Leading In The Time Of Virus
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 225: Frank Spotnitz
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business.
In today’s world, leadership means meeting the challenges of two viruses - COVID-19 and racism. In this environment, unlocking creative thinking and innovation has never been more critical.
This week’s guest is Frank Spotnitz, the Founder and CEO of Big Light Productions. They’re a London and Paris-based production company.
Under Frank’s leadership, Big Light has produced a number of high-end drama productions including Amazon’s Emmy award-winning The Man in the High Castle, Ransom, The Indian Detective and three seasons of Medici for Netflix. He has also co-created the new drama series Leonardo, which he talks about during our conversation.
Frank was also executive producer of The X Files. Writing or co-writing more than 40 episodes, he shares three Golden Globes for Best Dramatic Series and a Peabody Award and was Emmy-nominated both for writing and Outstanding Drama Series. He knows how to tell a good story.
I’m fascinated by the role that stories play in shaping society. They affect our personal lives, our politics and our businesses.
And I’ve never met an impactful leader who couldn’t tell a compelling story - about their vision for the future and why it matters.
What’s your story? And how do you tell it?
Here’s Frank Spotnitz.
Charles: (01:36)
Frank, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Frank Spotnitz: (01:40)
Thanks for having me.
Charles: (01:41)
Tell our listeners, tell our listeners where you are in the world and how you're spending this part of the pandemic
Frank Spotnitz: (01:48)
I am in Paris, which is my home. It has been for the past five years. Prior to the pandemic, I used to travel to London every week. I used to take the Eurostar from Paris to London Monday morning and come back on Wednesday evening. It's been really strange for me to actually be in one place for such a long period of time and in lock down, largely locked down because my wife's mother lives with us and she's 87. So, we're hyper-vigilant, not leaving the place.
Charles: (02:18)
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's got to be really tough. I always thought the Eurostar was magical. I always thought it was like time travel.
Frank Spotnitz: (02:27)
I love it.
Charles: (02:28)
Amazing, isn't it? You get into the train in Paris and you're having breakfast in London. I just thought it was incredible.
Frank Spotnitz: (02:35)
It is. It's magical. It's one of my favorite trips in the world. I love it.
Charles: (02:38)
Yeah. Really special. I was really interested in talking to you because I think, obviously all eras produce stories, but we are living through the most extraordinary era. My 85 year old father said to me yesterday, "I'm going to stop telling all my World War II stories because that doesn't compare to what we're going through now." So I thought that was quite a statement. Why do you think we are so attracted to stories? Why are stories so important to humanity?
Frank Spotnitz: (03:09)
It's a really good question. I remember years ago, this must have been 30 years ago, Bill Moyers did a series of television interviews with Joseph Campbell, the great mythology expert, and Campbell said that people don't just like stories, they need stories. And this is me putting it into my own words now, but I think the world is so complex and human experience is so diverse. And, gosh, we have never been exposed to more of it than we are now with the saturation of media that we have, that you need stories to kind of decode and help you understand other people and other situations. And so, it's preparation for life really, and the better the quality of the story, the better prepared you are.
Charles: (03:59)
And on that basis then, are stories the way that we find some sympathetic people around us, that we figure out who we want to be associated with and spend time with and relate to? Do you think…is that part of the filter that we apply there?
Frank Spotnitz: (04:15)
I think that's one function of stories. I mean, if you think about it, stories are your one and only chance to see the world through somebody else's eyes. You live your life through your eyes and your experience. And the story puts you in the mindset of someone different from you and you have the chance to empathize. And so, when you encounter people in real life, you're more likely to successfully understand where they're coming from and find people that you want to avoid and find people that you want to engage. And that's what good stories do. Bad stories, I think, just kind of waste your time. They're kind of like junk food, empty calories. They don't make it easier for you to navigate life. So, I always encourage people to consume the very best stories they can find because they're just so much more rewarding.
Charles: (05:03)
What do you think are the elements of the great stories? What are you looking for when you're looking to tell a story?
Frank Spotnitz: (05:10)
This is such a general answer, but it's really the only answer I can give, which is truth. And I know from my own experience and struggles as a writer, how difficult that is to try to capture what you know to be truth. And I think the really great storytellers, their humanity is so large. They have such a deep understanding of the world of other people, they're able to distill that into a narrative and then that narrative is endlessly rewarding because of the depth of their understanding. Look at William Shakespeare. He is second to the Bible really because of his incredible understanding of so many aspects of human nature. And we just keep revisiting his stories and keep retelling his stories because they have so much to offer.
Charles: (06:01)
I think, especially here in the States, the truth has become up for debate. There is a real battle around what is true and what is not any more and facts don't seem to apply in the way that they used to. And I think that concerns and, in fact, in some cases frightens many of us, because if you don't have that to count on, what else is there other than relentless opinion?
And obviously, we are dealing at a time now where the truth and facts matter more than ever because the virus doesn't care about our narrative. It just does what it's going to do. And it seems to most of us, I think, or many of us, that science ought to be playing a much bigger part in deciding what we do and what we don’t. Given all of that, given the fact that certainly from an American standpoint, we're living in an era where we would think it's pretty obvious what should happen next and we're finding it hard to do that because the truth is not consistently applied across the board, how do you think people should navigate this time? How do you find the truth for yourself in a way that is meaningful and not just relevant, I think, but accurate?
Frank Spotnitz: (07:10)
I think what you're saying is absolutely right. I think the internet and, in particular, social media has been an accelerant, an incredible accelerant for disinformation and so-called fake news. And it's never been harder than it is now to try to identify the truth, whatever that is, objective facts. But looking at the bright side of this, I suspect that ignorance and disinformation and misunderstanding have always been widespread. It hasn't been shared so quickly as it is now, but it's always been out there. We just weren't aware because we weren't talking to people. We didn't realize how ignorant and misinformed they were or, in fact, we were. So, I think if you look at this in the longer arc of history, this initial shock of disinformation, fake news that's coming at us with the spread of social media, gives us the chance to begin a counter move against that disinformation and fake news.
And I think that's what we're going to start to see. I think we're still being flooded by this big wave of disinformation and that's not going to go away anytime soon. But we're in the very, very beginnings of figuring out, "Okay, now how do we educate people better? And how do we agree on established facts?" And I think you're going to see that conversation start to happen.
One of the things that I've mourned, I can't speak for the entire world, but certainly for the United States and the United Kingdom where I've spent a lot of time recently, is the decline of public education, at least since the 1980s, of free universally available, excellent public education. And I think, I hope, that that's something that is a question that's revisited in the years ahead. And also teaching people semiotics. There was a great book by this NYU professor, Neil Postman, I believe his name was, called Amusing Ourselves to Death. I think he wrote it in the 1980s.
And he was saying, even in the 1980s, so this is pre-internet, that young children should be taught semiotics, which is to say they should be taught to decode images because we live in such an image saturated society and images are so powerful and they enter your brain in a different way than text and manipulates you in a different way than text. And so, I think that's another thing we need to start thinking about is educating people to be aware of when they're being manipulated. Again, if I'm looking at the bright side of this and this is not going to happen in the next two or three years, but maybe in the next 10, 15, 20 years, you could end up with a population that is more universally sophisticated, educated, better able to discern truth from fiction, but that will happen as a reaction to what's happening now.
Charles: (10:05)
It's a great point because the fact is we're not skeptical enough, are we? We're too ready, and to your point, social media is built around this ability to filter out the things we don't want to hear and only listen to the things that we do want to hear. I mean, I think, the demise of the printed newspaper is tragic because it gave us access to and exposed us to information and insight and stories that we otherwise wouldn't come across, I think, in our daily lives. You're obviously a student of the story, you obviously are constantly looking for stories. You have the choice of many, many stories to tell and have to decide which ones you want to spend your time telling. You've gone all the way back to 15th century Italy in some cases to select your stories. What do you think of the stories that will come out of this era that we're living through?
Frank Spotnitz: (10:56)
Wow. I think there are going to be some great stories coming up. I was just saying this to some friends the other night that most of us, my generation, we were very lucky, in a way, to live through such a placid era, really. The baby boom generation, it was pretty stable. And now that's all sort of cracking wide open for all kinds of reasons, not just the pandemic. Technology, I think has been a big factor in it. And artificial intelligence is going to result in even greater changes to society and the jobs that people do. So, huge ruptures are going on all across the world right now and that's good for storytelling. I mean, it may be bad in the short term for a lot of people's lives and wellbeing but, in terms of stories, you're going to see bigger stories. Stories that speak about bigger issues. I think, and I love John Updike, John Cheever, but there is a kind of personal writing that went on during this era. Things got smaller.
And I think when you have big social economic disruptions, the writing gets bigger. It has to match the moment. I don't know what those stories are going to be yet because I feel like we're still very much in this moment, but I have no doubt they're going to emerge.
Charles: (12:25)
The nature of heroes has changed, hasn't it? And is changing, it's seems to me, all the time. Again, I think to your point about social media, we're able to... Not only are we exposed to voices that we might wish to avoid in some cases but, in other cases, people's voices are able to be heard that would otherwise have been drowned out or wouldn't have generated enough attention in and of themselves in the sort of traditional media world. What do you think the heroes will be coming out of what we're living through? What will heroes look like?
Frank Spotnitz: (12:57)
Well, it's really interesting to me because I think the truth is, in literature and theater, there have always been very complex heroes and very interesting, and antiheroes. And you really can't beat some of the amazingly perceptive and nuanced depictions of heroic behavior in literature. But popular culture, on the other hand, Hollywood, the heroes were flat and not nearly as realized, by and large, as literature for a very, very long time. And that has changed. It began to change, I think, pretty dramatically in the '60s and '70s. We started to get more complex heroes and then a cynicism kind of set into the culture. And now, with television, with this wave of television just accelerating like wildfire on this much more, I guess, cynical is the only word for view of people. And it affects the way that we write our heroes.
I don't know. And one other point about that is I think it's a shame that all cultures become pop culture, in a way. There is all kinds of bad implications for that, but it has, for better or worse, which is to say it's commercially driven culture. But I suspect that the same seismic shifts we're talking about and in the world at large are going to result in a different kind of heroism because, in fact, cynicism is not a sustainable way of looking at the world. You have to believe in something. If you're going to accomplish anything, there has to be a positive belief in something. And we're going to have to find a way to write characters who do embrace something and it's not going to be the things we embraced in the past. Our relationship with religion has changed fundamentally. I wouldn't be surprised if religion resurfaces in a different way, a more modern way. But yeah, I think cynicism is going to be one of the casualties of the years ahead.
Charles: (15:09)
Somebody said the other day that politics has become a new religion. Do you think that's true?
Frank Spotnitz: (15:15)
No, I don't. I think all of these things are prisms through which to see the world and politics is a prism through which to see the world. Television is. Music is. Religion is. And I'm not a religious person at all. But, to me, religion is religion or philosophy is philosophy. And they are equipped to deal with a whole range of issues that politics can't begin to grasp. Religion, one of the fundamental things about religion is it says this whole existence is a veil. This isn't really what it's all about. It's about the afterlife. It's about eternity. It's about things that transcend the material. And politics, of course, is all consumed with the moment and it comes and goes with astonishing speed. So, no, I wouldn't put it on the same level as religion.
Charles: (16:09)
Your career has obviously been predominantly spent in episodic. And as you said, television has this extraordinary era that we're living through, for which certainly, I think, many of us are grateful because it does allow us to understand different kinds of stories, to see character and narrative arcs developed in completely different ways. How long do you think this might last? I mean, do you think this is the way that we want to consume media going forward? And we are now so invested in longer narrative arcs that this is what we want? Or maybe better put, what do you think the future of movies is by comparison?
Frank Spotnitz: (16:50)
I think it's evolving really rapidly. And I think the idea of a TV series itself is changing pretty quickly and it used to be... When I started on The X Files, we did 24 episodes a year. And now, very few shows do 24 a year, comparatively speaking. Most of them do 12 and now it's becoming 10 and some are eight and some... In the UK, it's always been a much more mixed ecology than it was in United States. But I think you're seeing already, because of the economics of the streaming business, there's no reason why a TV show has to be any set number at all. It's really, "What's the right length for that story?" And I think that trend is going to continue. So you'll see one, two, six, 24. It could be anything that fits the story, which I think is great.
I think what's astonishing about TV right now is what you were saying, is that we can consume all kinds of television and I can look right now and I can watch a show in Turkish or in Hindi or in Hebrew. And that's astonishing that we are connecting the world this way and I can't help but be optimistic about that, that you're going to identify with people who speak different languages, practice different religions. I can only think that's going to have a positive effect.
But I don't know. I think the thing that I worry about is the decline in literacy, because there is an anxiety that has been fueled by all these devices and screens that we're on all the time. And I know, even for me, and I love to read, I have to actually sort of resolve to read now and try and calm myself and get into that space. And I just think, as much as I love visual storytelling and I really, really do, it doesn't enter your mind the same way that reading does and reading is a really valuable skill that I worry about the effects of losing it.
Charles: (18:58)
Yeah. I think it's a great point. There's an anxiety, suddenly I find, in putting all my devices down and shutting the lids on everything and saying, "Okay, I'm going to pick up this book. Nothing is going to change. I'm not going to get a headline beeped me. Right? Not going to get a like. Nothing's going to happen except I'm going to gain something from the experience of reading what this writer wants to tell me."
Do you think we're getting to the point... I was struck yesterday, I had a drink with a friend, socially distanced drink with a friend. And she said that one of the big movie theater chains here is trying to reopen and they're offering 15 cent tickets and we thought, "Really? Is price really the thing that's going to make us decide to go back and sit inside an air conditioned environment and sit? Are we six feet or 12 feet and is this safe?" And I thought, "There is no situation that I can see that would make me want to go and sit inside a movie theater. And I've got a 72 inch screen in front of me and surround sound and whatever food I want and nobody's going to interrupt me. Do you think we're getting to the point where we need to stop distinguishing between films and television? Do you think it just becomes, at some point, content and we just get to decide this one's two hours long, this one's six episodes of an hour. Do you think we're getting close to that?
Frank Spotnitz: (20:13)
Yeah, I do. It's funny. A few years ago I was given an award and I was asked to talk about the difference between film and television. And I only came up with, "Well, one is shown on a big screen and one is shown on a television." But having said, there is a traditional form of a movie, which is more or less two hours long. And I still love that storytelling format and, in some ways, I think it's superior, in some ways, to a television series because you have to create an entire world beginning, middle, and end. It's distilled. It's like poetry or orange juice concentrate. It's so strong. Everything matters in a way it doesn't in a television series that can just unspool for hours and hours. So, I really love the form. And, of course, I love movies.
I'm of the generation that grew up going to movies. As a kid, I would go and sit and watch the same movie two or three times in a row, sometimes on a Saturday and just lose myself in it and I loved that. I think what cinemas still have to offer is a social experience. And every once in a while, you want to get out of the house and you want to go out and you want to be with strangers and you want to have a communal experience. And I think that kind of explains the trajectory, unfortunately, that Hollywood has been on for the past decade or so, which is just making these giant rollercoaster ride films. I don't care for many of them. I wish they were better stories, most of them. But I understand what they're trying to do, create an event that you have to leave the house to go to experience. And at the moment, I think that's still the best answer. I just wish they were more interesting and less calculated commercial projects than they are.
Charles: (22:00)
Let's talk for a moment about the practical side of returning to production. Where are you and your colleagues and partners in the process of actually being able to make stuff again? What do you think... And what do you think that is going to look like going forward over the next months?
Frank Spotnitz: (22:18)
Well, I'm one of the lucky ones, I have to say. We were shooting a limited series about Leonardo da Vinci in Italy. And so, we had to shut down in March. Italy, obviously, was one of the first to get hit really hard in Europe. But as a consequence of being one of the first to shut down, we were actually one of the first to go back. So, we actually went back in mid June and, amazingly, we wrapped shooting last week. We were able to do it.
Charles: (22:42)
Wow.
Frank Spotnitz: (22:43)
Yeah, we completed the whole series. No one got sick. I think it helps that Rome has a very low infection rate right now. But we instituted a whole bunch of measures, taking everybody's temperatures three times a day. Everybody with the actors wore masks and gloves. There was color coded bands on different departments for the crews so you knew who would be on set when. I can't say that we enforced all of that incredibly rigorously but, nonetheless, we obviously enforced it well enough that we were able to succeed. And it added some cost and some slowness to the process, but not that bad. It's really going to be a function of how well society at large manages to contain the virus and, based on what I'm seeing in many parts of the world, I think I'm waiting for a vaccine, I think, is what I think.
Charles: (23:36)
Yeah. Or some therapeutics that work, plus some testing would be helpful.
Frank Spotnitz: (23:39)
Yes, yes.
Charles: (23:40)
And also a better understanding of what are the implications if you do get it. Somebody said last night, we were talking about the 1918 Spanish flu and about how this is different because our science is so much more advanced. And I said, "Well, we're six months into this and we don't know who's really susceptible. We don't know what really happens. We don't know whether you're immune after you've had it. We don't know for how long. We don't really have any therapeutics that are proven to work." So I said, "I'm not sure they were much worse off in 1918 than we are today from a practical standpoint." So, it really is just the most extraordinary time. And I think I've said this on an earlier episode of the podcast, but it also strikes me that it demonstrates how dependent the world is on American leadership. And when there is no American leadership, there is no coalescing force around which expertise can be gathered and appropriate debate can be had. And I'm not sure anything is really going to change unless and until there is some real American leadership.
Frank Spotnitz: (24:39)
I fear you're right.
Charles: (24:42)
So, based on your experience, was anything compromised? Did you feel that you had to compromise anything in terms of performance or production values or quality?
Frank Spotnitz: (24:51)
By a lucky stroke, we had been building a backlot before the coronavirus struck. And so, what we did is we expanded that backlot and we were able to move a lot of scenes that were going to be shot in other parts of Italy to the backlot. So, would I prefer to be on location? Yes. Will the audience notice? Probably not. There was one scene I had written that had a lot of extras and I had to rewrite it for no extras. But other than that, no, I don't think anybody... I mean, actually, I don't think the audience will be aware at all. We, the storytellers, are but I don't think it will be perceived.
Charles: (25:30)
And how are you adapting the kind of stories that you want to tell over the next year or 18 months or are you? Are you thinking differently about the kind of stuff that we want to tell and how we might get it done?
Frank Spotnitz: (25:40)
Honestly, I'm not. I mean, there is one project that I loved anyway that, as it happens, is incredibly COVID friendly, and that takes place in a single location with a limited cast. So, it would be very easy to do in this environment. But I loved that and would have wanted to do it regardless. And no, I mean, this has been a ruthlessly busy and productive period for us because you can develop scripts with writers, with everybody working remotely, no problem. And I find Zoom is merciless because there is no downtime where you have to travel between meetings, take a taxi or walk even to the next room. There's a boom, boom, boom, Zooms after Zoom, which I get a little tired of to be honest. No, so we have been really productive and very busy, but I can't say that we're worrying about coronavirus in our storytelling, we're just imagining we'll be able to do what we want to do when the time comes. It takes so long anyway. Usually, these things take at least a couple of years.
Charles: (26:40)
Yeah. Oh, well, let's hope you're right. Let's hope we're not worrying about this in two years. Last two questions for you. What have you learned about yourself over the last six months?
Frank Spotnitz: (26:50)
Oh, that's such a good question. I think I've been so busy running around for the past five years that I've learned to stop and reflect. I've spent more time thinking about myself. I have spent more time with my family and some more time reading. So, I hate to say it because this has been such a catastrophic and awful event for the world in so many ways but, for me on a personal level, it's been really helpful to have a pause and stop and just think. And I'm somebody who loves restaurants and loves theater and is constantly going out. And I went to my first restaurant last night in five months. So, just to not be busy, to be still, has been something I've enjoyed, which surprises me. And I'm curious, when and if this ends, and I do think it will end, will I be more still than I was before? Will I have less running around? I think I will.
Charles: (27:56)
And very last question for you. What are you afraid of?
Frank Spotnitz: (28:01)
I feel like this disinformation that you were talking about and the fact that social media and the internet seems to reward hate and anger and fear is hugely destabilizing to the world. And so, I fear that my children are going to live in a world where there is war and where catastrophic events, nuclear blasts or biological weapons, where these things are not only possible, but likely. So, I fear we could be heading toward really dark, dangerous times. And I don't think it's inevitable though, but I think it's probably more likely now than it's ever been in my lifetime, certainly.
And this was one of the reasons why I did this series, The Man in the High Castle, based on the Philip K. Dick book. Because what struck me about that premise, that's a world where Nazis won World War II, rather than the allies, is you can't take it for granted that the good side is going to win. And I think that's a theme that's more powerful now, in this era we're living in, in this post Brexit, Trump era, that we have to fight to bring about the future we want to see.
Charles: (29:23)
I think that is such a great point to finish with. And because we have... You and I, I think roughly the same age, and we've lived through an era where World War I and II worked out the way they did. You could tell who the bad guys were. The good guys always ended up winning. James Bond always won. I mean, we've just gone through these eras where the heroes were always on the side of right and came out on top. And I think we've all become complacent.
I mean, in fact, it's interesting because the 2016 election, which I dreaded, but felt at the end of the day, "This isn't going to go this way, right? There's no way Trump can win. He's just too much of a caricature of a bad guy and it's all set up." And I think it was a shock to the system when he did. And I think the, hopefully, the very real fear that unless you really do the work and get out and vote, that this could happen again. In which case, God only knows what the future looks like. The Man in the High Castle might look like a very attractive alternative compared to what America might look like after another four years of Trump, Trump and Bill Barr. But we will see. Frank, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you taking the time and your insight.
Frank Spotnitz: (30:33)
Thank you. My pleasure.
Charles: (30:33)
It's just fascinating. And good luck with [crosstalk].
Frank Spotnitz: (30:33)
I really enjoyed it. Thank you, you too.
Charles: (30:36)
Thanks a lot. Take care.
Frank Spotnitz: (30:38)
You too.
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