This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Here
weekday afternoons on the Drive. Patty Lynn is a television writer with lots of
credits and lots of television shows as well, many of which you are familiar
with, whether it's Freaks and Geeks, Friends, Desperate Housewives, Breaking Bad.
She's written about her experiences and end credits. The book is How I
Broke Up with Hollywood, and it's a hilarious and brutal, honest memoir about
what it's like to live and work in Hollywood. Let's start at the beginning,
Patty Lynn, When you were a kid, then you were asked what
you wanted to be when you grow up. Did you say, I want
to be a television writer. No. No, I did watch a lot
of TV growing up. I was a latchkey kid, so you know,
the TV was my babysitter. But I never imagined that I could write for
a TV show, you know, I just it seemed so far from anything
that I knew adults to be doing as a career. So it wasn't until
I was in college and I was, you know, actually going to see
The Letterman Show as a you know as a tourist. Uh, and met
a page and started an NBC page and started talking to him about, you
know, how how to get an internship at the Letterman Show. That's when
I, you know, realized that oh okay, regular people can actually work
in entertainment. And that was really how how it all started. And did
you get that internship? And it went from there? I did. Indeed,
I worked as an intern, a research intern for The Letterman Show.
And then after I graduated from college, I got a job in the accounting
department. I bet that was fun just as well. I mean, I
you know, you got to start somewhere, right, I know, I
did plenty of weekend overnight duty as well, you know, getting into this
business at the young age I got into it. But we're talking with Patty
Lynn. Her book is in credits, How I Broke Up with Hollywood.
Uh. It's an wall of what it's like to live and work in Hollywood.
What was that first big break? What? What show was your first
big show to write for? It was a show called Martial Law and it
was an action slash martial arts show on CBS. This was back in the
late nineties, and I, you know, did not have any you know,
interest in writing for an action show. It was also a cop show.
Uh, you know, I just didn't really have any you know,
background in that sort of thing. But it was a job, you know,
writing for TV, and uh, you know, you take you take
that job when that when it comes along, and you know, the good
thing is that it was it was a very difficult job, and it sort
of disabused me of the notion that Hollywood was going to be you know,
sunshine and rainbows and all that. You know, so it kind of like
paved the way for a lot of tough experiences ahead of me. When did
you realize that the industry you were working in is dysfunctional? Immediately? Immediately,
Yeah, it was, Yeah, that was. It was kind of
shocking how chaotic the process was and and the way that writers were treated.
You know, you would think that people would, you know, you think
of a Hollywood writer as being somebody who is well respected and you know,
just the core, right, the core of the creativity that comes from these
TV shows. But that was not how writers are treated. You know,
the contributions of writers are just blatantly undervalued. And I imagine it's difficult to
when you're writing, because I know it's a it must be a brainstorming kind
of atmosphere. You're you're sitting around a table with a bunch of people and
you're writing together. It's not like you're turned loose to write a whole scene
on your own, are you. Well, it depends, but there I
would say that on the majority of the shows that I that I worked on,
there were the writer doesn't have a whole lot of freedom on what they're
what they're writing, you know, so, uh, the stories are are
broken as a group. Broken means, you know, you figure out like
what the what the the plot is. You know, you figure out what
the character beats are, and all of that stuff is usually done as a
group. And you know, in an ideal situation, the writer would go
off and you know, write the entire script by themselves, but that was
often not the case. You know, a lot of times, the time
crunch was such that that you would have a whole group of writers writing,
you know, working on one episode, and each person would write a separate
scene for the script, and then you would stitch them all together at the
end and try to make something coherent out of it. That said, did
you have to write a certain way for certain actors, knowing that this particular
character is who you write, who you are writing for, Oh yes,
absolutely, yeah, absolutely, And a lot of times, you know,
knowing knowing the actor a little bit, knowing their personality. Uh, you
know, that helps a lot when you're when you're writing for that character because
you can kind of, you know, picture that person doing the doing the
lines that you're writing. So it's actually very helpful to to have a personal
you know, knowledge of of of who the actors are. Pady Lennis,
who were talking to end the credits as her memoir how I Broke Up with
Hollywood, And she's written for many popular shows, you know, Freaks and
Gigs, Friends, Desperate Housewives. There's a lot of people you got to
get along with when you're a writer. Which which are the most difficult to
get along with? The actors, the directors, the producers. It really
depends on the on the individual. There were some actors who were fabulous and
you know, cooperative and and some that were not so much. And there
are some writers and showrunners who were collaborative and respectful and some that were not.
It really is an individual type of thing. And if You're lucky the
people that you are working with on a show are you know, respectful and
and uh and wonderful people. But that was often not the case in my
experience, which is part of why I left. I just didn't want to
be spending my life, you know, dealing with people that just didn't show
basic respect. Well, I imagine two, you couldn't be too proud of
what you were writing because you're basically writing somebody else's idea. Yeah, I
mean, look, I always like to take pride in what I write,
you know. I mean I think as a writer, you know, that
is it's an important thing, you know, to care about your craft.
But that's part of why it's so hard to write for an industry like like
the entertainment industry, because not everybody has that attitude towards the words on the
page and credits. How I broke up with Hollywood, her agonizing ten year
relationship with the dysfunctional industry, and it's Patty Lynn who's brought it to us.
We thank you for the memoir and thanks for joining us. Thank you
so much. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to Listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven
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