Meet Gina Fattore! Gina is a published author & seasoned TV Writer. Her first novel is the very funny Spinster Diaries, which you can find wherever you get your books. She also has a TEDx Talk about spinsterhood called Become What You Believe. Her TV credits include being the creator & showrunner of Dare Me, being a Consulting Producer on the STARZ limited series Gaslit, and a writer on Better Things, Californication, and Gilmore Girls. Like me, Gina is a life-long spinster, and I really enjoyed our chat. Of course, we spoke of writing for TV, but more interestingly, IMHO, we chatted about how the TV of the 70s which came out of the wake of both the Women’s Equality Movement & the Civil Rights Movement helped to shape both of us into the feminists that we are today and the artists that we have become. And as two spinsters would, we also touched on how women can seek out freedom & autonomy and be happy. Find out more about Gina on her website at: https://ginafattore.com Connect with Gina on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/ginafattore/ Follow BS on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/blissfulspinster/ Follow BS on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/BlissfulSpinst1 Check us out our website at: Blissfulspinster.com
[00:00:00] Cris: Hi, and welcome to Blissful Spinster. This week's guest is author and TV writer, Gina Victoria, Gina lives in Los Angeles and has published her first, very funny novel. The spinster diaries. Bet you can't guess why I'm having her as a guest. She's also given a Ted talk called become what you believe and her TV credits include creating and show running.
[00:00:17] Barmy the stars limited series gas lit better things, California nation and my favorite Gilmore girls to name a few, I really loved meeting Gina and the chat we had was super interesting. We had discovered how seventies TV, like the Mary Tyler Moore show informed our development as feminists and artists alike.
[00:00:34] And we also talked about how women can seek out freedom and autonomy and still be happy. However you found this podcast. Thank you for tuning in and please enjoy this week's episode. Hi, Gina. How you.
[00:00:45] Gina: Hi I'm doing pretty well. Thanks so much for having me on your podcast.
[00:00:50] Cris: Wow. Thank you for agreeing to be on my podcast and you're my very first interview and I'm very excited.
[00:00:55] Gina: That feels prestigious. Being the first I'll take it.
[00:00:58] Cris: You did go to the lesser [00:01:00] known Ivy league college. And now, that I've actually read your book.
[00:01:04] Gina: that was a very, that was very specific way of showing me that I appreciate that. I yeah, and that you have a great attention for detail,
[00:01:12] Cris: , it was pretty funny.
[00:01:13] I listened to it. I I've learned that listening is a really, I wish I'd had that in school to be honest. But it was fun and.
[00:01:20] Gina: Yeah. And you said you work in podcasts. So honestly the idea and my book, my novel, the Spencer diaries is honestly the reason that I almost wasn't able to ever get it published is that it's what they call voice driven.
[00:01:33] So it really is almost like a monologue, like many people who read it along the way, we're like, oh, it could be like, almost like a play. And so I think that to have someone listen to it is to me, that's just as cool as reading it because that's the way that it was intended and this spirit that like, it's just this voice coming at you.
[00:01:51] And and yeah, and that the character behind the voice is not always reliable, but she's funny and interesting, [00:02:00] hopefully enough that you stick with her for 226 pages.
[00:02:04] Cris: well, I stuck to the 226. It, there was I did find it interesting that you ended it like a TV writer and it's a bit of a cliff hang at the end.
[00:02:12] I'm not gonna spoil it, but I was like, okay, I dunno what's gonna happen, but alright.
[00:02:19] Gina: I really, it was funny. There were certain responses to the book where people said it's not done yet. And they meant that. Not just because the actual way that I ended, it is very in the middle of something. But I think also because, and this maybe speaks to the whole spinster thing, which is that, and maybe this is a spoiler, but that we expect stories about.
[00:02:39] Women to be about them falling in love. And the story's not over until the character has fallen in love. And I've always been fascinated by that because, I love stories like that. Like I think I'm a television writer. And so I think a lot about what makes the story interesting, what makes the audience interested and, honestly I [00:03:00] do love, I love romantic comedies.
[00:03:01] I love, romantic dramas. I love stories like that because it's so satisfying when people actually do get together in that way. But I have not had that experience in my life of any kind of oh, this is gonna be a happy ending, a feeling. And I, yeah, I guess in my book, I wanted to try to find a different ending than that traditional one.
[00:03:20] Cris: Yeah, like you, like this podcast itself is called blissful spinster. And I too am I'm in my fifties, I'm in my early fifties. I've had relationships here or there, but none of them have ever ended in a wedding or anything. Mainly because of me, not because of any, I ran from all of them to be honest, like I get to a certain point and I'd be like, I don't like this.
[00:03:42] Like why are you acting like a 15 year old girl texting me all the time? I don't get it right. Whatever it is, and I think I just grew up valuing my autonomy and my freedom a little much. And I did have an older sister who's 13 years older than me who did at one point, tell me don't [00:04:00]ever let a man.
[00:04:02] Diverge you from your goals, because oftentimes you will see that you'll see, somebody's on the way a woman's on the way to achieving something. They fall in love and in, and they end up, married and it's not as much now I think, where they don't continue with their careers, but my sister was a baby boomer.
[00:04:19] My parents were from the silent generation. That's what, I came from. And but the script I've written, which I think I mentioned, it's called a lone girl, is that it's basically the woman realizing that she's happy single. So she turns the guy down by the end.
[00:04:39] so I, and you're cheering for it. That's how I built it, and that's why I appreciated your book too, cuz I do. I think we need more stories like that for young women and older women to see, because right in life, it doesn't always end up, That way.
[00:04:55] Gina: Yeah. What are those other possible endings?
[00:04:58] Honestly, that's so interesting. What you [00:05:00] said about having this sister who's older and because I do think that in a lot of ways, like all of us, there's, I am actually among the older of my siblings. Like I'm. Second of four. So I have a little sister who's eight years younger than me and my older sister is two years older.
[00:05:17] But I think that if we, those of us who were alive as children in the seventies, I was just thinking about this, it's like the narrative of the seventies and the women's movement. And what your sister would've said to you about having children and taking care of a home and taking care of a man are going to be incredibly hard and they might not be fulfilling to you.
[00:05:36] And I feel like that story had permeated pop culture to a certain extent in the seventies. Alice was like a sitcom on CBS. And like you saw a single mom, but she was struggling and it wasn't easy to be a single mom. And, there were just so many of the narratives, which doesn't make sense.
[00:05:51] I would not have been watching like these, classic works of 70 cinema when I was like a 12 year old girl in Indiana. But I think somehow this, I [00:06:00] did permeate the culture and I always joke just cuz like I grew up I'm Italian American and so I feel, and I grew up in the Midwest.
[00:06:08] My grandparents had come from Italy and somehow everybody wound up in Gary, Indiana. But like I think that it was still the fifties in so many ways in the seventies like that, it was like everything came, everything in pop culture that was seventies about women finding what they wanted and all of that.
[00:06:25] Didn't get to. The smaller towns in the Midwest until the seventies or until the eighties. So the seventies was still, very traditional. And I do think in a way I just saw for me all those, I love those words you said in the beginning. I always think of it as independence, but I think you said autonomy and freedom, maybe that these are things that like, people can have a fundamental desire for we always talk so much about people's desire for love and that everyone wants love and they wanna be loved.
[00:06:53] And, that's true on some level. And I like the way Brene brown sometimes talks about connection, which is different than [00:07:00] romantic love, but yeah, autonomy, honestly I feel like there was this idea. Back then that in the, in that wave of feminist thinking and all of that, that maybe being independent could be a happy ending for women because the version where you're so dependent on, in the heteronormative way on a man who, to support you financially, which again, I had a mom who did not work outside the home I, that was the model that I knew and it didn't seem appealing.
[00:07:32] Cris: Yeah. My mom was a stay at home and she had six kids. Yeah. wow. Hard to have a career. I've heard stories, I think CN and Brian comes from like a family of section seven and his mom was a lawyer. And when I hear that I'm. I wanna meet your mom. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're wonderful Conan, but I wanna meet your mom, but my, my dad was a businessman and we actually grew up, I grew up, most of us grew up in Mexico here and there because my dad was a businessman that ended up working for a company down there. [00:08:00] And so I got this really interesting mashup of all of that. Yeah. There was an independence movement here, like feminist moving in the seventies here, Mexico's a little behind there.
[00:08:10] Although these days I think they would vote a woman in a presidency before we would that interesting. But I just I think you're the world we were born in. We couldn't even have an abortion. We couldn't even, like the year, the years we were born before those. That happened.
[00:08:28] And then the explosion with the women's movement and stuff. And but even with that, we were talking about the, you see your mom married and, kids were whatever. My dad told my sister, he she had left college for a minute because of a riot that had happened in Mexico or something.
[00:08:44] And they wanted to go back and my dad said, I'm not paying for that. You're just gonna, aren't you just gonna get married and get taken care of it, and she told me this story and I was like, dad never said that to me. And she's I don't think anyone could control you Chris.
[00:08:55] Cause I, my mom was always like, you were born and you were, [00:09:00] you raised yourself. That's basically what happened. But
[00:09:03] Gina: fascinating cause that is the weird thing in my life where like what, even what you were saying about when you made the joke about how I joked in my book about the less famous Ivy league school.
[00:09:11] So I went to Columbia university and I am class of 1990 which I could try to lie about my age, but this is all like a matter of record. So when I got there in 1986 Columbia is traditionally a male college and Barnard was the women's college across the street. So the first class of women who went to Columbia were the class of 87.
[00:09:32] So like when I arrived there and I graduated in 90, that there were only like three classes of women, 87, 80, 89 who'd graduated before me. So we, even though whatever, we're not baby boomers. Like again, we had the sense of this world was not built for us. Like we were not supposed to be here and here we are.
[00:09:51] And we've only been here for three years. So I think all of my friends, like my peer group, we felt that really strongly. And honestly, I just, my dad who's now [00:10:00] passed away. But what you said about paying for college? So my dad, like there were. He had four kids. My brother actually went to state school in Indiana, but my older sister went to Northwestern.
[00:10:10] I went to Columbia and my little sister went to Notre Dame. And one of his cousins at one point, who was actually had been born in Italy and came over here. So wasn't quite as Americanized as my dad who was born in this country, he said, why are you spending all this money? Like educating these girls?
[00:10:25] I remember that from when I was a teenager and my dad was so proud of us and we were such academic overachievers. And I think he loved that about us. That we were just, my older sister, she did quite well in school and I was always just like struggling to keep up with her.
[00:10:40] And so he, I, everything, I so much of my career and everything. My dad, a lot of people would've said, I wanna go to Columbia. I wanna go to New York and been like, that's ridiculous. I had parent my friends of my parent Parents of my friends from high school in Indiana were just like, this is ridiculous, but he made it happen.
[00:10:58] He paid. And when I [00:11:00] graduated, he paid my student loans. So like I got financial aid, I did it all. But when I graduated, like the bills went to him. So my goal and cause I already, I wanted to be a writer from the time I was like 10 years old. So my goal after that in, after college was I just need to get a job that will support myself.
[00:11:19] So I don't have to ask my parents for money. And I can try to be a writer and I can just try to figure that out. And I really did give myself like all of my twenties. I was always like, once my dad said to me, what about law school? Like law school is a thing that people do. And I'm sure he was thinking, I invested all this money in her education.
[00:11:36] But it worked out and yeah, I think they're just the world when we were kids, we didn't. See representations of women doing different things with their lives?
[00:11:46] Cris: No, we didn't. I, so I I knew I wanted to make movies when I was eight. I went, my sister took me to see close encounters with a third kind, which I think came out, I think a couple years earlier, but in Mexico we, we got [00:12:00] it in 78 and we left and my sister what did you think?
[00:12:04] And we're all wise asses in my family, just all of us. And I turned to her and I said I want, I wanna do that. And she said, what be abducted? Cuz she thought I was, bonding with the kid. And I said, no, I wanna make that. And somehow I'd figured out in my little head that someone. had told a story to me visually.
[00:12:24] And I wanted to be a part of that. And so from that day on, I was like writing or finding plays cuz in Mexico we didn't have scripts. I'd sneak on movie sets because they did shoot American films down in Mexico. And you can imagine a little toe headed nine year old kid sitting in a director's chair.
[00:12:39] They just found that was me and the ad going I guess you can stay. You're quiet, like not, but I ended up in undergrad studying theater. And so I had a technical theater and creative writing. So I had a double major and I remember my dad coming up for [00:13:00] parents' weekend and grilling one of my theater, like my advisor, like what is she gonna do for money?
[00:13:06] Is she gonna make money? Is she gonna, cause he was a businessman, I'm like, and the thing was is there was no way I was gonna study business. I'll show you right now, the history of my bad, terrible financial decisions, but I'm still happy cuz I go for my artistic creative stuff.
[00:13:21] But in the breaking, through wall, like ceilings, I did go to graduate school in Illinois, actually at the university of Illinois. Yeah. And I have a master fine arts and theater technology. I'm only the second woman to get that graduated 96. But think about that. That's what, four years from this century.
[00:13:43] And they'd only had two women go through that program. Ahead of yeah. One woman before me, it's, like we are still trying to get through all of this. But I, yeah it's also, in the vein of what we are talking about in the stories we were writing [00:14:00] about ourselves in our own kind of Spencer journey, , I think we're all raised with that fairytale, right?
[00:14:08] Whether it's a Disney film or a parent telling you, and I think one of the things that inspired my script, and I think you'll, you might have something to say about this as well. Is we as women, no matter who we are, whether we're straight, gay, whatever we all have that first 10 years.
[00:14:24] Right. of being indoctrinated with every, with media, with whatever. And we're told that our happiness is exterior to ourselves. We're not happy until. Partner comes and tells us we pick you. I bestow your happiness to you. Now come get married. Come be my partner. Yeah. And men are not taught that, and being single is not a tragedy, but everyone thinks it is
[00:14:52] Gina: it's.
[00:14:53] I think that's, I think that's true. I think there's so much great. PE many different people. Now I've found who are writing [00:15:00] about, being single, both men and women who are like looking at this question. And I think you're right though, that it is like, so gendered. I, from the time I was 18 or 19, to the present day, I've had a lot of gay male friends and it is interesting in some ways to like, see, oh, just as you said I think that somehow through, like the fluoride in the water, we all, as women of a certain generation straight women, We did interpret all of this as it, the only way you can prove your worth in the world is to be married.
[00:15:28] And I just recently rewatched Muriel's wedding. And like I talked about it, I think on another podcast I was on even, but I loved that movie. I must have seen it. When I first came out, I would've been in my twenties. And I wrote, actually I wrote this essay. It was really about my best friend's wedding, but I talked about me's wedding within that same essay.
[00:15:46] Cuz I wasn't a TV writer yet. Then I was living in Chicago and, but I, yeah, like I just thought that was the point of that movie, which is that when you saw it acted out, you could see that it was ridiculous. Like why is this, what is the [00:16:00] power of love that like we've all been taught and of course in college I had read Jane Austin, like incredibly closely.
[00:16:07] And so I understood. The idea of the marriage market, which I guess is very strange to think. Like I be maybe because I always so loved Jane Austen and I studied English literature so intensely, and I particularly loved Victoria novels. It always seemed strange to me that other people didn't understand that marriage was a market because all of the 19th century Victorian novels, like pride and prejudice, famously a little bit before that, but really the, such an easy story to comprehend.
[00:16:32] It's really the same story of Downton Abbey, which is there's all these daughters they're not married. Like the family, house and fortune is at stake because they can't inherit it. And so yeah, like all those stories, those are 19th century stories and we were still all living them like up until so recently.
[00:16:49] And I, I think like on Twitter and through other podcasts, I have, before my book was published, even like I also, I did this Ted talk way back in 2015, that was about being a [00:17:00]spinster, but I've really become more. Aware of my friend, Sarah echo, who's not single herself, but she wrote this amazing book called it's not you.
[00:17:08] And there were all these things. Bella Dal's work about single people. Like she's a sociologist. I believe and she's not a professor anymore, but like she's studied these issues. And a lot of interesting writers, there' a book called solitude, which I think my therapist actually recommended it to me maybe like 10 years ago.
[00:17:26] And it was this amazing book that really talks about solitude playing a key part, essentially for artists. That like, how are, and I know obviously many artists are married, many artists have children and they figure out their ways that they make it work within, the context of having a family and dividing their time between, their solitary, creative process and their family.
[00:17:49] But, for me, I think that it is important to have my solitude is very important to me and I think it took the pandemic maybe 18 months of pandemic [00:18:00] solitude for me to start to feel like, oh, I miss it. I miss people. So I think the idea that every there is a spectrum, everybody is wired differently.
[00:18:08] It has to do with introversion extroversion but other things, so many women I know, will talk really openly about how they just, needed. A husband. And so they settled for someone they didn't really love because they wanted these other things in life. And I'm like, I don't judge those people.
[00:18:25] That's if you felt like you really needed to be married, that's fine. Whatever, and yeah. And I, yeah, I never felt like I couldn't make my own way in the world financially and I, yeah, there never seemed to be anyone who I was attracted to enough that I wanted to merge my life with that person.
[00:18:44] To me. I that's the other thing, the joke about single women over 35 maybe, or certainly over 40 is just that they're all too picky. Like straight women who are single it's oh, they're all too picky. And like that it can apply to virtually everyone. So at a certain point, I think the hilarious part is like, [00:19:00] why not just embrace that and say yes, like the bar is very high.
[00:19:03] Like I, have to feel a comfort level with someone at a meeting of the minds and all of these different ways that you can be attracted to people. I would need to feel that before I embarked on, a partnership.
[00:19:17] Cris: Yeah. And there's nothing that they, people look at that and they go, oh, maybe there's something wrong with you.
[00:19:22] Or there's something you're defected. And it's no, exactly. It's not. And part of what's going on, I think is that we've all been gas lit for centuries. into thinking that. We are supposed to all be coupled up. And that's
[00:19:36] Gina: why I'm telling you in Sarah eel's book, which is called it's not you.
[00:19:39] Yeah. She that's the easiest, most logically simple part of it when she says okay, you know this idea that you will fix yourself. And through the process of fixing yourself, you will then be ready for love. And you will meet this person who will now be attracted to this better version of you.
[00:19:55] And you'll get married and you'll be fixed and solved forever. And that's the story that works. [00:20:00] Oh, we're so often just told. And she was like, okay, let's think about this for a second. Think about every married person, are they fixed? Are they like somehow more evolved than you? And the answer is very quickly.
[00:20:11] No, , they're not like they're not, they're just not, you're
[00:20:16] Cris: not making it look very attractive sometimes. And it's not, I don't have I have a ton of friends who are in good relationships or relationships that have had their ups and downs, and but if that's where you wanna be and that's where your happy is, that's great.
[00:20:30] The thing is we get judged a little bit differently. Even from single men of a certain age, what
[00:20:39] Gina: they get, I honestly never meet any single men. So the idea that there exists a set of single straight guys is like completely I guess I believe it on some level, but the world that I'm in, like men who've been married before frequently just remarried very quickly.
[00:20:54] And I think that there's, although there, I shouldn't say that cuz there's this very interesting podcast called solo and that's [00:21:00] done by a single straight man.
[00:21:01] Cris: So yeah, I have single straight men, friends as well. So as well as saying I've got the whole world, as friends and that's one thing like the character in my film, she has this very strong friend group because I do, and I think that's another kind of misconception that, Spencers are all alone and they, They don't know how to have friends because nobody's gonna be with them because, why would a couple be a friend with, it's guess who takes care of their kids sometimes, right?
[00:21:29] Guess who's the adopted aunt to, I've got two two kids in their twenties right now who I'm their adopted aunt and help make their short films right now, and I love that and that's, we get love from all kinds of places. It doesn't have to be that traditional thing, yeah. In my mind, and
[00:21:46] Gina: That's so true. And I think like most single people have. Like a talent for friendship. And honestly, there was just a big article that was quite interesting. I think it was in the Atlantic.
[00:21:56] Cris: Yeah, I think know the one you're talking about. Yeah.
[00:21:59] Gina: She was writing about [00:22:00] friendship, but as I was reading the article, I was like, this is very interesting, but I think it is very rooted in married with children, people, because that is their life cycle, which is that you have friends in your twenties and in college and then you get married and you have children and you essentially just become friends with the other.
[00:22:18] Of the children who are like in school with your kids and maybe you do or don't stay in touch with people. I try to say now to younger single people, like I do think it's amazing. I've stayed in touch with my high school friends and my college friends. And guess what? Like their kids are now older and yes, they could not do things with me for years and years.
[00:22:36] And we couldn't like, have lunch or we couldn't do anything for years and years because their children were just little kids who demanded so much time and energy, but, it's worth it. I think from my perspective, I've always felt like it's worth it to maintain those relationships.
[00:22:51] And, then you, because when those kids grow up there are, you can have different, I don't know, just a whole different kind of friendship with those old friends who like, [00:23:00] who did share your twenties with, and you do have so much history that, isn't. But anyway.
[00:23:04] Yeah, I think that like at the heart, maybe it's the only thing possibly that married with children, people would envy about single people, which is that we do have more friends
[00:23:15] Cris: well, and I think they also see us as, oh, they're, you've got a, you've got freedom to choose whatever you want to do, and that's. Yeah. And that's true. And guess what? I stop pit like, stop, like looking at me that way, when you're the one who chose to get married, yeah. Like I hate to throw it back in your, like at the beginning of the pandemic, you'd see everyone like. Tweeting about, how are you guys doing, cuz we were up with the kids and I'm like, that's great.
[00:23:39] You chose to have them, like I hate to throw it back in your face, but I'm not gonna be feeling sorry for my choice.
[00:23:48] Gina: I do think it's interesting. Like I realized at a certain point, like I never understand why anybody cares what other people do. Like that to me is always just I'm like, why do you care?
[00:23:56] And I realized at a certain point when it wasn't actually about [00:24:00] having kids, it was about buying a house. And it was like during the financial crisis, like around like 2007, 2008, two, th actually probably more like leading up into that in 2006. And I noticed that God, in 2006, I would've been like than, I guess more like late thirties.
[00:24:15] So literally every time I stepped outta the house and went to a party or interact with people, everyone would tell me to buy a house. And I honestly sat down with my business manager, accountant type person. And he was like do you really want a house? Do you need a house? And. Not really.
[00:24:30] I like my apartment and he's your rent is very reasonable. So I would say, don't buy a house right now. Like the prices are really high and whatever. And so I didn't buy a house, but like I like look back. And what I learned from that was that like, when someone has just done something and it's really hard and they have some doubts about it, they want other people to do it too.
[00:24:49] Yeah. So that makes them feel like, oh, I had to do this cuz everybody does it. And you just, it soothes their mind in some way. And I was like, oh my God, I think the same thing happens with children [00:25:00] that like, once you've done it, you need to tell everybody else about like how they should do it. And it doesn't matter if it's not right for their situation.
[00:25:07] You just need them to know that it's the best thing to do because you're saying it to yourself to remind yourself that you made the right choice. And no matter how hard it is, you're gonna stick with it. And God bless parents should do that. Like they should be saying that every minute of every day they should be saying, I made this choice.
[00:25:25] I need to give everything. I've got to this.
[00:25:27] Cris: Yeah. And I love my friends with kids and I like their kids, do you know? I think I never wanted a kid myself, like to birth one. I think I've always had this idea that if I was ever financially able, because there's so many kids born without yeah.
[00:25:43] A parent that I would be open to adopting and probably older kids who, cuz I like the idea of giving someone hope that probably has already lost it, and go. But that hasn't happened yet. I still, unlike you I still have my student loans I have not had an [00:26:00] adult day of my life where I haven't had that.
[00:26:02] And it's far more than I borrowed still. But one thing I wanted to get your thoughts on is I had this epiphany, cuz we're both writers and we're both creators and and about. Being it's most of the literature in movies and TV. Probably up until, it's still pretty lopsided with the amount of men who are writing and stuff.
[00:26:23] And, white men, cisgendered, whatever. But up until now, basically, we've been learning about women through the lens of those male writers. And a lot of that I think is at play in all of this too, because I'm talking, yeah we had Jane Austin. Sure. We had a few, female writers to look at, but not many, and it's interesting to me, cuz that means men have been learning about women from men and and.
[00:26:58] and that adds to, [00:27:00] this is why you don't understand us.
[00:27:02] Gina: Yes. That's. That's a famous quote from Jane Austin. Like I'm laughing because like I used this once in one of my Dawson's Creek episodes, but in persuasion, two characters are having conversation about women and, are they, the question is are women just the femme fatal stereotype of ah, women, like all they want is money and they'll drop you in a second and all these like negative ideas about women.
[00:27:22] And and then one of the characters points out every story that we've ever been told is like that. And then one of the characters says those stories though, we' all written by men. So like Jane Austen was noticing that in 1813, basically. So yes. And in my, in TV, which is the kind of writing that I do obviously it's it's been such the case. Like when I started in that era in the late nineties, like ally MCIL was just on and was a huge thing. And of course, sex in the city was just coming on and was a huge thing, which was like, oh my God, we have this representation about women's lives. But it David Kelly was a straight guy writing Ali MCIL and Michael pet king and Darren [00:28:00] Starr were gay men who created Texan city.
[00:28:02] So and I do think it's fascinating cuz not all of those portrayal of women are bad or wrong, like honestly, like there was a lot about them that I loved and related to and all that. But I think, yeah, that it's really great to have lived forward into this moment where there's just so many more stories being told.
[00:28:20] Honestly the writer skilled report on employment came out recently and. I think they put the 2010 statistics in there to compare. So 2010 is already 10 years after I started. And I just remember it being, it was probably in 2010, it was probably like 30% women. And now it's getting closer to 50.
[00:28:41] It is getting, oh, that's good. Just like they look at just who was employed as a TV writer. Yeah. Calendar year. And they break it down by all the groups.
[00:28:49] Cris: Yeah. That's good to hear cuz the directing one went down. Yes.
[00:28:52] Gina: The directing one is like home and crazy worse. Yeah.
[00:28:55] Cris: Yeah. And I remember cause I moved here and right after, actually right [00:29:00]before I graduated, I did my last semester out here as an internship at, in 96 and I didn't go to film school, so there was a lot of barriers for me.
[00:29:09] Yeah. And then I ended up in, in unscripted. So I did the amazing race and I did a bunch of other things and I have an Emmy. You know for that, but it's not what I, it's not what eight year old me wanted to do. I
[00:29:22] Gina: honestly, I have a friend who's an editor in reality.
[00:29:24] And same thing of sometimes you just you're, you get into a world and
[00:29:29] Cris: You move. Yeah. And then you have to look back and sit yourself down, which I did, like in 2016, it was like, what do you wanna do? And at least because I've had that experience, I'm, I've worked myself into the privilege of being able to take day jobs that I can maintain myself and not show run, cuz I could in that genre.
[00:29:49] But I don't want to I like, and I make my friends laugh daily, the ones that are, and I'm like, I see what you do. I don't wanna do what you do really hard. I can imagine. Yeah. Like I've seen those network notes. [00:30:00] Yeah. Have at it, I'll sit in the bay and fix it for you, but I will not be, you do not want me talking to that executive cuz I will look them at them and tell 'em how.
[00:30:09] Dumb, that note was , but which does not get you hired again but, but when I look at it, I go, I'd rather go through that with my own thing, my own film. And if I'm getting a note from whoever than, okay. And I can fight that. But
[00:30:25] Gina: yeah, like using all your energy, to fight for your own work versus yeah.
[00:30:31] That's so
[00:30:32] Cris: crucial, and I think, I probably saw I think I felt some of that in your book that you were probably expressing things that you probably, it's the funny thing about I love that thread of the mini series, she keeps trying to write the period piece, and at the, and that at the very end, the BBC ends up. Spoiler alert, the BBC says, no too, like that was your one gleaming hope was the BBC,
[00:30:52] Gina: I think in the. In the world of I've been really lucky to make a living writing TV and like it's a really fabulous thing [00:31:00] to do for a living.
[00:31:00] And when you're, in a job and you're in the union, it pays really well too. But it's not the same as creating something in your own voice. Like all of the, and this isn't still, isn't very, I think widely understood by people at large, which is that, you're just, you're being rewritten by the showrunner.
[00:31:18] And then on top of that, like the showrun is getting notes and everything is constantly in flux and changing. And so it's never going to give you this level of, satisfaction, I don't think. And so part of the reason I started working on a book was because I wanted to have more control over what I was doing.
[00:31:34] And I have always had that idea in my head of you have. Your day job, whatever that is, where you make the money that you need to live, and then you have whatever you're writing. And to me, the question is, can you sell what you're writing? Is it something commercial that maybe it does have?
[00:31:50] I've done many pilots that I wrote on spec, just cuz I believed in them. And I thought maybe they did have some commercial potential, but so I always divide things in my mind between like [00:32:00] how commercial is this? And with my book, I always knew it was gonna be a little strange and quirky and odd.
[00:32:04] And I probably would not be able to make any money from it, but I just kept working on it whenever I had time between, paying jobs, I, when I started writing it, I was working on Gilmore girls and that was, one of the last times I had one of those or no, I also did on parenthood, but a job where you're making television and you're making 22 episodes of television.
[00:32:26] Like nowadays those jobs are incredibly rare. Those are, if
[00:32:29] Cris: you shows even. Do you have anymore? Like they don't even do 22 episodes anymore. Do they maybe
[00:32:34] Gina: like one CBS show or something that does that. But though, those jobs were like, if you were lucky enough to get one, you worked all year, you had maybe six weeks off, maybe eight weeks off.
[00:32:44] And that was your time off. And I, what I found during my Dawson's Creek years is that I was often too burnt out. By the time I made it to the end of 23 episodes, I was too burnt out to try to write my own screenplay or write a book or write anything, cuz I was just [00:33:00] exhausted. So these are the long, I think, the long haul of trying to have a creative life, everybody hits these walls and figures out, oh, this part doesn't work for me.
[00:33:11] Like I need to have a day job that ends at five or I need, and everybody's trying to come up with a different thing. That'll help them just, give them that time to work on their thing that they love, that they wanna
[00:33:26] Cris: put out into the. Yeah. It's I always tell younger people, you gotta figure that out and there's what do you really want to do?
[00:33:35] And right. And there's a way to, to keep doing that if you're doing, if you're in the industry, but don't fall for, cuz I, I think for a minute there, I was like, oh, I'm going up the chain on this thing. I'm still working. And admittedly, I got to travel the world. Yeah. I got to witness people's ups and downs.
[00:33:54] And how amazing is that for a writer, right? Yeah. Yeah. In a filmmaker to be present [00:34:00] at real people's, moments in life that you are helping document and then you go into post and you get to listen to it all. You're the one interviewing them and then you get to listen to it. All right.
[00:34:10] Yeah. And go and tell their story. It's a privilege. It's an honor. It's also made me a thousand percent a better. Because I have listened to hours and hours of human beings speaking. Yeah. And we do not speak well, I will guarantee I will listen to this and I will be, like I say so effing much.
[00:34:32] I cannot believe it. And like people don't have proper grammar. People don't have, all of that and you can bring that into your dialogue and you can make those traits and make people so much more, full. And and what is that because you've been writing. I loved Gilmore girls.
[00:34:49] I'll tell you that right now. I don't know that I got through all of the seasons, but there was a Mo moment there where I don't, there was just something about that mom and daughter. Not that I, I didn't have [00:35:00] that relationship with my mom. No. Yeah. But there was something really empowering about watching them because they were.
[00:35:08] Gina: Yeah. It was a super smart show. And one of honestly, one of the few shows created by a woman. If you look back at that TV, it Gilmore would've premiered probably in 2001, maybe so it'll be like gone back and looked at what, that TV season, which shows were run by women.
[00:35:24] I'm sure it'll be like six or something incredibly small. And, so for someone like me like I didn't ever actually meet her cuz I've worked on the show at the very end, she was, she had this voice and she wanted to tell, stories in her own way. And the WB network was like this little new kind of fledgling network.
[00:35:43] And they gave her a lot of freedom to do the show that she wanted to do. And that's so rare in this industry that like someone actually gets. Creatively to make the show that they wanna make. And, she did do that and it was, it is one of those things that it's [00:36:00] just, I, my theory about why it worked was that like, cuz I was, however old I was when I was doing that.
[00:36:05] And I I went to my 20 year high school reunion when I was doing that. So I would've been 38 I guess. But I thought, okay, all the women who are like in their thirties, they all have little. Yes. And so their fantasy is what if I, and it's very hard to have a little baby. So their fantasy would be like, what if I had a teenage girl?
[00:36:22] And we could go shopping and we could talk about boys and we could like, and it was that. But and, but if you were a teenage girl, you had your actual mom who was probably like 45 and like very annoying. And so your fantasy was like, what if my mom was like 32? And she was super cool and she dressed just like me.
[00:36:39] And like we had, and I was like, I think the show just worked as a fantasy for both audiences. So like essentially like all women 18 to 50 my own mother like really loved the Gilmore girls. She was a big fan of like thirties old movies in general. But it was written to sound like a screwball comedy from the thirties.
[00:36:58] Yeah. So [00:37:00] it just, it's almost like I've often wondered this. I'm like, what is it. How could one show be so attractive to all female viewers? Yeah, it was amazing. Yeah, it's an accomplishment and I I've been lucky to work on all these other, on so many shows, but particularly that one, because it did mean a lot to women and teenage girls.
[00:37:20] Cris: Yeah. It was. Cuz yeah, I would've been, I turned 30 in 2000, so I mean I was right around there and I was, we were coming out of that, I mean I love the X files I loved, but those were the big shows that were, I came, I moved here with a spec for the X files. Oh. And I initially what's interesting is, was writing kind of sci-fi, I had a thriller.
[00:37:41] Sci-fi thriller called ripple that I'd written. And I told this to a friend and I think you'll probably find this funny, like a little while back. And I recently opened it cuz I was like, I wonder if I could, maybe it's still good. Cuz the idea is like the general idea is just a kind of a universal thing, whatever.
[00:37:57] It's basically dead common space, [00:38:00] with meets alien that's it, but I opened it and I'm like, you were sexist back then, Chris, and it's one female character and six male, but what was selling back then? Yeah, if it was that right. If it was a sci-fi thriller, it was big male driven, and still to this, I mean there's a big market for female strong female characters.
[00:38:22] Although I'm getting a little tired. Oh, she's got a gun, she's gonna shoot him. Okay. We're strong in other ways. Yes we are. You
[00:38:29] Gina: know, that was good to joke about. Because I was always on the TV side and I had an opportunity and an early mentorship and all that, like TV wasn't great.
[00:38:39] But TV was so much better than movies, like in that era of basically like all of the nineties and like the eighties, like TV, like you could find, whatever, going back to Cagney and Lacey and Murphy brown and you could find these female characters who were relatively like interesting and some to is even over 40 and all this, but like in movies.
[00:38:59] Yeah. You were [00:39:00] never gonna say that in movies.
[00:39:01] Cris: So yeah. No, I remember like Northern exposure was a favorite of mine and yeah. And all that stuff. Yeah. And then back to like way back to beginning of our conversation, I was gonna say, Mary Tyler Moore was also, and you had Betty White's character.
[00:39:15] Like those were things we had in our, yeah. Our zeitgeist growing
[00:39:20] Gina: up. I, I think about Mary I'm so obsessed with the Mary Tyler Moore show. And I think about it all the time. And I think that I actually, I have maybe like the Vegas of memories of actually seeing it when it was on, but, I'm sure, I think it ended in 77 maybe.
[00:39:35] So I would've been like eight years old or it's conceivable that I did see it when it was on real TV. Cuz of course all of us children in the seventies, like just watched whatever was on and nobody cared it was for, but I really fell in love with it in my twenties when Nick at night happened.
[00:39:51] Yeah. Like night was like this whole thing. And so I think it was just like in my twenties in Chicago, I can remember just watching Mary and like it is just an amazing [00:40:00] portrait of she's over 30 when the show begins. And like she's just been engaged and decided not to marry this dude.
[00:40:06] And originally the original concept for the show was that she was going to be divorced and they would not go for that. Her life was, centered on her work and her friends and like she dated, but it was never like the focus of the show. And it's sad in a way maybe that it's more revolutionary in so many ways than sex in the city, everyone
[00:40:26] Cris: Yeah.
[00:40:26] Especially when you look, not just at her character, but the buddy white character who was Randy, and, dirty, like all of it and, and it was like, and and they've just been replaying some of her scenes cuz you know, sadly she passed away, but you sit there and you're like this show, like where is this show today?
[00:40:46] Yeah. And then I was gonna say, like, when I was writing my film, because the woman doesn't say yes, and it's very prominent. It builds to that. I was watching things for research sometimes. And I don't know when the last time, [00:41:00] if you have seen it, but if you have the last time you saw private Benjamin, but it ends with her walking away from her, from the wedding, right?
[00:41:09] Yes. Yes. And that is not normal. Yeah. And then I was, and there's also some very well written scenes in there for Goldie H that where you're like, and I looked at the writers and who was involved cuz they always goons, always thinking, I can't remember his name. It's a male writer.
[00:41:29] And Nancy Myers has a credit on there and I'm like, I will guarantee I can point to the scenes, Nancy Myers rewrote for all of you guys. I can point to them.
[00:41:40] Gina: I, I think though that that was when she was married, Nancy Myers was married to Charles Shire. Yeah. They were like a team. And I think that, yeah, that, that was during that private Benjamin that, you know what, that's another example of what I was talking about that seventies idea.
[00:41:55] That was just like it had permeated popular culture, this [00:42:00] idea that there could be this like heroic independence in like basically saying I'm not going to compromise and be married to a man who's not worthy of . And those were stories that were told private regimen is a great example.
[00:42:13] Yes. Like I you're making me wanna watch it again.
[00:42:15] Cris: Yeah. And this is like somebody read my script. I can't remember who it was. And they were like, I've never seen something like this before, and they has there been. And I said, not often. And then I mentioned private Benjamin and they're like that was, and I said, but one of the major differences is she's she leaves him because he's an ass.
[00:42:31] He's cheating on her. And he's, so it's an external thing. And I worked really hard to make it her choice. When it gets there and you as an audience member please don't say yes, because that's not you please don't, you're not gonna be happy. Have you. And that's the goal, is to get an audience to cheer for someone to be single. To turn the romcom on its head completely by using the
[00:42:54] Gina: romcom, you're hearing for that outcome. It's funny cuz what I just flashed on was my brilliant career, which is Jillian [00:43:00] Armstrong's movie. I don't know if you ever saw
[00:43:01] Cris: I haven't but I'll have to, I'm
[00:43:02] Gina: gonna write that. Yeah. Cause that is an example of it's very it's a little more indie spirit than a conventional Hollywood movie.
[00:43:10] Yeah. But it is a story that ends with a woman saying no to a man who is a perfectly good, nice man. So that was interesting when you said that's why it reminded me of it and it doesn't have. and of course audiences have changed, right? Cause audiences, this is one of the most classic stories from the creation of little women, which I don't know.
[00:43:31] Yeah. I, wasn't a huge fan of GTA. Wick's like new version of little women, perhaps just cause I loved the old version so much, but it is a true story from the creation of little women where the first volume was published and basically women just wrote in droves to the publisher and they said like, why didn't she marry Lori?
[00:43:51] And they just couldn't expect that this character was not going to marry Lori. Like they just thought that's what the story has to be. So the idea of what does [00:44:00] the audience expect? Louisa may Alcot there's, she said at the time okay, so I. Didn't want that, but she went ahead and she did ultimately create a love interest for Joe March.
[00:44:09] And Joe B did ultimately get married. Yeah. But that was like, it was like Twitter at the, in, 1870 or whatever. It was like, here's what the people want. And I think as we're writing our screenplays and TV shows and all of that, like we are all cognizant, what is the audience expectation?
[00:44:26] I, yeah. I love this idea of just saying, could the audience feel that excited, to see the woman walk away rather than like at the altar kissing the guy?
[00:44:38] Cris: Yeah. And I think we're approach, I think it's the a Fe the female pocketbook rules don't, we don't, we have something like 85, 90 5% of the purchase power is female right.
[00:44:52] In the economy. Like, why aren't we tapping into that? What is going on? One thing that I have found in my producing partner. Who's also she's a really [00:45:00] talented producer in the indie, and had films at Tribeca and stuff like that, but we're finding it. There's a huge gap between men who invest in women who invest in films, that the amount of women who invest in film is there's not even a number. That's how low it is. Oh, wow. And isn't that where parody and equity could start happening as if female investors started investing in those stories. They wanted to see, because it is hard to sell a story like this to yeah.
[00:45:28] Like to the conventional. Yeah. But there are men, I've got several people who've, cuz that's, I worked really hard to make sure it doesn't, it wasn't, it's not a man hating thing that people might expect. It's not a, like somebody actually turned to me and said, you love men.
[00:45:41] I go, yeah. I come, I came from one, I have four brothers, I've had several friends I've I have dated, it's not, are you hoping to direct your yes. Yeah. That's the goal? Yeah. That's and I just, I decided to start this, so in the script, you're gonna love this because you've written a book about a writer and everything.
[00:45:59] So I can only [00:46:00] assume a little of that was , I don't know how much you can tell me later, a little bit of me. Yeah. And my script is very much, it's I took my story and it's my heart's in that script, so at the end she quits her. She works at a reality show.
[00:46:15] As a, as the writer for the host copy and stuff, and it's like one of those house. Relationship shows and realizes that she's part of the lie she's writing the lie, she's part of contributing. And part of what's making her, so she quits and she ends up starting a, she's got by the end of the film, she ends up starting a podcast called the lone girl, which is where the, and there's a joke that goes with that, that I won't, give away too much, but I'm imitating my own art right now.
[00:46:41] I was like, what if I start a podcast like this and become this voice right. And document that journey because it is hard to get this film made. And I find it so hard to find information actually on, on how other producers have done this part, the getting the funding the [00:47:00] in, in real time. Yeah.
[00:47:01] Gina: And honestly, I love to see writer, director driven material, but I have no idea how any of it ever gets made.
[00:47:08] It seems really hard. So yeah. Yeah. That would be. Important to figure that out and
[00:47:14] Cris: document it. It's also interesting to me and I've had this conversation with a couple people and then I just went to a screening of the big chill. Oh my God. They honored, they were honoring Marsha Nater who passed away this last year, but she was the first female to be an executive at a VP of a studio.
[00:47:34] Oh, wow. At United artists in the seventies, I believe that happened. And the person who brought her over with her was Mike meowy, who's a pretty big, well known producer as well. Yeah. But she's, she found Rocky, had them I think get the the distribution for Cuckoo's nest. And she's the one.
[00:47:52] So Lawrence Kain had pitched the big chill. To 17 places and gotten to know, [00:48:00]oh, wow. And then
[00:48:01] Gina: after he made body heat, which was very commercially successful movie.
[00:48:05] Cris: Yeah. And then got it. She somehow it got to her and she was at Carson at the time, Johnny Carson's production company, which I didn't know, cuz I, the last time I really watched big chill was in the eighties.
[00:48:16] I just, it's always been a favor of mine. I just never went back to, to watch it. And and he said she was like, let's make your film. And she had a put, which I don't think they do anymore. And so she told Columbia, they were making this film cause it was under 8 million and they tried to make her other people, producers tried to make her do other films.
[00:48:34] She goes, no, we're making this one. And then it won three Oscars. Yeah. But you sit there and you're like, I sit there and I look at that and I go, would those films get made today, be made today? And that's part of what I'm think I'm fighting too. Yeah. Is. we don't seem to make those kind of mid-level movies that are just story.
[00:48:55] Good stories about humans. Yeah. So true. Ignore at least the studios aren't it [00:49:00]doesn't have a superhero on it. So
[00:49:01] Gina: yeah. That's where honestly, like I, the rise of TV, made perfect sense. Because it was just like, basically the only stories being told in features were action.
[00:49:13] Were, the tent poles, I guess they generally call them. Yeah. And all those big movies, or, as always, in the indie space, if you can, figure out a way to tell a story, with two people and like very cheaply, then those movies would yeah. Always get made, but anything in between, I think just fell to TV and it's ING TV has changed though, because even, when I was first starting out, like I think a lot of us, especially a lot of us drama writers.
[00:49:40] I don't know. I worshiped soul called life, which was like oh, I love that one. Yeah. And, Winnie Holtzman had worked on 30 something with all of those people and like 30 something was something. Naturalistic with no storylines and like all that. And, even today it would be very, it would be difficult to get that show made.
[00:49:57] Look at maybe like the equivalent would be scenes [00:50:00] from a marriage with Oscar, Isaac and Jessica chestain, but , you wouldn't be able to get that on the air, unless you're you have actors of that caliber who've been nominated for Oscars. Yeah. And the writer is that Israeli guy who had created in treatment and the affair it's, it is a, Ugh.
[00:50:17] Anyway, I guess maybe it's just, Ugh, I don't know all this stuff that we did grow up in an interesting time when you could, see all these things. And then I don't know, for me cable started when I was maybe like junior high and something. Oh, my God, you can watch movies like so many movies and oh, HBO.
[00:50:33] That's where I saw big chill. I'm sure is like on HBO, in 1983 or whatever, some day after school, which is like,
[00:50:41] Cris: is such a well put together film. Like now looking at it now, knowing what I know. Yeah. Like I watched it in a high school class on film the teacher I, I was a freshman and he only was only taking juniors and seniors.
[00:50:54] And I'd been watching movies like I told you, since I was eight, I would go rent. And so I [00:51:00] dazzled him with my I'm like, no, you gotta understand. I gotta take this class. It was like a film appreciation class he was doing. And the big chill was one of 'em. Which was super cool. Cuz then we got to break it down, right?
[00:51:12] Yeah. But I'm watching it now as an adult and it means so much more too, because you can appreciate certain things when you're. 15, 14 or whatever I was, but now I can appreciate it also, as I've lived through
[00:51:27] a
[00:51:27] Gina: lot of that stuff, the journey of the characters. Yeah. I keep having that. I don't know if it's something particular to being 50, maybe sadly, the truth is we don't tell a lot of stories in our culture about people over 50.
[00:51:38] And we certainly don't tell stories about women over 50. Yeah. So I think frequently now I have that experience of oh, I'm watching the story about someone younger than me. And so I could see where then your brain goes okay yeah, like that's I get that. Or that's certainly I watched when I was 15, I, everything I watched had people in their thirties in it, I, it didn't occur to me, but that would be interesting to go back and watch and just yeah that, [00:52:00] I think they're all like in.
[00:52:01] Late thirties in the,
[00:52:02] Cris: yeah. They're in their late thirties. So they were all hippies. The be like disillusion
[00:52:08] Gina: from their,
[00:52:09] Cris: yeah. Yeah. And it's 15 years later when the friend kills himself. Yeah. Yeah. And that was Kevin Costner. I don't know if he knew that. Yeah. Just the body in the, yeah, he was, it was just for, I think there was a scene that got cut.
[00:52:22] I think he actually, there was actually if the story is that I remember,
[00:52:26] Gina: yeah. I love stories like that. I think it's so interesting to think what did the writer think that, what seemed necessary at a certain stage? And then as you move forward with your storytelling, you're like, you know what, it's better to keep that character offscreen.
[00:52:43] Cris: Yeah. It's in cause Lawrence, so Lawrence wrote it with a writing partner who was a woman. Yeah. And you can tell that it's a really, like, all of those characters are really full, right? Yeah. But you have a writer director putting it together. And I've always told people, like when [00:53:00]people ask and whatever is your script is or the you're basically writing three, three times you write the script and then you watch the actors bring it to life and they're writing it for you.
[00:53:11] Or however, in the DP and yourself, and you get in the edit and you're writing it a third time.
[00:53:17] Gina: I know. I have to admit being a show runner to me, the best part was the edit. And yeah, I had been lucky enough coming up on all the shows I worked on. To sit with the editors and to have like at least a chance to like, sit with them when they were making, the producers cuts of my episodes and, on Dawsons I just, I would make my own cut of my episodes and just get it to the showrunner.
[00:53:38] But that is storytelling that is figuring out what do I need? And do what happens when you put these two things together and how does that change the story? If you cut directly from one thing to another, I love it. It's so much fun.
[00:53:50] Cris: And all of a sudden you realize that page of writing is replaced by two seconds of a visual, right.
[00:53:58] But it's such a brilliant thing to [00:54:00] discover that, yeah. One thing I want to, because I don't wanna take up too much more of your time cuz I wanna be mindful. But I heard you were saying that and I heard you say this at your Columbia. Cause I watched the thing you did at your Columbia thing too.
[00:54:13] Yeah. And you were talking about how TV girls who want to be a TV writer. Don't always understand that you're not really in control of what you're writing. And I just, I'm on Twitter a lot with the writing community. And that's generally what people are seeking is to be in TV and to write and and writing their own stuff.
[00:54:33] Like they're all continually, like I see that, cause I'm not into, I really wanna do my feature not TV. Which is a different kind of a different thing. But you have a really good insight into it. And I'm wondering, they're also entering all those like trying to get the fellowships to be mentored and stuff.
[00:54:48] What would you say to them? Because, I don't know if they understand that. I don't know how much from reading it, that they understand how much control they're gonna lose. Not that I wanna dissuade. I just [00:55:00] want them to go into things without blinders,
[00:55:02] Gina: I think what's changed so significantly in TV is the idea basically of freelancing and in a way it breaks my heart because I know the hardest part about the freelance economy is that you have a job and say that job is eight episodes.
[00:55:18] That means by the time you get to episode five, like you better be trying to find your next job. And it is exhausting. And I think that for a lot of writers who come into TV within the past, like five years, there are people who like were doing some other kind of writing. And so the TV writing was something that they would do.
[00:55:37] And it was fine if you only had a job for six months. And it was not that the TV writing was the side hustle, but it was just another kind of job within like all the jobs you had. And, I am a dinosaur, like I said, I came up in the system where We just worked like all year long on TV.
[00:55:52] And maybe you had a little bit of time left, but probably not. And the salaries were higher because you were working all year long, [00:56:00] whereas nowadays you have to scramble and go from job to job. And I think the people who probably enjoy it the most are the people who like just. Love the idea of, I think the best thing about TV is you learn, you just learn.
[00:56:13] And even if it's not your own, partly even if you get rewritten you're gonna have in your head. Here's how I wrote the scene. Here's how the show runner rewrote me. And you're gonna get to see the dailies. Like it's not, ethereal or whatever. Every week we make a show like that is TV.
[00:56:30] It's like a, it's like a, yeah it's just being in the trenches and we make it. And so we can't afford to be precious. It's not when you're writing a novel or whatever, and you can do a year on it. Like when you're making TV, it's very deadline driven. Like when I made my show dare me, I was doing it with a novelist and she had some experience in TV, but not a ton.
[00:56:50] And I said to her, the thing people don't realize is that this is more like journalism. So like TV writing. I think that is one of every show is different now and some shows [00:57:00] are more. Like just written by one person, frankly. And so that's what is sad to me about, the old system.
[00:57:08] It was cool to be in a room with other writers all day. And some of my best friends are people I met working on shows and we're still friends today. And, if you have a good show runner and you have a good process, you can have a good collaboratively written television show, and , I think, things that are written collaboratively get a bad name because, we all worship at the, alter of like artistic integrity and collaboration seems, somehow Packy or something, but when TV, yeah. When it's going well, it's like a great job that you can learn so much from.
[00:57:45] And I think, I it's funny to me. I'm not always sure. When I see that on Twitter I notice that too. Like how many people wanna work in TV? And I do understand why. It is, there is, I'm not actually one of those writers who's super extroverted, but some [00:58:00] people are like, oh my God, it's my dream job to sit in a room all day and talk with other people about stories.
[00:58:04] Like, how are we telling this story? , I can't deny that part of it. It is fun. And I think whatever you wanna do for yourself in your own writing, practicing the craft of writing and like spending a lot of hours thinking about someone else's show, I think that does help your craft. Like it, it helps you have the skills, so that you're when you're thinking about your own story and you're sitting home going well, what if I did that?
[00:58:30] You could say to yourself, oh, we did that once on the show and it, this is how it looked or this is what the pitfalls were. So yeah, it's just a way to practice your craft and hopefully earn some money which is, important. Yeah. You can't deny
[00:58:45] Cris: that people need to earn money. It's IM it's important to pay your rent.
[00:58:49] yeah. Now a place for your cat,
[00:58:50] Gina: especially if you're a single person, frankly, who does not have a partner, because that is one of the things that people, you know, people who live their life in a partnership, [00:59:00]which again, I've never experienced that, they have that idea of if I have a bad month, maybe this other person will be able to contribute and it'll come out in the wash.
[00:59:07] And maybe that changes how you think about what you wanna do with your life. And yeah. And but yeah, if you're a single person you have to figure all that out and just, yeah.
[00:59:15] Cris: Have a plan. My, my cats had health insurance before I did, weird single person choices you make, thank you so much for being open and I'm so for being here and I'm so happy Karen made the introduction I've never met her, just so you know, I just, I do well
[00:59:33] Gina: that's, that's funny, you should say that because that Karen McCullough who wrote legally blonde yeah.
[00:59:38] Is one of the, when I just said just now that I've worked on many shows and I have many friends from those shows, that's how I know Karen. Like she and I worked together on a sitcom in the late nineties and we are still friends now. And so amazing. When she told me about you and your project, I was like, oh, I wanna hear more.
[00:59:54] And I really wish you like so much luck with it. And I
[00:59:58] Cris: You're friend, you're [01:00:00] a friend now I just want, a single fifties women have to stick together. Spencer we'll start the Spencer club like the babysitters club. Yes, exactly. I really but yeah, no, I wanna Karen said she was busy right now, but that she would consider being a guest in a couple months.
[01:00:13] So I'm really hoping cuz legally blonde and 10 things I hate about you. They're all, those movies that kind of made us. Yes. And,
[01:00:20] Gina: and have really interesting, empowering messages. Yeah. And Karen was married once originally, but is, a proud single woman now.
[01:00:30] And I would love to hear her. I would love to hear her on your podcast. Yeah. So I
[01:00:33] Cris: can't wait for that. So yeah. So I'm on the hunt for other voices and stuff, but thank you so much. And this has been some fun and no problem love hearing your journey and I appreciate everything and good luck with what I don't know if there's anything you need to plug or want to, but
[01:00:47] Gina: Just my book, the spinster diaries, which, you know, I it's been two years almost exactly since it was released at the beginning of the pandemic oh.
[01:00:55] But yeah. I and I. Just like everybody else out there. I'm trying to sell new [01:01:00] TV projects, but it's very hard to do that right now. And yeah. Thank you so much for having it was nice to meet you.
[01:01:04] Cris: Thank you so much for tuning into BLIS spinster. If any of these conversations are resonating with you, please subscribe on apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:01:14] You can find bliss will spinster on Instagram and Twitter and through our website, bliss will spinster.com. Again, thanks so much for joining me on this journey and until next week go find your happy.