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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Truth.
This is The Truth. I'm Jonathan Mitchell. And lately, we've been releasing conversations in between episodes, talking with the writers about where these stories come from and the ideas inside them. And today, I'm talking with writer Mac Rogers, who wrote Let's Not and Say We Did. And this will be a spoiler-filled conversation. It's really meant to be listened to after you've heard the story.
So if you haven't, please go listen to it first. We'll talk with Mac after the break. This interview will be available in the main feed for four weeks. And after that, it will be exclusive to our premium feed where we keep all of our interviews and bonus material. That's also where you can listen to the show ad-free. Go to thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm.
On the surface, Mac Rogers' new story, Let's Not Say We Did, appears to be about a married couple who have opened their relationship. But by the end, it becomes something a little bit more unusual. It's a story about creative partnership and finding someone who helps you become more fully yourself.
And I started our conversation by asking Mac what made him want to write a story that begins with ethical non-monogamy.
I'm going to get very slightly TMI, but not very TMI, so don't worry, listeners. For most of my life, my sex life has occurred within relationships. And there was a period of time between one relationship ending and me meeting the woman who is now my wife of many years, where I was like, well... I'm a man. I'm a heterosexual man. Don't men like one night stands and playing the field?
I should go play the field and go have some casual sex. And I didn't enjoy it at all. So I became fascinated by the idea of couple where they tried to do this because their relationship is at a real standstill, and it works for the woman and doesn't work for the man.
Because the joke that is nearly always made with these sorts of stories you see on TV, movies, or whatever all the time, a guy is really restless in his relationship, he talks his reluctant girlfriend into opening up the relationship or the marriage, then she ends up like... dating tons of guys, he can't date anyone, and he's super jealous of the guys that she's dating.
And that's sort of like the hackneyed version of it. I was like, what if he just actually just didn't like it? Right. But then he thought that would make him look like a loser to his wife at exactly the same time as she's meeting a lot of exciting new prospects.
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Chapter 2: What is the main theme of 'Let's Not and Say We Did'?
She had kind of a mischievous sense of humor that came out naturally during the date scene. Suddenly just sort of hit me. What if she offers to help? And this plan to deceive was created by two people who are just getting to know one another, so it functionally becomes a new relationship. And suddenly, and writers live for these moments, suddenly all the light bulbs started going off.
Yeah. And in this story, Jeff, and I guess Leslie too, has a sort of compulsory need to do this, you know? Yeah. And I'm wondering, like, Is that how you feel once you start writing a story? Do you feel sort of just this compulsory need to revisit these characters and get to know them better and see where they lead?
My glib answer would be I wish that I have that because Jeff can't wait to start doing more writing, whereas I'm a dreadful procrastinator. But yes, I exist in this weird space where my brain is constantly working on scripts, but then I have this terrible procrastination problem with actually writing them down.
What is it about that that you find compelling? Once you start sort of pulling on that thread, what is it that's so satisfying about making up people that don't exist?
It's rarely that I'm making a statement, but more that I'm trying to like investigate something that I haven't worked out for myself. A lot of times people say like, oh, what is this script trying to say?
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Chapter 3: Why did Mac Rogers choose ethical non-monogamy as a story element?
And I'm like, well, if I knew what it was trying to say, I could just say the thing. More often it's about an idea where I'm not settled yet and I don't know where I'm going. So I needed to write a script because I couldn't just say what I think.
So what do you think you were trying to work out with this story?
Well, I have this fascination with people who live quite differently than me and people who live in a way that I just kind of couldn't imagine living. Like, you know, particularly given that ethical non-monogamy and polyamory are – they seem to be growing increasingly. in popularity. I don't know to what degree that's been measured. I'm out of the loop. I have not heard anything about E&M.
Oh, believe me. There's no reason my wife would ever be on my laptop, but I made a point of telling her early in this process, listen, I just want to let you know I'm doing a ton of searches about ethical non-monogamy and open marriages and polyamory. It's for a script. It's for a script, I swear. I think I sort of wanted to struggle with the idea of
I find it so fascinating that people can function in open marriage situations because for some people it really works. And it was a really important thing that I really had to struggle to keep in every draft of the script. Something that was really important to me was it's working for Ingrid and it should never – I never want it to turn out that it's not working for Ingrid.
Right.
Right. It's not about E&M going wrong. Right. Another thing that it does for the story, I think, is that it puts pressure on Jeff for it to go right for him as well.
And I really wanted to try to write this stuff that I personally don't identify with at all and see if I could find a way into understanding it. That's a big part of the fun of writing is to take situations that you yourself are not interested in, but see which parts of your personality come closest to it. In my case, it would be like the storytelling and the artistic collaboration aspect.
Is there any way that I can sort of imagine... What parts of me are adjacent to this kind of thing that I find so hard to understand, but that seems to work for a lot of people who are not entirely dissimilar to me? That, I think, is what I was struggling with with this story. Yeah. Did you learn anything through the course of writing it?
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Chapter 4: How does the character Jeff's experience with casual sex shape the story?
I think it's an interesting thing is where it's like, even if you don't have an open marriage, you can't be every single thing for your life partner. And even as a couple, it's important to maintain other relationships in your life. You're usually platonic ones, but where each of you gets a little something that you don't get from your partner and there's nothing to be ashamed of.
It's perfectly natural.
Yeah. And so how did you feel about how all these elements came together in the final piece? Did anything surprise you that you didn't expect?
A big part of it was the music. In the back of my head, I thought, you know, I thought I think I said something about this to you. Unfortunately, you were you were interested. Oh, maybe this might kind of have like sort of heist sounding music like this, you know, like the kind of stuff like when when Steven Soderbergh is panning a camera across a Vegas casino.
I mean, that was a thought that I had, too. I mean, I always think because they're plotting, you know, and so you kind of want a rhythmic thing. It kind of creates a sense of urgency and purpose to what people are doing if they're talking over that kind of music. And so I thought, well, it would be nice if there was a groove to it, you know, like some kind of...
Sort of almost like retro-y bass and drum oriented music.
What I got from your music when I was listening to the bounces of this one, it felt less heisty and more like I felt like I was feeling the exhilaration of creativity. Oh, that's great. Well, I mean, I thought I was worried that it would sound too porny, you know? Okay, now I retroactively am hearing it, now that I'm picturing me abusing it.
But when I was listening to it, it was like, oh, Jonathan wants to show that they're both realizing that they've happened upon something that they both really enjoy. And that's what this music is doing.
Like a part of them is coming online that they've never... Ultimately, when I was looking for music, I felt like my directive was just find something with a nice groove to it that's not too active, that has like just sort of walking tempo. And everything I ended up finding sounded like porn music to me. It's like... Is there something subconsciously that's going through me that I could, you know?
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Chapter 5: What role does the character Leslie play in the narrative?
Right, because the rule I give for myself is never ask for the scripted line to be restored purely for vanity. Right. Only ask— You could. You could do that.
I just wouldn't do it.
Right.
Right. It's like, I know it's yours. Again, it's like this thing is like, you know the rules before you walk in the house.
Yeah. I mean, for me, like when we do the improv with the actors, it's not really a question of the words being right or wrong, you know, the words or the words tripping up the actor or something like that. I don't think of it like that at all. I don't see that as being the function of the improv.
Why it's important to me is that it gets the actors listening to one another in a different kind of way. It gets their brains working differently. If they're improvising, they don't know what the other person's going to say next, and so it forces them to listen to one another. And when I'm editing tape...
A big part of my process is to listen to every take of a particular line of dialogue next to one another. So I might have like seven or eight takes of a single line of dialogue and so I'm listening to them in order and you can hear The difference when it's really close together like that, you can hear when the actor pops in and they come alive.
There's like a life to the performances that only comes about usually while they're improvising for whatever reason.
and it's in my mind it's vital to making a connection with the audience that the actors feel engaged with what they're doing in a particular kind of way they aren't just there to as a vessel for words they're they're there as a character in a situation and they're bouncing off of another character and and that interaction is really what's making these sounds come out of their body
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Chapter 6: How does the story explore the dynamics of creative partnership?
Improv is very inarticulate, but it also has a spark, like a life to it that is very difficult to get otherwise. On the other hand, recordings, are very static and sort of have like a deadness to them because you can't change them. Yet you can edit them and no one would know you've edited them. It's an incredibly pliable medium.
And so I thought, wow, if you took these two things together, you could sort of maximize the potential of both of them.
Well, I don't know if you intended to do this, but you actually quite elegantly brought the conversation full circle because that image of you going to UCB and kind of immediately having this feeling of recognition is... Really, I mean, it's Jeff and Leslie's story in a way. To look at another person and sort of see a soulmate, but not a romantic one, but a creative soulmate.
To finally go, oh, this is the sandbox I'm meant to be playing in. This is my canvas. And that is a big... Jeff says, it may not have been the final cut because the line was improv'd a little bit, but something where he says, like, where he says, I'm not in love with Leslie. It's a big feeling, but it's not love.
The feeling of finding your creative people is a feeling that very much resembles romantic love, but it's not quite the same thing. And, you know, I think, yeah, I think what you just described is kind of what this story is about.
Our next episode is written by Mary McDonnell. It's called Do-Over, and it's about a woman with severe social anxiety who discovers that an AI therapy tool designed to prepare her for life may be keeping her from living it. That's coming next week. And as always, if you'd like to listen to our show ad-free, go to thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm. It really helps our show.
We can't make it without everyone's help. thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm I'm Jonathan Mitchell, and you have been hearing The Truth.
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