DreamWorld - Writers Room

I am here with Sonny Pistiglioni, the writer of dream World.
He was also the writer of Love of Darkness from
season one of Table repodcast We just finished the reading.
It was so much fun. How are you feeling super excited? Great?
It came out ten times better than I could ever expect. Really,
the boy yeah, I mean the voice is you never
know what you're gonna get when people are doing you know,
creatures and all these great characters.
But the cast is incredible.
That's so great to hear you. And this is Sean Scharmer,
one of the co founders of Table Repodcasts 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 I need to tell you something.
No another story first hasn't called yet.
It's only fair.
Come on, read snow white just so.
She calls, Okay, one more, I'll I'll read snow White
you like mom does with the voices.
Cassidy nods his heartbreaking 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 right. I think 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 the script for you
said almost twenty 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, any 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 Masterdon Georgie Porgi. They all
just had that little twinge of off center, and it
just makes it so spicy.
They don't do anything stupid. We're here for the magic beans.
Nobody has to get hurt.
Under which Mastadon draws the mini gatling gun which fits
around his right fist.
Mister 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 towards 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 Scott. Jack mid twenties is a thief
with an eyepatch covering his right eye.
Is there a better man than I?
Here he goes again.
You see this as a live action writer 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 eyeps, because you
have two dozen eyeps. Of course, if you're looking for
something that has roots. Each of these stories goes back
one hundred two hundred, three hundred years, sometimes five or
six hundred years, and you're.
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 riding good book and I just kind of looked
at it and was like, wouldn't it be cool if
she was a were wolf?
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, it'd be funny if
like Jack was when Jack the Beanstalk was in the
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
big source where you can be the sleeper and little
bo peeps. 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
we can call her the shepherd and it just starts
to flow and.
Like a day humpty dumpty, and have suddenly that be
like an owner of a gentleman's call general.
And Sin, when I wrote Sinderella, I'm like, oh, Sin, Durella.
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 altar 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 you would be rated?
I you know, I think we do have some not
dark subject matter, but there's definitely a level of violence
in this I think like a middle it's not like
an R rated 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 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 for the world around us. But I think overall,
there's a lot of emotion in the shows that we've
just 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 expressed those two sides, because even though some of
them have great lives now, they're not necessarily what should
have been. And so they take up that that honor
of fixing it, even though they're going to lose everything
and I think that's definition of a hero. They're not
none of our good guys, Jack and Scarlet and Macedon.
You know, they don't think twice about it. 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, you know,
go and do their mission. So I like the emotion
in it, but it doesn't but that's not our selling point,
you know, like it's some one. It's fun and just
the transformation of all these great characters. So, and I
love the demons. The demons was one that I was like, Oh,
what can I do with dwarfs?
How can I make them?
I want to say, the demons are a little more
fun to me than the dwarfs.
One, two, three, four or five six, seven? You're the seven,
you're my That's.
That's is a tad reductive boss and more like friends
with killing benefits.
I'm sorry I haven't been myself lately. Those two seems
to be gold around anyway. This guy was trying to
put the moves sonya and.
That's no no.
So now it's time to step up to the plate.
You don't owe him nothing.
This lazy's right. Killings gotta be done here and you're
the only one who can do it.
Fuck 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's 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 when you're
writing the wrong story can be hard and it's a challenge.
And I remember writing this one was very easy because
the story kind of I mean 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 story, and so you're like, oh, yeah,
that's a great mcguffin 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 gotta go back
in time, you know, which is a tried and true
trope which always works. And then you get to read
up on all the different fairy tales and nursing 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 the world went back, I.
Know 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
blue Beard, and because I there was like two choices.
There 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 luw everybody down
with her hair.
Got 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 Sixstaria and Starlight star Bright, 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 itshbuckling hero. 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 was like
made him little distracted, something that was a little bit
of an insecurity.
Now he ended up with the hook.
But and he ended up with a hook, you know,
and so that it was just it was those fun
conversions like we're.
Even as the audience, You're like, no, no, no, we want
to go back to the real dream world. We don't
want to have this michigots.
Like exactly exactly, you know, or like dragonflies like a
little buzzy.
I love dragon.
Turned into a little demon exactly. You know, this fire
coming out of her mouth. She gets eaten by Prince Frog.
You know, you're known for writing these, you know, 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 are 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 some
he says, so what do you like to write?
I can't. I can't say what I like to write.
I only know when I hear the story and I
leave a room and I say, that's a story. Like
for instance, when we did Love in Darkness, Love and Darkness.
I was working on a Warsaw ghetto story and it
was good, but you know, all the characters that we
used to love in arts 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 or
his grandfather.
Sorry, and his last thing he said was and you know,
and he was hungry.
And there were these tough Jewish people in Hungary who
used to kill Germans if they came up their mountain.
And 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 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 it is all so 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
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 snow White is now a 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. This is so different because you get to
see the wide birth of every character of everybody's law.
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 do some business here.
The industry is definitely going through a change, especially after
this last year. Oh yeah and so, 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 like 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 Sunny?
Well, I'm developing a cop shore right now off a
Danish property.
That's very exciting.
I'm doing some business with b et Plus and 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 right,
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 trying to find gold somewhere, and whether you walk.
Around the mall or you go to the movies, or
I'm playing with my daughter, or me and my wife
were at dinner, or we're watching TV. I'm always like,
there's part of me that's 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 check up on my elbow. I hurt my elbow
and 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 it a computer screen, except if you're gonna do research.
But it's like that's when you were walking around or
you do go on a vacation or you go away
for 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 imagine.
Yeah, you know, you I think you can't put out
without taking in and on my schedule that I've had,
you know, I just you know, I handed in this
project to be et.
I was writing hard, you know.
You know, after the strike ended, I started picked up
the pen again and I wrote hard for a month
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,
it was hard, and especially you know as we're doing
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 just 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.
And it's just key.
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 Land with
my brother and I had a laptop with me and
I just said, no, I just got out, 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 and oh they pulled the
sword from the zone. And that's how he kills Marigold,
and that's the sword that kills Sleeper, and it just
comes out, and that's It's a beautiful process, 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 and 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 Mister Missus Smith 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
watched some Korean dramas. I love international dramas. There's you know,
there's a lot of good stuff out there, and you know,
I just had a daughter of young babies. So we
don't get to you know, we start watching something and
we don't come back to something. Well, we don't come
back to it for like, oh, well we're 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,
is Lope is an amazing job.
Well, then I can't wait to watch it. It's it's a
real it's real.
It's a really smart version of that show. You know.
Yeah, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Well, Sonny, I just want to say thank you so
much for 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 we'll
be able to enjoy it as well. So thank you
so much.
And thank you for being the star of our our
our four episodes and in bringing it man and bringing
Cassidy to life.
You oh shoot, we went a lot longer than I
thought you were