fbpx

BPS 085: From Legendary Flop to a Moneymaking Machine with Waterworld’s Peter Rader

Today on the show we have the writer and creator of the legendary film Waterworld Peter Rader. I wanted to bring Peter on the show to discuss what it was like to be a part of one of the biggest budget films in Hollywood history at the time.

After the melting of the polar ice caps, most of the globe is underwater. Some humans have survived, and even fewer still, notably the Mariner (Kevin Costner), have adapted to the ocean by developing gills. A loner by nature, the Mariner reluctantly befriends Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and her young companion, Enola (Tina Majorino), as they escape from a hostile artificial island. Soon the sinister Smokers are pursuing them in the belief that Enola holds the key to finding the mythical Dryland.

For those of you who may not know Waterworld was considered one of the biggest box-office flops in history. The production was plagued with production issues, the script was re-written too many times to count and the budget soars from $100 million to $172 million. The film was a punching bag for the press. Waterworld ended up making $265 million at the box office. That with the revenue generated over the years from television rights, VHS, DVD, special editions Blu-rays the film turned out to be one of the most valuable films in the Universal library.

Where the money machine really gets turned on is from the Waterworld: A Live Sea Stunt Spectacular attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood. The show has been a mainstay at the park for over 20 years, replacing the Miami Vice Stunt Show. The attraction has also been duplicated four other times around the world including Universal Studios Japan and Singapore and has generated Universal hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.

Peter Rader has worked as a film and television writer for 20 years. He has developed numerous projects for other studios, and industry leaders such as Steven Spielberg, Dino De Laurentiis, and John Davis.

He has worked as a cinematographer, editor, and producer on a number of award-winning documentary projects, including AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, which THE GUARDIAN dubbed the Indie sleeper hit of 2014, following its extensive worldwide theatrical run.

Peter was raw and candid with me about his amazing journey with Waterworld, which is celebrating its 25-year anniversary this year, and his other Hollywood adventures. Enjoy my eye-opening conversation with Peter Rader.

Right-click here to download the MP3

LINKS

SPONSORS

  1. Bulletproof Script Coverage – Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals
  2. AudibleGet a Free Screenwriting Audiobook

Alex Ferrari 0:47
I'd like to welcome to the show Peter Rader, man, how are you doing, Peter?

Peter Rader 5:13
I am great. Thanks for having me.

Alex Ferrari 5:15
Oh, man, thank you so much for coming on the show you you've been a, you've been on my other shows, as a documentarian, as a producer as a self distribution guru. And it's so odd because when I first I was so excited to meet you, and we had that lunch that day in that ridiculously expensive Indian restaurant. I still never forgot that, like, how much is the buffet. But we were sitting there and I was so excited about the movie you did with called awake about Yogananda that I really never realized that you were the writer of water was only like, months, or maybe even a year later. I was like, we I think we're gonna do another interview. And I was like, Oh, let me just check out what else he's done. And I was like, Oh my god, he wrote Waterworld. I'm like, I can't believe and I'm a fan of the movie actually loved the movie when it came out. And and I'm like, Oh, I gotta get him on the show. So thank you so much for coming on the show to talk all things Waterworld and your experience writing it and dealing with it and all the stuff that came out of it.

Peter Rader 6:17
So yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I have existed on both two extremes of the entertainment business. I've written you know, gigantic movies for the Hollywood Studios. And I've also you know, produced indie documentaries about a spiritual master. So those two very Yeah, I've got stories stories to tell.

Alex Ferrari 6:37
So I so for for everyone listening, how did you get into the business as a writer?

Peter Rader 6:43
So I had a light bulb go off in college, I took a film production course. And I was like, this is it. Got it. This is it. This is my life. I'm making movies. I'm telling stories. I love that I love the technology. I love you know, the whole idea of the narrative and, and, and, you know, just the logical archetypes and telling epic stories, all of that got the bug. I thought I was on a directing track. That's, that's I was like, I'm gonna direct I'm going to be a director, because I just loved you know, just that whole thing. Just controlling the whole process is particularly post production. Got to Hollywood moved out here and did some independent, like, music videos. I did a couple of music videos as a director, you know, I was hustling and actually did a couple of low budget features. I did a gothic horror movie called grandmother's house, which was great. And, and another genre movie called hired to kill which was dirty dozen with women.

Alex Ferrari 7:42
Nice.

Peter Rader 7:44
Both are the same producer. And but it was kind of like this thankless thing where it wasn't kind of getting to me, getting me to the kind of stories that I wanted to tell. And meanwhile, sort of on the side, I was kind of doing some writing. I never saw myself as a writer that was so interesting. It actually took me years to realize, you know, I'm a writer, even after what, I didn't realize I was a writer. But I had developed this story. And interestingly, the genesis of the story did come out of low the low budget world. Up until that point, in my early and mid 20s. I was thinking What can I do for no money? Like what can I do on in, you know, in one location on a weekend, you know, like every young filmmakers thinking like, what can I contain contained contained small, small, small, and this one guy invited me in for a meeting, he worked for Roger Corman, his name was Brad crevalle. And he actually went on to produce a bunch of the Farrelly brothers movies, you know, pretty big producer, but at the time, he was kind of hustling and raising money for Roger Corman, by any means necessary. So in this case, he said, okay, Peter, here's the deal. I've got some South African money, okay, I got some South African investors, and they want to make a Mad Max ripoff. If you write it, I'll let you direct it. Okay, so it was like, Okay, I'm being asked to moral questions here. was straight

Alex Ferrari 9:07
straight up Mad Max rip off. Got it. Okay.

Peter Rader 9:10
Yes. So, am I willing to take the South African Blood Money? Okay, because it was still the apartheid era.

Alex Ferrari 9:17
Yeah, Jesus, right. Yeah. So

Peter Rader 9:19
there's that and then second was I would like to do a Mad Max rip off. Okay. So unfortunately, the answer to the first question was, yes, if it was gonna get me my directing break, you know, whatever. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. Second question was was I willing to write another one of these Mad Max rip offs that were a dime a dozen that everyone was developing that was you know, everyone was bringing to MIPCOM and AFM here. I got this. I got, um, you know, I got gasoline blowing up in the desert. I got all beat up cars. I got machine guns. It was just completely oversaturated and boring. And it wasn't exciting to me. But I remember walking, you know, in the marina here in LA, and a bunch of us had like, charted. Botha river we're gonna go sailing whatever and I looked around I was like I got one of those light bulbs is like on water madmax on water that's how we redefined the genre show happens all the time. It's like you know, Star Wars is a Western space like you take a

Alex Ferrari 10:14
die hard diehard on a boat Die Hard to build a die hard a plane. Yeah,

Peter Rader 10:18
I heard with a blind guy, whatever you change up one huge one element and it becomes a completely different story, because we are rehashing the same stories over and over again. Anyway. And Waterworld is a Western. I'll get to that in a second. But I did come up with that idea, which is let's set it on water flooded planet. How cool would that be? boats jet skis. Boom. So I went back to Brad and I said, Okay, Brad, here I got, we're gonna do Mad Max on water. And he looked at me, are you gonna have your friggin it's gonna cost a fortune. A movie like that. Literally, it's gonna cost us $5 million dollars.

Alex Ferrari 10:53
Fine, easily $5 million?

Peter Rader 10:55
Easy. He wants to spend like 50 grand. Right? Right, right. 100 times his budget? No. So he said no. And I said, I still like this idea. So I wrote it on spec. And I was so fearless. You know, when you're young and you don't know the rules, and you don't know all the rules that you're breaking. That's a good time. That's a beautiful, creative time. And I think I just cranked out some a draft in three weeks. And then at the time, I knew no one I knew no producers. No, right? No. My cousin was dating a writer who was working on a TV series. And I said, Would you take a look at this? Would you read it? The guy read it. And it goes, he gave me a man, you know, and I was like a man. It was a knife in the heart. So I said, Okay, I'll put this on a shelf. I'm putting this on a shelf. And I went off and I pursued these other opportunities that I mentioned the two low budget movies, okay. In the second movie, I was so disillusioned, I was like, Oh my god, this is a path to nowhere. You know, do I really want to do these movies. And I opened the drawer, I dusted off the script. And I said, this thing is not bad. I wrote it in 86. In 89, I took another look at it. I was like, This is not bad. I did a quick rewrite. By the way, I wrote the original draft on the original Macintosh computer, that the one

Alex Ferrari 12:12
Yeah, sure. I got it nice.

Peter Rader 12:16
Anyway, dusted it off. I rewrote it on a slightly later version of the Mac, I think. And, and then it was one of these just Hollywood dream stories were like, at that point, I didn't know a few producers, I gave it to one. They're like, this is really good. I'm gonna I'm gonna give it to this guy. I got an agent. I got a lawyer. Before I knew it. It was handed to john Davis. You know, it was a big producer, who had a deal at Fox. His father ended up buying Fox later. But that's a separate story. His office was in the diehard building, you know, and, and he said, I know who's perfect for this. Larry Gordon. So margins, Larry Gordon. And you know, within three weeks, I had a deal. And it wasn't just one, you know, they bought this back script. And then my crazy agent at the time, who was ICM, and then he moved to CIA in the room said, you like this thing? I you know, you know what his next project is? I don't want to talk about it. But you know, I want you to commit to two pictures. They he got me a to picture deal sight unseen on a script that didn't even exist in my imagination. I had no Wow. So, so and then, and then began my, my Baptism by fire. Because I was so naive at the time that I didn't even realize that a writer could be fired. You know? I'm the runner.

Alex Ferrari 13:41
It's my idea. What are you talking about?

Peter Rader 13:44
Yeah, exactly. So you know, development. Hell, it was just crazy. All the executives got in there. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone put a pin on the script, you know, get this I did this darker, grittier, you know, blah, blah, blah, more more edgy, more Mad Max more this, you know? And I did, I ended up doing seven drafts. You know, some new ideas came into it that were good. But mostly it was like horizontal changes are actually kind of a diminishing of the, you know, the sort of energy and

Alex Ferrari 14:13
a watering down if you will, no pun intended.

Peter Rader 14:19
And I'll take a sip of water. And, and then, you know, there was a series of writers that came on. So when Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner came aboard, I had one creative conversation with Kevin Reynolds. And then he basically said, look, I think it needs a new voice. You know, we're gonna bring in another writer. And of course, you know, Kevin Costner had someone in mind they brought in you know, who whoever I don't remember the sequence Exactly. writers, but there were five writers who actually participated in the arbitration. There was one writer Joss Whedon worked on it without any credit or whatever. He was like a script doctor literally onset but ultimately, the original Funny drafts. And you know, the thing was arbitrated. And you know, I got, of course, first position credit. And I shared with David Lee, who, you know, ended up doing some, you know, some good, good, good work on the one piece.

Alex Ferrari 15:15
Now, do you have the original script still like your version of it? I do have is it available anywhere for anybody to read?

Peter Rader 15:23
It might even be on the web. And I people have seen it. It's, it's been the subject of various I mean, we're probably going to get into this, but it was, we did various arbitrations at one point, we had to find the story of origin and trace it back. And, and here's, this is the quintessential Hollywood Story. Three months before production, so I sold the script in 1990. They went into production in 94. And in 95, the movie came out. And in fact, we're celebrating the 25th anniversary this year, um, three months before production in 1994. Chuck Gordon, Larry's brother, who was also a producer on the movie took me out to lunch, just to kind of let me know what was going on and stuff and you know, connect and, and he said to me, you know, Peter, you know, the deal is that we don't, we still don't have a script that's as good as your original spec script. I was like, You gotta be kidding. Just Just use the real. Yeah, should be written exactly, thank you shoot the original. And he said, too late. The train has left the station, we've built a set, we've committed to it, we've committed to producing this other script. And even though it's not as good as your original, it loses the energy, when you write it into the ground, there's something about you know, original ground.

Alex Ferrari 16:44
Well, let me ask you a question. Because you were, how old were you? When this happened?

Peter Rader 16:48
Let's see. I was around one, seven, I think.

Alex Ferrari 16:51
All right. So that's fairly young, to be thrown into the deep end of the pool here, cuz you're, you're at this point playing at the upper echelons of Hollywood, and, and you're playing with some really big players of the day. So when someone you know, I want writers listening to understand that, it's not always the best script that gets made. It's just not. There's politics, ego, money, there's so many things that get thrown into the mix. And that he took you out to lunch and said, Hey, I wish we never got anything as good as your original script. That's a great definition of Hollywood, isn't it? Like it's like, oh, we we had something really good. We watered it down to appease all of the egos and all of the politics involved. And now we're this man, wish we could just go back to what we what we originally bought. Now. Unless you are Joss Wheaton, Christopher Nolan in Tarantino Sorkin you know, very established screenwriters. And even they depending on guarantee knows much, but maybe even they still have to deal with some of this stuff. They would, they would have had the juice to push back a bit. You had no juice, because you were just happy. You were happy to be there.

Peter Rader 18:05
Yeah. And and also, um, this goes to another question that is really some point to make, which is in in the Hollywood structure, you're assigning your copyright, you give away your copyright in about an hour. And they buy they buy you out, which is unlike Europe, you know, and unlike playwrights, you know, in Europe, writers retain their copyrights and they give a license and extended license, you know, to to the producer, and you know, playwrights control their material and on Broadway, they own the copyright in you know, hollywood the pact with the devil. The money is big, the upside is big, you know, there's fame, fortune, all these things, but you are giving away your copyright, which means they can do whatever they want with the material. And this is going to tie into a conversation that I hope we get to which is this whole idea of separated rights, which is certain rights that the writer retains even in the the Writers Guild contract. No, such as novelization, you have the right to turn your work into a novel, dramatic stage rights, you have the right to adapt your your work into a play version. Right. They have free rein,

Alex Ferrari 19:19
so Okay, so you so you're a few months away from production. You've been obviously there's been a barrage of writers on board at that at this point in the game. And now you've got Kevin, who, at that point was already an Oscar winning director. And and All right, I'm not sure if he didn't, right. Didn't dances, right? No,

Peter Rader 19:41
yes. But he's not directing.

Alex Ferrari 19:42
No, no, no, Kevin. No. Kevin Reynolds is directing. Yeah, I know. But but he still was a Oscar winning. Yeah, he was. He was he was it in the in the

Peter Rader 19:52
90s. It was principes he was coming off of a hit movie. The problem of movie so right but he

Alex Ferrari 19:58
was Yeah, and dances. Well, before that and Field of Dreams and all the stuff that he's been doing during that time, he was in his in the heyday of a thing. So Kevin, from what I understand, I've spoken to a few people who worked with him before after, and during that time, he pretty much controlled the show. Like he like whatever Kevin wants. Kevin gets. So if he wants a new writer to come on board, guess what, everybody that new writers coming on board, he wielded a lot of power. And that's also the almost I think the, the height of the of the of the movie star in the movie start with the movie star power. Not as much today, there are still so obviously movie stars, but not, you know, before you could literally put Kevin Costner reading a back of a cereal box. And you got 20 million opening? Yeah. You know. I mean, essentially, that's the way it worked back then. So how are you? So the movie gets started? And they're, they're producing it? And I mean, I'm assuming you went on set? I did. So okay. How was it? Because the stories are legendary of how I mean, you you're shooting on water? That like is rough. That's a rough you. You're working in the elements. It wasn't a tank, for the most part, if I'm not mistaken, right? No, it was no tank at all.

Peter Rader 21:14
In fact, here's the I understand that Kevin Reynolds, in in pre production decided to call the one guy who could give you a lot of advice about how to shoot on water. He called Spielberg. And he said, Hey, Steven, here's the deal. I'm doing Waterworld. We're doing a water. You know, do you have any advice for me? Steven Spielberg said unequivocally Do not shoot. Water. dope. I mean, in other words, you're gonna get VISTAs set out second unit, get your big shots on water. You know, whatever, your drones and helicopters. We didn't have drones back then. But do everything on a tank, everything in a tank or you know, in a stage, everything, everything everything. And Kevin Reynolds decided to disagree with Spielberg. And it just was a bizarre decision, you know, but I understand it. I want to defend Kevin Reynolds and Costner. I'm sure Costner was part of that decision. They wanted the verisimilitude. They wanted that gritty no denying it, we are out in the frickin middle of nowhere. And they did get that they don't get that. This is God forsaken flooded planet city. You know, it's out in the middle of nowhere. But the cost of that, you know, the price of that was that, you know, they went wildly over budget. And also, there's a certain ugly ugliness to the movie. Because, you know, the first shot of the day always ended up being like an 11 o'clock or noonday sun, even though their call was like 6am or 530. By the time they got all the freaking boats out there, that picture boat, catering boat, the prop boat, this boat, you know, you're not, you know, you're looking at 11. And then you've got this ugly sun. So they really ended up getting like five or six setups a day. And you know, then the one beauty shot like as that sun as the sun ball was setting in the thing, they would get that one beauty shot. That was it. That was their day,

Alex Ferrari 23:07
you know, it and I mean, there was a there was a storm to hit that right to

Peter Rader 23:12
Yeah, just before production. So here, I'm going to set up my visit to the set. So about three weeks into production, I show up on set. And I'm so excited. You know, this is my first feature. I mean, there was already a little bit of that negative press, you know, going around, but you know, I didn't care presses press it was so exciting. Movie, you know, and I flew to Hawaii, where they were shooting big island off the west coast and and I show up and I I'm getting this energy, like from the crew, like everyone is like glaring at me. Like why they glaring at me. And everyone was like, that's the fucking writer, you know,

Alex Ferrari 23:48
that's the guy who will put us through this.

Peter Rader 23:51
Exactly. That's what it was, you know, and, and I suddenly realized that you know, I here I am arriving three weeks into production. And they're like two and a half weeks late. Already, all they got was like two or three days of shooting, you know, three weeks in and everyone saw the writing on the wall. It was a disaster. A couple of weeks before production, that enormous set that floating set that sank it saying I need to rebuild it from scratch.

Alex Ferrari 24:17
Yeah, that's a Dennis Hopper of like, fourth thing.

Peter Rader 24:21
Yeah, no, not the Dennis Hopper thing. The good guys the eight. Oh,

Alex Ferrari 24:24
that's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Peter Rader 24:25
Yeah. Yeah, that that thing sank and you know, it was just a little bit of a disaster. So in that way,

Alex Ferrari 24:33
so just for everybody listening, if you're on if you're doing a movie, and on day one, you're a page behind. You're already in trouble. You got to pick that up. If you're two and a half weeks in and you've got what was a three day shoot or two and a half days of actual shooting

Peter Rader 24:52
rereads and they've gotten three days of shooting correct on them. This is

Alex Ferrari 24:55
an absolute disaster. You can pull your way out of it, it would be a miracle and the only thing that can fix that as money, that's that there's no catching up. It's just a money hose. And at the time, what was the starting budget of the film? If you don't want to ask me?

Peter Rader 25:15
I'm gonna guess, you know, there was one point at which we were actually looking at another director, this I guess he was Norwegian, his name was Niels gout. And he was, you know, a talented indie guy, but you know, he was not. This was where they were thinking, you know, we're gonna make this thing for 60 million or something. Well, you know, we'll really contain it. By the time we got, you know, movie stars in and stuff, it was it was up there was, you know, pushing whatever. 8090 ultimately, I think the budget was 175, which made it the most expensive movie of all time for five minutes. Because it was immediately eclipsed by like, 30 other movies, including that. The the Batman one with Schwarzenegger, and Clooney, and all Batman and Robin, which was just, yeah. So the above the line alone was like 16 million on that, you know, right. So they so so it was like, you know, short lived record for the most expensive movie of all time. But, you know, that's not the only reason it became a punching bag. It was all it also coincided with, you know, as you said, Costner himself was, you know, wielding his enormous power, and yet, he was very vulnerable. He was his marriage was falling apart, there was some scandal involving, you know, some affair that he had in Hawaii. And, and the press just decided, let's go to town. But here's, here's a good story. You know, we're over budget, you know, Heaven, you know, where they call it Kevin's gate for a while.

Alex Ferrari 26:37
Yeah, Kevin's instead of Heaven's Gate. Yeah,

Peter Rader 26:39
this star fish star. This is great. This is a story. And then it's that story turned out to be a myth, you know, and we're gonna get to that which is ultimately, you know, that water, the

Alex Ferrari 26:52
legacy, the legacy of the AI, so you're going on set, so everyone hates you? What else happened on that day when you were there?

Peter Rader 26:59
I, you know, went out on the boat and hung out with Costner and we chatted and Hopper, I think was in the scene, or no, maybe I saw him earlier, whatever. And we, it was all very pleasant, you know, and, and it was exciting for me. But, you know, ultimately, it was, you know, it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I was super pumped and super excited. And also, I was hard. So I was heartsick. Because I was, I was realizing that the essence of what I had written was not really in there. You know, Chuck Gordon had told me as much but I was also feeling and I was sensing it, you know, they had made a series of choices that were really kind of taking the heart out of the movie a little bit, and just making it kind of, you know, edgy and kind of the wrong way, in my opinion. So, so it was like, okay, you know, I stayed there for a week, I went to the set a couple times, and then I went home.

Alex Ferrari 27:50
So that I mean, so you're 27, around that age, and you're walking on at the time the most expensive movie ever made. And, and that's your script. I mean, that catapult I mean, there has to be a thrill. Regardless of the punching bag, regardless of the press, I would be so excited. And it's just such a massive film, like the size of it. I mean, on the water, and the, it was a fairly epic film to be shot.

Peter Rader 28:17
It was, you know, I have to say that the I think two to two moments in that story were bigger than that. When I actually sold that script, no spec script, and there was like a little bit of a bidding war and everything. And I was part of that whole spec script thing. I mean, that that moment for me was like, oh, man, you know, this is great in my dream, you know, and I remember that Christmas, it was just before Christmas in 89. That my father was coming out to visit, you know. And, and, you know, he, you know, I just ended up renting renting like a limo and pick him up to live on chef David stuff. It was a lot of fun. I mean, I was 27 you know, I was so young. And so unprepared for that voyage, you know, and, and, and the sad moment, you know, had this kind of bittersweet feeling to it. And then, ultimately, you know, then finally, the third moment was the premiere, you know, this huge Hollywood premiere at the Mann's Chinese. And, you know, again, another limo and you know, this whole thing, and, you know, I brought the 20 friends and that was really exciting. And, again, it was a mixed feeling there. The first part of it was super exciting. Kevin Reynolds idea to deconstruct the universal logo, you hear you have the universal logo, the globe and the letters wrapping around and then they float away and you see the globe and you see the continents disappearing, disappearing, disappearing and drilling in all the world and it's all water and then you come in on on Kevin, you know, on the timer, and I was like, oh, Like, it's a great moment, like, they nailed it. And then you know, the first scene of the movie was the first scene of every draft that was written, you know, which never changed was my scene, which is pices, puts into a contraption, filters it, and he drinks his home urine that tells you visually sets up the whole movie with, say, the words, you know, which is really,

Alex Ferrari 30:23
which is, and I want to just jump on that for a second, because, as opposed to a lot of a lot of writers will write it because you needed to establish what was going on, in a very quick and efficient way. I can't think of another way that you could have done it better, obviously, because after 400 writers or people wrote on it, they didn't change that, because it was so well constructed. Because without one word, you're right, you know, oh, this is a Waterworld. There's no land. And freshwater seems to be an issue.

Peter Rader 30:59
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I have a friend of my son's goes to USC film school and was taking a sort of interest, screenwriting class, and I forgot the professor's name. But, you know, basically, he was talking about, you know, grabbing the audience in the first five minutes and setting up. And he said, Who here has seen knows the opening of Waterworld actually use Waterworld as a case study. And, of course, no one raised their hand. But this one kid by my son's friend knew the film that I and it was that scene, that idea of just you know, the economy of really no sending up the whole thing and just, you know, visually,

Alex Ferrari 31:37
so when, so the movie comes out. And it's already I mean, you know, like, I've had other I've had other writers and creators on that have been in like, cultural Zeitgeist moments, like, we had the creators of Blair Witch, which was like a complete. I mean, I had to ask him, like, How did it feel being in the center of that storm? I have to ask you the same question, the negativity, the I mean, it was it was a punch line. Waterworld was a punch line for a long time of being a flop and like, Oh, my God, and it was like, an example of Hollywood excess and the powers of movie stars and all this stuff, which, obviously, none of this was your fault. But you get some of that blame some of that energy goes to you. What was it like, as, as a writer, and that's just as a human being to be caught up in that?

Peter Rader 32:28
Yeah, you know, um, it was interesting, very intense. And amazing. It was, it was amazing. I have to say that even the bad press was was kind of exciting on some level for me, because, as you said, it wasn't really, it wasn't my fault. You know, I created an idea. And then it basically got taken over and, you know, a series of decisions were made that I had nothing to do with. And here we were, on the other hand, you know, it was being written about, you know, in every newspaper, every round the world knew about that word, you know, that, that that title, it became part of the Zeitgeist, you know, it still is to this day, it has cult status, I still get residual checks, substantial residual checks every quarter from that movie 25 years later, because it has it kind of struck a chord of some kind. I mean, I think part of it, of course, is, you know, the origin story, which is the flood myth, every culture has a flood myth. And I was recently someone was telling me, you know, what that potentially was caused by which is, you know, there was a, there was a meteor strike potentially back way back in the day, but it wasn't just one. It wasn't just one Meteor because it wouldn't have affected all these different continents. It was this huge rock that broke up and then bom, bom, bom bom. So it had a whole bunch of splashes, and apparently, you know, wiped out a lot of cultures and hence, the, you know, that the flood myth, you know, the Noah's Ark, and every every civilization has this myth. And I think the combination of that idea, which is probably built into baked into our DNA, and also this kind of obsession with post apocalyptic movies, which everyone seems to have,

Alex Ferrari 34:13
when and in today's world, not so much, it's not so much fiction anymore.

Peter Rader 34:18
Exactly, exactly. In fact, I was invited to the United Nations to talk about Waterworld. We can talk about that if you're interested. How,

Alex Ferrari 34:24
what? Please, elaborate,

Peter Rader 34:29
okay. Not long ago, around six months ago, I got a call out of the blue from National Geographic journalist who was saying I'm organizing a roundtable at the United Nations to discuss the feasibility of floating cities. In other words, we're dealing with two crises at the same time simultaneously, habitat loss, you know, from rising oceans and an increasing population What are we going to do with like, for instance, Bangladesh, like, you know, you have five feet, and that's millions people displaced. But you know, what are we going to do with them? Is it possible to create floating cities that are actually self sustaining? And could you know, lava bumps? So they brought in a whole team of architects, you know, a rockstar architect from Denmark and engineers and drama, and they brought in a screenwriter, you know, because basically, the model that they created, the prototype model looked exactly like the a tall, you know, so, here I was, you know, talking to the undersecretary general and a whole bunch of bigwigs at you know, about about this idea. And, you know, it makes perfect sense that they should involve screenwriters, I'm going to tell you one little other anecdote that is that might be interesting to your, your audience, which is, I heard, in fact, I know some of the people that were part of this, that after 911, the National Security Agency brought in a bunch of created a writers room of Hollywood screenwriters, and said, Listen, we want you to tell us what's next. Because 911 was not a failure of intelligence. We knew these guys, we knew they were going to flight school, it was a failure of imagination, we didn't make that leap of faith that they would weaponize airplanes. What do you got? You writers who think about this stuff all the time? You know, so it's like, you know, writers have a place at that table, which is thinking about the most incredible implausible ideas that could actually help us in the future.

Alex Ferrari 36:33
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I still, I still remember days after 911, like, when the plane would fly by i would i would have like, literally have like, you know, reactions, physical reactions to it. And, and I, and what's what we're going through right now, with with Corona and the COVID, of the COVID crisis, I promise you that the hangover, even after a vaccine, and after this kind of goes away, which could be yours, there's going to be a hangover of a generation of people who are going to be like, I don't want to go to a concert. I, you know, and I, and that's something I've had, I've talked about a nauseum on my other podcast as well, which is, you know, how many people are really going to want to go back to the movie theater all the time, you know, like, it's gonna, I'd love to, I'll throw that out, throw that out to you just out of curiosity. You know, I know I want to go I want to go see Tennant and up in a big screen, I want to go see the next big Marvel movie, or a big event film in the big screen and IMAX or something like that. But you got to balance it out. Like is it worth the risk, and even a year from now, even two years from now, it's going to take a minute before you go back in like any, like any trauma?

Peter Rader 37:42
Yeah, yeah. No, the business has changed, for sure. And we don't exactly know how but you know, even in our world, I mean, we're now we're distributing a movie online, a virtual distribution of movie where, you know, using whatever on streaming technology and doing a whole thing and completely, you know, rewriting the rules as we go along, because we have to figure it out.

Alex Ferrari 38:06
Now with with all this, you know, negative press that happened when when Waterworld came around? How did the town treat you as a as a screenwriter? Because you were hot stuff for a minute, because you were there's a bidding war, you've got a to picture deal? How did that play out?

Peter Rader 38:20
So, um, I was spared the, you know, I got a lot of assignments after after Waterworld. And unfortunately, they were all huge, epic sci fi things that never got made. Nobody was gonna do it again. You know, but that's the thing. They said, you know, you're the world creator, let's create a world over here, let's create a world over there. You know, I did a whole bunch of them. And they ended up in development hell, and and that's actually one of the things that informed my pivot to, you know, to indie filmmaking and distribution, which is what I'm doing now with my wife, um, you know, I met my wife, she was she said, Let's go to the Sundance Film Festival, you know, and I was, like, I suddenly just got excited again, like, I was in college about, you know, making movies where you're actually making the movies, you know, and, and then, you know, I joined her in the, in the company, and, you know, we've been doing a number of projects, ever since then. And it's hands on, it's, it's like, really fun, you know, and, you know, it's not the same money and there's trade offs and stuff, but, you know, you're always making choices between, you know, the pack with the devil and, and your hearts truth, have, you know, those things. So, so that's an ongoing thing, but I do think that the business has changed. And, you know, it's, it's, it's up to us to sort of redefine how we're going to re engage. Now,

Alex Ferrari 39:43
can we talk a little bit about the, the legacy of Waterworld because so many people think of it, you know, especially of a certain generation, that kids nowadays, you know, unless they look it up, they weren't, you know, in this it wasn't in the Zeitgeist of them growing up like it was was with me like it was with you that we knew Waterworld but it was considered a flop like I remember when Ishtar was like nobody knows now knows remembers his chart but I remember it start being like the punch line. And Heaven's Gate is a legendary punch line. And Titanic By the way, just a couple years later took the throne as like this is gonna suck. This isn't a complete disaster This is not gonna make any money whatsoever. It's 200 million plus, who's this James Cameron think he is? Well, that worked out okay for James. But what is the what is the legacy of the actual numbers of the film because it was considered a flop but it's the truth is different. Yeah.

Peter Rader 40:39
I mean, everyone the 25th anniversary, everyone is writing a story, which is you know, Waterworld was so not a flop. In fact, I'll go on the record saying that Waterworld is one of the most profitable titles in the universal catalog. And it all comes from the theme park exploitation. So what happened? You know, a couple years after the film came out was Universal Studios, hollywood had this Miami Vice stunt show, which was you know, it had a water tank and you know, boats and stuff. And they were like, no one's going to stunt show, no one's going to cares about my advice. We got to reinvent this or, you know, upgrade it, and we're like, water, let's do water. Well, you know, so they suddenly created a water world show, that show has been running at that park for, you know, 25 minus two years. So

Alex Ferrari 41:26
that's it. I see. I've seen it a ton of times. I love that part. I love that show.

Peter Rader 41:30
arena seats, two and a half, 1000 people, and they have a dozen shows a day. And it Park is open before COVID was 365 days a year. So you can do the math there. That's 10s upon 10s upon 10s of millions, if not 100 million in that theme park. Then they opened one in Osaka and Singapore. And now they're opening 120 21. Supposedly, let's see what happens in Beijing. And in that in the Beijing universal theme park, there's a water world zone. Okay, it has its own zone. It's a land, like a land, like Jurassic like transformers, like a hope of Harry Potter, you know, movies that have had franchises that have had seven eight titles in them, you know, get their zones, and then water will get to zone. Now why is that? It's because the demand the interest, the fascination with water roll has no limits. And, and also because it's you know, a splash zone or whatever, it's, it's a fun, it's a fun zone for you know,

Alex Ferrari 42:33
it's a good brand. It's a good brand. It's a good, it's a good IP for the university

Peter Rader 42:37
athletic brand. You know, I'm still getting the residual checks. And if you do the math on for theme parks, you know, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of people have been exposed to this Waterworld idea. Now, the great thing about that is that the Writers Guild right after that theme park was open approached me and David Tuohy, the two credited writers and said, You know what, no writer has ever been paid for theme park exploitation of their work. But we think that we have a chance to argue that this this constitutes a exploitation of the dramatic stage rights, which is one of those separated rights that a writer retains in a writers go contracts, we were saying that the you know, the waterworks done show is basically a stage version of, of the show, 20 minutes version. It's verbatim dialogue, it's the same characters, it's the same story. And you know, the universal through a ton of money, and a ton of lawyers to fight us fight, fight, fight, fight fight. And the smoking gun moment, this was brilliant, was we got a transcript of their, you know, of the stump show or whatever, verbatim line transcript. And there was this block of dialogue like three or four sentences in I think the deacon, you know, the bad guy, speech or whatever. It wasn't in our final scripts. It wasn't in any of the final movies. But it actually that verbatim three sentences, paragraph of dialogue appeared in a script that wasn't used. So they had gone through the whole stack of scripts, and they have cherry picked stuff. It was proof that they were using our writing in their show. And at that point, the arbitrator found in our favor, and we got a huge settlement. And we established a precedent So from now on, you know, Writers Guild writers are paid a minimum for the theme park exploitation.

Alex Ferrari 44:31
So the Simpsons Simpsons creators, the the ET writer, the the Fast and Furious writers, all those guys get something now from all those all those guys. Yeah. That's amazing. And then out of curiosity, like and I'm not going to ask numbers, but like, how do you Is it a percentage of like, how do you how do you get a residual off of a show that is based off of an entry price? There's no charging for the show. How does that work?

Peter Rader 44:56
Yeah, so that was difficult to figure out, right? You're right. It's a turnstile. You're paying

Alex Ferrari 45:01
for all of it. Yeah, you're paying Harry Potter for Transformers everything.

Peter Rader 45:04
So how do you assign it to here to here to there. So they did a buyout, they did a flat fee for us. And it was substantial. And then in the Writers Guild contract, there's a minimum, there's a, you know, whatever it is, I'm not sure what it is. It might be, is it 75,000 it might be if your work is turned into a theme park ride, you get a minimum of this, and you can negotiate above scale, but it's a flat fee. It's a buyout, basically. Okay, so

Alex Ferrari 45:28
so for that 25 years, you're not getting percentages of anything, you just got a big flat out payoff, which was substantial. Wasn't a minute, which is not the minimum.

Peter Rader 45:39
Correct. And, and it was for every time they opened it in a new park, we got another payment. So I think that's true. And that writers go contract too, which is, you know, you get this payment for one use. And if there's another one, you get another payment, etc.

Alex Ferrari 45:52
Got it and whatever. And then, but you have the power to negotiate at that point,

Peter Rader 45:55
if they want to negotiate above scale, if your name is john, sweet, you're gonna get more than that. Yes,

Alex Ferrari 46:02
right. Yeah, exactly.

Peter Rader 46:03
But Joe Schmo, you're gonna get the minimum. Got it. But something.

Alex Ferrari 46:08
Yeah, it's, it's something, it's something to to give you. And you're still getting residual checks off off the exploitation of that film. Right. That's insane. That's insane. I mean, 25 you would think a film like that. And it's Waterworld is such an interesting is such an interesting legacy. Because, I mean, it's a movie that has still stayed in the Zeitgeist. And I, because there's a lot of movies in that was made in that time. Like, there was that other really big stinker that Kevin did, which was a postman.

Peter Rader 46:42
That's right after another post apocalyptic another,

Alex Ferrari 46:45
which is now gaining traction again, people are going back and finding it because everyone's thinking about post apocalyptic things because of

Peter Rader 46:51
keeping the posts alive. Yes. Because that and, you know, I'm Alex, I was paid the biggest compliment recently. Um, you know, most most people that I talk to, when they find out that I wrote water, will they go, I love that movie, I think, you know, got so much fun. Yeah, so much mumbo jumbo, you know, but this one kid said to me, kid, I mean, whatever, you know, he's in his 40s or something. But he said to me, that was my first my eye opening moment where I started thinking about climate change, like that movie. Yeah, makes made me think about the oceans, you know, would rise or whatever. And, you know, it's interesting, because, conceptually, when I write anything sci fi, when I create worlds or whatever, I always like to have, you know, ontological authenticity, like to the extent that I can I like things to make sense like to really, you know, and ultimately Waterworld a sea change so many things that didn't make sense. But anyway, so but I think that every movie gets one leap of faith like one you get one, like, excuse a good user, give me Okay, and in the case of water roll, it was the amount that the ocean would rise. In fact, if if all the ice were melted on the earth, you know, and I remember researching at the time, and it was like, if all the ice melted, it would be like 35 feet or whatever. Okay. Um, in my version, a part that they took out of the movie, which this was the biggest loss when the when the mariner leaves dry land at the very end and goes and sails off and Helen and inola are at the top of the mountain. They watch him sailing away. And by the way, that's a Western moment.

Alex Ferrari 48:27
Yeah. What is that? Let's talk about the western in a second, but go ahead,

Peter Rader 48:29
okay. They see something underfoot. It's a plaque, they dust it off and on it says here in the year I forgot what the year was 53 Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited this peak. Everest, it's now that they took that out, took that out, they took that out. And that was the thing that got Kevin Reynolds interested in directing the movie, he said, this is the Planet of the Apes moment. This is the Statue of Liberty. This is right. That's Yeah. And, and, and it got him so excited. But, you know, Kevin Costner did take over the edit, and he decided to excise that moment. And I understand that choice also, because there's this sort of emotional thing that's happening between you know, the girl who's, you know, saying the man or sell off sale off and you kind of maybe want to stay in that part space and not add a gimmick onto it. So I get it, but for me, that was like, it was from the moment you know, that yes. Okay. So

Alex Ferrari 49:31
how is because you said that before? How is Waterworld a Western?

Peter Rader 49:36
Well, so there's two parts of the writing process for me. First is the concept. You know, what, you know, what's the what's that, like? That idea that really lights you up and says, Oh, my God, I can't wait to sink my teeth into it. So Mad Max on water. That was the idea there. But then the the other one and this is the much more devilish one is what's the structure? What's the three x what's the Story, you know, and and, and, you know, when you're writing something on water that's really challenging, like, you know, there's no geography like, where you go from point A to point B, what's point A and what's point B? Like, you got to make all that stuff up. And, you know, is it it's a boat floating over here, then how does it make sense? And is it a coincidence? And there's lots of stuff that you got to think about. And another breakthrough for me was I suddenly remembered the movie, Shane. Yeah. And, of course, Shane, yeah, homesteaders are trying to live peacefully, um, you know, the Wild West, and you got your bad guys, you're pirates. You want to take advantage of them. And here comes that, you know, lone cowboy with a dark past that you don't want to talk about. You don't ask questions about okay. He rides into town Shane, you know, he walks into that bar. You can tell he's killed a lot of guys. And the bad guys mess with him and he decides to take side with the homesteaders. He spends off the pirates and then he rides away. That's the structure Waterworld. It's a Western

Alex Ferrari 51:02
I Shane has been stolen so many times as far as structure is concerned. I mean, from I think Joe Osterhaus did it for nowhere to run with junk. lavon DOM, I remember that was Shane Logan, Logan, as more recent as they literally put Shane in the movie like Logan's watching shade that like wink, wink, nudge nudge. It's shame guys. But it's with a mutant. Shane is such an amazing at that structure of that, that. That idea of that character of being this, the lone wolf, who has a dark past, but yet he, he comes back, he comes back towards the light by doing good, even though he might have killed. God knows how many people in his past. He's such a powerful character. Why do you think that is? Why does that resonate so wonderfully with with the audiences? You know?

Peter Rader 52:00
And I teach, I teach writing my wife and I do a creative workshop. And one of the things that we talk about is the fall from grace, the fall from grace moment, all stories, it's part of the fall from grace. I mean, you know, the Garden of Eden, even your birth is a fall from grace, in some ways, um, you know, your womb, it was all glorious. It was

Alex Ferrari 52:20
all good. We were born fed, everything was good. We hit the like, people love this inside, like his mom loved us.

Peter Rader 52:26
So the question is, you know, it's this a really good exercise for writers is, think about the fall from grace for your principal character. It's where is it going to be in the movie structure? And what is the tone of the fall from grace? So for instance, in a broad comedy, like a Jim Carrey movie, that fall from grace is front and center. It's in the first 10 minutes, and it's highly humiliating. It's like, Oh, my God, here I am with my pants down in a court of law or whatever. You know, it's one of those moments or Ben Stiller moments, it's a broad slapstick fall from grace, right? In film noir, are in sort of a darker, edgier movie. The fall from grace happens in the distant past. And it is never discussed. It's something that's not talked about. It's like the very child child from the Sam Shepard play. It's that thing that no, it's Chinatown. Chinatown is Jake had a fall from grace in Chinatown. It's never discussed. And there's it haunts the movie. So that energy of that character, why is he so mean? Why is he so shut down? Why is he a loner? Well, he obviously has some stuff from his past that he doesn't want to talk about. In various drafts. We wrote those scenes, like the murder of his family and stuff like that. We just decided to take them out. It's much more interesting to not be discussed. You know what I mean?

Alex Ferrari 53:46
Oh, yeah, because your imagination builds something else up. So that was the whole thing with Obi Wan Kenobi. And Star Wars like this older Jedi like and he would just talk about certain things like the Clone Wars and, and I had a I had a student who killed you killed your father, and then it turns out to be Darth Vader. Sorry, spoiler alert for anybody who hasn't seen Star Wars. But, but that character was so powerful. It had so much weight behind him purely because of like, all this stuff. And they even talked about it gossiping, like Oh, you don't want to go see Ben Kenobi. No, no, no, no. It was so it was really interesting. But you're right, that kind of it's a very powerful character. A tool for your character is if you have this backstory, specifically a fall from grace is extremely powerful depending on your story. That that drives it drives a current narrative like in like in Waterworld. So Peter, I wanted to thank you for coming on and being as raw and honest about Waterworld and your experience with Waterworld as you have been because it is. I mean, again for my generation, I just know how much of a beating that film took and I just love knowing because I even said that to myself like I was sitting there watching Waterworld. The show on Universal, and I'm like, How can this be such a big flop? If it's still heat, like this thing is still going, you know, and, and what I, what I've discovered now talking to you is that there is something about the concept of Waterworld, which madmax has, has longevity as well, just the concept of Mad Max that post apocalyptic, everything's gone, you got to find gasoline and water and all that stuff. But Waterworld takes that and kind of amplifies it because now you throw in the flood myth, which then everybody in the planet knows that the flood myth they it's like you said in their DNA, and then you have the ecological aspect of it, like, oh, global warming and all that stuff. So it has it's, it's hitting on so many cylinders. And it's honestly very ahead of its time, because in the mid 90s, when you wrote when you thought about it, which was in the mid 80s. Climate change wasn't a thing, really. At that point, it was talked about very, very minimally. So it's really interesting how it is grown, and it continues to grow is the popularity of the of the concept. By the way, why hasn't universal done a sequel a reboot? Something else? Are they just scared to death of it? Because you can make that film much more affordably now?

Peter Rader 56:15
Yeah, yeah. This is an excellent question. And I'm actually restricted in what I can say about it.

Alex Ferrari 56:21
Nice.

Peter Rader 56:24
But um, yes, there's there's lots of complicated machinations behind what's going on right now with the rebooting water with the

Alex Ferrari 56:32
with the brand, because universal in general doesn't have Marvel doesn't have DC. They don't have they don't have like a 3000 characters. They don't have Harry Potter, they don't have Star Wars. So they have Fast and Furious, which they are definitely exploiting, without us without it. And they have a handful of, of IP and brand, but they don't have a lot of like, IP, like, like Waterworld could be a thing. Like you could do

Peter Rader 57:03
a three picture deal. The thing is, they are rolling out sequels in the form of theme parks. So in other words, this idea that, you know, that's the safe way of exploiting that IP is just do another theme park. Now we know exactly how much that's gonna cost. We can totally contain that. And let's just do it in China, we'll do a whole zone, you know,

Alex Ferrari 57:22
but there's but there it's there a little bit, a little bit gun shy because I like the first one went went 175 million, we weren't really expecting to spend 60. We can't take the three or $400 million hit. So I guess it has to be the filmmaker behind it, what to do and where to go. But, but I know like I've spoken to the guy who created final destination. And that that horror series he goes, every time they make one he gets a check. I met the guy who wrote fast and furious and just like he hasn't written Fast and Furious in a long time. But every time they make one, he gets a check. So I'm I'm praying for you, sir, that they make 20 more of those films. Now I'm going to ask you a few questions. I asked all of my guests. What are three screenplays every screenwriter should read?

Peter Rader 58:10
Um I think Tootsie is bones. Yeah. And mostly in the way there's so many subplots and there's so well integrated, you know, these these incredible things that all have payoffs. And they all come to a culminating head in that one moment, or Michael Dorsey rips off his wig. You know, it's just brilliant, the way that's structured, not that I'm a comedic writer, but that is a brilliant script. What else do I love? I love Peter Weir is Picnic at Hanging Rock for how minimalist it is, and how he never reveals what happened on that rock. You know, just that kind of brooding, quiet patient, you know, sort of teasing out about just basically a brooding mood. You know, that's a lot of us in the filmmaking, but I think it's in the script also. And what else am I going to go for? 31 um I'll go to something indie like do the right thing now.

Alex Ferrari 59:29
Which wasn't indie I mean, that was a universal release but but it was low budget and definitely not that Waterworld budget level. Though. It would be very interesting to see do the right thing it on water. No, that film is that film. I mean, people went back every year to a spike lee movie in hopes of getting the same feeling they got when they saw do the right thing. It was just it's a masterpiece. Now what advice would you give a screenwriter wanting to break into the business today?

Peter Rader 1:00:00
So, writing is a discipline, and it should not be results driven. So fall in love with process. You are a writer, if you show up on a regular schedule at your computer for a given amount of time, and it doesn't matter how much you produce, as long as you're sincere, you stand there, look at that blank page. And you and you, you, you clock in and clock out. You're a writer. Don't fall in love with the highs and don't sink, the lows, the middle path, the middle paths, just stay committed to process that's long term success in this business is all about the willingness to take ego death to take the spear in the heart and just let it go. Let it go move on, resurrect, get back to the get back in the saddle and type another sentence.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:52
What did you learn from your biggest failure?

Peter Rader 1:00:58
Yeah, same thing resilience, and being willing to just do it again, do it again. It's not about the results. It's not about the results. And it's so tempting to get wrapped up in the results, especially the successes. Those are really insidious. It's like,

Alex Ferrari 1:01:17
it's so much. Oh, yes. It's like, it's like a drug, you get that you get that high. And then and especially if you associate yourself with that high and associate your work with the high that you need that every time if you're done. Cuz you know, nobody, nobody in our industry is at the top all the time like that not everyone hits home runs every time.

Peter Rader 1:01:38
Yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna say one other thing, which is either I did have a period of writer's block, that was pretty intense, like three, three months or so I think every writer does. And so it's interesting to talk about it. But I have a metaphor that I like to introduce, which is the intersection of indecision, there is a temptation to stay in the intersection of indecision, which means you kind of stare at the screen and you think and you scratch your chin and you make your cup of tea No, and you think and you bubble bomb, and you're sitting in that intersection, not making a choice, you've got to make a choice. Get out of that fricking intersection as quickly as you can, and write the shitty sentence and here's the other metaphor, which is back in the old day when when pipe was made out of, you know, whatever. Not copper, but where you know, you're you were out of town for a few months. You ran your bath water came out, it was brown, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:02:32
You know, iron, iron,

Peter Rader 1:02:34
iron, iron pipes, brown water. Okay. When you ran that brown water? Did you go into a tailspin? Did you panic? Did you call the plumber? Were you like, Oh my god, what's going on this? Is this the apocalypse? No, it was simply brown water. What comes after brown water, clear water. Be willing to write the brown sentence write the shitty sentence, right? The brown water and other stuff comes the flow begins. Get out of the intersection, fall in love with process, write the brown sentence. And that's that's what you do. I love that.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:06
I love to write the brown sentence. That's that's a great, that should be a T shirt. Now, where can people find you and the new work that you're doing with your company?

Peter Rader 1:03:17
So My website is beaterator.com. And our production company is this is CounterPoint. films.com. This is counterpoint films.com where we're doing all sorts of cool things.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:30
And if you guys haven't seen awake, the paramahansa Yogananda story, if you guys have listened to me for a while, you know that it's one of my favorite documentaries of all time. You should definitely watch that. And I know they have a ton of other good stuff that they're doing over there, counterpoint films. Peter, again, thank you so much for being on the show. I truly, truly appreciate your time and your candor, with the amazing now a very profitable Waterworld. So thank you again, my friend.

Peter Rader 1:03:59
Thanks Alex. It was really fun.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:02
I want to really thank Peter for coming on the show. And being so raw and vulnerable and honest about his experience, writing and being part of Waterworld, considered one of the biggest flops of all time, but as you now know, it is not it is not all what they say it was that that film has done an insane amount of business and continues to do an insane amount of business and we will see what Universal Studios will do with the IP if they decide to reboot it and what they plan to do with it i'd i'd be interesting to see an updated version of Waterworld with today's technology and and see what actually could be done with it and in the right hand. So I'm really, really curious about that. But thank you again, Peter, for coming on the show if you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, and if you haven't seen it if you want to watch Waterworld, just head over to the show notes at bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/085. And I also want to let you know guys that I I am teaming up with john Truby, the legendary story Master, and author of the best selling book, the anatomy of story. And we are going to bring you a free webinar training called stories that sell. And john will explain his system to help you structure and layers genres characters, story, worlds themes, and everything else within the individual screenplay. Now, if you want access to this free webinar, just head over to truby.com forward slash hustle. That's true v truby.com. forward slash hustle. Thank you again for listening guys. As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.


Please subscribe and leave a rating or review
by going to BPS Podcast
Want to advertise on this show?
Visit Bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/Sponsors

Want to read all the 2016-2022 TV Pilots?

Learn from the best screenwriters working in Hollywood today!