Tony Maietta 0:51

WHello . I'm film historian Tony Maeda .

Brad Shreve 0:54

And I'm Brad Shreve , who's just a guy who likes movies .

Tony Maietta 0:57

We discuss movies and television from Hollywood's golden age . We go behind the scenes and share our opinions too , and of course , being the average guy , my opinions are the ones that matter , as does your self-delusion . Welcome to Going Hollywood . I tell you , I'm so excited about this episode , Brad , because on our itty-bitty baby podcast we have an incredible guest . I am so excited to have him here .

Tony Maietta 1:28

His name is Ron Nyswaner and , for those of you who are living under a rock and don't know about it , Ron is the executive producer and creator of a wonderful series on Showtime called Fellow Travelers . Now , this Fellow Travelers explores the clandestine love affair between two men during the height of McCarthyism in the 50s , and their relationship unfolds amidst a backdrop of political tension , societal norms , their sacrifices . But it's not only in the 50s . The show also immerses everybody in incredibly significant moments in American history . You know the Vietnam War protests , the disco era , the AIDS crisis . So I mean it is really an epic show . And our wonderful guest , mr Niswainer , is not only the executive producer and the creator , but one of the writers , and he is an Oscar , emmy , bafta Writers Guild , golden Globe and Spirit Award nominee . Is that all , that's all ? And for those of you who also don't know , the Oscar nomination comes from an incredible little film called Philadelphia . I've heard of that .

Tony Maietta 2:33

Have you heard of that ? Yeah , yeah , it's amazing Now for fellow travelers . There's a whole slew of award nominations that it's gotten . I do know it was honored with a GLAAD Award just very recently and Ron is incredibly modest , he won't go into this , but I just want to say it is a phenomenal show . I am so excited to have him on as our guest on Going Hollywood . Welcome , ron , thank you so much for being here .

Ron Nyswaner 2:57

Oh , thanks Tony , Thanks Brad . I'm really happy to be here and you know I am maybe modest about some things , but I actually am certainly willing to acknowledge that Fellow Travelers is pretty darn good . Pretty darn good came together and everybody came to the show with the same attitude of doing their very best work and also just being incredibly sort of lovely people , so it was a very magical experience .

Tony Maietta 3:34

Well , that's phenomenal . You know , Fellow Travelers is based on a 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon , who actually is one of my favorite authors . I just read a book of his called Up With the Sun just this past year . So he's a phenomenal writer . And what I find amazing about but we're not gonna talk a lot about the book , because this show was about your series but what I find amazing about the book is the book pretty much takes place in the 50s . I mean , it starts in like 1991 , I believe , when Hawk is on a foreign post and he gets a letter that Tim has died . And then there's the flashbacks . But your story , it's epic . It covers , as I just said in the intro , an entire the life of gay history , I think , from pre-Stonewall all the way up until , you know , the early to mid-90s with the AIDS quilt . What inspired you to take this little nugget from Thomas Mallison's novel and expand it into this kind of epic , every gay man story ?

Ron Nyswaner 4:36

Well , you know , I think , actually the book you just mentioned , there is a preface , I think it's a few pages , where we meet Hawk as a man probably around 60 . He is in Italy working for the State Department and he gets a letter that someone obviously that is important to him has died . And then the book goes into the 50s , as you said , really goes from about 52 to 57 . There was something very intriguing to me about Hawkins Fuller , that main character , as a man in his 60s who has a wife , who has children and grandchildren , and I thought , well , I want to see that . And then I thought , well , where would Tim have been ? So then I put him in .

Ron Nyswaner 5:17

It immediately came to me that the AIDS crisis is a real parallel to what we call the lavender scare or the lavender purge .

Ron Nyswaner 5:28

The lavender scare , which many people don't know about I didn't know much about it when I started working on the show was the literal purge of people who were suspected of being sexual deviants from our government . It was officially sanctioned by the government . President Eisenhower signed an executive order and there were multiple , multiple investigations and people . It's estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 people lost their careers and at one point it was estimated that of the people being investigated by the State Department . For example , one of the investigators said we were experiencing one suicide , a oh my God , Wow , If you can imagine any other part of American history where and this lasted three or four years , so for three or four years a group of people are officially designated , not allowed to be part of the federal government . Their parents , their families , were notified . Their son or daughter is being investigated by the FBI as a sexual deviant . People came home and found their partners hanging , had hanged themselves , and one a week people were committing suicide and we don't know about it .

Brad Shreve 6:34

I heard that in the show and I was like , can that possibly be true ? But I also know how much you researched this , so I was astounded and disgusted .

Ron Nyswaner 6:43

Yeah , Brad , and something that I do like saying about the show that I'm very proud of . You know it is meticulously researched and we had a lot of rules . I'm a guy who likes rules . One of the rules is that everything that , for example , joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn say in public , they have to have actually said we're not going to put words in their mouths . So every hearing that takes place in front of the McCarthy-Cohen committee , those are all from transcripts . You know , Langston Hughes is interrogated , the Army McCarthy hearings that's all from transcripts .

Ron Nyswaner 7:14

Even McCarthy's first entrance into the show at the very top of the show , when he shows up at a rally in 1952 , election night . And I'm going to tell the story because I think it's kind of fun . It's a little insight as to how films are sort of sometimes happy accidents , films and television shows . We were in this huge ballroom in Toronto that we had for the night . We're shooting at night , so everyone's going to be up from , you know , to dawn , 200 extras through several cameras . You know it's a big , big , big scene and through several cameras . You know it's a big , big , big scene and we're blocking the first part when McCarthy enters to the applause and takes the stage and I just we're just rehearsing it and I realized , oh , I didn't write anything for McCarthy to say and I thought , huh , well , this is a problem .

Ron Nyswaner 8:00

So I called my researcher Luckily he lived in LA , so he was three hours . He was still awake and I said I need a speech from McCarthy to give at this rally and , lewis , I need it in 15 minutes . Wow , wow , when he takes the stage , we have a new president , one who no longer tolerate party line thinkers or fellow travelers . Wow . One said Lewis , that's not real , you made that up . He said no , he said that literally on the night we were shooting , on election night , 1952 . And I said , okay , well , the gods have aligned for us .

Tony Maietta 8:58

So that's how meticulously researched the show was there yet . But one of my favorite episodes is the Fire Island episode , which I believe is the next to last episode , pent ultimate episode , and the way that you blend what's happening in San Francisco with Harvey Milk and Dan White and with what's going on in Fire Island on the two coasts . There's a moment where Tim has taken is it Ecstasy ? I think yes , and he's on the dance floor and there's a certain song playing .

Ron Nyswaner 9:28

Yes .

Tony Maietta 9:28

That is very identified with that era . Can you talk to us a little bit about the significance of that song ?

Ron Nyswaner 9:35

Yes .

Tony Maietta 9:36

And how it was also kind of something that was guided and that was meant to be .

Ron Nyswaner 9:40

Yeah , well , all of the , you know , there's so many what we call needle drops throughout the show where people are actually listening to music , and you know , from all the different decades , and that was really one of the joys of making the show , just getting you know . You know Anita O'Day from the 50s and Tony Bennett was one of my favorite singers and you know , putting that through the 50s , the 60s , then the 70s , and I came out of the closet in 1977 , 78 . So that's the height of disco , the height of Donna Summer , and I spent many nights dancing to Donna Summer , you know , and really associating that with my liberation . And I've always loved that song , MacArthur Park . It's actually one of my favorite favorite . It's so weird and mystical . It is , yeah , you know , favorite . It's so weird and mystical . It is , yeah , you know , and someone left the cake out in the rain . What does that mean ? What does it mean ? Yeah , exactly , probably nothing , but it means something to me .

Ron Nyswaner 10:34

And at the very last minute , actually , we lost the rights to use the song and my music supervisor called me and said I have really bad news . I don't think we can use MacArthur Park and Michael Perlmutter his name , and I have to give him a shout out because he worked so hard on this show . And I just said , michael , that song has been in my head since I first started thinking of doing this show 11 years ago , so I can't live without it . And so we wrote a letter to the Donna Summer estate and I just said how I knew Donna Summer was a Christian and when I came out , yet her music really helped liberate me and I wanted to sort of sort of express I , donna , actually allowed me permission to be okay as a gay man out gay man .

Tony Maietta 11:20

I said that .

Ron Nyswaner 11:20

So I actually . It's a tribute to her Wonderful . You know the song . We got to use the song .

Tony Maietta 11:25

Oh yeah , and it's just it's perfect , it's perfect .

Brad Shreve 11:27

Ron , I got to sing your praise about something and ask you a question as well . This show gave me goosebumps and I'm going to tell you why . I came out late in life and I came out in Las Vegas and I used to go this gay men's group before I came out and I talked with men in their 70s and 80s that waited until their wives died before they came out and they talked about how if you hooked up with somebody , you don't want to give them your name because then they could turn you in late and I was in the closet and lived in North Carolina during the AIDS crisis . So that was kind of this foreign thing to me , and Fellow Travelers made me feel like I was there through the entire time For the first time . Having been told these stories , I finally experienced it . It was brilliant and I thank you , but could you elaborate more on what made you expand these stories from the 50s for another 30 plus years ?

Ron Nyswaner 12:20

I got a little distracted early , but so the AIDS crisis actually is , I think , quite a great sort of parallel situation to the Lavender Scare , but the difference was the AIDS crisis . Thousands of homosexuals were dying because of the government's indifference .

Ron Nyswaner 12:35

So rather than actively purging us from the government , the government just let us die by , you know , by being ignored , through indifference , and actually that's a line actually in the script . So I knew I had those two things . You know , I approach everything really from a kind of Matt . This disappoints people who talk about , think about writing as this great mystical , creative thing , intuition sort of channels through me and things happen . I'm very mathematical , you know , I'm very . I think writing is solving problems . So I want to get from the 50s to the 80s . Well , gee , that'd be kind of interesting .

Ron Nyswaner 13:08

What are Hawk and Tim doing in the 60s ? Hawk would have and Lucy would have children by then . Oh , I want to see their children . How do I get Tim there ? What are they doing in the 70s ? Oh , maybe Hawk has started to like play with being sort of out as a homosexual . But where would he do that ? Well , Fire Island . Play with being sort of out as a homosexual , but where would he do that ? Well , fire Island , of course . And I was looking for moments in history and I knew that the White Knight riots had taken place in 79 . And I just thought , and there's something about White Knights and I thought , you know , being on Fire Island doing a lot of cocaine , those are sort of White Knights and then you have the White Knight riots and then boom , the sort of San Francisco to do . The two stories in the same episode were born . So those were early , early , early in the pitching process . I knew we would hit those spots , those moments in history .

Tony Maietta 13:56

I think , too , it gives us like as I said before , it gives such an incredible panoramic view of gay life from where it started , from where , literally , you could be arrested , people would lose their jobs or were suicides in the 50s , yeah , all the way up to the point where there was a freedom that was so mind-boggling to so many people . I mean the scenes on fire island and the meat rack and and , and then what , what eventually we dealt with in the 90s and I think that's so incredible . So the show to me , because we meet people , sometimes I meet people , but there are people out there , exist the young kids exist out there who have no clue about their history and what your show does and does so beautifully and does it in such a relatable way that you don't even feel like you're learning , but you're seeing the entire gamut of a gay man's life , from when you couldn't speak the name , all the way up to there was so much freedom .

Tony Maietta 14:52

you know that there were no limits whatsoever , and I think that's what's amazing . And you not only do it , but you do it with a phenomenal cast who bring such incredible empathy and love to these characters that you're immediately affected by it . I mean , it's incredible .

Brad Shreve 15:10

You kind of did a good job on casting .

Tony Maietta 15:13

Yeah , it was kind of perfect .

Brad Shreve 15:19

Do you enjoy going to Hollywood ? Well , of course you do , and Tony and I would like you to do something for us and , more important , for other podcast listeners out there . Go to Apple Podcasts , itunes , spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts and rate and review this show . A five-star would be especially nice . That way , when others are looking for a new show , they'll see ours and see those reviews and they will stop and listen and boy , that will make their day . It will be much appreciated .

Tony Maietta 15:55

Let's talk a little bit about the cast .

Ron Nyswaner 15:57

We did have help from Avy Kaufman , who is the legendary casting director of films and television . I shouldn't say we have help . Avy was our casting director , you know , of films and television . I shouldn't say we have help . Avy was our casting director .

Ron Nyswaner 16:07

But Matt was attached early on , before the show was even in development . So Matt was part of the pitching process . Robbie Rogers , my producer , introduced me to Matt . Matt read the book and wanted to do it . You know that's always this thing where you're , you know , an actress or holding space for a show that doesn't yet exist or doesn't yet have a green light , and you never know like he has the right . You know if something great comes along he might take it . Luckily it all worked out for us . Jonathan pursued us before we were actually officially greenlit Really Wow , sending Robbie texts and saying Jonathan would do anything to be part of fellow travelers , and so we were thrilled with that casting .

Ron Nyswaner 16:49

We hesitated with Jonathan a little bit because he was also doing Bridgerton at the same time and then ultimately he was doing Wicked . He was doing three things at the same time . We didn't know how we were going to manage our show in Toronto and Bridgerton in London . So it was a little scary . But we did what's called a chemistry read where you put the two guys together and you know they , they do a scene and you see what's the chemistry between these two guys . And Matt was in LA and Jonathan was in London . So this is a chemistry zoom and they were acting a scene where their characters were sitting on a park bench next to each other and they and they and they act this . They do probably a couple of times in my memory , you know . We all say great , great , great , thank you , guys , you know , hang up . And then we all gather again to have and I actually got a text . One of the executives said well , that's a first . I cried in a chemistry read .

Tony Maietta 17:43

That's amazing , their chemistry connected 6,000 miles .

Ron Nyswaner 17:47

Through Zoom .

Tony Maietta 17:48

Through Zoom .

Ron Nyswaner 17:48

It's like , okay , this is whatever it takes , whatever it takes , whatever it takes .

Tony Maietta 17:52

And you clearly know , you clearly feel that that chemistry between them from the very first meeting .

Brad Shreve 17:58

And I want to jump in and say Matt and Jonathan get all the attention and they deserve as much attention as I get . But , Jelani Alladin , you can tell me if I mispronounce this . Erin Neufer , Allison Williams , Will Brill - I'm going to stop because I could just go on forever . I don't want to leave anybody out Right down the line . Will Brill made me despise Roy Cohn all over again .

Tony Maietta 18:23

You just got over Al Pacino's depiction in Angels in America , and now Will Brill makes you hate him all over again .

Ron Nyswaner 18:30

Again , that was like the stars are really aligned , you know . And Allison Williams as Lucy is , you know , so spectacular . So , yes , so we just kept going . And Noah Ricketts as Frankie, Noah's ability to sing also informed . Like , well , what if Frankie performs with Stormy DeLarverie , who is a real character , who is in the bar and played by Chelsea Russell , and you know that's Stormy DeLarverie is a real person from LGBTQ history , an icon really , who performed in clubs in Washington DC in the 50s . So , again , you know , history comes in . Yeah , Brad , thank you so much . It was an extraordinary cast and , you know , it was one of those magical things where this impeccable cast who are so smart , many of them write , produce , they do all these other things but it was the kind of set where an actor would come over to me and say can I change they to them in this line , and I'd say , of course , you don't have to ask my permission to change a word . I think it was Allison who said , oh , yeah , on this show we do .

Ron Nyswaner 19:33

That's incredible , this immense respect , you know . And obviously there was collaboration and they had ideas about the characters , et cetera , et cetera .

Tony Maietta 19:39

How amazing for you on your part , though , Ron . I mean Billy Wilder wouldn't have said that . Billy Wilder would have said , no , I wrote they say they . And you were just so plugged into these acts . Not that I'm just not disparaging Billy Wilder I mean , we all love Billy Wilder but what I'm saying is that you were obviously .

Tony Maietta 19:56

This was such a . It shows what a collaborative effort this entire series was . It comes right out of the screen . Everybody was working at their utmost level to create this epic story for all of us to enjoy but learn from and I most hesitate saying that because I don't want people to think for a second that this is dry I mean the sex in this show . Can we just okay , we just have to talk about the elephant in the room .

Tony Maietta 20:20

I know one thing that I appreciated and one thing that I was blown away by , and one thing I realized watching , you know , the first sex scene that I had never seen , I was like , oh my God , that's incredible . And I was like I've never seen that depicted between two men so realistically , so passionately , like we see it between men and women all the time . So thank you for that . First of all , for showing that this is what it looks like and we should be absolutely as proud of it and as in love with it as the straight world is .

Tony Maietta 20:57

The chemistry between these two men . It's mind blowing . But I had a friend who asked me if they were really having sex and I said , of course they were . You can't do that , you can't really have sex on a set , but my God , the passion between them was just , yeah , the chemistry , I'm sure , was 6,000 miles . So I really feel like that was such an incredible step forward for us as gay men to see ourselves depicted . Finally , we've had some depictions here , and they're usually by straight men , but , okay , by two gay actors , by the way , which I also oh God , it drives me crazy which also we have to point out . These are two out and proud God bless them gay actors whose bravery is something that I will always be grateful for as an audience member and as a sometime gay actor .

Ron Nyswaner 21:48

Well , Tony , I just want to say actually we have five out LGBTQ actors playing five of the LGBTQ . It's amazing , so that you know , aaron Neufer identifies as LGBTQ , as Jelani and Noah and Johnny and Matt Just phenomenal , it was really so moving . Yeah .

Brad Shreve 22:10

And Ron , I'd like you to speak to what Tony said . I'm going to toss something in there . Sure , when I wrote my first novel , I was really reluctant to put sex in there because I didn't want people to think it was erotica . And author Michael Nava , who's a brilliant author , I talked to him about it and what he said was how a character has sex says a lot about the character . He totally changed my perspective and I feel like that's what you did here .

Ron Nyswaner 22:35

Yeah , we had a rule for every scene , which is a rule that I sort of I was inspired by my three years working on the brilliant television show Homeland with a group of brilliant writers , and the rule on Homeland was there's not a scene in Homeland that doesn't move the story forward . So there aren't scenes where people just sit and talk and how are you today ? And you know it's like you know , oh , there's a Russian behind you pointing a gun . It has to , has to move , has to move the story forward , to take a love story and to take that kind of thriller approach to it that every scene moves the story forward . The characters are slightly different , they're slightly somewhere else than they were at the beginning of the scene . So that and apply that to the sex scenes as well- and I have to say , you know , Thomas Mallon's novel , one of the things that comes from Mr Mallon .

Ron Nyswaner 23:21

There are two things that I can think of right away that come from Mr Mallon's novel . One is the who's my boy ? Who do you belong to ? You know , and then it gets a little tougher . In episode three there's a slap involved In the book . There's just one slap , but I made it two . I also added the tying , the hands up and the other stuff that we see . A lot of the sex was scripted . The foot sucking was scripted . As a matter of fact , when I got the notes on the pilot script , I remember one of the executives when we got the scene , saying well , I've never read this in a script before . Again , one of the many rules is that we don't want to do the same sex act twice . So I have to say , by the time , my colleagues and I Anya Leita and Jack Solomon , who co-wrote episode eight with me- we were kind of stuck Because , wait , we're now in the eighth episode .

Ron Nyswaner 24:23

What can we do ? That's a little different , but we found something . We found something actually a big thing actually . We switched to who's in charge , so to say , of the sex , and I think that Johnny and Matt both have said and responded to what allowed them to be very free in those sex scenes was that the sex scenes had a point , and it was the point . As I said , on the show , every scene is about power . We'll find that like a little . Some people have found that a little offensive in a way like , oh , this is a love story . It's about power because you always have . You know , if I love you more than you love me , you have power over me . You know you have power over me , obviously in some ways . So that's , you know , if I'm attracted to you more than you're attracted to me , somebody has power in that situation . So you apply that to sex scenes and it gives it .

Tony Maietta 25:12

It gives it them something to it's a it's the shifting of the sex scenes also depict the shifting their relationship thing , dynamics of their relationship and the shifting power in their relationship .

Brad Shreve 25:24

If you cut everything out of this film and left just the sex scenes , you would know exactly where they were in their life .

Ron Nyswaner 25:29

Yeah .

Tony Maietta 25:30

I agree , yeah , no , absolutely .

Ron Nyswaner 25:32

You're going to be asking us to actually release that version .

Brad Shreve 25:38

I would watch it . I would watch both . Regarding the love story aspect , because I have heard you call it a love story . Sure , it's beautiful and difficult at the same time , and I have heard arguments that this is not a love story , and I heard the same argument about Brokeback Mountain . I would guess , because it's not a traditional love story , that it is so painful and it doesn't have a happily ever after per se does it have to be tragic .

Ron Nyswaner 26:17

Why can't we have a happy LGBTQ story and I just say yeah . So why don't we apply that to Hamlet ? Drama comes from human struggle . It doesn't come from you know everything working out and by the way if there's anybody out there that has a love story that doesn't have some struggle in it ?

Tony Maietta 26:30

it's a boring love story . No , I don't either . And let's talk about the classic love stories . Let's talk about The Way We Were . Let's talk about these films which are iconic and then no one ends up together . Maybe it's just the same movies , but you don't end up together in the end . Gone with the wind . You know what I mean .

Ron Nyswaner 26:49

She realizes she loves him and he's gone . I was just going to say that actually . By the way , matt sometimes has referred to our show as The Gay We Were

Tony Maietta 26:56

I would agree with him .

Ron Nyswaner 26:57

I want to do someday a screening of the way we were in , like an episode from a show , because I literally stole things from the way we were .

Tony Maietta 27:04

Yeah , you know , one of the big things is HUAC , of course . I mean , they're both set against the House Un-American Activities Committee , which I want to definitely talk about with you . But I want to loop back to the love story , and that criticism people have , you know , when it was crystallized for me is in the last episode , when tim says to him at the very end that he had an all-consuming love and some people don't have that and he had that . And that's the point he said I spend my I'm sorry if I'm paraphrasing in front of the writer here and I might paraphrase , but if I he says all my life I've been trying to get God to love me and I realized that all was necessary for me to love God .

Tony Maietta 27:44

You know , that's the thing he had . Hawk allowed him to have this all-consuming love . Was it perfect ? Hell , no , but he experienced it . And sometimes I think we're so worried about whether or not the other person loves us we forget that the real active thing , the thing that matters to us , is whether we love them and how that colors our lives , and I think that's beautifully summed up in that final episode . It puts a cherry on the top of that for me .

Ron Nyswaner 28:12

Mr Mallon actually has . One of his chapters is prefaced by a poem from Auden , and the last two lines are if equal affection cannot be , let the more loving one be me . Isn't that lovely . In episode six that used to be in . Tim used to tell that poem to Marcus and it was a whole sequence that didn't make it to them .

Tony Maietta 28:32

Back on that . You know , the thing that always bothered me about the Wizard of Oz was when and bring the Wizard of Oz into this was when he gives the Tin man . I'm gay . When he gives the . Tin man his heart and he says to him and remember my friend , a heart is not judged by how much you love , but by how much you are loved or by others . And I'm always like no , wait a minute .

Tony Maietta 28:54

I think you got that backwards , wizard . I mean , you're a humbug . So it makes sense Hard to judge by how much you love , and that's what Tim is saying at the end it's that I have loved you and that has been my great joy in life .

Ron Nyswaner 29:08

And that's , by the way , and just again , how collaboration works . In Mr Mallon's novel , that letter that Tim writes in the preface , Mary says that Tim decided that what was important is that he loved God . So I took that , I had that in my head and I thought , well , yeah . But I added that Tim says it's the same with you . Hawk Thomas Mallon has been so supportive of the show , even though there's a lot of difference between the show and the book , because he recognizes that his book is really all through the show . I just build on and do other things .

Brad Shreve 29:38

Talking about Thomas Mallon , there's one thing that really jumped out at me and my husband , after the first episode , bought the book , but I haven't had a chance to read it yet . One thing that jumped out at me that is really simple is Mary Johnson . It's such a basic , simple name and something tells me that wasn't by accident .

Ron Nyswaner 29:56

Brad . Interesting , by the way , Mary in the book is not LGBTQ . She has an affair with a married man , which is a different way and actually early in the early development , that's what Mary was , but there were too many different stories . So , again , that book comes from . That name comes from Mr Mallon's book . All the names come from the book , although Marcus and Frankie don't exist in the book . So that actually , I think is a big difference between the book and the novel .

Ron Nyswaner 30:30

And for whatever reasons and I know that there are reasons not to speak to anything about Mr Mallon , that's negative but there weren't black characters in the novel . And I , for whatever reasons there and I know that there are reasons not speak to anything about Mr Mallon , that's negative , but there weren't black characters in the book . And I just know , in 2023 , I'm just not going to create a television show that you know has all white characters . You know that thing . That often happens . You know Jelani and Noah , and I have all talked about this . You know often that issue is addressed by having you know Jelani and Noah , and I have all talked about this . You know often that issue is addressed by having you know the judge is black .

Ron Nyswaner 30:56

Supporting characters are black . They show up and they give advice or whatever . It's kind of like how gay characters used to be treated , right Like the next door neighbor gives the straight couple advice on how to decorate their apartment and how to fall in love with each other . What I found is that the black press because there are many , many , many black owned and written and edited black newspapers in the United States in the 50s was really powerful and I thought , okay , there you go , a black journalist would be there in Washington and that's where Marcus was born .

Brad Shreve 31:29

And I want to give you kudos for that . There's an author named Cary Alen Johnson who wrote a beautiful novel called Desire Lines and it's about black men during the AIDS crisis and he wrote it because he said I haven't seen anything that talks about my experience during the AIDS crisis , the black experience . Kudos to you for putting that in there so important .

Ron Nyswaner 31:47

You know , very again , significantly researched . It seems like a stretch that maybe there's a black man covering the Senate hearings , but actually that's not a stretch . There were black reporters . There was a White House correspondent who was a black woman . Actually Eisenhower , appointed , brought her into the White House press court . So that was , again , it's very well researched . And Marcus's whole storyline , the whole thing at the Washington Post actually happened to a black journalist named Simeon Booker , where he was hired to be the first black journalist on the Washington Post is actually happened to a black journalist named Simeon Booker , where he was hired to be the first black journalist on the Washington Post and the editor said look , I just have to ask you to use a different restroom Now . He didn't have the reaction that Marcus had .

Tony Maietta 32:26

It's truth . You know you're bringing truth back into these stories . And speaking of truth , I want to make a correction . Earlier , when I was comparing the way we were to the gay we were , as Matt calls it I love that to your show I mistakenly said both involved HUAC and that's incorrect . Fellow Travelers is actually later , when Joseph McCarthy took up the mantle in the Senate Committee on Investigations in the Senate . It's the same era and they're all hunting communists . But I just want to make that distinction between .

Ron Nyswaner 33:03

HUAC and McCarthy . And McCarthy had built his career starting in 1950 , building on what the House , the HUAC , had started . He gave a speech . He talks about it in the show . He was a nobody and he goes . He's saying there are 200 communists in the State Department Overnight he's a huge celebrity . So he turned his committee , which was basically a committee that checked government agencies for overspending on their budgets , and he turned it into a way to to hunt commies and homosexuals .

Tony Maietta 33:37

what I found fascinating about the show was was that , you know , we always think that suddenly people got a conscience and this whole circus ended . And , as you point out in the show , it wasn't that really . It was really homophobia which brought down McCarthy .

Ron Nyswaner 33:57

I would say it was both . I mean , that's my theory of it . One of the differences I think that we are seeing from the 50s and from the 70s , when Richard Nixon resigned rather than being impeached , is that there were people in both parties who despised McCarthy . They despised him , including President Eisenhower , and it was President Eisenhower's idea , once they knew that the army was going to investigate , use the Senate committee to investigate McCarthy himself , which is kind of interesting . Eisenhower is the one who said let's get the television networks in there , let's show America what this guy is . So there was this revulsion toward him among many people .

Ron Nyswaner 34:37

But , yes , the Pixie Ferry moment in episode five , seen in episode five is from the Army McCarthy hearings and in the end .

Ron Nyswaner 34:46

Yes , what they , what they did is they painted McCarthy with the gay brush . In other words , you're defending this guy , roy Cohn . Roy Cohn is obviously in love , has an obsession with this guy , David Schine . All that's documented , all that's true , and we now are going to make America see the three of you as being similar . And it really , you know , and especially climax , when Joseph Walsh , the lawyer , had this conversation about pixies and fairies . It was humiliated , you know , in the hearing , and humiliated McCarthy .

Brad Shreve 35:20

That took me aback . I've been researching gay bars throughout history in Los Angeles and most of those clubs .

Tony Maietta 35:29

That's personal Brad .

Brad Shreve 35:34

Most of these , really before the 70s but even earlier , were hidden but they were hole in the walls and I'm sorry I don't remember the name of the club

Ron Nyswaner 35:43

Yeah , yes .

Brad Shreve 35:44

That was beautiful . Is that based ?

Ron Nyswaner 35:47

Well , the Cozy Corner existed , but of course course we have no idea what it looked like , because people did photographs inside places like that . So I have a feeling it was not as beautiful as our beautiful club . But you know , that's where you take a little bit of dramatic license . You know my production designer , Antonio Massaro , is a genius . You know we built it . That's a set we built . You know everything is set , the Senate hearings , you know those are all constructed sets , we built from scratch . So that isn't but the Cozy Corner . And I don't even know I don't know the Stormy DeLarverie ever performed in the Cozy Corner . I'm not even sure the Cozy Corner had live music . But I do know the Cozy Corner was a real gay bar near Howard University , that its customers were mostly black men .

Brad Shreve 36:31

Well , I'm glad you went with the vision you had . Yes , yeah , it's too beautiful .

Tony Maietta 36:34

Well , the amazing thing about that is it's all shot in Toronto , right , Ron ? I mean , everything practically was shot in Toronto . The Fire Island scenes were shot in Toronto .

Ron Nyswaner 36:43

They were Two days in Washington for like the exterior of the government , not in Washington , in Richmond , virginia . But yes , Fire Island is entirely shot in Toronto . It's phenomenal . Wow , yeah , believe me , robbie and I were heading to Toronto . We were having conversations , like Robbie , how are we going to do episode seven in Toronto ? He's like I don't know . Ron , you know , we figured it out . We fly to Fire Island . You know , we didn't know , figure it out . We fly to Fire Island . You know we . You know , we didn't know . And then we have these extraordinary people called location scouts and location managers and you know nobody . We don't talk very much about them in film , but they're so important and they worked and they worked and they worked so hard and they came to me with so many like photographs , different places , and I'd say no , no , no , no , no , sorry , no . And then they found a place that looks like the beach in Fire Island .

Tony Maietta 37:30

It's phenomenal . I mean , you totally didn't believe that house wasn't in Fire Island . It's phenomenal , it's just phenomenal . And also the last shot of the series , when you go up and you see the length of the quilt as the years go on and on and on . Which was so , oh my God . I mean aside from when he says you know , this was the man I loved , which was just .

Brad Shreve 37:48

I was in tears , unbelievable . And the beautiful way you had it slowly extending , yes , oh , that ripped my heart out .

Ron Nyswaner 37:57

That was very last minute , really . That was shot in Toronto as well , in December , and we in the field there are green screen giant , green screens around , you know , and I again , you stand there and think like this is going to look like the National Mall , but because we had this brilliant special effects house they did an incredible job and Mavericks in Toronto and we filled all that in . But we had several others . I love this . Relating this we called the Names Memorial Foundation to say , look , we're going to build some quilt squares , you know , and we're going to do part of the quilt . The rest will be done with special effects and just so . We want just one information , like to send us information about how big a quilt square should be , blah , blah , blah , blah . And they said , well , tell us about your show . They said , well , your show sounds great . Why don't we just send you some real quilts ?

Ron Nyswaner 38:48

Most of the quilt squares that you see I mean I'm going to say most the real ones that we shot , the ones that Matt walks past , are real , including Roy Cohn's . Somebody made a quilt square for Roy Cohn . That is the real thing . Well , so we shot it there . It was an extraordinary experience to tell the extras . Why what ? This was ? Because a lot of people didn't know and I said this is sacred , you don't step on them , no , you can't have a can of soda got away from you , from you . And they were really moved by it , which is really great .

Ron Nyswaner 39:18

And then , when we were looking at the special effects , we only did 1987 and that was what was in the script and you know it's really a small section of the national mall , but I've been there , I've been to it's called and I knew it took up the whole wall at one point and I thought I just thought , literally we're about to approve the special effects , the sony , and had to watch everything in and I said is something about this isn't as moving as it should be ? People should know just right on the spot . We got this idea to expand it and I said everybody was really right on the spot . We got this idea to expand it and I said everybody was really collaborative on the show . That includes our executives . You know people love to tell stories about how you have to fight those horrible executives for all everything good , that was not the case . So I had to make a call and say , look , we're going to need a few thousand dollars more for the last shot .

Brad Shreve 40:05

Good call .

Ron Nyswaner 40:06

And I said let me pitch it to you .

Tony Maietta 40:13

And they said let me pitch it to you . And they said , oh , that's incredible . Yeah , sure , of course , yeah . And again , it's giving a history lesson in that this crisis kept going on and on and the extras , as you just said , some of them had no knowledge of what this represents . So it's our history that you're bringing to us in this incredibly moving and very sexy many times way that makes it so palatable to everybody . So it's just , it's a phenomenal . It's just , it's such a phenomenal achievement up to the very last frame .

Brad Shreve 40:39

Tony brought up the gay actors and you corrected us not just the primary stars , but much the additional cast .

Ron Nyswaner 40:45

Yep .

Brad Shreve 40:47

What is your feeling about great actors playing gay actors ? Was this on purpose ?

Ron Nyswaner 40:51

it was a preference but not a rule . And , by the way , when you're casting , you can't ask , you know , right ? So , like when Jelani did this incredible sort of reading , we just like we had Avy Kaufman cannot call the casting director , can't call Jelani's agent and say we're just curious , is he LGBTQ ? That's actually forbidden , which it should be . We shouldn't be casting away . But because we were hoping to do that , so Robbie Rogers , who's an out gay man , married to another great producer , Greg Berlanti . So Robbie would go on Instagram and then Robbie would report back and said oh yeah , jelani , he follows me , he's gay . So you know , people tell a lot about themselves now on social media . You know , roy Cohn , I don't think is necessarily would ever identify as gay . Will Brill is definitely not gay . He's , you know , heterosexist , gender , heterosexual , but you know but that . But Will Brill , how could you not cast Will Brill ?

Tony Maietta 41:47

as Roy Cohn ? Yeah , exactly .

Ron Nyswaner 41:50

So it's a preference and , Brad , I don't make moral judgments about other people might do . Do you know what I'm saying ? I know that Tom Hanks said today he wouldn't have played Andrew in Philadelphia , but all I know is that Philadelphia continues to happen to me . It just did a month ago . Continues to happen to me . It just did a month ago . Somebody , a city councilman in Cincinnati , told me that when he was 11 years old his parents were diagnosed with AIDS . He found my movie on VHS and it's what he watched it over and over again for five years and that is what got me through . And you have to complain about that . There's a straight guy playing a gay character in Philadelphia , but you know , 30 years later people are telling me that it helped them . So I think for me it's not a hard fast rule .

Brad Shreve 42:37

I defy anybody to tell me that Tom did not do a brilliant job .

Tony Maietta 42:40

He did an incredible job . Plus , remember , in 1994 , as an actor , as I was in 1994 , there weren't any gay movie stars . I mean we have so few now that are actually open and willing to talk about it , but there were none . So these actors who took this chance with their career because it was questionable at that time , I'm sure really did a service for us . So to the point where , yes , we can get better , we can get to the point where we have these two incredible actors playing these parts in your show , who just happen to also identify as gay men , and it feels like we're moving forward , at least a bit , in a big way and I certainly applaud them and you for that , having Jelani and Noah as a couple and Jonathan and Matt as couples , being LGBT people themselves , I do think gay men themselves , they understand .

Ron Nyswaner 43:37

I think maybe what they did is that they were willing to be a little dirty and to be a little rough and to be a little sort of complex and sort of not always . I think that some straight up real feel the need like I have to make my gay character likable . You know what I mean . They might feel this sort of politically correct need to sort of make them heroic . Actually , that is something I actually experienced in something else that I've done , where I was kept arguing with the people . It's like , yeah , this is not complicated enough , but that's another podcast .

Tony Maietta 44:02

Well , we always had to be the perfect little boys . I mean that carried through until finally . Now we're saying no , we're actually complex , real people .

Brad Shreve 44:16

I'm going to get flack for this , but I can tell when a queer author wrote a gay scene in a novel and when a straight author wrote a gay sex scene in a novel . It's very clear . Now they would argue that , but I can tell .

Tony Maietta 44:28

Yeah , I think that makes perfect sense , and I think what you said happened in the movie would have been different . Yeah Well , what can I say except let's just talk about this for a minute . 29th Critics' Choice Awards nominations for Best Limited Series , best Supporting Actor and Mr Bailey actually won that one yeah .

Tony Maietta 44:43

The 81st Annual Golden Globes Best Series , again Best Actor , People's Choice Awards , TV Performer of the Year for Matt Bomer . We have the Satellite Awards , we have the Screen Actors Guild Awards and we have the GLAAD Media Awards , which you won , Ron , Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series this past year .

Tony Maietta 45:01

And I know we have some awards coming up soon . I can't think of what they're , what are they called ? They're in September or something like that . Oh , that's it , those TV things , those Emmys . And I got to tell you what every time I go online and I look at an article or I look at somebody's opinion , these two men , matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey , are so in line and your show Ron , so in line for nominations . So I know I speak for Brad . We are so excited about this for you .

Ron Nyswaner 45:27

That was me knocking on wood what your audience just heard .

Tony Maietta 45:31

There it is . I heard it , yeah , yeah . So well-deserved , so deserved Thanks .

Brad Shreve 45:36

Ron , thank you so much for being here with us . I can't express my appreciation .

Tony Maietta 45:39

Yeah , yeah . I mean this has been so wonderful to talk to you and to get this view of this incredible series . People just go onto Amazon and get your Paramount Plus subscription and your Showtime and watch this show . I guarantee you , no matter what you identify , as you will identify with this because it is so heartfelt Can they find it on Amazon now ? I think ?

Ron Nyswaner 46:03

actually yes , right . And then it directs you to Paramount Plus .

Tony Maietta 46:06

Yeah , yeah , I think you might even be able to buy individual episodes .

Ron Nyswaner 46:09

For whatever reasons , they didn't share that , but now that's great to know actually .

Tony Maietta 46:13

Or send me an email and I'll give you my password . That's it . That's fine . I don't care . I want everyone to see this . That's just the way I feel about it .

Brad Shreve 46:19

Thank you , Ron .

Tony Maietta 46:20

Thank you , Ron , thank you so much .

Ron Nyswaner 46:23

Thank you , guys .

Brad Shreve 46:24

Lister , we can't guarantee to have a great guest like Ron every week , though we would love to . We still have a lot of fun on this show and we hope you enjoyed it . And if you did and you should have please look at the app that you're on right now and click that follow or subscribe button . Or , if you're listening on a computer , go to goinghollywoodpodcastcom and there's all kinds of buttons to select which one you want to listen on . You got that in there . Good for you . Yes , I did . Wow , I finally remembered .

Tony Maietta 46:52

I said bye , I was ready to leave . Subscribe , subscribe .