Podcast #14 – From Script to Screen: Award Winning Writer & Director Chuck Evered’s Creative Journey

Doug Dvorak (00:01.272)
Good day Mission Podcast community. I’m your host Doug Dvorak and I’m extremely excited to bring you inspiring stories from incredible guests. These individuals are on a mission to create remarkable possibilities that not only enhance their own lives, but also make a lasting impact on the communities and individuals around them. Stay tuned for some truly amazing conversations.

Doug Dvorak (00:31.328)
My guest today is Chuck Evered, an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. Hey, Chuck, how are ya? Excellent, good to see you again. Chuck is a graduate of Rutgers and has an MFA from Yale University where he studied under director George Roy Hill. He has won several awards for his writing, including the Crawford Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship,

Chuck (00:41.428)
How are you?

Doug Dvorak (01:00.47)
at the Manhattan Theater Club, the Chesterfield Amblin Fellowship, sponsored by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, and the Edward Albee William Flanagan Fellowship. Your plays are quite impressive, include Running Funny, Billy and Doggo, as well as a host of others. And then I had the high honor and privilege to participate when you came to Idaho on your Adopt a Sailor Road show. really incredible. You know, I looked at all of your accolades. You’ve written screenplays, teleplays for studios and companies such as Universal Pictures, NBC, Steven Spielberg’s Dream Works Pictures, Paramount. You also, and I was really intrigued by this because my wife and mother-in-law are huge Monk fans, you really wrote an episode for Monk entitled Mr. Monk and the Leopard for USA Network starring Tony Shalhoub.

Chuck (01:30.732)
You were. Okay.

Doug Dvorak (02:00.352)
So it’s really a high honor and privilege to be with you. Not only are you a storied writer and director, but you’re also the founder of the Evered House, a nonprofit that supports artists who are military veterans. The Evered House is dedicated to your father, Charles J. Evered, a veteran of World War II. And you’re currently just completed a 50- state tour for your play, Adopt a Sailor, in support of this program.

Doug Dvorak (02:28.078)
You yourself served in the US Navy Reserves reaching the rank of lieutenant and is a member of the Yale Veterans Association and a founding associate member of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of Cincinnati. You live multiple places, LA, California and Virginia. What did Mick Jagger say? A rolling stone gathers no moss. So it was really…

Chuck (02:48.446)
I have lots of moss, so doesn’t really work.

Doug Dvorak (02:56.162)
Yeah, well, it’s really cool to have you as a guest on the mission.

Chuck (02:59.102)
Well, it’s so nice to talk to you again, and you, should be noted that you were very funny in the reading of my play, and it was terrific to work with you all.

Doug Dvorak (03:07.81)
Thank you. let’s, Chuck, let’s talk about what inspired you to pursue a career in writing and directing.

Chuck (03:13.607)
Sure, failing at baseball, mostly. My inspiration was when I was sitting across from Mr. Pepe, who was my guidance counselor in high school, and he broke it to me unceremoniously and he said, Chuck, you’re not gonna make it. You’re not gonna make the majors. You might go into college, you might do okay, but. So that was kind of the turning point where I realized, okay, I’m 6’4, I’m a gawky guy and I don’t really wanna work in offices. What am I gonna do? And then the truth be told,

Doug Dvorak (03:16.098)
Hahaha

Chuck (03:42.49)
I had a lot of loss in my life when I was a young person and my way of dealing with that, it could have gone a couple of ways. I could have started drinking, I could have done drugs, but thankfully I just started writing stuff down and I started reading great writers and I was inspired by Henry David Thoreau who wrote obviously a journal for years and I started to journal. I started to write in a journal and that really kind of saved me, Doug. It kind of put me on the right path.

Doug Dvorak (04:09.28)
Excellent. Can you share a bit about your early experiences when you broke into the industry and what that some of the challenges that that were that you experienced?

Chuck (04:19.004)
Yeah, I think the main challenge was really making that realization that the stories you have around you when you’re growing up are the grist for the mill, as it were. And as a young person, we all remember, we kind of want to rebel from where we’re from. sometimes we don’t want to have anything to do with it. was none other than Steven Spielberg when I was at that fellowship with other writers who told us, and he said, You think that we want you to write big car chases. You think that we want you to write big movies. We actually want you to write your stories, your personal stories. And he, know, the most commercially successful director in the world, if he could say that, right, it must be true. So I took the cue and I wrote a little screenplay called Homespun, which was about a bunch of goofball kids from New Jersey who fell in love and got in all kinds of trouble. And I wrote that screenplay and while it was never made as a movie, it became what they call a calling card script for me. So it got sent to agents and I got an agent from that and it got sent to some movie stars and they start to care about me. And then I got another deal from Steven Spielberg’s company. was really Doug, was really writing a small story that I actually really cared about that broke me as a writer.

Doug Dvorak (05:20.526)
you

Doug Dvorak (05:42.186)
Interesting. So Chuck, you’ve worked in theater and film. How do they compare and do you have a preference?

Chuck (05:48.791)
Well, when I talk to young writers, I always tell them and they laugh at me. say, do theater if you want power and do film and TV if you want money. They always laugh and they’re like, what kind of power does a playwright have? And they’re not wrong. Usually we don’t have a lot of money, but what we do have is control of our words, right? So in the theater, you literally can’t change a playwright’s words. So.

Doug Dvorak (06:00.526)
Hahaha

Chuck (06:15.499)
So it means that when I bring a play into a theater and they’re rehearsing it, no matter how big the actor is or how self-important they are, if they suddenly want to change my words, they by law, they can’t do it. But when you sell something to TV or to film, you no longer own it. It’s the same as if you went on Facebook Marketplace and you sold your car. know, somebody buys your car and they want to paint it purple. Well, you took the money so you can’t complain about it. So it does make me laugh when I see screenwriters you know, in Hollywood, complain about, Hollywood ruined my story. Well, did you take the money? Then shut up and write something else. That’s how I feel anyway.

Doug Dvorak (06:54.956)
Interesting. Chuck, what was your breakthrough project that made you feel like you had arrived?

Chuck (07:01.1)
Well, I saw Kim Waltrip talking on this very podcast about a week ago. And it was that very project that we did together called Adopt a Sailor, we made the film of the play. And it was that project that for me taught me that I might be able to tell stories that will find more eyeballs, right, than just a small theater. And ironically, as she rightfully noted, It was a very small movie, made on what’s comparatively a shoestring, but yet for me it had great reach. mean, it went to a lot of festivals, a lot of saw it, a lot of actors saw it.We went all over the country and the world to promote it. And so for me, a little movie helped break me out. And ironically,

Chuck (07:50.92)
They think it’s gotta be a big movie, you gotta make $100 million on a weekend, but that’s not true. It just has to be a story that somehow connects with an audience.

Doug Dvorak (08:02.828)
Interesting. Chuck, have there been any mentors or role models who shaped your career?

Chuck (08:08.885)
I would, there’ve been several, I was fortunate to study with Arthur Miller at, at Yale. Yeah. The very one. And he happened to live in Connecticut and our, chairman of our department knew him, got Arthur to come for a weekend and do a workshop. And that was pretty amazing. You can imagine. And the reason it was amazing was because he came in.

Doug Dvorak (08:16.66)
of a salesman Arthur Miller? Wow. Wow.

Chuck (08:35.27) And Mylan said to him, well, Arthur, what are you working on? And Mr. Miller said, I’m working on a play. I don’t know why people are coming into the room. I don’t know how to get them off the stage. I have no story. And watching this old dude who wrote the Crucible and wrote Death of a Salesman sit there and talk about how difficult it still is writing a play was so freeing for me because he didn’t sit there from Mount Olympia and say, I found the to the heavens, I know all the answers. What he gave us was a template for an artist never stops creating. They never stop working. They never stop exploring. And so at the end of that workshop, Mylon, our chairman, brought me over to him and said, hey, this kid is named Chuck Evered. He wrote this play called The Size of the World. Would you mind reading it for him? And I was horrified. I was like, no, no, No, no, it’s okay, it’s okay, Mr. Miller, it’s okay. And he was very gracious, you know, and he’s like, sure, I’ll try to get to it, I’ll try to get to it. So, know, Mylon gave me a copy and months went by. I honestly didn’t think anything of it. And then went to my little crappy apartment on High Street in New Haven and went into my little mailbox and there was an envelope. And on the back of the envelope, it said Arthur Miller, Connecticut. And I was shaking thinking, oh crap. This could be really bad. I opened it up and it was a letter saying he liked my play and this is what he thought was good about it and here’s some ideas on how to make it better. And I got a handwritten letter from Arthur Miller that didn’t think I sucked. So that was a big thing for me that kind of said, okay, well maybe I’m not in the wrong business.

Doug Dvorak (10:16.514)
Wow.

Doug Dvorak (10:25.806)
That’s exciting. Let’s morph over to the creative process and storytelling. Where do you find inspiration for your stories?

Chuck (10:33.533)
Well, the old adages write what you know and there’s something to that but there’s also something to write what you want to know. So for me, it was as a younger person, I would basically steal my life story, right? You write something that is very close to you and that you have experience with. And as I got to be an older writer, I started to realize, well, I want to go to places that I don’t know. want to… You know, just like when you travel, you get off a boat, you don’t want to go to the tourist spots, right? All the usual places. You want to explore a new world. And that’s what I started to do when I got older as a writer was I started to go places that were less comfortable for me and for the audience, potentially. So that’s, so I get my inspiration, honestly, however cliche it sounds, by staying alive and by staying aware and staying open and trying to learn when I mess up. in life and in art, and then trying to apply that to what I write.

Doug Dvorak (11:37.198)
Chuck, when developing a script, do you start with character, plot, or theme?

Chuck (11:41.83)
For me, I’m a character person. for me, I live with a character, I think for months or years before I even write down the story. I think it’s, you know, we all do it, right? When you meet somebody that just pops out at you and they make an impression on you and you say, well, this is something I’m going to squirrel away into my personal locker box, you know, in my soul. And then sometimes years later that’ll pop up and a little bit of dialogue will start and you’ll start writing that character. And then… What’ll happen is, hopefully anyway, is you write that character and then the character gets in trouble or something, you know, conflictive happens to that character. And then you have to figure out how to navigate that. And then that becomes plot. And so that’s basically my work is I work by listening to people. I listen to what they say. I try to be somewhat open about how they feel. And… and I squirrel it away and hope that it’ll emerge as a story. It doesn’t always work, but it makes your life interesting.

Doug Dvorak (12:44.502)
Interesting. Chuck, we’ve all heard about writer’s block dealing with that self-doubt. How do you deal with creative blocks or self-doubt or writer’s block?

Chuck (13:13.319)
Well, when my kids were young and I had to produce and I had to create and they needed to eat, they had this awful habit of wanting to eat every day. And I had to make inspiration, right? Because I didn’t want to be broke. So I tended to be able to find ideas or find stories. Or I would take gigs, I would take jobs to do rewrites on people’s scripts, or I would rewrite things for people, or I would…

Doug Dvorak (13:25.484)
Hahaha

Chuck (13:42.952)
Maybe things that I don’t totally love, but that’s part of being a grown up and being a writer and being in the world. So I would hustle, like all of us. You hustle work begets work and you get to know people and you hopefully do that. When I get to a place where my kids, they need me a little less, I could be a little more picky about what I work on or what I aspire to. And so… So now I tend to concentrate on what really, really interests me. And it means maybe I have less money, but I have more fun.

Doug Dvorak (14:19.31)
Chuck, what’s your favorite part of the film making process? Writing, directing, or something else?

Chuck (14:25.647)
I think it’s writing because the world is perfect when you write it. And then if you’re directing it, okay, now you’re trying to make on screen what your dream was on the page, right? And it never works, right? So you have to learn that you have to give up that little dream and find a way to keep going, you know? And so for me, it’s writing and then I have to kind of put writing aside and find a world to create physically and that’s directing, but I love both.

Doug Dvorak (23:22.264)
We’ve had a couple of internet and PC issues. So you’re seeing Chuck in a different light in a different background. Chuck, how do know when a script or film is truly done?

Chuck (23:40.907)
Well, I don’t think, you know, a play script can change whenever, you know, so that play that you wrote 20 years ago can be changed. You can make revisions and if you’re involved with the production, that’s no problem. As far as film goes, once that thing is shot, it’s pretty hard to go back. So what I try to do is keep it going. That is evolving the script and making changes, whatever I have to do. I have to keep it going until we actually shoot. So it’s always fresh and it’s always changeable. That’s how I look at it.

Doug Dvorak (24:13.55)
Chuck, which of your projects are you most proud of and why?

Chuck (24:18.208)
Probably, I guess I would say Adopt a Sailor because it’s reached the largest audience and also it’s just a story that means a lot to me. You know, it’s about, you know, just so people know, it’s about a sailor who comes to New York City during Fleet Week and there’s an actual program called Adopt a Sailor and he’s adopted by a very kind of snooty couple from the Upper West Side in New York City and it’s the clash of those cultures that for me was really, you know, worth telling a story about. And it also kind of contained both worlds that I know, the New York world and as a writer or living in that kind of space and also as a not so young sailor when I joined the reserves at 34 years old. So seeing culture from both of those sides was to me really fascinating.

Doug Dvorak (25:08.366)
Interesting. Chuck, what’s one of the biggest challenges you faced as a director or writer?

Chuck (25:15.326)
I think it’s getting stuff up on its feet. You can work forever on a script or you could say it’s perfect when it exists on the page, but if you can’t get actors to do it or you can’t find funding to make it, it lives in your drawer and that’s not a very happy place. As a young student writer, when I was at grad school, it was kind of… it was kind cool to write things that only very few people would see. So everything was kind of obtuse and kind of pretentious. But even back then, I was someone who always liked real stories, beginning, middle, and ends, and narratives. It may be very unpopular at grad school, but more popular in the world.

Doug Dvorak (26:04.75)
Excellent. Chuck, how has the entertainment industry changed since you started?

Chuck (26:09.117)
Only about 180 degrees, honestly. I think technology literally changed everything. Meaning the means by which we can make films are much less expensive and the equipment is much more accessible to more people. Whereas before you kind of had to have a rich uncle, right? You had to have somebody in the world that would help you or have a producer or have somebody in Hollywood that would give you a leg up.

Doug Dvorak (26:12.864)
Unpack that for us.

Chuck (26:39.293)
Well, now you could, know, whereas before you used to write a screenplay and submit that, you know, to the powers that be, be it a producer or a studio and hope that they’ll make it. Now you can kind of, if you write a small enough movie, you can submit that movie, right? You could submit that to festivals. You can submit that to different theaters, or you could just show the movie on a white sheet in your basement. But the point is the movie will be seen, right? Well, that’s only the last 30, 20, 25, 30 years, right? Because before that, you had to have a whole bevy of equipment and all those kinds of things. So I think it’s changed for the better. The modes of delivery now, these platforms you know of, YouTube, all these different places, there’s more places to put your story, which I think is really encouraging. If there’s a downside, it’s that there’s a glut of content, right? So because of all that, There’s just more that’s made and more that’s seeable. And so you run into another problem, which is that how do I make my project kind of emerge out of that glut? So it’s always a kind of heavy lift. It’s always a challenge, but you have to find ways to adapt. And that’s what I try to do. That’s what a lot of writers try to do is adapt.

Doug Dvorak (27:56.204)
I remember the most recent writer strike and one of the big areas of discussion and negotiation, I believe, was AI. Talk to us about AI and how that’s impacting filmmaking and writing of scripts.

Chuck (28:11.162)
Yeah, I think it’s undeniable. It’s a tsunami, it’s a tidal wave, and I think it’s about saying, am I going to pretend this wave doesn’t exist and stand on the beach and say, no waves, right? Or am I going to say, okay, well, how do I adapt my storytelling into the future that’s going to be inevitably coming, right? So I think the latter is the way to go. So I think you have to find other ways to… Inject your own creativity into stories and I think you can do that by being yourself and by telling your own personal story AI can’t feel for you, right? They could write, you know, it can write scenes it could construct things from its, you know vast well of knowledge or Information I should say not really knowledge but but I don’t know if you hold fast as a writer and you you try to remain original I think it’s gonna be okay. I don’t think it has to be this giant evil thing coming or anything like that. think eventually it’ll find its place and writers will find their places. But I think people with original voices are not threatened because they can’t, you cannot, right? Isn’t it true that AI only exists from what is put into it? In other words, right? It has to be fed like an animal and then that has power because it then disseminates that information. You know, if your story is your story alone, and if your point of view is an original point of view, AI can’t replicate that. It can see, it can do the structural replication. It can write a scene if you say, write a scene about a boy and a girl who are breaking up on a bench, it can do that. But can it write a scene that depicts Doug’s experience or Chuck’s experience? It can’t do that, because it’s not us. So I think in some weird ways, maybe AI is gonna make us kind of reclaim our humanity or be more appreciative of it and to try to find and hold on to that original voice, because that’s all we have.

Doug Dvorak (30:21.966)
Excellent. Chuck, if you could direct any story from history, what would it be and why?

Chuck (30:27.919)
gosh, it usually tends to be what I’m reading that week, but I’m kind of a nut for the American Revolution, right? I’m an amateur American Revolution historian, which makes me very bored, boring at parties. But I love that whole period. So if somebody gave me $100 million, I would probably make a movie about George Washington that was never made before, you know?

Doug Dvorak (30:42.804)
Hahaha

Chuck (30:55.19)
or a movie about the Patriots during the Revolutionary War and that isn’t like anything that was ever made before because I see it differently in a way. I see it as a much more harder edge, hard scrabble fight for our existence as a country. And so I would love to do that. Nobody’s going to give me $100 million to make a George Washington story, but I can dream.

Doug Dvorak (31:18.474)
Excellent. What advice do you have for aspiring writers and directors?

Chuck (31:22.87)
The thing that I’m talking to you on now, which is a phone that’s leaning precariously on a book behind you, that’s also a… This is a great example of thinking on your feet and the fact that that phone is your ticket. So you can make a movie with this phone. You can make…

Doug Dvorak (31:32.43)
But we made it, we made it work, or I should say you made it work.

Chuck (31:48.086)
short film with this phone and if it doesn’t suck and if it’s good and if it really is interesting you can download it to YouTube and if one person really likes it they might say hey check out this little movie and that might go on and on and on that could actually lead to something that’s really exciting you know that that that I think is great you don’t need a rich uncle you don’t need to go to film school for $400,000 you don’t need to do all those things necessarily you do have to study story you do have to know all those elements and stuff like that, but the truth is the means by which we can tell visual stories is literally in our hands. And so it’s up to us to tell those stories.

Doug Dvorak (32:25.848)
Chuck, what’s a common misconception about working in Hollywood?

Chuck (32:31.07) That there is a Hollywood. That there is a, that it’s, you know, I think people really, they have this vision of that kind of, what’s your name? Gloria from Sunset Boulevard. Gloria, what’s that actress? Would you know, you’re too young actually. Shit, this, thank you. Gloria Swanson, this image of Hollywood, right? The 30s, the 40s. Well, that’s, you know, that was a brilliant time. And the late 60s and early 70s was a brilliant time.

Doug Dvorak (32:33.218)
Hahaha

Doug Dvorak (32:48.686)
Gloria Swanson.

Chuck (33:00.039)
But it doesn’t exist anymore. Hollywood is a geographical place. For sure, Hollywood exists, but the business is literally all over the world. So if I had a story that I wanted to tell and somehow I got funding from Virginia, where I live part of the time, that’s where Hollywood is. That’s my Hollywood. You can bring actors to Virginia. You can bring people who are… working on all the sets to Virginia. There are very talented people here. You don’t need the confines of geographical Hollywood anymore. if you, I always tell young writers, if you want to write on a show that’s shot in Hollywood, you got to move to Hollywood. That’s just the way it goes. And that’s fine. It was never, that’s never the career I saw it, but, but you know, that’s still Hollywood in a way. You could work in a studio. They might shoot it around LA. Or whatever, or Hollywood can be Vancouver, Hollywood can be Toronto, Hollywood can be whatever. But increasingly, Hollywood is really just wherever the story leads you. So I would tell people, get that old fashioned idea out of your head, it doesn’t exist anymore.

Doug Dvorak (34:10.572)
interesting. Chuck, if you could go back in a time machine to when you were 25 and you could give yourself one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Chuck (34:16.978)
Ugh.

Chuck (34:23.195)
Gosh, that’s such a great question, Doug. Relax. Relax. Trust yourself. Don’t push so much. What you have to say matters, even if it sometimes feels like the world doesn’t care. And stay true to yourself. It’s a cliche, but there’s a reason cliches are cliches. It’s because they tend to be true. So simple things like that.

Doug Dvorak (34:50.862)
Excellent. Chuck, what’s a lesson from film making or writing that has influenced your personal life?

Chuck (34:58.272)
it’s close to what I said before, which is trust, know, trust the moment, even things that are awful and messed up and that there’s a season, there’s a time and that also will, things will get better. They might get worse in another way, but they will get better. And I think as a young artist, because we’re so driven and so… anxious to tell our story, we sometimes just don’t trust it enough. And I think that if I could learn to trust more, that would be better.

Doug Dvorak (35:37.91)
Excellent. And what about mindset staying positive because there’s so much rejection for actors, directors, writers like yourself in this industry. How do you stay positive, focused, motivated when you’re getting so many rejection letters or casting calls and there’s a hundred people? How do you, what’s the mindset to stay in the game, competitive, focused, yet not getting stained by all that rejection.

Chuck (36:09.391)
it’s great way to put it, You know, a lot of my actor friends who get, you know, I’m lucky I get rejections over the phone or I get an email or I get by no call back or whatever. So my rejection is pretty like small and personal. I could do it within my flat or I could have my rejection on a train in Ireland. My rejection comes, you know, wherever it finds me. Actors have to kind of face their rejectors, right? And they so they’re a lot more more courageous than me. But what I hear from my actor friends makes so much sense, which is that what they’re doing, the auditioning, the applying oneself to making this work, that’s the job. That’s the job, is to trying to get the job and to showing your art and expressing yourself in a way that’s true. That is your job. And if by doing that job, you end up getting a gig that pays you a little bit or finds you on TV or whatever, then that’s fantastic. But if you make what you do, your job, either way, you’re in much better shape. And that also implies that you don’t let that class of gatekeeper become the arbiter of your happiness. see what saying? So that’s applicable, I think, in everything, which is that if we live by their feelings of us, we’re doomed. This is also applicable, I think, in your personal life, which is that at some point, you have to have some core belief in yourself so that even if people are telling you no and no and no and no, and that story is sticking with you, and for some reason you can’t shake it, and it’s all you want to do, and you’re willing to go broke, and you’re willing to lose friends, and you’re willing to lose agents, and you’re willing to lose money, but somehow just telling that story matters more to you than anything. then the cliche is true, you should tell that story because at the end of the day, you’ll have that, right? If you make yourself malleable to the town or to other people or to everyone’s opinions of you, then you’re already done. Now, if somebody’s willing to give you $400,000 a year to do that, that’s one thing. But if they’re going to just keep telling you that your little idea is wrong, you know…

Chuck (38:34.112)
then you better really look within and say, it wrong? Is the story I want to tell about my dad or my mom or my brother or my dog, is that wrong? Or do they just not like it? Because it can be that they just don’t like it, but that it’s a wonderful story. It can be those two things. So you have to find the head space to figure that out. And so the way that works out practically in my life is, you know, I live with this story for a while and I see if it sticks with me. And if I can’t get rid of it, You know, there’s something there. mean, something about it is being, is kind of beckoning me to tell it. So, so you just have to, you know, keep your head down and believe in yourself.

Doug Dvorak (39:16.922)
Accept the realities of that profession which is it’s a contact sport and there’s going to be a lot of connections and contacts and rejection is a piece of it, but stay true to your Your craft be a master of your craft stay hungry focused and work work work

Chuck (39:19.774)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Chuck (39:30.817)
Yes.

Chuck (39:36.937)
Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly it. I mean, and that’s applicable to every aspect of our lives. Whenever I pitch in Hollywood, right, you know, the image of the cliche is the stuttering, shaking writer sitting before the well clothed, know, scions of money, right? And so we’re bringing our wares in there. Well, I’ve never, I never bought that. Even when I was younger, I thought, no, what a pitch is. is I have a story, an idea that I, but by that time, by the time I’m bringing it to a studio or producer, I’ve vetted it somewhat, right? So I must believe in it. I thought about it. I tried to work it out structurally, whatever. So I believe in it. So I go in and my feeling is, my true feeling is, this is not a thing that I bull crap myself about. My feeling is that if I believe in it, they might believe in it, right? And if they don’t believe in it, that’s okay too. They’re not bad people. They just don’t dig the story for them. for their company, for whatever they’re thinking of doing. So when I go in, it’s in the guise of, I’ve got a great story. I really want to tell you, I’m going to tell it anyway, meaning I’m going to do this story. I’m going to make this happen anyway. In other words, the train is going to leave the station whether you like it or not. So when I go in, they feel that energy. First of all, they feel no fear, because when you walk in with fear, or if you’re broke, or if you need them too much, you’re dead. you’re absolutely dead. They know that, they feel it. They don’t want to work with somebody that that’s kind of desperate. So not consciously, I go in excited because I’m going to be telling the story. I hope they give me blank amount of money to do it. But if they don’t, I’m going to get this phone and I’m going to film a little film of my story. So that’s much more the way to live. You don’t make them the bad guy, they’re not the bad guy. A lot of times in film school or in drama school where I went, There’s this whole feeling that like the makers, right? The producers are the bad people and they don’t understand your art and stuff like that. It doesn’t have to be that way. They can be your compadre. They can be your ally. And if you use it well and their opinion well, you can really improve as a storyteller. Now, sometimes you don’t agree with them, then you hash it out. But going in weak and going in needy is the problem.

Chuck (42:03.067)
And that’s something you have to just never do. You have to believe in your story enough to know, I’m going to tell it either way. And I hope you like it. I hope you give me money to write it. But it’s OK if you don’t. I understand, but I’m going to write it anyway.

Doug Dvorak (42:16.814)
That’s a great mindset or perspective. Chuck, what’s next for you? Any upcoming projects you can share?

Chuck (42:23.302)
Yeah, it’s so funny when I was watching Kim, your interview with Kim, which was so great, and she’s the coolest, but she’s the coolest, isn’t she? She reminded me when she was talking about us making a doctor salary, it’s funny because it was hard. She didn’t lie about that, it was hard. But at the same time, when I heard her talking about it, it reminded me of what I missed a lot of, which is everything was so basic, meaning down to earth and kind of like, we have to tell the story.

Doug Dvorak (42:28.76)
She’s the best. Yeah, she’s a great, great person.

Chuck (42:51.408)
There’s something about this story that really hits us. It doesn’t make any sense that we’re making it. This would not make money normally, but something compelled us to do it. So that’s what I’m doing, Doug. I had a new collection. What do you know? It’s right here, Doug. My new collection of plays came out about two months ago. 14 Plays and Monologues by Charles Evered. Listen to this, Doug. Plays from 1984. to 2024, holy crap. That’s 40 years, So I’m promoting that a little bit. But what I’m working on next is probably will have something to do with my dog, who I lost about a year ago. And I’m sure you’ve gone through this experience. Most of your listeners and viewers have gone through this experience. And I can’t, for the life of me, shake it.

Doug Dvorak (43:37.719)
no.

Chuck (43:48.586)
And you realize after a while it’s not about the dog. It’s about something even larger. The dog, your heart is all, you’re in love with this beautiful creature because the rest of the world is nothing like that creature, So when you go home, they look at you with, hi, I just see you. I don’t know how much money you have. I don’t know what you can give me or whatever. And so what I’m writing about in essence is what gift I got.

Doug Dvorak (44:03.126)
Exactly.

Chuck (44:18.34)
what gift my little friend gave me for years. And in doing so, you know, how do I, and just like people we lose in our lives, how do we keep them alive without being insane? Does that make any sense?

Doug Dvorak (44:34.329)
Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. No, that’s that’s great. Thanks for for sharing. So Chuck we’re on to the rapid-fire round of questions Where have these 45 minutes gone? So I’m gonna ask you a series of questions one word response or Short short answer. Here we go. You ready? favorite movie of all time

Chuck (44:43.414)
my gosh. my gosh. my gosh.

Chuck (44:49.943)
Okay.

Chuck (44:53.376)
Okay, okay. Yes. it’s a wonderful life. I have the poster somewhere.

Doug Dvorak (45:02.094)
Excellent. A director or writer you’d love to collaborate with.

Chuck (45:05.93)
Live in your test.

Doug Dvorak (45:08.918)
either.

Chuck (45:09.482)
I would say my teacher was George Roy Hill. I wish I could have worked with him. I worked with him on a script. But John Huston, would have died to have worked with John Huston.

Doug Dvorak (45:18.766)
Excellent. Biggest pet peeve on a film set.

Chuck (45:21.946)
talkers who won’t be quiet.

Doug Dvorak (45:26.24)
If you weren’t a filmmaker or writer, what would you be doing?

Chuck (45:29.132)
Baseball.

Doug Dvorak (45:31.586)
What’s one film or play you wish you had written?

Chuck (45:34.546)
That’s a great question There’s a movie out. I haven’t seen it, but I saw the trailer and when I saw the trailer dog I crap. Why didn’t I write? That’s my movie. I should have written it It’s called the last rifleman with Pierce Brosnan. It’s about a veteran of the Normandy invasion an Irish veteran of the Normandy invasion World War two and he’s 90 something and he goes back for the anniversary and he breaks out of his old folks home to go back and I thought crap, know, I recently found out last thanks to my sister and I found out that my dad served in Normandy in World War two and I didn’t know that so I went to Normandy about a month ago and I walked along the beaches and I imagined maybe my dad was here and all that kind of stuff but when I saw the trailer for that movie I thought darn it I missed it but I love Pierce Brosnan. I don’t care what the movie is. I don’t care how it’s made. I love that movie. I can tell you even before I see it, I love the heart of that movie. So, The Last Rifleman, it should have been mine. Ugh, I can’t wait. I can’t wait. Great.

Doug Dvorak (46:34.326)
I wrote it down. That’s going to be on my watch list. Coffee or tea on a long writing day.

Chuck (46:41.515)
coffee even though I have Irish in me I have to go coffee.

Doug Dvorak (47:02.964)
A book that absolutely should be made into a movie.

Chuck (47:16.307)
The Ginger Man was, gosh, I forget the name of the author. He’s an American author who lived in Dublin for a while. And Johnny Depp has been trying to make this movie for years, somehow hasn’t gotten to do it. My teacher, George Roy Hill, was trying to make the movie. He didn’t get to do it. And it’s really the story of a crazy American student in Dublin in the 50s. And it’s just kind of crazy.

Doug Dvorak (47:18.856)
Ginger man never heard of it

Chuck (47:45.183)
And that in Confederacy of Dunces, I don’t know if you know Confederacy of Dunces, another one of those great books that just can’t find its way into a movie. I would love to get a crack at that.

Doug Dvorak (47:55.86)
Excellent. Best piece of advice you’ve ever received.

Chuck (48:00.607)
It would probably be from the very same George Roy Hill who told me, because I had this amazing time with him, I have to write about it, but he was kind of, you know, done with his Hollywood career and he came to Yale to teach and he took a, he had a fondness for me, I don’t know why, but he liked his drink at night, he wasn’t overdoing it, but he’d like a nice vodka at night and would invite me to his Apartment to go over my one act play that I was working on and he would rip it apart and it was an honor to get ripped apart by Georgia Hill and and he he kept trying to Serve me a vodka and and I said, know George I don’t I don’t I don’t drink I don’t I try not to drink you know, and and he said don’t ever drink I thought that was some great advice You know

Doug Dvorak (48:51.598)
Hmm.

Doug Dvorak (48:55.202)
That is great advice. That is great advice. Well, we’re coming up on minute 50, Chuck. It’s been a high honor and privilege to share your career, your life, your thoughts on being a filmmaker, being a director, being a writer. If our listeners and viewers want to get a hold of you or buy one of your books, how can they get a hold of you?

Chuck (49:17.829)
I guess they should go to my website, which strangely enough is CharlesEvered.com, which will have a way to get to me to see if they want to play or whatever’s going on, which is cool. I’m on Facebook, Charles Evered strangely enough. They could always reach me through that. So I’d love to hear from anybody. as you mentioned, I’ve been all over the country the last couple of years, and it’s been just a pleasure to meet people. all kinds of people, theater people, non-theater people, and it kind of keeps me going as a writer, you know, it really does. So I love to hear from people.

Doug Dvorak (49:54.478)
Well, thank you, Chuck. And thank you, Mission Possible podcast nation. Please check us out at missionpossible.biz. Good luck, good health and Carpe Diem.