Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

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Lilly
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Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by Lilly »

Trevor has posted a thread on Twitter, prompted by discourse surrounding the writers' strike, that reflects on toxicity in Hollywood, specifically in regards to how it affected his experience on Moonlight.

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T.O. MUNSON
@TREVOROMUNSON
·
2h
This Lost article has gotten me thinking. Many of us have been in toxic and abusive situations on writing staffs over the years but we’ve mostly stayed quiet about it. Why? Primarily out of fear of retribution. (a thread)

But maybe it’s time we all started talking about this toxic system and calling out the individual bad behavior we’ve experienced. The all white men who run Hollywood don’t have any incentive to change things because, guess what - to them, it’s not broken. (2)

It’s functioning exactly as intended. Nothing will change if we don’t change it. And maybe that change starts by shedding some light on our own experiences. (3)

The toxic environment I found myself in the middle of was as a first-time creator on my own show, Moonlight, the series I co-created back in 2007. Based on my debut novel, Angel of Vengeance, it was a vampire show that aired at 9 pm Friday right after The Ghost Whisperer. (4)

A vampire detective series was a strange choice for CBS to make (especially when you consider the fact that was before the Twilight movies, before True Blood, and years before The Vampire Diaries) but make it they did. (5)

A feature writer until that point, Moonlight was my first foray into television. It was the culmination of a life-long dream. But the dream of creating my own show quickly turned into a toxic nightmare. (6)

I’d be lying if I said there weren’t any red flags from the start. The EP’s reputation for being a bully preceded him - by a lot - so I’d heard stories by the time I got a call from him while pulling into a Denny’s for breakfast with a friend. (7)

He was calling from a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean and apologized if the reception was bad. My agents had slipped him a draft of the feature I had adapted from my novel, he said. He loved it and wanted to make it into a series, he said. (8)

Head spinning in the Denny’s parking lot, I explained that while I genuinely appreciated his interest, what I really wanted for my script was to explore the movie version. (9)

Things were coming together on that front and I figured if the movie turned out well, I could pursue a series later. He understood. He totally got it. He’d be back in town that weekend, so how about I come in Monday and talk to him about the show? (10)

Thinking he must have misheard me, I reiterated that I appreciated the interest, but I couldn’t really see the point in that because I was going to pursue the movie version. Great he said. No problem, he would have his assistant reach out to set a time to meet on Monday. (11)

What else was there to say to a man who refused to hear words or take no for an answer? We ended the call without my fully agreeing to the meeting, but go and see him Monday I did, and long story short, that was how I ended up turning my edgy feature into a network series. (12)

They paired me with a showrunner. A genuinely good guy who had created one of the biggest hit shows of the eighties. He took me under his wing and together we created a pitch, wrote a pilot, and got the green light to make a pilot presentation. (13)

There were some bumps along the way, but things went pretty smoothly until the first cut didn’t test well. That’s when things really began to change. Suddenly the EP was very involved in the re-edit and everything me and my co-creator said and did was wrong. (14)

To his credit, he was good at fixing things. But it quickly became clear that this was no longer a collaboration. It was his way or the highway. (15)

This was really driven home to us when one point, my co-creator and I found ourselves getting screamed at and berated for the offense of questioning one of his editing choices and suggesting a different one. (16)

For some mystifying reason the tirade devolved to him yelling “Do you want more money? Is that it? You want more money?” at us over and over. As if this meltdown had been sparked by a financial request rather than an editing suggestion. (17)

Everyone else in the room went silent until he yelled himself out like a toddler having a tantrum. It was a bad scene and a clear turning point. (18)

In the end, the new cut was good enough to get us picked up to series, but although we didn’t know it yet, my co-creator and I had already been secretly marked for show-creator death. (19)

Our first real indication of this came out of the blue one afternoon shortly after moving into our new writer’s offices when the EP called us to a meeting during which we were casually introduced to a man we were told would be our new showrunner. (20)

This news came as a particular surprise because of the fact that we already had a showrunner. My co-creator. (21)

Effectively demoted, we got to work under our new showrunner putting the writer’s room together. Although we had written a full pilot, for budgetary reasons we had only shot a pilot presentation. (22)

The end result was good enough to get us a pick-up, but it meant that our full pilot script had not yet been shot. Consequently, and completely unbeknownst to us, the EP secretly told the new showrunner and other high-level staff writers to rewrite our pilot. (23)

Under orders, they did so, but what they ultimately turned in wasn’t up to the EP’s satisfaction. He told them to do it again. He didn’t just want tweaks and changes - he wanted a rewrite that would completely erase our credit and end our involvement in the show. (24)

To their credit, the other writers balked at doing this. Although in the end my co-creator and I were able to maintain our rightful "created by" credits, our situation with the show continued to deteriorate by the day. (25)

Soon after, we found that we were no longer being invited to participate in the writer’s room at all, and like many others before and after, found ourselves banished to the TV writer Siberia of casting. (26)

We were frozen out in every possible way and it became apparent that the goal was to make things so uncomfortable and intolerable for us that we would just quit. (27)

It was demeaning and humiliating and we probably should have quit, but we didn’t. This was the dream. How could we just walk away? So despite being persona non grata, we kept coming in. Episode after episode. Week after week. (28)

And then, suddenly several episodes into the season, the new showrunner disappeared. Apparently, fed up with the toxicity he had inherited with the job, he left one day and never came back. (29)

By the end of the week, we had a new showrunner (our third in about three months if you’re counting) The new guy, perhaps unaware that my co-creator and I had become the staff writer equivalent of Untouchables, took a liking to us and brought us back into the room. (30)

He even gave us a script. Things began looking up. We were halfway through the filming of that script - episode 10 - the first one we’d gotten to write since the pilot when the 2007 writer’s strike was called. (31)

I never saw the end of filming. That day was my last on my own show. Despite coming back for four more episodes post-strike, my co-creator and I, and a couple of others including showrunner number three, were removed from the staff by Force Majeure. (32)

Epilogue: One final kicker - despite all the internal toxicity and turmoil, the series ended up becoming a cult favorite and won the People’s Choice Award for Best New Drama that year. (33)

Because of the ongoing strike, the ceremony took place with no audience. The host, Queen Latifah, read the results directly to camera. To this day, I have no idea what happened to the actual award. We were ever contacted about the award for the series we created. /Fin.

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Even though I knew much of this, it hurts my heart to read it in Trevor's own words. :Mickangel:
Lilly

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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by allegrita »

Oh lord, what a terrible chain of events. :Mickangel: Poor Trevor and Ron! :hankie: And yet somehow, the magic happened in the midst of all that chaos, and the show was a huge inspiration for so many of us. :notworthy: It's kind of astounding that they managed to make it at all, under those circumstances.

I just want to give Trevor a huge hug, and thank him another few thousand times for all his hard work--and all the blood, sweat, and tears he shed in the process. :comfort2:
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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by aolver »

:hankie:
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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by MickLifeCrisis »

allegrita wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:25 am And yet somehow, the magic happened in the midst of all that chaos, and the show was a huge inspiration for so many of us. :notworthy: It's kind of astounding that they managed to make it at all, under those circumstances.
I knew the show had behind the scenes problems, and several show runners, but I had no real understanding of what went on. :sigh: :sadface: It really is amazing the show got made at all.
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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by Catmoon »

Thanks for sharing this.

Hopefully, things will start to change in Hollywood.

I have to say, as sad as I was at the cancellation, I was never sure I wanted to see what they'd do with a second season, and this only strengthens that.
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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by allegrita »

I agree, Cat. The show would have changed so much--and I'd have hated to fall out of love with it. I kinda cherish that it was our little, perfectly imperfect, 16-episode jewel. And losing it inspired us to keep telling their stories ourselves. :hearts:
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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by MickLifeCrisis »

allegrita wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 3:43 am I agree, Cat. The show would have changed so much--and I'd have hated to fall out of love with it. I kinda cherish that it was our little, perfectly imperfect, 16-episode jewel. And losing it inspired us to keep telling their stories ourselves. :hearts:
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Re: Twitter thread re: Hollywood toxicity and it's effect on Moonlight

Post by Moonlightsonata »

It was really interesting to read all of this and I appreciate it being posted.
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