Austin Tichenor

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: writing comedy, Joss Whedon, unproblematic men, putting public figures on a pedestal, the hierarchy vs. collaboration dialectic.
Let Me Run This By You: White coat hypertension, writing seminars, Boz's success story!, navigating systems for your own benefit.
Interview: We talk to Reduced Shakespeare Company's Austin Tichenor about UC Berkeley, Boston University, law school, surviving a directing MFA.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
1 (8s):
And Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina . We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? Sean rock is comedic, true crime, serial killer thrillers. I don't know what that means. Great. I'm getting my popcorn ready to be very specific.

1 (48s):
So, and yeah, so I think that that's, I'm sort of finding my way in terms of like what? So I, I, I felt like, okay, I need to bite the bullet because it's also 30 pages. So it's not a lot like compared to a 60 page. Oh my God. So it's half the, not half the work, but like you have half the real estate, which in some ways is harder in some ways. So anyway, I had this idea and I, I have a friend of mine. Who's a comedy writer and I, I, and we were talking about this idea of these two women, sort of a dumb and dumber, but for women. And so we started, yeah. And we have these conference rooms here and speaking of dumb and dumber. So we have these conference from here with glass walls.

1 (1m 30s):
Right. And there's like dry erase markers. And there's, you can see some kind of old writing on the glass walls. Well, so we're writing, I'm writing in my, you're not supposed to write it in the glass walls. It, in fact does not come off the glass, speaking of dumb and dumber. So then I'm like, so someone knocks on the door and is like, Hey, you guys know that you're not supposed to be writing on the glass walls. And literally I've written on the whole wall. And I'm like, oh my God. So it took me an hour to get off with scrubs and I had to use different rag. Anyway, it's the stupidest thing because there's no other place to write in the room and there's no whiteboards, so there's something wrong here. But so in, in step with, with sort of dumb and dumber, but anyway, so we're writing this like half hour comedy about just two women that are really dumb, but they're not really dumb.

1 (2m 24s):
Of course they're genius in their own way. But I liked the idea of like seeing women. Yeah. Just seeing women do really dumb shit like bridesmaids, you know, like you're like, yeah, like that kind of a thing. So I don't know how it's going to go. And we just started and we're like meeting, you know, once every couple of weeks, but like, it's good for me too. I also, there's a to study comedy. Like I'm never in my life, like I've done a lot of sort of study and research about drama and crime, but nothing on comedy. And there's a course, a million classes and stuff like that, which I'm not taking, but there's also like books and stuff that I always shied away from.

1 (3m 7s):
I think it was scared. Like, I don't know how you feel, but like, I feel like comedy is so hard to do right. That like, I just was scared of it.

2 (3m 16s):
Yeah. 90% of the comedy you see is terrible. I mean, and that's just talking about the stuff that gets made. So yeah, no, it's really a comedy is, as the saying goes, whatever it is, death, death is hard comedies. I forget. There's something about death. Something's harder. Writing comedy is harder than death, but that thing that you were saying about the toxic work environment, I've heard that too. And actually I was just reading the New York article about Josh Sweden.

1 (3m 50s):
Oh my God. Yes. And about the writers in the room and that, that one writer and he's reading or shit, and he's like making fun. I mean, he should be fucking, I mean, I shouldn't say that he should be hurt badly.

2 (4m 4s):
So for people who don't know, Josh Sweden was the showrunner of Buffy the vampire Slayer. And he was heralded as a feminist. I mean, icon practically. In fact, when I first heard that he was not who he appeared to be, I instantly flashed, I had this patient who had endured a lot in her life. Let's just say that. And she was extremely feminist and that was her favorite show. And he was her favorite person. And, and I distinctly remember her saying, he's like one of the only good guys in, in Hollywood, something like that, something to that effect.

2 (4m 53s):
And honestly, what the hell, I mean, please write a profile about unproblematic men. I it's gotten to the point where I'm like, is nobody

1 (5m 5s):
I'm doing the right thing. I just, I mean, you said a brilliant line, like which I'm going to steal and put in my script, which is in, in hold my calls, which is he's one of the Hollywood good guys or something like that. I think we all are. So looking for that, that when someone appears to be that we cling to them desperately in hopes that they will save all other men and it never works. Like they're all problematic. And I think of course we're all problematic all humans, but, but this is a special brand of problematic in Hollywood in creating art in, in showrunning land and also just Hollywood in general.

1 (5m 49s):
So like, this is a very specific type of toxic asshole man. And there are so many, so many. And so I agree, I need a profile about, but see, as soon as that comes out, there's going to be a woman that's like that dude. Fuck.

2 (6m 4s):
Oh, yeah. Right, right. Right. So remember when you were getting your MFA and you were had to watch all those old films and you said they were all written by women. What I never heard is when, why did that change and what was the,

1 (6m 20s):
So nobody, they, they ran out of men, journalists, writers to write the sort of storylines for the new, for new movies. Right. For the new art of cinema. So first they were silent. Right. And then, then there were titles, you know, let people wrote. And those were written by usually at the beginning, mostly journalist men. Right. And like newspaper, men like that, then they literally ran out. I think of men, people that could write. Right. So they, so women started submitting write some under fake names under, but a lot under their real names. And they didn't give a shit because they didn't get credit.

1 (7m 1s):
So nobody cared. They were women. Right. Cause it wasn't, they weren't on the screen. So as writers, so women really took over, like they, they, I think they just took over. Okay. So that was going great until I believe what happened was until the, the money men got involved from New York. Yeah. So it became a business. So then the money men financed the films, bankers and then women, I think like the first world war, right. Was what was, was, well, I don't know,

2 (7m 41s):
1917

1 (7m 43s):
Something like, I don't know. We're, we're, I'm dumb. So, but like around there the men had to go to war and the women had to take care of the kids. Right. So there was no one to there. They couldn't, it transitioned to more stereotypical gender roles and women stopped writing and then it just took over for

2 (8m 2s):
Yeah, I see. Okay. Well you're right. I mean, it's also like, it's fine for you to do all this work as long as you're not taking credit, but when it comes time for everybody to really recognize this as an art form...