DreamWorld - Writers Room

I am here with Sonny Pistiglione, the writer of Dreamworld.

He was also the writer of Love and Darkness from season one of Table Read Podcast. We just finished the reading.
It was so much fun. How are you feeling? I'm super excited.
Great. It came out 10 times better than I could ever expect.
Really? Yeah. I mean, the voice is, you never know what you're going to get when people are doing, you know, creatures and all these great characters.
But I mean, the cast is incredible. That's so great to hear.
Yeah. And this is Sean Sharma, one of the co-founders of Table Read Podcasts, along with Mark Nell and Jack Levy.
And lead of the Dream World. I was honored today to be able to play Cassidy, and thank you for trusting me with that opportunity.
Kids, I need to tell you something. No, another story first.

Mom hasn't called yet.

It's only fair.

Come on, read Snow White, just till she calls.

Okay.

One more.

I'll read Snow White.

Read it like Mom does, with the voices.

Cassidy nods, his heart breaking.

Ruben slowly walks over to Tessa's bed and slips under the covers. Okay, here we go with Snow White.
You brought a great humanity, I thought, and I think that was good. That's great.
You're a very innocent dad in this crazy world, which I think is very important to have that grounded person while we have these big, wild characters and personalities. What were some surprises today from you hearing it all come to life? Because you've had this script for, you said, almost 20 years.
Yeah. I think one of the main things was that there were lines that I didn't expect to be funny.
But when, you know, in the hands of these characters and in the hands of these actors who created these great voices, a regular line that I didn't mean to be funny became funny. What's an example? Can you remember one? I don't remember.
There's just so many of them. And the ironic thing is, is I think it is heavy subject matter, but it does bring a lightness to it.
And I think a lot of the demons took their lines to the next level. I think Ice Princess, everything she says is pretty hysterical to me.
Just her reactions to her father, her reactions to Prince Charming, when she doesn't recognize him, I thought was amazing. She was the one that was great.
Jack, Mastodon, Dorgy Porgy. They all just had that little twinge of off center, and it just makes it so spicy.
Don't do anything stupid. We're here for the magic beans.
Nobody has to get hurt. Under which Mastodon draws a mini Gatling gun which fits around his right fist.
Mr. Bank President, I am the fabulous Scarlet Hood and we have come to rob this bank in the name of the Redeemers.
Suddenly we hear footsteps running across the roof toward a stained glass skylight built into the bank's ceiling. The footsteps stop, and Jack comes crashing through the skylight, conveniently landing right next to Scarlet.
Jack, mid-20s, is a thief with an eye patch covering his right eye. Ah, is there a better man than I? Here he goes again.
Do you see this as live action, right, or animation? You know, I think it could go both ways. Because I think, you know, in a world that's driven by IP, our business, this is like one of the ultimate IPs, because you have two dozen IPs.
Of course, if you're looking for something that has roots, each of these stories goes back 100, 200, 300 years, sometimes 500, 600 years in Europe. And they tie into so many different countries' cultures.
Exactly. And they're all based in something that we all know.
Everybody, every culture in every country reads their children one of these books. So where did you even come up with the idea to tell a story like this with all of these well-known fairy tales and nursery rhymes? Somebody asked me this, and I remembered today.
I was flying to see my brother. I was in New York at the time.
I was off from working in Hollywood for a few weeks. And my brother was in Florida.
So I went. I was flying down, and I was in the airport.
And I think I saw there was a children's section of books I was looking for a book and there was a Little Red Riding Hood book and I just kind of looked at it and was like wouldn't it be cool if she was a werewolf and then as I was walking I'm like yeah she could be a werewolf and then the big bad wolf could be her wolf like a dog and I was like oh I could do a movie like that and then i said you know be funny if like jack jack the beanstalk was in it jack was like a thief and then on the plane i just started writing down well let me see if i can just see how many characters i can create an alternate version of and it just kept going and then i was like oh well merlin can be the. He can be the sleeper.
And little Bo Peep, she can lose her sight because she gets in trouble because her sheep do something bad, which ends up being the sheep eat the magic beans. And I was saying, we can call her the shepherd.
And it just starts to flow. You can take Humpty Dumpty and have suddenly that be like owner of a gentleman's club.
Owner of a gentleman's club. And when I wrote Cinderella, I'm like, oh, Cinderella.
So fun, because you've got not only the recognition of these characters that are in stories we've grown up with, all of us have grown up with, but then, so you've got this curiosity of, oh, I want to see how these characters are portrayed in something other than the stories we've heard them in. But then you've also got the alter world, the dream world version of them when it gets all messed up where you get to see a totally spicy new side of all of these kind of well-known characters.
I just think this is really primed for people to be very curious about how this is portrayed. What do you think would be rated? I, you know, I think we do have some, not dark subject matter, but there's definitely level of violence in this i think like a middle it's not like an r rated pg 13 i think i think and and also i'm not opposed to editing it to make it a little lighter in certain places you know it was it was written at a different time when i think we were a little less sensitive to certain violence.

And now we're obviously a little more sensitive to the world around us. But I think overall, there's a lot of emotion in the shows that we've just filmed and recorded.
I mean, it's the loss of who we are and the loss of who we could be. And I think a lot of our characters express those two sides.
because even though some of them have great lives now,

they're not necessarily what should have been and so they they take up that that that honor of fixing it even though they're going to lose everything and i think that's the definition of a hero they're not none of our good guys jack and scarlet and mastodon you know they don't think twice about it they they talk a little bit but when cassidy says that he has children that's when mother it convinces mother who's the mother to all these children like oh this guy's real and your performance when you say these are my children she that's the thing that convinces her. And the story hinges on convincing her because then she has Jack and everybody go and do their mission.
So I like the emotion in it, but that's not our selling point. It's not what it's fun and just the transformation of all these great characters.
And I love the demons. The demons was one that I was like, oh, what can I do with dwarves? How can I make them cool?

I want to say the demons are a little more fun to me

than the dwarves.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

You're the seven.

You're my Betts.

Betts is a tad reductive boss,

more like friends with killing benefits. I'm sorry, I haven't been myself lately.
Us two. Seems to be going around.
Anyway, this guy was trying to put the moves on ya, and that's a no-no. So now it's time to step up to the plate.
You don't owe him nothing. Sleazy's right.
Killings got to be done here. And you're the only one who can do it.
Buck steps with you, boss. Yeah, you know? But you start writing the names.
Like, I remember I wrote some of them on a napkin when I was on the plane. And I was just writing, like, dumpy and meany and creepy.
And I was like, it just, the thing about stories, and it's the thing that I've always said and why it's so hard to pick a story to write. Because the right story kind of writes itself and comes out.
I think when you're writing the wrong story, it can be hard and it's a challenge. And I remember writing this one was very easy because the story kind of, in a weird way, because of all the mythologies of the characters, it kind of becomes what it becomes.
Like, they're looking for the golden egg. Well, the golden egg is a big thing in Jack's story, and so you're like, oh, yeah, that's a great MacGuffin because you always need like the thing or what's the diamond or whatever the thing's going to be.
And so it just kind of made so much sense as I started building it. And it was easy.
And those are like, as a writer, when you sit down, the hardest thing is not getting sidetracked or losing hope or focus because you can't quite get the story where you want it to be and this one felt right from the beginning it was never I never was like oh I'm not getting it it kind of came out quickly and then it took time to write each scene and do all the nuances but I had the bones pretty quick because it's like oh yeah they got to go back in time you know uh which is a tried and true trope which always works and then you get to read up on all the all the different fairy tales and nursery rhymes too and you start to learn things you didn't know like i didn't know bluebeard killed his wives i just thought he was a great pirate and so you start to see all these different things yeah that was one of the most heartbreaking parts of the story was knowing that Staria would disappear if Dreamworld went back. I know.
And it's somebody who Bluebeard came to really care about. And you know that he's going to go back to being the murderous pirate when it all...
Well, the funny thing was is I needed a girlfriend for Bluebeard. And because I...
There was like two choices. It was like Rapunzel, which I couldn't quite, because of her hair and what she's known for, it didn't quite fit what that character was going to be doing.
Well, and she'd just throw everybody down with her hair getting cut. Exactly.
She could throw her hair at the beast. So I made up Staria.
And I think someone, a note I had gotten back from someone was like, you know,

this is like Staria and Starlight Starbite.

It doesn't quite make sense, Sonny.

And I was like, yeah, but like, and I was like, oh, that's it.

That's actually the thing.

It doesn't make sense because it doesn't work because she's not real.

And that would be so much harder for Bluebeard to accept and make her more heroic.

Because in a lot of ways, the script is about doing the right thing. And if she's willing to do the right thing, knowing she's going to disappear, then the others have to do the right thing.
What was the thought process behind giving General Pan, General Peter Pan, a lisp? You know, I wanted him to just be different. And that was it.
Instead of the swashbuckling hero teenager. Yeah, exactly.
I wanted him to have a little bit of a lisp. Because, you know, the real Peter Pan was like the head of the Lost Boys.
He was the leader. So he was the most popular.
So I wanted to give him something that made him a little detracted. Something that was a little bit of an insecurity.
he ended up with a hook but and he ended up with a hook you know and so um it that it was just it was those fun conversions like where even as a as the audience you're like no no we want to go back to the real dream world we don't want to have this mishigots like exactly exactly you know or like dragonflies like a little buzzing her fireballs. Oh, poor Tinkerbell turned into a little demon.
Exactly. There's fire coming out of her mouth and she gets eaten by Prince Frog.
You're known for writing these top hit dramatic projects, like TV shows that we've all watched. But this is more whimsical and more fantasy and all that.
So is this, like, what's closer to you and the kind of stories you want to tell is it the dramatic stories like that or more of the whimsical fantasy type of stuff you know i think they all are parts of me i think the thing when i go into a meeting and somebody says so what do you like to write i can't i can't say what I like to write. I know when i i hear the story and i leave a room and i'm saying that's a story like for instance when we did love and darkness love and darkness i was working on a warsaw ghetto story and it it was good but you know all the characters that we use love and dark were in that but it wasn't quite right and then i met with scooter braun and he told me this story about his uncle and or his grandfather sorry and his

last thing he said was and you know and he was hungry and there were these tough jewish uh people

and hungry who used to kill germans if they came up their mountain i'm like i'll be back in two

weeks and i was like that was the thing and i never you never know when you hear the story

the vesicucha and you hear the thing and you're like that's where i'm gonna you know put all my eggs in the basket and that's just sort of how i write like i never know what that thing is that's going to drive me but but it it is also uh it has a commercial aspect to it like a commercial bell has to go off and for this one i remember back when i wrote it was like there's nothing like it out there and and even still there's nothing like it out there now because most of the times a studio or you know will redo one story right peter pan is now a cop and that's the movie or or Snow White is now the dictator but that's the movie it's not all of them together and I think that's the advantage of something like this happening because those are great but you know what you get with those these this is so different because you get to see the the wide birth of every character of everybody's lore and i think that's i think that's more fun and i think it's more appealing to a buyer or a studio i think someone hears it and they'll see oh wow like there's no way someone doesn't know one of these stories and therefore we should uh do some business here well yeah the industry is definitely going through a change, especially after this last year. Oh, yeah.
And I think some of the shine is off of all of the same kind of superhero types of movies. So going back to stories like this that remind me more of things like The Princess Bride or the kind of golden age of these romantic fantasy kind of imaginative worlds, I really look forward to people hearing this.
So what are you working on these days? What's next for Sonny? Well, I'm developing a cop show right now off a Danish property. That's very exciting.
I'm doing some business with BET Plus. We have a pilot over there.
And putting that together and seeing if that's going to move forward And they're great over there. And trying to find the next story to write.
And that can be a very lonely place because you look for inspiration everywhere. And when you don't find it, it can be frustrating because you're trying to find gold somewhere.
And whether you walk around the mall or you go to the movies or i'm i'm playing with my daughter or me and my wife we're at dinner or we're watching tv i'm always like there's part of me that's the trying to absorb everything that's out there and see what happens and you never know you know i had had an idea years ago i was sitting in a doctor's office i was going for a checkup on my elbow. I hurt my elbow when working out.
And I came up with an idea. So it's sort of like you don't get, I don't think ideas come when you sit at a computer screen.
This is the one time I advocate for writers, don't sit at a computer screen, except if you're going to do research. But it's like that's when you're walking around or you do go on a vacation or you go away for a weekend because your subconscious is always working and you never quite know what it's going to pick up.
So you change your location to let new stimulus kind of jog the imagination. Yeah.
I think you can't put out without taking in. And on my schedule that I've had, I handed in this project to BET.
I was writing hard, you know, you know, after the strike ended, I started, picked up the pen again. And I wrote hard for months.
And, you know, you're putting out all that energy and all that creative energy. The tank's empty.
So trying to come up with a new story, you know, is hard. And especially, you know, as I was doing that, I'm doing notes on this.
I'm developing the cop show. I have some other projects that I'm doing.
I go for things that I love. I go for things that aren't out there.
And I go for things that make me keep thinking about it. Like when I first met my wife.
We met and I couldn't stop thinking about her and it's like oh that's it and i think that's how when it's right it writes itself yeah and it just you sit at the coming out and coming out and again going back to this that's how this was i remember i was when i flew down i landed with my brother and i had a laptop with me and i just said i just gotta just do a little writing in the morning and it's like three hours later and I'm still, I landed with my brother, and I had a laptop with me. And I just said, well, I just got to just do a little writing in the morning, and it's like three hours later, and I'm still, I'm like, Midas, and oh, and he can be able to turn things into gold, and it just keeps coming.
Oh, they pull the sword from the stone, and that's how he kills Marigold, and that's the sword that killed Sleeper. And it just comes out, and that's, it's a beautiful process.
Yeah. But it can be frustrating.
And I think not giving up on it and accepting the uncertainty that you're not always going to get the answer when you want it is the key to getting the answer. Well, in that particular story of Midas's greed killing his own daughter is just the symbolism in that everybody can relate to or

something. Well, so what is one of your favorite stories you've experienced over the last year, whether it's a movie or a TV show? What's a piece of storytelling that you really just loved? You know, I really liked the new Mr.
and Mrs. Smith on Amazon.
I love it. I think it's super creative and inventive and fun and so different from the original that it doesn't feel, it feels like its own thing.
And I'm a big fan of both actors and I just thought the writing was incredible. And I really, I've enjoyed that quite a bit.
I've watched some Korean dramas. I love international dramas.
You know, there's a lot of good stuff out there. And, you know, I just have a daughter, a young baby, so we don't get to, you know, we start watching something and we don't come back to something.
Well, either fall asleep or we don't come back to it for like, oh, what were we watching again? Oh, this thing. But I made it through the season of that i watched the new season of true detective which i was quite impressed with it's it's a shame that people are saying negative things about it i thought uh isa lopez did an amazing job well then i can't wait to watch it it's a it's a real it's really it's a really smart uh version of that show that's fantastic you know yeah i've i enjoyed it bit.
Well, Sonny, I just want to say thank you so much for a second time doing us just the incredible privilege and honor of telling one of your stories and allowing us to live in this fun world for an afternoon. And then so many of you listening will be able to enjoy it as well.
So thank you so much. Thank you for being the star of our four episodes

and bringing it, man, and bringing Cassidy to life.

It was awesome.

It's my honor.

Thank you.

Oh, shoot.

We went a lot longer than I thought we were.