"Billions" And "Rounders" Writer Brian Koppelman Shared Hollywood Secrets About The Filmmaking Process And They Are Insane (And Shared Some Inspiration Too)

Brian Koppelman, the brains behind “Rounders” and “Billions” among other movies/TV shows, has been tweeting some awesome threads detailing the inside workings of Hollywood, and how crazy a lot of the studios are and how hard it can be to make a good movie. This one is my favorite, when he talks about his movie “Runner Runner” that bombed at the box office and was panned by critics. He posted the original script online which people loved, and then talked about why it failed so badly. Read on….

Can you imagine??? You spend tireless hours, months upon months, writing and rewriting what you think is a great script. And then on set the director starts changing everything you’ve worked for and written because he thinks “Michael Corleone is super cool” despite never even seeing Godfather 2! And guess what? It almost ruined his career:

He was told his career was over. Un-hirable. Finished in Hollywood. And what did he do? Got to work on “Billions”. Didn’t let the powers that be stop him from becoming who he knew he could become.

I did a shitty Facebook Live 5 years ago and since then Dave has told me I’m more or less worthless on radio. Every time I go to DC I do radio and crush. When I fill in with Kate when Chaps is out it goes great. But any time Dave brings me up he says I suck. You just gotta keep pushing through and hope to come out the other side. It drains on me to be honest. You start questioning yourself. You start believing the negativity. But I don’t think I suck despite how bad he wants me to believe that to be true.

Here’s one last story from Brian about how shitty Hollywood is:

It’s like something right out of Succession but real life low rent bullshit.

Brian Koppelman is an awesome Twitter follower, I highly recommend it. He has great stories, is funny, and is inspirational.

Hollywood, what a place man. What a place.