Sean Gunn

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: It's a loooooooooong con. Boz rocks it on #coverfly
Let Me Run This By You: Are #stans just modern day gladiator fans? Also, Bhutan.
Interview: We talk to Sean Gunn about

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
I'm Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina Pulice. 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? I mean, nothing ever feel, I, sometimes I have the spotlight. I'm wonder if anybody ever

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00:00:32

Feels just really chill. I think there are some people who they wake up and they're just like, yeah, I'm going to do this and this and this. And I'm going to, I just always feel like there's so much clamoring in the back of my brain for attention, you know, I guess it's really just anxiety. I guess that's what it is. I just have a lot of anxiety and I grew up having no idea about that. And I remember saying, you know, kind of early on in my relationship with Aaron like that, I didn't relate to anger and he just laughed and laughed.

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00:01:12

He goes, are you kidding me? You were so anxious. I, it was news to me. I had no idea. And then it's like, oh yeah, that makes that's. That's why I do that. That makes sense. I don't know. Bottom line is I never feel chill, but sometimes I feel less anxious. I feel the same way. Like I don't ever feel, I think I, I think I'd have to be heavily drugged to feel really chill. And then it doesn't last. And also there's something to be said for like, you know, anxiety is a motivator too. So like yeah, all those things are motivators.

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00:01:53

So I feel like my anxiety, it's so interesting when I've been like profoundly depressed. I would say twice, two episodes in my life. I've also been anxious and I'm sort of grateful for the anxiety because it course gets to going. I'm not a depressed person that stays in the bed. I may pay surround and look crazy, but I'm not someone who sleeps for 12 hours a day. And look, I'm not saying I'm, I just feel like my anxiety was a motivator it's course, me too. Like, it was so uncomfortable that I was like, okay, well I have to get help or get out of this house or get, do something different because this is intolerable, you know?

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00:02:35

Yeah. You got to switch it up, but anyway, I'm so eager to hear about you. You made a brave, bold move and you set your amazing Nicholas stage. I don't think I said on this podcast, how much I love your pilot is so good. It's truly, it's so good. And, and what was especially fun for me considering that we are working on writing other things together is that I, I read it for the first time when the, that draft was already done. So I really got to experience it like an audience member the whole time. It was, it was such a page Turner anyway, so you sent it to Nicholas cage.

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00:03:15

So, so, okay. So the, alright, I entered it. Okay. A long time ago, I entered it into this log line contest before it was written spoiler alert. And, and then they've said, we want to see a full script so that if you listen to the podcast, you know, like we may have put on here. Right. That I, anyway, I wrote the thing really short. And then I, I I've been working on subsequent drafts, like over and over with my mentor, Don. All right. So then that same company had a D a, a diversity initiative for women and people of color and all kinds of things to, to enter a script into you get like a free log line, class pitch class.

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00:03:59

And if you win and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I love this company, roadmap, writers love them. I just find everyone I've met with has been amazing. And they're literally, their job is helping writers. And of course they have classes and stuff like that, but they actually seem to really give a shit, which is fantastic. So I entered hold my calls is my pilot into their contest. And by the time this airs it'll be common knowledge. So I got, I got second place. So they, I know, I know I so awesome out of a lot of scripts. And part of that is then I didn't realize any of this. So this is such a news. They start. And then I submitted through cover, fly to them, and then they rank your script.

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00:04:44

I didn't know that. And so my script was in the top 9% out of 50,000 scripts on, on cover fly. Yeah. And I have to say it it's, it's, it's especially amazing because every contest does have, you know, there's so many writers out there who are just dying to, to be noticed. And, and there are so many opportunities for it, but a lot of them don't lead anywhere, but this was like a prestigious thing. And to be in the top 10, 9% is an unbelievable accomplishment.

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00:05:26

Thank you. Thank you. And I feel like, what do I feel like? I feel like all it's a long con that's just what I keep saying. Like, people are like, people ask me too, and I've heard this before of other writers and people in the industry talking about this. People keep asking me that aren't in the industry, what's happening with your writing. And I'm like nothing. And a lot of things. And I, something like, I think in, we've said it on this podcast that I have to stop equating success with a paycheck because you need a paycheck to live. That is, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're not gonna, they don't go hand in hand. Like, it's not like I won prize money for this, but you win a further, like you said, noticing and further exposure and, and like, so that we can move forward in this industry.

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00:06:17

And it, it doesn't always, it doesn't look like a paycheck. I just, yeah. And, and R I'll, I'll just put the caveat that I'm sure that there are lots of professions that this is true about, but I only know about this one. So in, in the artistic field, it's kind of, I mean, what's the norm for us would not be the norm for other fields that we could spend thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars in many years, investing in ourselves. And that's the whole concept of like the overnight success, because nobody's an overnight success. Everybody has already invested a lot of time, energy, money, et cetera into it.

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00:07:00

And it's just that. And you know, and frankly, when people say actors get paid too much, I mean, sometimes I agree with it. And other times I'm like, yeah, but you don't know, you only see their successes. You don't see the 99% of the time that they're failing. I think it comes. That is exactly, exactly right on it. And I think even like influencer culture, look, those people have invested in. I'm not saying it's, if aliens come down and say, see, they're going to, it's going to make sense. What I'm saying is they have invested these, anytime you see someone who is in the public eye, or like doing something, someone who is being noticed for something, unless it's totally random has invested in what they're doing.

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00:07:47

You may not agree with it. And you may not think it's art, but they look, I've never met someone who has found notoriety or gotten notice that hasn't put some am...