Encore: Steve Martin can't imagine 'Only Murders in the Building' without Selena Gomez

from KCRW I'm Kim Masters and this is the business with season 3 of only murders in the building now streaming on Hulu we revisit our conversation with co-creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman after all his decades in Hollywood Steve Martin is not really a fan of the getting to know you business meeting so he wasn't that excited about having lunch with writer producer Dan fogelman my agent Danny Greenberg called me he said you know you're up in Santa Barbara you had to meet with Dan fogman and I said Danny I know what these meetings are everybody's fascinated with each other and as soon as you have a meeting everybody's bored and the fascination is over and nothing ever happens but this time was different only murders in the building co-creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman talk about the hit series with 28 Emmy nominations but first two buddies banter while I take a break stick around it's the business from [Music] KCRW I'm Matt bellany filling in for Kim I'm here with my vter buddy Lucas Shaw Lucas welcome great to be here so we had a development in the ongoing writers strike uh we're now over a 100 days into this strike and the two sides have been talking people were sort of optimistic cautiously over the past week they seemed to have gone quiet we had heard Rumblings that they made progress you had reported some details on the studio offer to the writers and then on Tuesday night we got an Abrupt press release from the amtp the studio side divulging all of the offer that the studios made to the writers and then like clockwork about an hour later we got the writer's response which was a resounding this isn't working the studios tried to jam us in their words and this was their strategy all along they have no interest in making any more concessions and we seem to now be back to an impass what's your take on what's going on here yeah this was about as bad a week as we've had in a while because as you note there had been some optimism you know the the after many months or at least a couple months of not talking they met and though there was some squabbling in public over leaks they met again the studios made a real counter proposal which everyone that I spoke with on the studio side felt like they were saying This Is Us signaling that we really want to do a deal and we want to get back to the table and we want this to be over and it sort of aligned with also what the heads of all these companies had been saying and it's clear that they were disappointed they being Studio side in the writer's response do it that the writers said oh this is great fine sure but like this is not enough they didn't think that the writers had come far enough whereas for the writers this sort of confirmed their worst fears which was that the studios weren't going to give on a lot of these core issues especially kind of minimum number of writers in a room more reward in success and so we're sort of at this stalemate where after two weeks of them being quiet because they wanted to do a deal they're back to fighting in public and that's usually a bad sign yeah we don't have to get into the exact details I mean this press release they put out was very detailed about what the studios say they are offering there was movement on the transparency issue as you mentioned there was a minimum number of writers that the studi said that they would hire for TV production um there were writers that would be hired for the production uh not just in a writing room that was a guild ask and there were a number of others you know they said that the wage increases would come up double digits during the term the writers say that Devil's in the details here yeah this may sound good in a press release that the studios put out but they're clearly not happy with some of the specifics that they are asking for the question is why did the studios put this out there in public because that was a very strategic move they're putting it out there because the guild as a whole is going to see it not just the negotiating committee and I think the studios are betting that the guild membership as a whole will see this and a lot of them are going to like it and maybe they'll put some pressure on the negotiating committee do you think that worked or do you think that backfired well we don't it's to too soon to know I mean the the studios had initially planned on releasing this proposal you know right after they gave it to them right you know I remember hearing before they actually met with the wga that the studios were going to release it and I think they made a decision that negotiating publicly was not a good idea and if they wanted to get a deal done that they should try to keep it private that having failed they're now trying to divide the union but it's really hard for me to to judge that because you know this is a union with more than 10,000 members you know I can base what I see on social media which is not particularly reliable or what you hear anecdotally from people which is also not so reliable the real question is is over the the next few days as more of these writers see what's on the table how do they feel and do they put any pressure on the leadership of the Union because there's a chance that they look at this and say look the Studios have already come fairly far let's keep our foot on the pedal and there's a bunch of others who may say I want to get back to work screw this like this is good enough yeah and if you look on social media I mean a lot of the vocal voices in the wga are saying this is a tactic don't fall for it they're trying to divide us but then if you look at the history of Labor negotiations this is what happened in the 20072 2008 strike is that some of the high earning showrunner type members of The Guild did start to put pressure on the negotiating committee because they wanted to get back to work and I think the studios are counting on that I think the level of solidarity this time is probably greater specifically because the actors are also out on strike and they clearly feel like this is the time to get what they want and they're going for it so we'll see if this prolongs this strike even further into the fall thanks Lucas thanks Matt that's Lucas Shaw head of the media team at Bloomberg I'm Matt bellany of Puck Kim will be back next week with season 3 of the emmy-winning only murders in the building now streaming on Hulu we revisit our conversation with co-creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman only murders in the building is set in the arconia An Elegant New York Co-op living in the building are Steve Martin who plays lonely one-time TV star Charles Hayden Savage and Martin Short who plays a faded Broadway director who is in a rear on his building fees through a chance encounter they meet another aronia resident Mabel MOA played by Selena Gomez who is living in and renovating her wealthy ant's apartment an unlikely partnership is born as the three launch a true crime podcast to solve of course a murder in the building I want to just step back and go to the spark of an idea I read Steve that you had this idea for a something about three people who saw a murder was it that simple or was it more well I can tell you the story in way it's fascinating sure it is we all had a friend named Sandy Gallen who was a well-known oh gosh you know entrepreneur producer yes yes I went to dinner at his house once I Sandy Gallen was a figure of Legend yes yes and he was a fabulous guy and he had a great sense of humor and he he in fact I was with him one time and I I was writing some songs when I was doing that you know serially working with the Edie brel and and with the Steep Canyon Rangers and I had this song and I played it for him and he said you know who ought to sing that Dolly part wow and I said well of course yeah she should sing Everything yes and he said I'm GNA call her so he called Dolly Parton and Dolly Parton and Vince Gil ended up singing the song So anyway I have a soft spot in my heart for Sandy Gallen and he invited me to one of his Showbiz parties at his house in New York and there were you know a lot of actors there and there were three older actors and he came over Sandy came over to me and said you know you ought to write something for them and I thought first of all I was flattered that he thought I could second I thought you know that's a good idea three older guys and I you know I just sort of riffed on it in my head who live in a building and solve murders because they don't have anything else to do the idea morphed into Selena Gomez which was a brilliant suggestion on the part of the producers and the premise was uh they're too tired to say go downtown to investigate things so they limit it to only murders in the building because they just stay home to solve the crime I can see the appeal yeah so I'm trying to connect you Steve with Dan fogelman because I know you weren't on this is us I'm really pretty sure actually fell it lost I was I was on it for eight years and no one noticed me definitely including me so how do you connect to Dan fogelman who is the executive producer of the show and a prolific producer it's one of the dullest show business stories ever means that it came about through professional contacts my agent Danny Greenberg called me he said you know you're up in Santa Barbara you ought to meet with Dan fogelman and I said Danny I know what these meetings are they everybody's fascinated with each other everybody's in love with each other and as soon as you have a meeting everybody's bored and the the fascination is over and nothing ever happens and I've had like 10 of those meetings in my life you've got to meet with you know Wes Anderson right and uh which I love them you know but anyway I said Okay okay so we have a lunch and I said I don't have any ideas and forgotten that I had this one idea so uh we have this lunch and it's all perfectly fine and now we're getting the check and I said you know I I do have this one idea and I just kind of pitched it and as it was coming out of my mouth we all kind of realized you know this isn't a bad idea and uh and then it just it went on a like a high-speed train you know then I met John Hoffman who had ideas toh elaborate the basic idea I had then we went to Hulu and we pitched the idea and the relevant question was that I was asked that said U they said well is this a comedy or a drama and I said um well I said in dramas people walk slow and in comedies people walk fast in this show people walk fast okay even though they're tired and they live in the building uh they don't want to go anywhere uh you go to John had you ever met John and you and Steve no never I was partnered up uh Dan fogelman and Jess Rosenthal asked me to come and talk about this idea of Steve's that they needed someone to showrun and co-create with Steve Martin and you definitely don't say no to that meeting um but for some reason I was just parking my car on largemont Boulevard and I had found a spot luckily when I got this email saying would you like to talk about this idea of Steves and I immediately didn't get out of my car and I sat and I started typing things immediately about pre-war apartment buildings and my love for them in New York City and everything from I started to think about True Crime podcasting and how to maybe make this idea sort of sing in a modern way that felt like relevant to what's you know happening around these kinds of stories now and I thought about Ruth Gordon and Rosemary's Baby and and then people were honking at me in and I realized I had my foot on the break still in that parking spot on Larchmont and and all these ideas had come and people were wanting my spot right you could have you could have auctioned that thing yeah you're lucky you weren't murdered out of the building yeah I always think like of that you know in my own insecurity about writing which I I I imagine everyone who writes has the only indicators of something to me are when an idea you know immediately starts multiplying on itself and feeding you ideas that just come flourishing towards your you know the synapses the other little hurdle of intimidation came in meeting Steve and so Dan and Jess and Steve and I sat down and had a great meeting of the minds and I was met with you know someone who I revered and he was utterly open and generous and off began a great conversation on a first episode of this show Steve did you meet with a bunch of people or was it John and only John no it was uh no only John only Dan fogelman only Jess Rosenthal it was it was a one-way Street we didn't even take it to a another company it was just on its way only Us in the building I was gonna say a lot of only a lot of ones yeah you immediately felt like this guy gets what I want this to be or I think he introduces the podcast idea were you yes he did were you warm to that right away you know I I have never gotten an assignment and then wrote it up for example in a script or something like that I always write it first because I like to see what it is or see if it even works once they said we're interested in this I I better write up some pap Pages you know and uh so I wrote about three three pages describing the idea but I i' had never done the the homework you know after the fact I'd always done it before Sean you talked about making it more real and dark and and I'm just going to touch on this dark there's a dark story in your life you actually looked into your childhood friend's death and it sounds like based on what I read that you solved a murder is that overstating things oh uh yes it is overstating I did not solve the murder but what I would say was I just found myself in a situation unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life where I was profoundly driven to understand what happened to a friend I'd lost touch with and this was like a brother to me growing up so it was a real tragedy and I just didn't know what his life was like so I went to Wisconsin after hearing that he'd been found shot to death with someone else on the floor of his own home and the injuries look like yeah it's a terrible story it has nothing to do with great but it was informative for the story in many ways because I was walking through an investigation of a true crime that was very personal to me for that year right before Dan and Jess brought this idea of Steves to my attention so it was very palpably real for me and what had happened was the injuries initially in the reports before the police really investigated it appeared that my friend had been the shooter he had shot someone and then took his own life and and I could not fathom could not fathom that as being the case from the childhood friend I knew I thought he could never shoot anyone so during the course of getting to know his ex-wife and his beautiful kids and and what his life was like and I talked to this reporter in the town and I met the neighbors next to the house where he died and I just got obsessed with it and I couldn't shake it emotionally and then by the end of the year the police report did come out and it the findings were reversed from what it appeared to be at first and it turned out he had been murdered and uh the other person had shot himself but you know no Victory but it was very much a process and and it does inform the storytelling in our show in many ways certainly through Mabel's uh perspective on on you know her need to understand her friend Tim koono who she'd lost touch with you know I think it was Dan fogelman for sure who said lean into that and I thought it's a comedy we're making are you crazy and he actually said Pitch this to Hulu and I remember Steve you're looking at like are you pitching this this is quite a story um I didn't know all these things well I was gonna my next question for you Steve was going to be when did you find this out is it is it now is it now is this the moment I think I heard this story before yeah but I thought he was lying yes pitch I guess no sadly no so you then put together a writer's room I guess this is what you do John and are you in full pandemic at that point point and it's all on Zoom yeah it was crazy uh it was all on Zoom we were meeting people to be in this writer's room of course everybody and their brother was alone in their homes and dying for something to do so we had quite a pick and we picked a brilliant group of people to come be on Zoom but that was a challenge because you know of all stories to try and break over 10 episodes a very intricate mystery which we knew we were going to have to do really requires whiteboards and uh we didn't have them and so it was a lot of challenging work to sort of you know first of all keep the focus alive while we're in this room and we would have Steve and Marty and Selena come into our Zoom room and we would run these stories by the whole dance was running stories by people so a they were clear and that the mystery was clear enough but it was also compelling enough to have them on the edge of their seat and not knowing which way it was going writing a mystery is so complicated because I've watched a lot of them and you know that's a talent we're so lucky that John and our team of writers have it you know to keep the story going I just applaud it thank you and and Kim I will say this though he's being very demure I think I understood him to be a real mystery afficionado a true crime interested afficionado all of those things and when I came over to his apartment in New York the very first time to get to work together on this he pulled me over to his kitchen and he showed me this distinctive quality about looking out his kitchen window across the courtyard to another window where the light was on and he said you see the what the activity in that window across the way I said yeah there's a man and his daughter and they're having a little what is that a cracker and he said yeah no that's not happening in that apartment that's happening in the apartment underneath us and that's the reflection on that window the mystery side was something I leaned heavily into Steve Martin on and at the very beginning in that first episode coming up after the break Steve Martin and John Hoffman talk about how series co-star Selena Gomez holds her own against two comedy Legends you're listening to the business from KCRW this is the business and I'm Kim Masters we're revisiting our conversation with only murders in the building co-creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman in the hul comedy Steve Martin plays Charles Hayden Savage the almost forgotten star of the cop procedural Brazos his partners in crime solving are his fellow residents in the building where murders tend to happen faded Broadway producer Oliver putam played by Martin Short and the much younger and somewhat ruthless Mabel MOA played by Selena Gomez when Charles gets an unexpected visit from his estranged stepdaughter Lucy played by Zoe klei he pulls out a Dusty LP that's an old favorite of hers the artist in question Brazos himself but as soon as the record starts to play the snarky comments begin you know this is H you know I'm such a huge fan of terrible music how have I never heard this do you have a perm yeah we make fun of it all you want but it was a big hit in Germany it went to number 83 on the charts and then the Berlin wallf and that stopped its upward momentum Steve Martin co-wrote and produced the novelty song titled angel in flip-flops which can now be found on streaming platforms only murders in the building is Steve Martin First Time starring in a scripted TV series he and his co-creator John Hoffman took the show to Hulu without shopping it elsewhere thanks to their partnership with executive producer Dan fogelman who has an overall deal with Disney's 20th Century television Steve you've been in this business for a while you've seen lots and lots of change the streaming thing is you know halfway devoured Hollywood before seeming to sort of yak it back up again did you just feel like I'd rather be streaming than broadcast I mean did you have any ideas about what you wanted it to be I already love the idea of streaming I was suspicious at first but I mean at first it's 10 years ago right now if we did a television show in the old days or did a movie in the old days it all was down to the opening weekend or in case of Television who you're up again right and so your show whether it's good bad or horrible could be slaughtered just by its competition MH and now people can drop in on it anytime and there's essentially you know the competition is more vague so I I just loved it and I actually thought TV must be so different I mean they're going to shoot 10 episodes in a week because they're going to do two takes and move on to the next thing which is how it's done in broadcast yes and I got there was just like just like a a movie it's slow and careful the lighting was incredible that's the main thing that changed in this iteration the movies you you used to go to the set and you'd rehearse the scene and then you'd go back to your trailer for two hours while they light and now you rehearse and you start to walk away and they say we're ready it's all on it's all on video and they can tweak the video and the lights are minimal so anyway so Hulu was it you just said Hulu we're good didn't you didn't auction the thing or is Dan have some arrangement with fulu that's true right yeah it is true Dan fogelman who is Our Shepherd here on this one was uh very much uh had had a deal with 20th TV and it's all under the banner of Disney now and and so Hulu had been sort of the early Target for US based on those uh relationships so we brought it in but it was quite an extraordinary pitch there too because you know Dana Walden was in the pitch and so it was everyone collected from Hulu and 20th and an a pitch unlike I'd ever been at and they were all there of course to see Steve and and hear him and and that was a thrill and and it was a gangbusters pitch honestly it just kind of was a a bit of a slam dunk in a way um I felt really good about it afterwards and then it was just a matter of a couple of hours after that that Dana was on the phone with Dan fogman saying we're in 10 episodes and then we were on the phone with Steve saying we're in 10 episodes were was were Marty and I I have a question for you John was Marty and I connected to the script at that point or was it just a script yes it was it was you and Marty and the script and our pitch of the first 10 episodes in in general a general Arc and an ending and outside of that yeah that was and it was the sort of personal connections the details about the way in which we were going to approach material and the tonal shifts and all of those things and it was a I think in many ways a good thing that it surprised them so you have Marty you have Steve let us add Selena to the mix and and Steve did you immediately caught into that because your initial idea was three eyes in a strange way it's kind of expected from a studio to say do we really want three old guys what if we put a young person in there so you know at first it feels like well that's a commercial move expected but what we didn't realize was how much Selena was going to contribute to the triumph angle of me Marty and her I can't even imagine the show without her now because when Marty and I are bickering and she just goes guys you know pulls us out of it you know it's a little bit of a miracle for our scene and she brings us down to earth our characters and is also has the right amount of snide it's just um it's just turned out to be perfect for us and Marty and I are you know even when no one's listening we say how great she is uh I wonder how intimidated was she I I don't know how she walks into that room and says I'm going to hold my own with you too because she wasn't established as that kind of performer I don't think unless I'm forgetting about some series that happened I looked her up when they first mentioned her name I said I should know more about her because you know she's had a whole career that I wouldn't know about and I looked out and she'd had done as many movies as I had so she's a pro and I've never seen her really be intimidated good for her who who said bring in a young woman and maybe Selena Gomez was that Hulu I'm gonna give full credit to Dan fogman on this one he absolutely angled it this way and said I think this may be the thing to do and I took a moment because I was like oh how do we make that work and then truly it was Selena when we met with Selena on zoom and she told us she was a true crime nut had just gone to Crime con with her mother and I and people were looking at her like what are you doing here but also everything I just described about her was clear in that first zoom and then the electric Sparks that came what that we all saw it was a group of Dan Jess and I and just Steve and Marty and Selena on a zoom to read our first episode and it was only about two weeks before we started shooting in New York City and we heard the three of them for the first time together read it and our phones just lit up afterwards and we were all buzzing and Steve and Marty were both in my ear going she was unbelievable and we were all saying she came to play it feels so established now that it's almost hard to make your mind go back and to a point where you might have said what is this you know because it feels like we know what it is it's right it feels so natural you can't replace her with anyone that's for sure she's great do you hear that TV Academy last question I'll ask Steve so you get into this thing it is your first uh uh you know you're doing this like as a regular TV series that is being renewed all the time because you know it's doing awfully well is there ever a time when you say you know I was leading an easier life before this is a lot of work and a commitment and I have to be on the set and the early call or whatever or do you feel like this is the so the right thing for me at this moment oh I absolutely feel it's the right thing I have no I mean I shouldn't say this aloud but I have no desire to quit I love love that I'm working with friends that I love that it's being well received it's uh intriguing it's it's um as my wife says you know this is the kind of show I want to watch big compliment and I feel the same way it's like I remember Stephen Spielberg said I just make movies that I want to see and uh you know you're not second guessing yourself so I feel like well this is a show I'd like to watch because I that's the kind of shows I watch anyway okay well see what you're supposed to do is say I really think I've quite had enough and then the negotiation begins but yes well Brian graser told me I was talking he's a friend producer great movie producer and I said how how should I be with the producer he says always be satisfied but not completely I don't think we can improve on that advice yes I'm I'm going to take that uh very much to heart Steve Martin and John Hoffman are the co-creators of only murders in the building thank you guys so much for doing this such a pleasure thanks and that's the business Joshua farum produced and edited today's program with help this week from Matt Schwarz Paul Smith and John Meek who mixed the show you can stream the business as well as other great KCRW shows on kcrw.com or wherever you get your podcasts I'm Kim Masters we'll see you next week on the business [Music]