Transcript
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: You are listening to OnWriting, a podcast from the Writers Guild of America East. In each episode, you’ll hear from the union members who create the film, TV series, podcasts, and news stories that define our culture. We’ll discuss everything from inspirations and creative process to what it takes to build a successful career in media and entertainment.
I’m Rupeshi Bhat. I’m a preschool TV writer and a member of the guild’s Animation Caucus. I’m joined by fellow public broadcast TV writers, June Thiele, Peter Miller, and Jill Cozza-Turner. Today, we’ll discuss the current state of public broadcast following threats, like the loss of federal funding. You’ll hear from industry professionals on why it’s so critical to fight back, to protect both public broadcasting specifically and free speech overarchingly.
Hey, June. Hey, Peter. Hey, Jill. I think it would be helpful to have you all introduce yourselves before we get into it. Peter, if you want to start.
Peter Miller: Yeah. I’m so happy to be here. I’m a documentary film director, writer, producer. I’ve been working on public television documentaries for 30-something years, and I am proud to be part of the Writers Guild.
June Thiele: Hi, my name is June Thiele. I use they/them pronouns. I was a writer for Molly of Denali since the first year they started, and I went over to one other episode on HBO. I’m relatively new, technically, to children’s writing, but I am a writer and an actor and have been in the world for a while.
Jill Cozza-Turner: Hi. I’m also very, very happy to be here. My name is Jill Cozza-Turner. I have been a children’s television writer for a very long time, over 20 years, in the kids’ media space. I’m the head writer of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and I’m also a very proud member of the Writers Guild.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: Amazing. It’s so nice to speak with you guys, though these circumstances are not the best. For me, public media means programs that are research-backed, relevant to communities, and available for free. How do you all think about public media, and what do you see as its value?
June Thiele: For me, I think my biggest thing, especially working… and it’s always been a major core value of public media, is the diversity and including diversity and showcasing diversity when a whole lot of other media wasn’t. For me, writing for Molly of Denali was just another way that they proved they were really dedicated to the mission. Also, choosing indigenous writers to be brought into and not be necessarily only in front of the camera really kind of proved to me that that quality is solid in PBS, and I think that’s a huge… Such an incredible thing is you watch old clips of PBS and you’re just like, “Wow.” Even back in the ’60s and ’70s, it’s like, “Cool. Damn, that’s pretty awesome.”
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: I recently watched the first episode of Sesame Street because we were reading Street Gang for the Children’s Media Association book club. Even that, you knew it was a PBS program. You knew what they had thought about coming in to all of that. So I agree with you on the diversity being important on and off the screen, behind the camera too. Jill, Peter, what is the value of public media to you both?
Jill Cozza-Turner: Well, writing for PBS, I’ve probably written more shows for PBS than any other broadcaster, and it really has been a training ground in how to create those engaging, age-appropriate stories that also weave in a very strong curriculum. They’ve always been so intentional about who they partner with for their kids’ shows. They research episodes. They bring their scripts to actual children, so we get to see how children are reacting to them. And if I’m being super honest, because we always work with… I’ve been able to work with so many child development experts on these shows that it’s really informed how I parent my own children. It’s just given me so many tools personally, behind the scenes, so it makes a huge impact. Like June was saying, behind the screen and on the screen.
Peter Miller: Yeah. For me, I work in the history space, so most of the films I’ve worked on are about historical subjects. PBS is the one place where we can get honest, in-depth, incredibly well-researched films about where we’ve been as a country. When we make history films for PBS, the level of detail, the level of research, the way we work with scholars, the way that our work is vetted and fact-checked is the most intensive of anything I’ve ever experienced. But beyond that, we get to tell stories that matter. In a time now when we’re going through so much complicated stuff, knowing our history, the way of knowing where we are now and how we got here, provides tremendous amounts of insight into what we’re about. The way in which PBS has presented history is part of a national conversation that makes democracy possible, and I’ve just been so pleased to be able to share stories that matter with PBS audiences for free to every household in America.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: Clearly, we are all proud of the programming that we’ve worked on, and it makes me very happy coming into the industry that Daniel Tiger, with Jill, was the first show that I got to write on. I love thinking about what you said, Jill, about it being a training ground. I want to hear more about the PBS programs that each of you have worked on. Maybe we can start with Daniel. Jill, would you be able to talk about the show and your experiences? Not biased, but-
Jill Cozza-Turner: Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood is just a joy. And for those who aren’t familiar, it is based on Mr. Rogers’… it’s a legacy project of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It’s created with the Fred Rogers Productions who are wonderful partners in this and really taking those lessons, those socio-emotional lessons, and bringing them into a new audience. It’s just one of the best things I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of. And like I always say, I get more… Whenever I tell somebody I’ve worked on the show, parents will repeat the strategies that they have learned that have helped them parent their own children, it really has made a big impact and it models diversity. We’ve got different family structures on the show. We are modeling how a preschool classroom works. We’re just giving kids and their caregivers tools on how to manage their emotions. Fred Rogers said, “When feelings are mentionable, they can be manageable.” So we’re trying to label emotions as much as we possibly can and carry on that legacy of Fred.
But like Peter was saying, the amount of research and care and thoughtfulness that goes into every single episode with our advisors, with the folks from Fred Rogers Productions, with the PBS executives, just to make sure that we are delivering these messages in the most careful, thoughtful way possible. I’ve written for Carl the Collector, Nature Cat, Donkey Hodie, WordWorld, lots of other shows on PBS, and it’s the same thing. If we’re putting out a lesson on cicadas in Nature Cat, we’re going to have those environmental advisors, people who are telling us, making sure that we’re getting all of our facts straight, that we are delivering it in an age-appropriate way. But of course, all the stories have to be engaging and they have to be for that little audience. We want kids to watch and giggle, and lean in and love these characters. So combining those two is truly the mission that we have on every PBS show I’ve ever worked on.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: It feels like the research is so important because it makes what you’re writing feel relatable, because… It’s fiction that you’re writing, but it makes it feel relatable. And then, also, it works the other way where then kids and their parents can take it out into the real world and apply it as well.
Jill Cozza-Turner: Exactly, yeah. Kids are brutally, brutally honest. They will tell you if a story isn’t working or if they’ve lost interest in something. So being able to discover that in the scripting process before all the time and talent goes into making it into an animated show or a puppeted show, it really helps tremendously.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: It’s such care and regard for the audience which means a lot. June, in terms of Molly of Denali, I think this is a good lead-in to that, talking about children’s television. Would love to hear your experiences on the show.
June Thiele: Yeah. I think a lot of the experiences are probably going to be similar to Jill’s, but I was brought in to the writing program for a fellowship. We were brought out to Vancouver and we did a week of intensive scriptwriting fellowship, and we were all Alaska-native writers. Before that, I was like an actor. And then I got into writing and then I was just kind of like, “Oh, I’m going to do this crazy thing, and it’s going to be great.” And then it really changed the course of my life, which is great. Molly of Denali, at the beginning, we didn’t quite know or understand the whole dynamic of the show. But as it came along with the delicate nature that they go into these processes of creating these shows, and they’re so specific and so thoughtful.
For this show, it was a little harder because everybody was like, “Okay. We have to get Alaska-native voices into the room. We have to have Alaska-native advisors. We are going to bring a lot of people in to make authentic characters and look at the culture, and make sure that everyone who’s writing knows what they’re doing. So not only with a whole group of native writers, there were advisors and producers on the show as well and… It was really beautiful. It was the first time I’d ever seen all natives in a room writing, and I was just like, “Wow, this is a new experience for me.” So it’s sad to see it’s not being continued into the future, but it was an incredible opportunity and that’s kind of how I got into all of it.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: What is the writing process like for an episode of Molly as much as you can share and, in general, what the show is about as well? We’ll keep it alive on this podcast.
June Thiele: Molly of Denali, I guess, I’ll go into what it’s about. It’s about an Alaska-native girl and all her friends going on adventures in their day-to-day live living in their village of Qyah in Alaska. It’s a fictional village up by Denali. And then we have learning goals, a lot of learning goals, a lot of cultural goals, and every episode has to hit at least one and you have to do it by season. So they’re very conscious about the seasonal aspects about it as well, because all seasons are important when it comes to native life and indigenous life living out in a rural area. The process of writing was pitching and then they chose something, and you developed that in a group. We did usually like writers rooms virtually, at that point, because we were thinking that it would happen more in person occasionally. But I think the way that everything was working out, everything was turning more virtual.
It was a first, second, and maybe sometimes a third draft. We were all relatively new. So I think they were taking a little more time with each episode, especially if we were newer to children’s television writing, and then they did the final draft. So it was a process. It was a bit of process, but it was a good one to learn on because I remember one of our head writers was like, “This is going to be one of the more intense ones you’ll be writing for, ever. The rest of them are as difficult because it’s like they took such care on each episode, so that’s why it was more intense.” But I was like, “Well, at least, now we can just go into another room and be okay.”
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: Doing something new and doing it for the first time. And it’s kind of an experiment, but it’s an experiment that you really want to go well so that it can happen again. Peter, shifting into nonfiction, what does writing for documentaries like?
Peter Miller: Probably the most important part of the documentary process is listening and learning, and realizing that every story that we tell is built on the shoulders of those who came before us who studied this stuff. Every film I work on is I do in collaboration with scholars and with participants in that history, and that informs how we tell our stories. I made a film that was on American Masters on PBS this summer called Marcella, which is about the great Italian cookbook writer Marcella Hazan. She died a decade before the film went on the air, but her voice and her way of looking at the world is throughout the film. I spent six years making this film, immersing myself in her story, getting to know members of her family, getting to know people that she worked with, reading everything I could possibly find, speaking with scholars, speaking with experts, digging through thousands of photographs. And then taking this person’s extraordinary story, which is a story of disability, a story of immigration, a story of being a woman in mid-20th century America, trying to be a strong presence in the culinary culture.
And then take all of this material that I’ve gathered and say, “What’s the narrative throughline? How do we make this compelling? How do we make it as compelling as it is in real life? How do we keep an audience engaged?” It’s really just about taking a massive amount of stuff and putting it into 86 compelling minutes of broadcast television. I can’t imagine anything more thrilling than doing that and then taking people on this journey along with this person whose voice is at the front of telling her own story, but is supported by amazing human beings. Part of the trick on that film was it’s a film about history and about biography, but it’s also about cooking. So we brought people who were influenced by her, who are great chefs, into their kitchens and interviewed them while they’re stirring tomato sauce. The level of emotional connection that happens when you listen to what your story’s about, realize this is a story about… which contains a great deal of drama and emotion and content, but told while you’re using a wooden spoon on a pan full of risotto. I mean, it changes the dynamic.
Every film I work on is about a different topic and a different time in history. It could be from 100 years ago or a couple of hundred years ago, or it could be from last year. But it’s all about combining scholarly knowledge with really engaging storytelling, and finding a way to take things that are complicated and trust your audience to embrace that complexity. This is what we get to do. This last fall, I worked on a film that was broadcast on American Experience called American Coup: Wilmington 1898, which was about a racial massacre in coup d’etat that happened. That basically took a multiracial democracy that was flourishing in North Carolina and white supremacists went on a rampage carefully planned and removed a multiracial democratic government, killed dozens, possibly hundreds of Black people, and took over the government at gunpoint.
It’s a story that nobody had known. I hadn’t heard of it until colleagues had said, “Let’s tell this story.” And the goal is how do you take this 120-something-year-old history, bring it alive, and engage with an audience in a respectful way that brings them to this history and makes them think about what our country’s story has been.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: For these projects that you worked on with PBS, were they involved from the start or did any of them start out indie? How did that all go?
Peter Miller: Every project is different. So many projects begin indie. I’ve had the privilege of working with a part of PBS called the Independent Television Service on three different films. ITVS, their whole purpose is to get independent filmmakers, people like me, to tell stories of underrepresented audiences in engaging ways and put them into the PBS schedule. I’ve had the honor of making three movies that ITVS supported. Sadly, with the cutbacks to public broadcasting into CPB, ITVS isn’t going to be able to do that in the same way that they used to be able to do. But it enabled us to tell stories. I co-directed a film about the Latino Civil Rights Movement, the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, a story that would never be told on any other network.
We started this as an independent project. We raised some grant funding. We found people to tell. We shot some footage. We created a show reel. We brought it eventually to American Experience, and they said, “Yes, we need this show.” PBS was able to put up the money we needed to finish doing it, give it a prominent air slot, and now… This is 15 years ago, we made this film. There’s like three screenings going on now during the Hispanic Heritage Month where they’re showing this film. It continues. It has a life that goes on and on and on because this history really matters. We independent filmmakers bring it to PBS, PBS brings it to the public, and this is an incredibly important act made possible by our Public Broadcasting Service.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: With that in mind, with indie docs, what makes PBS different than other distributors? Or what do you feel like its role is in the doc world?
Peter Miller: Well, one of the things that PBS lets us do is make films that are not aimed at a commercial market. They’re aimed at telling the truth, at telling stories that matter, at exploring American history, exploring social issues that matter. We’re not looking and saying, “Is this going to be financially successful?” We’re saying, “Is this going to be intellectually rewarding? Is it going to reach an audience? Is it going to tell stories people need to hear?”
And then the other thing that I think is astonishing about PBS is that all the executives I’ve worked with, on all the shows I’ve worked with, let you tell the story that you know how to tell and respect independent filmmakers. Nobody’s saying, “You got to change this.” You might get very good notes from people we’re working with, but they respect independent filmmaking in a way that I don’t think any other network does. They let us do what we’re good at, which is to tell these stories the way that we know how. And oftentimes, these are stories coming from the communities that are represented in these films. And the people at PBS who I work with have this remarkable wisdom at working with us to make our films the best they can be, but still honoring our independent spirit.
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: Do you feel that as well, June and Jill?
Jill Cozza-Turner: I would say yes. I think that that’s one… PBS truly trusts their creators and trusts their producers. They’re very intentional about who they partner with. So just what Peter said, we will get some thoughtful notes. But when PBS green-lights a show, they know why they’ve greenlit the show. They know who they’re working with. There’s already so much trust built in there, so they’re great partners to have in the kids space as well.
Peter Miller: Can I just add something, speaking of the kids space-
Rupeshi Shah Bhat: Yeah.
Peter Miller: … because I grew up with Mr. Rogers. I was there when, I think, that show probably was fairly young still. I was very young and I watched it, and the sense of trust… This television set across the room is full of good intentions that respects me as a human being. I wonder whether or not watching Fred Rogers, when I was a tiny kid, put me on the path to wanting to tell stories on PBS. I don’t think I’m alone in that regard.
Jill Cozza-Turner: You are not alone in that regard at all. When I was a kid, I didn’t know that writing for television was a thing, that that was a job you could do. But I did watch Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, and all these wonderful shows that sparked so much curiosity. I think when you look back at all of the steps that bring you to where you’re at now, I think that… It is, it’s a trusted, trusted space. As parents, sometimes you have to take a shower, and you have to put your kid in front of the television. So you want to be able to put your child in front of a station that you know is going to be putting out positive messages that is well thought out. It’s just a different space that is really… I think trust is a big word that is used whenever we’re talking about PBS kids shows.
