easier to not have to make those decisions. Totally. It's much easier to hand those decisions.”
2019-03-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: For the Billions of Creatives Out There · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source