Navigating "Fellow Travelers": A Conversation with Ron Nyswaner, the Creator of the Showtime Series
In addition, Tony and Brad celebrate with Ron the profound performances of the cast, whose chemistry breathes life into the characters. Ron sheds light on the inclusion of real-world locations, historical figures, and introducing significant black characters absent from the original novel to weave more authenticity to the series.
You can find transcripts, a link to Tony's website, and a link to Brad's website at www.goinghollywoodpodcast.com
Tony Maietta:
Hello. I'm film historian Tony Maeda.
Brad Shreve:
And I'm Brad Shreve, who's just a guy who likes movies.
Tony Maietta:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Yes.
Tony Maietta:
That is very identified with that era. Can you talk to us a little bit about the significance of that song?
Ron Nyswaner:
Yes.
Tony Maietta:
And how it was also kind of something that was guided and that was meant to be.
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
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:
I said that.
Ron Nyswaner:
So I actually. It's a tribute to her Wonderful. You know the song. We got to use the song.
Tony Maietta:
Oh yeah, and it's just it's perfect, it's perfect.
Brad Shreve:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
You kind of did a good job on casting.
Tony Maietta:
Yeah, it was kind of perfect.
Brad Shreve:
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:
Let's talk a little bit about the cast.
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
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:
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:
That's amazing, their chemistry connected 6,000 miles.
Ron Nyswaner:
Through Zoom.
Tony Maietta:
Through Zoom.
Ron Nyswaner:
It's like, okay, this is whatever it takes, whatever it takes, whatever it takes.
Tony Maietta:
And you clearly know, you clearly feel that that chemistry between them from the very first meeting.
Brad Shreve:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Yeah.
Tony Maietta:
I agree, yeah, no, absolutely.
Ron Nyswaner:
You're going to be asking us to actually release that version.
Brad Shreve:
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:
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:
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:
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:
I would agree with him.
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
That took me aback. I've been researching gay bars throughout history in Los Angeles and most of those clubs.
Tony Maietta:
That's personal Brad.
Brad Shreve:
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:
Yeah, yes.
Brad Shreve:
That was beautiful. Is that based ?
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
Well, I'm glad you went with the vision you had. Yes, yeah, it's too beautiful.
Tony Maietta:
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:
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:
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:
I was in tears, unbelievable. And the beautiful way you had it slowly extending, yes, oh, that ripped my heart out.
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
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:
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:
Good call.
Ron Nyswaner:
And I said let me pitch it to you.
Tony Maietta:
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:
Tony brought up the gay actors and you corrected us not just the primary stars, but much the additional cast.
Ron Nyswaner:
Yep.
Brad Shreve:
What is your feeling about great actors playing gay actors? Was this on purpose?
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
as Roy Cohn? Yeah, exactly.
Ron Nyswaner:
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:
I defy anybody to tell me that Tom did not do a brilliant job.
Tony Maietta:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
That was me knocking on wood what your audience just heard.
Tony Maietta:
There it is. I heard it, yeah, yeah. So well-deserved, so deserved Thanks.
Brad Shreve:
Ron, thank you so much for being here with us. I can't express my appreciation.
Tony Maietta:
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:
actually yes, right. And then it directs you to Paramount Plus.
Tony Maietta:
Yeah, yeah, I think you might even be able to buy individual episodes.
Ron Nyswaner:
For whatever reasons, they didn't share that, but now that's great to know actually.
Tony Maietta:
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:
Thank you, Ron.
Tony Maietta:
Thank you, Ron, thank you so much.
Ron Nyswaner:
Thank you, guys.
Brad Shreve:
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:
I said bye, I was ready to leave. Subscribe, subscribe.