Let's Put the Vampire Back In His Coffin: Some Final Thoughts on the Worst Creative Experience of My Life
Put a stake in me because I’m done talking about ‘DRACULA’ (2013)
This is the final installment of my “Monthlong Celebration of the Complete and Utter Shitshow That Was 'DRACULA' (2013) on Its 10th Anniversary”. If you haven’t read my previous accounts of my experiences during the creation, development, and production of my first TV series, I suggest you start here.
“Although we've come
To the end of the road
Still I can't let go
It's unnatural
You belong to me
I belong to you”
-“End of the Road”, Boyz II Men
Maybe it’s true, maybe I will never be able to let “DRACULA” go. It was the first TV series I ever sold, as well as the first thing I ever had produced as a screenwriter. As horrific of an experience as the whole thing was, it will always belong to me and I, for better or worse, will always belong to it. That said, I’m so tired of talking about it.
Earlier this year, I decided to discuss publicly for the first time what happened to me between 2011 and early 2014 when “DRACULA” (2013) was canceled. The initial reason was because I hoped my story might educate others, providing them with some of the insights I wished I’d had when my career kicked off. But very quickly, I realized what I was really after was some kind of closure. Some sense that what happened to me wasn’t my fault. I now accept it wasn’t, at all, despite missteps I made along the way. Those missteps were made in response to atrocious, unacceptable behavior. In other words, it wasn’t my fault to get them right. I was just doing my best as the rookie in an otherwise toxic and creatively crushing situation.
It's now necessary for me to shut up about “DRACULA”, though this isn’t to say I won’t make reference to it here or there in the future. Just that this month and the series’ tenth anniversary was the last hurrah for me writing at length, reconsidering, and dissecting the experience for anyone interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the complete and utter shitshow it turned into. Before I get on with things — i.e., discussing art I genuinely love and discussing making art with people whose work I genuinely love — I wanted to share some closing thoughts in no specific order.
Earlier this month, I announced a schedule of articles about “DRACULA” (2013) that was meant to include one summarizing my experience of watching my own TV series for the first time. Meaning, I’d never actually watched “DRACULA” before. When the series aired, I watched the pilot and second episode before I decided I couldn’t emotionally endure the rest. By the time the finale aired, which I wrote (and which was rewritten into something I can mostly only apologize for), I agreed to watch it and live-tweet it for the sake of the fans and the actors and crew I wanted to help get a second season if I could. About five years ago, I thought there was enough distance from the experience to finally sit down and watch the whole damn thing. I made it four episodes in and again gave up. I just had more important things to do with my life. When I started down this road again this month, to finally watch my own TV series and put it behind me, I couldn’t make it past the pilot. It’s just not a series I would watch in my personal life, and I concluded very quickly — and once again — I had better things to do with my life. This Substack doesn’t pay enough for me to spend ten hours grimacing and wincing my way through something I’d rather not have more memories of. Sorry for anyone who wanted yet another portal into my creative suffering.
My friend comic/TV writer Ed Brubaker has asked me to discuss the fact that I was blocked from visiting the set of my own TV series. To answer this request, let’s begin with the fact that the head writer, every writer who wrote an episode, and the series creator (me) were not allowed to travel to Budapest where “DRACULA” was produced. I don’t know who was responsible for this, or rather I have my suspicions but do try to treat this Substack as a form of journalism and try to only share that which I can verify. In this case, what I know is that there were elements of the production that believed I was not the creative voice of the series and wanted to prevent me as much as possible from being present in that capacity. I also know I wasn’t allowed onset. Related? Who knows? But the latter remains true, and there were real-world consequences to my absence and the absence of the head writer. Decisions were regularly made that directly impacted story and often required scripts to be rewritten. One example: in the pilot, scenes were shot using expensive, time-sucking wire work that implied powers Dracula did not possess in our story and which we consequently never included in other episodes of the series. Yet another: Jonathan Rhys Meyers uses a katana in the pilot. A katana is a Japanese sword, and his character never visited Japan because, you know, opposite side of the continent and all. Its use onscreen is comically silly and a point of embarrassment for me. It makes no narrative sense and that’s why we, the writers, never included it in another script. Yet another example: a key set was dismantled without warning. We just heard one day some version of, “Sorry, we can’t shoot all these scenes in all these scripts because that set no longer exists.” No one could explain why, as I recall. There are many, many, many other examples of people – not the writers of the series – making story decisions that couldn’t be explained, that cost the production money, and which the writers’ room had to constantly pretend away or alter story to accommodate.
My time on “DRACULA” can be credited with turning me into an angry advocate for diversity and representation in Hollywood. Well, that and a chance opportunity to hear Geena Davis speak (which happened at roughly the same point in my life). But it was specifically the result of seeing the writing samples sent to me by one of the series’ production companies and agents and managers that disgusted me so much. In the first batch, which featured numerous submissions, there was only one from someone I could identify as a woman by their name alone. When I queried about this, I was told this would be rectified, which resulted in a few more appropriate writing samples being sent my way. My intention had always been for “DRACULA” to have a writers’ room split evenly between people who identified as men and women, but it became a painful struggle to pull off. One female writer who ultimately made it into the room only did so after I personally called her agent and asked for help finding exciting female writers. So, when women and people of color and other marginalized groups talk about the gatekeepers who used to — and still can — keep them out of jobs, know they’re not exaggerating. It was a painful reality in Hollywood for decades.
I’m asked many questions about “DRACULA”. One that has often come up is: would I have returned for a second season? The answer to this will be edifying for many, I think, because it reveals a pragmatic truth about this industry. Yes, I would’ve come back. I have often tried to convince myself I wouldn’t have, but the money and the prestige would’ve been too much to pretend away. Early in your career, you rarely have the privilege to behave like an auteur. You need to create opportunities for future, better successes. That’s what a second season of “DRACULA” would’ve meant for me. This all said, in hindsight it’s better for me, both personally and professionally, that the series was canceled. I can’t imagine what dark places I would’ve slipped into had I had worked with Mr. Smiley or the head writer again. Who I would’ve become after that second season would’ve made me impossible to work with, I think. One season was enough to warp how I collaborated with others for several years. A second season would’ve probably driven me from the business altogether even as my career was only just really taking off. More, a second season would’ve cemented my relationship to “DRACULA”, warts and all. With only one season of it out there, I’ve always been able to keep a safe distance from it. It’s a glorious failure. Consequently, I’ve been able to pursue work without potential partners holding me accountable for it.
Another question I’m often asked about “DRACULA” is if there were any bright spots in the experience for me. Yeah, there was: money. In other words, security. “DRACULA” helped me buy my first house, and for that I will always be grateful. It also created heat around me. I sold a lot of projects off the series being produced and worked with a lot of remarkable filmmakers I admire as a result, such as Park Chan-wook, Wes Craven, Walter Hill, Dario Argento, Simon Curtis, Floria Sigsmondi, and Jonas Åkerlund. These experiences all made me a stronger storyteller and filmmaker. But as wonderful as the income, professional boost, and collaborations “DRACULA” resulted in — no, even better than them — are the friendships I struck with the rest of the writers’ room (head writer excluded, as you might have guessed). These include Harley Peyton, Nicole Taylor, Thomas Grieves, Katie Lovejoy, Rebecca Kirsch, and Jesse Peyronel.
A surprising side-effect of airing my “DRACULA” trauma over the course of this year is how many TV creators and showrunners reached out to me to express their own experiences with Mr. Smiley or their own horrific experiences elsewhere in the industry. For a time, I was having regular Zooms with incredibly accomplished writers — people whose work I admired — whose sanity had been tested in countless terrible ways in their pursuit of their craft. Several NDA’s were broken, let’s just put it that way. But again, out of these conversations came several new friendships - as well as the sense that Hollywood is an industry rife with abusive behavior and criminally incompetent people who have failed upward while leaving a trail of broken writers in their wakes. If you’re being abused, find writers whom you can confide in. We must take care of each other. Illegitimi non carborundum - don’t let the bastards grind you down.
These essays about “DRACULA” were written for screenwriters, other filmmakers, and artists in general. Many fans of the series have read the articles and expressed their loyalty to the series. I remain immensely grateful for their loyalty and support for “DRACULA”. I’m glad anything I did, regardless of my experience making it, brought them joy. If you’re one of these fans, these anecdotes, lessons, and other insights are “insider baseball” as I’ve often heard it put in Hollywood. They’re about how I experienced the making of the series, not how you experienced it. The two should have nothing to do with each other, as far as I’m concerned.
I will close with this: whoever you are, whatever kind of art you create, I hope you never encounter your own Mr. Smiley. I wish you creative partners who value you, who seek to prosper alongside you. I have had several of these in my career, many of whom have become some of my closest friends. Producers are like any other profession. There are more than a few bad eggs in the bunch, but most just want to make something they care about. And when you find the good ones, when you find the ones who see you and believe in you and have the skills to back up all that faith, they will help you become better than you ever thought you could be.
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I have enjoyed these articles immensely, and not just because I’m a sadist. There’s always more to be learned from failure (“here’s what went wrong”) than success (“who knows what we did right?”) and your honesty is so insightful.
You’ve written eloquently on how your experiences on Dracula have informed your later career choices, but did any of them also inspire your fiction?