MargaretNagle

I'd never want to change a single thing about that show. It's perfect. The show was only 18 episodes, ABC took it off the air three different times, they didn't like it, and it took the audience a long time to find it. And critics were mean to it, didn't understand it - and I want everyone who jumps on and judges a show right off the bat, they are killing art - people are so quick to judge something, and get defensive or insecure when something is asking you to watch it differently. Three different timeslots, they would drop the show for 4months, then come back and make a couple more - it was BRUTAL what they did to the show, but the audience found it on MTV and it lives on, but it could have run 5 seasons, the network didn't take care of it and viewers are always harder on new things, and they are harder on things that ask them to feel things. That's the one thing - everybody's got to slow down for a second. There are so many TV critics, and there were critics who were trying to go back and save MY SO-CALLED, but in the mind of the network it was damaged goods. And it's such a beautiful show, and Winnie - she's an incredible writer. She's writing another Show for HBO with Cameron Crowe about roadies, about the people who go with them on the show and set them up in every town. And she comes to everything, to the premiere, we watch all my stuff, I sit and show her, she shows me her stuff, she's this incredible life mentor.

Here's the thing: when you're the writer in Hollywood, you're the brunt of a lot of stuff. And even with THE GOOD LIE, I got fired off it 2 years into it. But they couldn't find another writer to re-write it, so luckily what happened was the producer of it died, so it went into turnaround, and the script was on what is called "The Blacklist" which is the best unmade scripts in Hollywood that year, so I proceeded to - I'd received most of my work as a writer off this movie, but I'd never been able to get it made. So the WGA has this little-known rule called The "Writer's Re-Acquisition Rule" - which is that after a script has not been touched for 5 years by any other writer, the original writer can legally get it back for a free 18 month option and try to re-sell it themselves.

So I waited for 5 years from the last time I'd been paid to write on it, and i went into Paramount with legal documentation from the WGA and took the script back, and Ron Howard - every producer turned it down, but Ron Howard was starting a 1 year writing program where he wanted to use the TV writer's room construct to write features, because feature writers get so isolated and alone, and what if they could check in with other writers? So he hired 9 writers, and he said "I'll help you redevelop THE GOOD LIE." So while I was at Paramount, they were going through a rocky time, and they had 3 studio heads who each gave me different notes - so the script was sort of corrupted, and so Ron Howard said "Come do this program, and you can just take the script and get it back to what you wanted it to be." So that's what I did, and then the financing he had for the movie fell out after 12 months. So I had a new script, but no financing, and I'd used up 12 months of the 18 month option. SO then I had a 6 month ticking clock going and I was sending this script everywhere and everyone said "No" - and it's a $15 mill movie, it's not an expensive movie, but no one would do it, and finally it found its way to a producer named Molly Smith, and she, it turned out, her father had adopted a Lost Boy in Memphis. And put him through college, and this Lost Boy got his P.H.D in Engineering! That's the other thing - Lost Boys are really smart, they are making this huge contribution to our world. So teaching themselves to read in high school, having done math & science without going to school.

So she said "I'll finance the film" and it was so hilarious -we were at the very last week of the 18 months, and she said "Well," - I had to go to Paramount and buy the script back - and I was paid scale plus 10% for the agents because it's not a lot of money for the amount of drafts I did -and I was literally taking work to keep this project alive, so I could afford to keep writing, because various studio heads ask you to do work on it - she said "I'll write you a check" and I said "You don't understand - my bank is going to hold your check for a WEEK to make sure it clears, and my check will cash, and it's now 4 pM and at 6 PM we are toast."

So she was scrambling to get a cashier's check and get it into Paramount BEFORE they locked the doors- but we got it in. 6 months later we were shooting the movie, Reese took this small part, and really the movie is about the guys and their walk and we were in Atlanta shooting. And when we sent the check in, it was almost exactly 10 years to when I got the job.

And when we premiered at TIFF a couple weeks ago, we had no idea how it would be received and we got a 10 minute standing ovation.

Well, I was a shoe model in NYC because I have small feet, and there's a shoe convention every year in NYC, and because my feet are small they'd book me. But these shoe salesmen, it's a little sketchy being a shoe model - because people that are really into shoes on women's feet like that usually have a little bit of a fetish, so you work for a shoe company all day, and then the people working and pushing the shoes, they come to NYC and they wanna have a good time, they want to take you out and look at your feet... it was really weird, You'd be like "I wanna go home now" and they would say "No, wait try on these shoes... you just have a great pinkie toe.." and you'd be like "Oh no, what have i done?"

The thing about being an actor and writing - you're actually really set up to be a writer if you're an actor, because you're working within the world that a writer has created, you're saying their lines, you're dramatizing the moments they've put into the writing, so you're actually learning writing, character, story drive, dialogue, so actors make really good writers. And the way I was able - the first thing I was able to write was the spec script for WARM SPRINGS, and it ended up winning the Emmy for Best Movie, but the reason it worked was that - as an actress, I'd been in so many plays and done so many other writers' work, I'd acted in MY SO-CALLED LIFE, you're learning all about writing if you turn that part of your brain on, you're LEARNING to write. So I would say to any actor that wants to write is that you're going to have a lot of basic training, you're just going to apply it somewhere else. It's like if you're a football player and you decide you want to be a coach, you know a lot about coaching because you've been coached so much.

George Clooney said something like "We can all agree on Sudan." And on Wednesday, we are doing a social media Thunderclap with the ENOUGH Project, we are getting 1 million people to go on social media because we can re-direct focus to South Sudan because they have 2 million displaced people there - by Christmas there will be 250,000 people in the refugee camp the kids came from, and they are going into a hardcore famine.

So this is not just a film - it's also bigger than that. And so we're not going to let this go. And we played it in Washington DC last week, and we got 450 Senators and Congressmen to come. We plied them with cocktails, and had them sit down and watch the movie, and then we served them dinner. We brought out the Lost Boys - Nico & Vince played, they wrote the music for the movie- and Emmanuel Jal did some of the music, and John McCain was crying, we had Samantha Power and Nancy Pelosi, and we said "You guys can stalemate all you want, but this is something we can all agree on, to use our resources to help these people." And UNICEF came, and UNICEF has been a partner with us, and we've created THE GOOD LIE fund - http://thegoodliefund.org - and we just want people, this is serious, so we were able to raise $250,000 seed money, we made all the Congresspeople and Senators pay for dinner, and UNICEF is going to take the aid in and work with us, so we are going to use this and we are trying to open up, get these people out of there to be resettled or at least make sure they have enough food and educational resources to live in this camp.

Oh my god, that's so hard! There are SO many of them. Let me think...

Okay, so, this is a weird one - I've had so many! I was an Usher at the Berkeley Community Theater so I could go to contests for free, I've lost a lot of hearing, I love music... I worked in a sweatshop, translating for people... I worked at an aerobics studio, I used to open up a gym at 3 AM in the morning, down in the Village - that was the worst job, because I don't like waking up, and I would get on the subway - and the subway at 3 or 4 am in the morning is a lot of people changing their job shifts, and the subways don't run that often at that time, so you have to wait half an hour for the subway, and I would get to the gym and it would be all these pissed-off investment bankers who wanted to do their workout before they crushed the world... I had just gotten off the subway with 500 maids cleaning office buildings... I'm a person who thinks that everyone is the same. I recently, in the writer's room for RED BAND, had someone say "Go, you're such a Communist in the writer's room" and i said "Thank you so much!"

Because I think that's so bad. And I've had money, and I have had absolutely NO money. I've sold all my vintage toys from childhood during a writer's strike. I've seen the whole thing. And I think people get so separated and lonely and lost when they think money means more than anything than being able to buy some food. When people define themselves in that way, talk about ripping your heart out.

And I was always bullied in school. I was seriously bullied. So writing - and in the RED BAND SOCIETY, like the girl who bullied me really badly is the girl who needs a new heart in RED BAND. And I know she's seen the show, and she is horrified - she was mean to everybody who was artsy, or smart, or bookish. She was ruthless.

Okay, first of all, Wilson Cruz is a regular on RED BAND SOCIETY - we've been friends since he was 19 years old, and he's giving me an award next week in LA! So about the whole LGBT - I have felt - it's really interesting, my best girlfriends all grew up to be gay. And I was bullied in school, it was the girls that grew up to be gay, they all ended up being the ones who would say "Leave her the hell alone." My brother is disabled and retarded from a car accident, so they really made fun of me. and I did a lot of theater and plays, so a lot of my friends were gay. And also, the smart kids are always picked on, so on MY SO-CALLED LIFE, there were letters that came in from kids in really remote places all over the country from kids who would say "i'm scared, I'm gay" - Ricky was the first openly gay character on a series. And I remember with Wilson - his own parents kicked him out for a while, while we were doing the show. I remember him telling about a kid in Ohio who had written him a letter saying he wanted to kill himself because he was gay. So Winnie said - this is just too much for you, you're 19 and going through them yourself, we'll call them, we'll go through them and help so that you're not taking it all on yourself Wilson.But now Wilson has gone on to be a media spokesperson for GLAAD - but at the time, the flood of people who wanted to speak to him - EVERYBODY answered every letter. They said "Call me, write me, there's hope, don't suffer in silence, we are here for you." So that was one of those things when the show was cancelled - we were thinking "God, where are those kids now, hope they are okay."

So it was really really important. And I just always feel that because - if we're all equal, then I want to see my storytelling reflecting all different kinds of people in the world. One of the things on BOARDWALK, for example, Michael Pitt's wife was gay, and having to hide that fact from him, hiding that fact while he was away in WW1 she fell in love with a woman. Or Cara on RED BAND SOCIETY, she has 2 moms. Or for example, Octavia Spencer, I'm sort of into seeing a world - I can't just look at a bunch of white dudes every single time. That's not the world we live in. We are not better for that. People say "if you can't see it, you can't be it." And I think maybe the reason I didn't start writing sooner, I didn't see a lot of female writers doing writing - none of my professors encouraged me to do this, it was Winnie. So I urge you - if people want to write, if there is something you need to do, follow your passion and do it, because that is what you are going to be best at. And you are going to be happier if you do that. It's so bottom line. But it's hard sometimes to figure out what your passion is.

I'm someone who was a super-late bloomer. I worked so many things, it took so long, and this is my FIRST MOVIE getting made and it took 11 years.

So I urge you - never give up. Don't let other people tell you who you are. There's only one you. And we need to hear from you.