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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Here

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weekday afternoons on the Drive. Patty
Lynn is a television writer with lots of

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credits and lots of television shows as
well, many of which you are familiar

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with, whether it's Freaks and Geeks, Friends, Desperate Housewives, Breaking Bad.

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She's written about her experiences and end
credits. The book is How I

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Broke Up with Hollywood, and it's
a hilarious and brutal, honest memoir about

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what it's like to live and work
in Hollywood. Let's start at the beginning,

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Patty Lynn, When you were a
kid, then you were asked what

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you wanted to be when you grow
up. Did you say, I want

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to be a television writer. No. No, I did watch a lot

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of TV growing up. I was
a latchkey kid, so you know,

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the TV was my babysitter. But
I never imagined that I could write for

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a TV show, you know,
I just it seemed so far from anything

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that I knew adults to be doing
as a career. So it wasn't until

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I was in college and I was, you know, actually going to see

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The Letterman Show as a you know
as a tourist. Uh, and met

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a page and started an NBC page
and started talking to him about, you

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know, how how to get an
internship at the Letterman Show. That's when

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I, you know, realized that
oh okay, regular people can actually work

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in entertainment. And that was really
how how it all started. And did

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you get that internship? And it
went from there? I did. Indeed,

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I worked as an intern, a
research intern for The Letterman Show.

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And then after I graduated from college, I got a job in the accounting

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department. I bet that was fun
just as well. I mean, I

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you know, you got to start
somewhere, right, I know, I

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did plenty of weekend overnight duty as
well, you know, getting into this

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business at the young age I got
into it. But we're talking with Patty

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Lynn. Her book is in credits, How I Broke Up with Hollywood.

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Uh. It's an wall of what
it's like to live and work in Hollywood.

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What was that first big break?
What? What show was your first

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big show to write for? It
was a show called Martial Law and it

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was an action slash martial arts show
on CBS. This was back in the

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late nineties, and I, you
know, did not have any you know,

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interest in writing for an action show. It was also a cop show.

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Uh, you know, I just
didn't really have any you know,

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background in that sort of thing.
But it was a job, you know,

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writing for TV, and uh,
you know, you take you take

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that job when that when it comes
along, and you know, the good

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thing is that it was it was
a very difficult job, and it sort

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of disabused me of the notion that
Hollywood was going to be you know,

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sunshine and rainbows and all that.
You know, so it kind of like

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paved the way for a lot of
tough experiences ahead of me. When did

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you realize that the industry you were
working in is dysfunctional? Immediately? Immediately,

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Yeah, it was, Yeah,
that was. It was kind of

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shocking how chaotic the process was and
and the way that writers were treated.

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You know, you would think that
people would, you know, you think

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of a Hollywood writer as being somebody
who is well respected and you know,

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just the core, right, the
core of the creativity that comes from these

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TV shows. But that was not
how writers are treated. You know,

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the contributions of writers are just blatantly
undervalued. And I imagine it's difficult to

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when you're writing, because I know
it's a it must be a brainstorming kind

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of atmosphere. You're you're sitting around
a table with a bunch of people and

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you're writing together. It's not like
you're turned loose to write a whole scene

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on your own, are you.
Well, it depends, but there I

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would say that on the majority of
the shows that I that I worked on,

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there were the writer doesn't have a
whole lot of freedom on what they're

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what they're writing, you know,
so, uh, the stories are are

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broken as a group. Broken means, you know, you figure out like

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what the what the the plot is. You know, you figure out what

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the character beats are, and all
of that stuff is usually done as a

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group. And you know, in
an ideal situation, the writer would go

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off and you know, write the
entire script by themselves, but that was

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often not the case. You know, a lot of times, the time

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crunch was such that that you would
have a whole group of writers writing,

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you know, working on one episode, and each person would write a separate

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scene for the script, and then
you would stitch them all together at the

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end and try to make something coherent
out of it. That said, did

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you have to write a certain way
for certain actors, knowing that this particular

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character is who you write, who
you are writing for, Oh yes,

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absolutely, yeah, absolutely, And
a lot of times, you know,

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knowing knowing the actor a little bit, knowing their personality. Uh, you

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know, that helps a lot when
you're when you're writing for that character because

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you can kind of, you know, picture that person doing the doing the

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lines that you're writing. So it's
actually very helpful to to have a personal

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you know, knowledge of of of
who the actors are. Pady Lennis,

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who were talking to end the credits
as her memoir how I Broke Up with

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Hollywood, And she's written for many
popular shows, you know, Freaks and

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Gigs, Friends, Desperate Housewives.
There's a lot of people you got to

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get along with when you're a writer. Which which are the most difficult to

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get along with? The actors,
the directors, the producers. It really

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depends on the on the individual.
There were some actors who were fabulous and

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you know, cooperative and and some
that were not so much. And there

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are some writers and showrunners who were
collaborative and respectful and some that were not.

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It really is an individual type of
thing. And if You're lucky the

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people that you are working with on
a show are you know, respectful and

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and uh and wonderful people. But
that was often not the case in my

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experience, which is part of why
I left. I just didn't want to

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be spending my life, you know, dealing with people that just didn't show

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basic respect. Well, I imagine
two, you couldn't be too proud of

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what you were writing because you're basically
writing somebody else's idea. Yeah, I

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mean, look, I always like
to take pride in what I write,

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you know. I mean I think
as a writer, you know, that

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is it's an important thing, you
know, to care about your craft.

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But that's part of why it's so
hard to write for an industry like like

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the entertainment industry, because not everybody
has that attitude towards the words on the

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page and credits. How I broke
up with Hollywood, her agonizing ten year

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relationship with the dysfunctional industry, and
it's Patty Lynn who's brought it to us.

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We thank you for the memoir and
thanks for joining us. Thank you

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so much. Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast,

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and remember to Listen to The Drive
Live weekday afternoons from five to seven

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