Insight
Koppelman: Uncredited writers should write spec scripts to maintain creative leverage
“If someone's willing to pay you guys who have no credits, 5000 dollars now, write the thing, and you'll have a much better chance of success. And we've taken that lesson to heart still to this day to write unencumbered. We like to go in a room and let our idea…”
Insight
Koppelman: Achieving creative control requires taking responsibility for failure
“If you don't have control, you don't take the blame. 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…”
Insight
Koppelman: Creative work does not require abandoning your other identities
“One mistake I see people make when they decide they have to do some kind of artistic work is they think it means they have to grab that identity so hard that it has to shut out the rest of their identity. But what I found was you don't have to do that.”
Insight
Koppelman: The expected value of unwritten creative ideas is zero
“The expected value of not doing the work is zero. Like there's no question about the EV of just thinking I'd like to write and not writing.”
Opinion
Koppelman considers 'Solitary Man' to be the best film he ever made
“Solitary Man, which was a commercial failure. I mean, it made its money back, but it was not a big commercial success, but I know it's the best movie we ever made.”
Insight
Koppelman: Morning pages eliminate writer's block by creating momentum
“I meditate every morning, and I do morning pages every morning. So morning pages, like out of Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, I do three longhand pages, a real brain dump, where I just Let the pen move for three pages, no matter what. And it has this i…”
Disclosure
Koppelman instructed his kids to burn his journals upon his death
“No, you burn, I, my, there, my kids have instructions to burn upon my desk.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Koppelman: Every Hollywood agency initially rejected the 'Rounders' screenplay
“We were rejected by every single agency in Hollywood.”
Insight
Koppelman: Showrunners must manage studio relations like founders manage VCs
“I'll tell you, it's so analogous to the way a founder and Will work with the investors, right? The VC, the board. It, it's up to you to manage that relationship. It's up to you to set the terms.”
Insight
Koppelman: Speak to powerful executives without awe, condescension, or fear
“The main thing is, is don't treat them as the, most of the time, Don't treat them with a sense of awe, and that they're, like, their station makes them better than you, but also don't try to condescend to them as though you're the smartest person in the world,…”
Insight
Koppelman: Delivering overlong cuts invites executive interference
“What happens when you give the 67 minute thing is you're inviting a bunch of people to tell you how to get the thing to 57 or 58 minutes. And suddenly they're giving you their opinion on it. Also, by you not having to have rigorously With discipline, make thos…”
Insight
Koppelman: Writer's rooms extend showrunners' worldviews
“Writer's rooms become extensions of the way the showrunners see the world, and the way they see the world of their shows.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Koppelman: Showrunners edit every episode regardless of writing credit
“Almost all shows, the showrunner does the final pass on all the episodes, no matter whose name is going on.”
Opinion
Koppelman: Mid-budget $14M-$30M films are much harder to make outside Netflix
“It's much harder to make those mid, mid, those sort of mid budget, 14 to 25 or thirty million dollar movies. Though Netflix does it, right? You can do it at Netflix now, which is probably where it would happen, but, and then, or you would try to tell the story…”
Insight
Koppelman: Pitching Rounders today would be a TV series, not a movie
“No, you would pitch 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.”
Insight
Koppelman: Partnership success depends entirely on managing your own conduct
“The more you know that the success or failure of a partnership is based entirely on how you comport yourself, the better off that you'll be.”
Insight
Koppelman: High performers require enforced mental breaks to succeed
“It's not surprising to me that so many of us who are high achievers, aggressive in going after what we want, willing to take risks, That finding some tool that gives you some enforced break from that, it's not surprising to me that that then, when you then com…”
Insight
Koppelman: Creative partners should resolve major disagreements strictly in private
“If there's something that suddenly is going to, we see really differently, we just immediately take it to a private communication, right? We take the audience out of it, right? We never talked about this, but we just do it. We take the audience out of it, beca…”
Insight
Koppelman: Every character in 'Billions' is written to be smarter than the writers
“You have to make these fictional characters feel incredibly real to you, and you want to write them smarter than you are, and that's the only thing I can say is we want every character in Billions to be smarter than we are.”
Insight
Koppelman: Write with total freedom, then rewrite with total clarity
“So the whole gag is to write with total freedom and then rewrite with total clarity.”
Assertion Supported
Koppelman: 'Rounders' failed at the box office despite long-term cult status
“Rounders was rejected, it was incredibly difficult, the movie wasn't a big box office hit, but 21 years later, people are in ferocious online arguments about the most microscopic moments in, in the film”
