'Taken', Writer, Leslie Bohem

0:06Jawad MirStart from the top, just kind of about your career first, how you got started, before we go on to Taken, how you got started, what your journey has been so far.

0:17Leslie BohemIt's, it's sort of... It's, it's backwards. My parents…

0:22Jawad MirOkay

0:22Leslie Bohem... Were both writers. My dad was a writer and a producer. My mom was a writer and, they hated the movie business and were long out of it, and I had dropped out of school to play in a rock band. So, nepotism did absolutely nothing for me except that my idea of what grownups did when they went to work was they went in the other room and typed, so, you know…

0:44Jawad MirRight

0:45Leslie Bohem... There's that. And there was a guy named Stuart Cornfeld, who was the drummer in my band. So I knew him in high school, and then he was the drummer in my band in college, and when we all dropped out, he refused to drop out, so he wound up in Hollywood. And he,.. I ran into him at a movie theater. I was probably my mid-20s, and, he had started producing, and he produced, for Mel Brooks. He produced The Elephant Man and The Fly and a bunch of other stuff. And I was playing in a band called Sparks, and we were... Stuart and I had decided to write. We'd written a script, and it wasn't very good, and, then, I was playing in this band, and the band was sort of popular in LA, and Stuart called me and said that Atlantic Records and the Ladd Company had an idea for a movie about rock and roll. And he had told them that I played in a band and I spoke in complete sentences.

1:49Leslie BohemAnd so they flew me back from Paris, where my band was playing…

1:53Jawad MirWow

1:54Leslie Bohem... And I told them that their idea sucked, and they hired me on the spot.

1:59Jawad MirAmazing. It…

2:00Leslie BohemThis is something I've never been able... I've never been able to recreate that moment again, of being that obnoxious and arrogant and getting the job. And, so for a while, I did both, and I got a lot of jobs writing about rock and roll.

2:14Jawad MirYeah.

2:15Leslie BohemAnd nobody makes those movies. The junior executives would pay me to write them 'cause I was cheap, and they had seen my band, and then their bosses would go, "Well, there's no part for Kevin Costner in this," and, it being the 1980s. And, so then the only other jobs that rock and roll guys could get were horror movies 'cause they sort of conflated the two, and, so... And I like horror movies, so I wound up writing Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and a movie that was meant to be House 3 but wound up being called The Horror Show. And then I sorta looked up, and I wasn't in the band anymore, and I was writing full time, and here I am.

3:00Jawad MirWow. You know, your part about, where you said that you hated the script and they hired you on the spot, it reminded me of that episode of, Seinfeld where George Costanza... I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan.

3:12Leslie BohemYeah. I lo… Yes, and I remember seeing that when it came out and went, "Exactly."

3:19Jawad MirAnd he got the job with the Yankees. So that's, that's great. And where are you originally from? Which part of, the world?

3:26Leslie BohemI'm from West... I went to Hollywood High. I'm from LA. I grew up in…

3:30Jawad MirOkay

3:30Leslie Bohem... In North Hollywood and then in Hollywood.

3:32Jawad MirOh, okay, so you've been in California…

3:34Leslie BohemYeah

3:34Jawad Mir... Your last... From the beginning.

3:36Leslie BohemYeah.

3:36Jawad MirOkay. And how did you g… get involved in Taken and, you know, and how…

3:44Leslie BohemI... It was a, sort of a combination of things. I had a... Well, yeah, my movie Dante's Peak had just come out, and I had a general meeting at, I guess it was Amblin then, not DreamWorks, and…

4:00Jawad MirRight

4:01Leslie Bohem... They… the… it… just sort of the conversation led to, that Steven had 20 hours on the SyFy Channel to do Alien Abduction, and was I interested? And he... I… I guess he had, he had seen Dante's Peak, and he had seen a movie I wrote called Twenty Bucks, which was a script of my dad's that I rewrote, and thankfully he liked them both. And I... Dante's Peak is heavily stolen from Jaws. So

4:34Jawad MirI've seen it

4:34Leslie Bohem... I... The... In Jaws, there's big shark, bigger shark, and I was like, "Well, we should do the same thing. Big eruption, bigger eruption."

4:43Jawad MirYeah.

4:43Leslie Bohem"And, I'll make the mayor the love interest." So I... And so I confessed to having stolen Jaws, and I…

4:52Jawad MirRight

4:52Leslie Bohem... Think you know that.

4:54Jawad MirYeah.

4:55Leslie BohemOne thing led to…

4:55Jawad MirNo, I... Well, a lot of films borrow from Jaws, right? Like, even Twister…

5:00Leslie BohemSure

5:00Jawad Mir... Looks at…

5:01Leslie BohemWell, yes. It's stealing from the best.

5:04Jawad MirAnd I... Ex…

5:04Leslie BohemAnd I did.

5:04Jawad MirExactly. And then I remember when Dante's Peak came out. Incidentally, I actually watched Dante's Peak again three months ago. And I remember Volcano came out around that time, too, with Tommy Lee Jones. There was this trend, Deep Impact and Armageddon.

5:19Leslie BohemYeah.

5:19Jawad MirVolcano. And I don't know how that happened…

5:21Leslie BohemIt…

5:21Jawad Mir... But it kept happening.

5:23Leslie BohemI, my... This is a... I have a theory which I can't substantiate, which is simply that, development executives go to parties, and…

5:33Jawad MirAnd they love…

5:33Leslie Bohem... If you come, if you come back and tell your boss, "I wanna do a movie about a volcano," and your boss says, "That's a great idea," you're in business. If your boss says, "That's a terrible idea," and three weeks later somebody else announces that they're doing a movie about a volcano, you still look good. So it's a win-win situation. I have no idea if this is true. I know that, we stopped Michael Crichton from writing a book about a volcano erupting 'cause he was just like, "There's too many of these. I can't do it." And, you know, that…

6:04Jawad MirReally?

6:04Leslie Bohem... That's, you know... Like I... Because he would've clearly blown us all out of the water on the spot, right? You know.

6:09Jawad MirYeah.

6:10Leslie BohemBut he was like, "I…

6:12Jawad MirHe kinda did a, I mean, it wasn't like a volcano-based movie, but in Congo…

6:17Leslie BohemYeah

6:17Jawad Mir... There was a scene about volcano and earthquakes, like…

6:20Leslie BohemWell, easily, for all I know, he used the scenes…

6:23Jawad MirYeah

6:23Leslie Bohem... He'd already written when he gave up the volcano movie. That's certainly what I would've done.

6:26Jawad MirProbably, yeah. You're right, you're right. And how did you... I mean, it's one thing to have, you know, to find out that Spielberg has 20 hours on Sci-Fi, come up with a series, but in order to write something about UFOs or alien abductions or whatever that is you're writing, or you have to either know it or you have to believe in it to a certain extent or be fascinated with it or to be curious about it. So I guess that's…

6:54Leslie BohemWell, I, it's a, y… you know, when I, in our first meeting, I was like, "Well, really all I know about this is your movies and The X Files." You know? I don't, I mean, I really don't know a lot. And…

7:08Jawad MirOkay

7:08Leslie Bohem... It was like, "That's better because you won't come with a lot of preconceived notions."

7:14Jawad MirYeah.

7:14Leslie BohemAnd so, you know, I, obviously I read a lot. I have a huge collection of contactee books now, which are the, you know, the guys from the '50s, the, that first… ... Wave of sightings. And I went to a lot of conventions. I went to Roswell. I kept looking for something that I could hang onto that would make, you know, that would resonate for me, and it was when I got the title. I mean, 'cause at first we were gonna call it Closer because of close encounters.

7:50Leslie BohemAnd then, you know, and by the way, since the Liam Neeson movie has come out, I've had to spend the rest of my life going…... "No, not that one, the other one." But this will be funny.

8:00Jawad MirThat's the same problem with Google. I mean, Google Taken, that's the only thing that comes up.

8:05Leslie BohemAbsolutely.

8:05Jawad MirNo, not, no.

8:05Leslie BohemAbsolutely. I mean, thank God it's called Steven Spielberg presents Taken. But, I got, once I thought, "Well, it's called Taken," then I thought, "I'm gonna make this about every single way," and which this is gonna sound a little pretentious, but I, every single way in which people are taken, you know, drugs, love, lust, power.

8:29Leslie BohemAnd so once I had that sort of framework, it really helped me to find, you know, stories w… within that world that were about all these other things, you know, that…

8:42Jawad MirYeah

8:43Leslie Bohem... Because o… on some level, whether you literally believe in aliens in that, in that sense or…

8:52Jawad MirYeah

8:53Leslie Bohem... Or you don't, I mean, the, what's fascinating about our consistent compulsion to tell that story, you know, 'cause we've been telling it since the incubus and the succubus, you know? And…

9:03Jawad MirYeah

9:04Leslie Bohem... It's almost more interesting if it's not literally true. You know? Because if it's literally true, then wow, that happened, but if it's, if it's not literally true, then why do we keep coming up with that story, you know? I'm, I'm wandering into Joseph Campbell land here, but, it's, it's, it's, it's really, I, it just became, I, it, the more, the deeper I got into it, the more riveting that part of it became to me.

9:27Jawad MirAnd that's, that's so accurate, right? Because even throughout the series, I actually had a, I watched it again last week, and just to kind of refresh my memory because it's been such a long time. And obviously with a new pair of eyes, you know, in terms of age teaches you so much more about perception, about people and all that. It, there was that constant question throughout, even when they were sitting, I think it was episode six or seven or towards the end where they were kinda sitting in a cer… a group session where they're talking about…

10:00Leslie BohemOh, yeah

10:01Jawad Mir... The wo… nobody believes us, and that idea of nobody believes us was literally start, you know, started from the very beginning, and it kept lingering. And then I think that's for an audience that connects because as an audience member, like even to this day, like I know a lot of people, there are skeptics out there. There are people who believe in it thoroughly. There are people who don't even believe in it. So there's all that idea of curiosity, which was really built really well into the entire series. So I just wanted to sort of…

10:27Leslie BohemOh, thanks

10:27Jawad Mir... Make a comment of that.

10:29Leslie BohemWell, thanks. I also, you know, I realized, like, where the show was going. There was a, y… you know, I certainly couldn't answer the questions I was asking. They were, you know, like, what is the meaning of existence kinda questions. So…

10:43Jawad MirYeah

10:43Leslie Bohem... Like the best I could do was really ask them well, you know, or try to. So it, that sort of became another sort of, you know, part of it.

10:52Jawad MirYeah. And I think it's important, I mean, I've learned this too myself being a filmmaker is that it's so important not to get the answers to the questions that you want as well because if you keep asking questions, it will show in the film, it will show in the story, and it will... That's the audience. Like, you are the audience, right? So if you're asking…

11:09Leslie BohemYeah

11:09Jawad Mir... Yourself that question, the audience will ask that question too until the last frame. And…

11:14Leslie BohemWell, that becomes a, it's a hard thing about, like you know this. It's a hard thing about what we do is that in most other art forms, you know, you're, you're asking the question. That's why you're doing it.

11:28Jawad MirYeah.

11:28Leslie BohemBecause we have to have the, you know, we're, we're, we're spending tons of money and other people's money, so a lot of times we have to answer all those questions before we start. And that's a, that's a very different process. I mean, I'm working on something now. My entire, you can't see this, but my entire wall is full of cards, meaning I've answered all these questions before I started writing, which sometimes is a lot less fun, you know?

11:49Jawad MirYeah.

11:49Leslie BohemAnd but part of what was, I mean, w… part of what was so fun about Taken was that we were under insane gun, so, like, I was writing it as we were shooting it by the end. And…

12:01Jawad MirOkay

12:02Leslie Bohem... You know, so that became part of the excitement was, like, I really didn't know what was gonna happen, you know? And, I mean, I sort of did, but...

12:09Jawad MirYeah, no, I get it. I get it. And that's, that's, that's similar with, when you make documentaries… depending on the type of documentary you make, like the ones that I've been involved in, as a narrative documentary, and I'm filming everything in real time as it's happening, like following…

12:24Leslie BohemYeah

12:25Jawad Mir... The protagonist, and I have no clue where the hell is the story going. And that is scary as hell, but at the same time, that's what keeps you going, at least for me personally. You know?

12:35Leslie BohemSure.

12:36Jawad MirYou don't know where it's going. But…

12:38Leslie BohemWell, I would imagine, don't you fi… I mean, you must, like, the story shows up in the editing room a lot then for you, right, I would think?

12:44Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, it is. It, I mean, you have an i… you know, you've figured out the beginning. You know where the ending is, what the journey is of the protagonist, and then you have no clue if they're gonna make it till the end or…

12:55Leslie BohemYeah.

12:55Jawad Mir... How they're gonna make it to the end, right? So.

12:58Leslie BohemYeah.

12:58Jawad MirBut, it's, it's fascinating how stories are. And one of the things I really loved about my favorite character, and this is back in 2002, right? At that time, characters like that were really rarely written, I think, maybe with the exception of few. Cardinal Owen, played by Jo… Joel, Gretsch, I think.

13:17Leslie BohemOh, Joel Gretsch. He's, he's…

13:20Jawad MirAmazing

13:20Leslie Bohem... He's so good. I'll, I'll, I'll, the, there's one of the most profound things I've ever seen an actor do, I think, is there's the scene where, okay, are spoilers okay?

13:35Jawad MirI think that's fine. Yeah.

13:36Leslie BohemWell, okay. So there's a, there's the scene where he kills his wife.

13:40Jawad MirYeah.

13:40Leslie BohemAnd then it's followed by the scene where he tells his children that their mother died, right?

13:43Jawad MirI know. That was insane.

13:45Leslie BohemAnd, like, first of all, our, we, I had written him running the car off the road, and the location fell through, and we couldn't afford the stunt.

13:55Jawad MirRight.

13:55Leslie BohemAnd so Sergio Mimenca, the director, was like, "Can he just walk up to the car and shoot her in the head?" And I was like, "Yes." And A, that's 10,000 times better than any stupid low-budget version of a car chase and a run a car off a cliff would be.

14:15Jawad MirYeah.

14:15Leslie BohemBut then Joel comes into that next scene with his kids, and I guess, you know, where you see this a lot is in The Sopranos. The Sopranos is a totally sociopathic show.

14:25Jawad MirYeah.

14:26Leslie BohemLike…

14:26Jawad MirYeah

14:26Leslie Bohem... It's written by sociopaths. You know, like, you watch a scene where they do something horrible, and in the next scene, Tony's worried about his daughter going to college, you know? And ev… the scene's written and played as if he hadn't just murdered somebody.

14:41Jawad MirYeah.

14:41Leslie BohemAnd Joel did that. I'd never seen an actor do that before. He just, he played the scene with his kids brokenhearted, like, "Oh my God, your mother died," with, like, no, nothing in his…

14:52Jawad MirRight

14:52Leslie Bohem... Entire performance that suggested that he just killed her. And it was like, that is really messed up. Like, way more messed up than I had written it, you know? And I was just, like, stunned. Yeah, he, Jo… Joel was, he's, he's... I mean, the cast was great. It was a r… I mean, you know, it's an insanely good bunch of people, but Joel was really good.

15:13Jawad MirYeah. And that scene that you described, what's so amazing about that scene, if you, if somebody was just flipping channels and that scene was on, you wouldn't know the context.

15:22Leslie BohemYou'd think you were in a soap opera somewhere, yeah.

15:24Jawad MirYeah, that's how great that scene was, that you would actually believe that. You wouldn't have a clue that this guy is being, you know, conniving and manipulative individual. Like, the way…

15:33Leslie BohemNo, totally. And that's, that's, that's on him. That's, that's, I mean…

15:36Jawad MirYeah

15:36Leslie Bohem... I'd love to take credit for that, but that's completely his performance. It's really good.

15:40Jawad MirBut yeah, his character, was just so well-written. I think that's one character that I felt personally, for me, that was a, for me, I felt that was the strongest character in the, in the series. And when he obviously died, I mean, that w… I, as happy as I was, at the same time I was...

15:57Leslie BohemWell, that's like, when we got to the later episodes, and I really liked Heather, who plays his granddaughter.

16:04Jawad MirYeah.

16:05Leslie BohemAnd, you know, Joel and I had become friends, and I was like, "I'm gonna write you back." You know, like, 'cause there's visions in the show. Like, so, "I'm gonna write you back in, 'cause, 'cause I want you back one more time." So that whole scene where he comes back, and I guess that's in eight, something that... Just 'cause I liked him so much, I wanted him back in the show.

16:22Jawad MirYeah, no, he was, he was phenomenal.

16:24Leslie BohemYeah.

16:24Jawad MirAnd I, and I think r… what really was really good also was Dakota Fanning's narration from the very beginning. You know?

16:29Leslie BohemWell, that, it, again…

16:32Jawad MirIt probably happened after in post, I'm guessing.

16:35Leslie BohemWell, no, what happened was I was, e… I had written a couple of drafts of the first episode, and I just couldn't get the tone that I wanted. You know? And I had this sense that it was somehow the show was gonna be kinda s… sad and bittersweet altogether. A… and well, I can literally remember the day I just came, I know where I was sitting in the office, and I was like, "My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky." And I was like, "Oh, now I know what the show's about." And so the narration, I wrote the narration as we went along. I mean, a lot of it changed, obviously. But it was in there from before we started shooting.

17:16Leslie BohemAnd I remember, 'cause, my son is the same age as Dakota, and you know, he was a wild five or six year old, whatever, and I would go to the sessions.

17:28Jawad MirRight.

17:28Leslie BohemAnd there was this little girl, and I was like, "Do you know what the word wistful means?" And she's like, "Oh yeah, absolutely." And then she reads to me completely differently. And it's like, it was just... I've, I've seen her as an adult, and it's still sort of like a running joke between us. It's like, I'll say her somewhere and she'll go wistfully, and it's like, "Yeah."

17:48Jawad MirYes.

17:49Leslie BohemYeah, so that.

17:49Jawad MirOh, wow.

17:50Leslie BohemBut that, it... I've only had that happen to me a couple of times writing, where I just, like, one line sort of informed how the whole thing was gonna feel, you know? And

18:01Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

18:03Leslie BohemAnd…

18:03Jawad MirI thought, I thought that was cool. I thought that was a really nice touch. And the, it also connected the dots between the story, and sometimes it gave you a little bit of a break from what was going on, you know, just for the audience to kind of just take a pause and take a breather. In your research, Les, especially the Roswell incident… Aside from what you wrote into the script and, you know, the show, what did you personally get out of it? Like, what did your... Obviously, you know, you gained new knowledge, but what was your belief in that? This is, like, a little bit off-topic from the series question, but…

18:38Leslie BohemI, well, I, you know, the, I'll tell you something also that's sort of interesting about the way pop... Y… y… you... 'Cause, you know, there's a way in which pop culture in… informs the UFO world. I mean…

18:52Jawad MirRight

18:52Leslie Bohem... There used to be sightings of dirigibles when Jules Verne was writing, and then after Orson Welles, there was all the stuff that we think of as, you know, the '50s stuff. And so it always goes back and forth, and I, what I think is that it was a spy balloon. I believe the Air Force, you know, the, with their confession from the '70s. I... The parts I find hard to believe about alien abduction are the, this, about the rigors of the myth are that these beings that are so evolved that they can move through time and space have come all the way here to stick things up our butts. You know, like, I'm not buying that part.

19:38Leslie BohemI don't... I think it's a little bit c… you know, you, what's the Sherlock Holmes thing about the easiest explanation and all that? So the fact that 90-some percent of the sightings are right by Air Force bases suggests to me that it's more likely that our government is testing stuff that we don't know about.

19:57Leslie BohemI mean, the Area 51 stuff, they had a prototype of the stealth at the same time that people were seeing this weird thing in the sky. So I think that explains…

20:05Jawad MirYeah

20:05Leslie Bohem... A lot of it. That said, sure, there's life on other planets, and who the hell knows?

20:10Jawad MirYeah.

20:10Leslie BohemBut I don't particularly think it looks like things that were designed by an art department in the 1950s to make science fiction movies. That seems too coincidental. My... So I had read all the stuff on Roswell, and it's a fascinating place to go to because, you know, that air, that airstrip is so enormous, and this was pre, 9/11. So we rent airspace to other countries because there's this huge airfield there that's been abandoned. And so there's this little tiny town, and there are people from all over the world, the air forces of, like, six different countries, 'cause they test planes out there. This is a really inter… you know, and then there's a tourist trade that's developed around the alien part. So it's, it's a fascinating place. But, you know, at the time, we said it was a weather balloon. Then we admitted that it was a spy balloon. So one day, I decided I would just make up this bit of, "Well, okay, so the spy balloon crashed. What did it bump into? Well, it bumped into a flying saucer, and that's why it crashed." That's, you can find that online now as true, and as far as I know, that's just something I made up on a Thursday. So that sort of suggests to me that a lot of the other stuff came from similar places.

21:27Leslie BohemLike, a lot of stuff seems awfully similar to the Orson Welles radio broadcast or, oh, gee…

21:33Jawad MirYeah

21:33Leslie Bohem... Now they want the same things they wanted in The Day the Earth Stood Still. You know? It's like, I... So the grain of salt that I take, I can't even say it's a grain of salt because again, I go back to what's really interesting to me is why would we wanna keep telling this story if it isn't literally true? That seems much more interesting.

21:54Leslie BohemYou know, that, then that goes to, you know, why we need gods and why we need all the things we need. You know? It's, it's, it's just fascinating.

22:01Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, and w… w… in your research, did you come across the Phoenix Lights, back in the late '90s when that happened?

22:09Leslie BohemI think that had just happened when I was writing.

22:13Jawad MirYeah, at the time…

22:13Leslie BohemYeah

22:13Jawad Mir... Probably when you were in the writing phase.

22:15Leslie BohemYeah. I, remind me, but I feel like yes, and I couldn't…

22:19Jawad MirIt was, I think it was 1997. But basically what it was, pretty much the entire city, witnessed... Yeah, 1997, March 13. On the Southern West states of Arizona and N… Nevada, people…

22:35Leslie BohemYes

22:35Jawad Mir... Saw this V shape, whatever you wanna call it, with lights on. And it was apparently, according to a lot of people's testimony, it was huge, like the size of several football…

22:49Leslie BohemYeah

22:49Jawad Mir... Football fields. So I mean…

22:51Leslie BohemWell, so

22:51Jawad Mir... I mean, yeah, go on.

22:53Leslie BohemWell, I, just so what about, you know, the last two years? I mean, it's been like…

22:57Jawad MirI, that was gonna be my next question.

22:58Leslie BohemYeah, no, I mean, that is like that, like, 'cause, you know, my opinions are all based on the time when I'd spent in that world, and I'm like, as I read that, I'm like, "On the other hand..."

23:09Jawad MirYeah.

23:10Leslie BohemI mean, the, because those stories, it's always, they're always, as you're about to totally doubt it, there's one, like, really reputable, you know, like, Air Force commander who says, and you're like…

23:21Jawad MirYeah

23:22Leslie Bohem... And certainly, you know, like, I have, like, there's people who've been, you know, up close that I, that I mean, you know, I... By the way, I w… I would love to see a UFO. You know? I wish I'd seen one.

23:35Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, we, w… wouldn't we all? But it, what's amazing to me, I went to, I was in, Nevada a few months ago, and, I made a, finally made a point. I've always wanted to go. Whenever I'm in Nevada, I'm like, "I wanna go to the Area 51 area…

23:50Leslie BohemYeah

23:50Jawad Mir... As far as you can go. So I went finally, and I didn't know this, that the entire Area 51 area, whether it's underground or wherever it is, stretches 88 miles. I mean, that's insane. So it must be... That's, that's, like, almost equivalent to, like, a big city.

24:11Leslie BohemYes.

24:12Jawad MirYou know?

24:12Leslie BohemYeah.

24:14Jawad MirSo who knows what's going on under... And y… and I wasn't even near the Area 51. I w… there was a, there's a place called, when you get out of Nevada, Vegas, it's called Alien s… Alien Center Shop, like where they sell like…

24:28Leslie BohemYeah

24:29Jawad MirAnd it's just, like, literally in the middle of the highway there's an alien center shop, there's a gas station, and that's it. So I was talking to the store owner, and she's like, "If you go af… if you go on the road for the next, like, an hour and a half, you're fine. But if you, even in this area, if you go behind our store in the desert area, vehicles will come in."

24:49Leslie BohemI met a guy recently, he's, he's dating a friend of mine, who's sta… he's stationed there. And I was like, "So what can you tell me?" And he was like, "Nothing." I was like, I like, "Come on, I won't tell anybody." He was like, "I can't."

25:01Jawad MirNo, and then people fly in from helicopter every day to work.

25:05Leslie BohemYeah.

25:05Jawad MirThere is, there's actually a air… an airport just before, way before that where people fly out just to go to work and then come back. You can't even drive there.

25:14Leslie BohemWell, but, you know, I, again, I mean, you know, like, we spent a lot of money on military stuff and, you know, and…

25:21Jawad MirNo, I know, I know

25:22Leslie Bohem... I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean, that... Well, do you familiar with the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland? That's another wonderful spot where…

25:30Jawad MirNo. No

25:32Leslie Bohem... You know, maybe where Lyme disease came from.

25:36Jawad MirYeah, no, I, you know what?

25:37Leslie BohemDepending on your conspiracy bent.

25:40Jawad MirNo, I j… you know, growing up I used to be fascinated by UFOs, and I used to believe that they exist. Like, you know, that's what's coming up. But as you grow older and you start, you know, what you're sort of mentioning too, I now do believe that it's either somebody did visit us long time ago and we have used that to make these sophisticated, you know, flying disks or objects and whatnot, or they're just military, based, tests, and everything else is a distraction to keep our minds off. You know what I mean? So I…

26:15Leslie BohemWell, that clearly, you know, in the, I mean, in the midst of the Cold War, the propaganda people were like, whether it was true or not, they were like, "Yeah, we're gonna use this," 'cause, you know, like, it's a better story than, you know, any of the spy stuff. Did, have you read any of the Jacques Vallée books, the guy that Truf… the Truffaut character is based on in Close Encounters? He's wr…

26:37Jawad MirA long time ago.

26:38Leslie BohemHe, 'cause he's, it, he traces the myth. I mean, there's one, it's a Taken story, if you'll indulge me. So…

26:50Jawad MirNo, that's good

26:50Leslie Bohem... I, if you remember, there's a scene where they go onto the ship and the guy sees his mom, and his mom brings out a plate of cookies. And…

27:01Jawad MirYeah, I think in the last few episodes, yeah

27:02Leslie Bohem... Yeah. And I, it had been beef stew until the last minute, and then I was like, "I'm gonna make it cookies. Sounds more homey," or so I made it cookies.

27:12Jawad MirYeah.

27:12Leslie BohemAnd I'm reading this Jacques Vallée book, and it's about the history of abductions from, you know, from the 12th century on. And there's an Irish incubus and succubus myth. And a woman goes into the woods, and there's a house floating in the woods, and she comes back pregnant, and she's also carrying a plate of scones. And he goes on and on about the obsession with baked goods, to the point where there was a guy who claimed to be abducted in the 1950s, and the Air Force tested the cookies that he brought back to see if they were made of something other than flour and eggs and butter. They were not. They were made of flour and eggs and butter. But why did I change it to cookies? Like, w… I coulda made it beef stew. Like, what weird collective unconscious thing did baked goods speak to? You know, that I thi… I think the only time working on the show when I got sort of like, "Ooh, this is spooky," was then.

28:20Leslie BohemYou know, like, I never thought, "Aliens are coming through my fingers and making me tell this story."

28:25Jawad MirYeah.

28:25Leslie BohemBut when I switched it to cookies and then read the book, I was like, "That's a little weird."

28:32Jawad MirYeah. No, I bet. It, let's, what's your process for writing like? Like, you know, when you come up... You can use, take an, as an example or any other film. Like, when you come up with an idea, if any writer was watching this, like, w… how do you go about doing what you do? I mean, you said you have all these, you know, notes all around.

28:50Leslie BohemWell, it's different every time. You know, when I, Taken was only my second experience working in television. The first was a Neil Mor… Leonard western called Desperado that I did for NBC in the late '80s, I guess. And that was very much it was a movie, and I just went off and wrote. And when I started doing Taken, i… i… that was the first I'd seen with the sort of television process, which is index cards, and everything's broken down…

29:18Jawad MirRight

29:18Leslie Bohem... First. And, you know, I w… I wound up w… w… we had a really good room full of writers for a while, but that didn't, in this case, particularly work, and so I wound up writing all of Taken. But in that process when there were other people, it, you know, at some point somebody said, "Well, the ex… the executives are coming in today to see your cards." And I was like, "Cards? Huh?" so my initial process was always, I get an idea and I just start writing, and then I generally write myself into a great big hole that I can't get myself back out of. And y… you know, that, but I sort of mistrusted cards for a long time 'cause it felt like, well, that's hack work. Like, real writers just make it up. I love cards. They're really useful, you know? So I kind of do a hybrid version where I seem to think better with my fingers than I do just talking, so I just start writing stuff down, and then I'm like, "Oh, I need to look at it," and then I put up cards, and then I desperately find someone really smart who I can talk to tell me that I'm an i… Full of crap.

30:34Leslie BohemAnd, you know, just, it… it's so much easier when, you know, when you're not alone. And the thing I like about sort of breaking something into cards is I'm, I'm looking for cards, so I don't have disease. It makes for extremely achievable goals. 'Cause all of a sudden, instead of, "Oh, I've gotta write, you know, 20 hours of television, how am I gonna do that in a month and a half?" I'm like, "Oh, there's these four cards. I can do that today." And then suddenly it…

31:10Jawad MirOkay

31:10Leslie Bohem... You're done, you know, 'cause you've done a lot of the heavy lifting in advance. Of course, the dirty secret about cards is they're lies. I mean, ev… everything changes as soon as you start writing, you know, get a good idea. And I still, I like not knowing it all before I start. I like being able to discover. You know, we were talking about it before, just to still be asking questions and, you know…

31:34Jawad MirYeah

31:34Leslie Bohem... Something bothers you and you wanna know why, and so you start poking at it. And I'm a little... I, this concerns me these days with, of, you know, playing around with the AI writing software and stuff, is that…... What we do is so formula... It... I'm, I'm not particularly creeped out by the fact that a machine is gonna take my job.

31:58Jawad MirYeah.

31:58Leslie BohemBut I don't like the idea that what we do is so formulaic that a machine could figure it out. You know? And like, a, if everything always happens where all the screenwriting books and now, you know, ChatGPT tell, tells me where it's gonna happen, then I'm doing something wrong. I mean, it d… it just, there's gotta be some place where something surprises you, and isn't just the part where things fall apart or the part where they come back together again. Or, you know, it's just that, i… in writing for the movies and TV, I mean, I think you have to fight that all the time because it's so easy to fall into the this is the part where trap, if that makes any sense.

32:39Jawad MirYeah. No, it does. And I, you're so right about, so when... W… whether you're writing with a pen or a typewriter or a computer, at least for me, when I, when I have my fingers just typing, you know, the ideas flow a lot more…

32:56Leslie BohemYeah

32:57Jawad Mir... Better. They could be completely all over the place, but they just flow more better. But at the same time, I started using, index cards, in Final Draft. I don't know if you use that software.

33:07Leslie BohemI haven't... I just saw that it was... I was like, I…

33:10Jawad MirYeah

33:10Leslie Bohem... I'm so used to seeing them big on a board…

33:13Jawad MirYeah

33:13Leslie Bohem... On the other side of the room.

33:14Jawad MirWhich is, which is great. I'm, and I wish I could do that. But on Final Draft, I mean, my premise was very sh… simple in terms of like, you know, six, seven characters. And just to even lay it out, like act one, act two, act three, I'm looking at it, I'm like, "Oh, okay. Now that makes sense." You know, it just, it does give you a little bit of visual assistance. So I think…

33:33Leslie BohemIt's really help…

33:34Jawad MirYeah.

33:34Leslie BohemA… and when you're trying to figure out what's missing, sometimes just like actually going, "Oh, this happened, and then this happened, and..." Have you ever seen the Matt and Trey, how to write thing that's on YouTube? It's…

33:48Jawad MirWhat are you talking about?

33:48Leslie BohemIt's the... It... Well, it's Ma… you know, Matt and Trey from South Park. It's their…

33:54Jawad MirOh, okay

33:54Leslie Bohem... Tips, their tips for writers. It's the smartest thing on writing I've ever seen. A… a… and…

33:58Jawad MirI'll check it out.

34:00Leslie BohemIt's basically, if you could say, this happens and then this happens, you're completely screwing up. You have to be able to say, this happens, therefore this happens, or but this... It's, it's just, it's, it's daunting and they're right and, you know, and it's, it's funny to watch it 'cause it's the, really one of the smartest things I've ever seen about screenwriting. And then it's funny to watch it and then watch a South Park episode and realize that they actually do that in South Park. And it's, it's, you know…

34:28Jawad MirWell, South Park…

34:29Leslie Bohem... One of the many reasons South Park is so good. So.

34:31Jawad MirNo. So I haven't seen all of South Park, but lately on my social media, like, you know, the clips will come up and the animation, you... I mean, now it's like you get used, but back then when it came out…

34:43Leslie BohemYeah. It's like…

34:44Jawad Mir... I remember, what is, what is this, right? Visually, it doesn't look any appealing, but obviously there was something in the writing that made it work…

34:52Leslie BohemThey're, they're…

34:52Jawad Mir... All these years and they keep making it

34:53Leslie Bohem... Brilliant. But it's really like this, it's really, this is like some of the best writing advice I've ever seen. I think it's like a two-minute…

34:59Jawad MirI'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out.

35:00Leslie BohemCheck it out.

35:01Jawad MirI'm gonna check it out.

35:01Leslie BohemIt's brilliant. Yeah.

35:03Jawad MirAnd last one, when taken... So how involved were you? I mean, I know you were writing the episodes as things went along, but how involved w… were you, were you as a showrunner, in terms of being on the set, if you were on the set, and having a conversation with the director or just leaving him alone? Like, what was that like…

35:24Leslie BohemWell, it…

35:24Jawad Mir... What was that process?

35:26Leslie BohemYou know, I had to go back and forth 'cause the editing room was in Los Angeles, so I was, you know, I was, I was more on the set for the first couple.

35:33Jawad MirWhere did you guys film it?

35:35Leslie BohemIn Vancouver and various other parts of Canada.

35:38Jawad MirOh, that's so great. Near where I am.

35:41Leslie BohemWhere are you?

35:42Jawad MirOh, I'm in Toronto. Well, like…

35:43Leslie BohemOh, yeah, we never got that far east, but, you know.

35:47Jawad MirLike the…

35:47Leslie BohemMostly Vancouver.

35:49Jawad MirYeah.

35:49Leslie BohemAnd then like the, you know, the plains for the last couple of episodes. So I would go back and forth. I was mostly in the editing room. I spent a lot of time with the directors. I mean, you know, obviously I wrote the whole thing. I was involved in, you know, I... So I, it was, I, a… and the, you know, a lot, a lot of the stuff, like... I'm trying to, trying to think where, you know, like Steven would come in for all the edits and, you know, o… obviously he has very good notes in an editing room. He's, he's, he's done a lot of this.

36:32Jawad MirYes. Yeah.

36:33Leslie BohemSo, you know, that, and that, I mean… That, obviously, that's sort of like, oh, bonus. You know, it's like it's, it's film school. Like, it's just, it's…

36:43Jawad MirRight

36:43Leslie Bohem... It's great for both, like, you know, the stuff that was working and the stuff that really wasn't working and how we would fix it and all of that. You know, it was, it was the most sort of like intense class in that I ever got. But I was pretty much, you know, left alone to do what I could do in the editing room. And, you know, it's television, so again, like at some level, I'm the final voice, not the director's cut.

37:10Jawad MirYeah.

37:11Leslie BohemAnd, you know, the... I mean, honestly, the... I think the most exciting thing to me was I got to pick all the music, and we had a great music supervisor, and she, Anastasia Brown, and she,.. I don't know how she did it, 'cause we did not have much of a budget, but, you know, we've got Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead and Jackson Browne, and I wrote a song that Emmylou Harris recorded. I mean, it was like, you know…

37:33Leslie Bohem... So that song that plays through the last couple episodes. So it, you know, a… a… and because we were going from like late '40s to the present, it was like, well, I get to do like, you know, my own personal, you know, like encyclopedia of American music.

37:49Jawad MirRight

37:50Leslie Bohem... I don't, I don't have any copies of this thing, but I made... This was CD days. I made these mixes for the cast and crew that were every single song I could find about flying saucers. You know?

38:01Jawad MirOh, wow.

38:01Leslie BohemAnd so there's... I, like, I don't think... The, eh, the Elvin Stroud song I don't think made the show, Two Little Men and a Flying Saucer, but great song. All the way through, you know, my... The band I was in the '80s, Sparks, did a song called I Married a Martian, so that was in there. It was... So that, I think of all sort of the, you know, the perks of the show, I mean, the obvious perk, I got to work with Steven Spielberg, and then the less obvious perk, I got to pick the music. So, no, that was really fun.

38:34Jawad MirI'm sure. And how... What was that process? Because you're working with different directors, right? Like, whether it's in production, kinda on and off, but mostly in post, and just to kinda keep everybody... Because, you know, creative people are very much different from each other.

38:51Leslie BohemYeah.

38:51Jawad MirIf they're similar. So how do, how do you captain that ship to bring everybody into synergy, as the episodes kinda go along?

39:00Leslie BohemWell, I see... I mean, part of what... I mean, first of all, they were all really good directors, which, you know… ... Obviously helps. I mean, when we got to, I guess, it's eight is on the ship, and it was John Fawcett, and…

39:14Jawad MirYeah

39:14Leslie Bohem... He, you know, li… li… like, there was half the budget there had been, and, you know, like he had to figure out how to, how to, you know, do that on the spaceship. And, y… you know, so there were like crazy challenges that required really good people. But we, you know, we had the same DPs and, the same production designer and art direction and all that, so, you know, a l… a lot of the... There was a lot of consistency in that.

39:39Jawad MirYeah.

39:39Leslie BohemSt… Steve Beers was more like the line guy, pr… producer, was a really good producer and, you know, so he was on the set to keep things kind of consistent. And we... You know, th… and there were some lofty ideas, like we changed film stock so that they would be more the stock that was used in the time period when we were shooting. And, you know, the... These are Steven Spielberg perks. Like, you get to do that. We got to have a full orchestra…

40:03Jawad MirYeah

40:03Leslie Bohem... To do the score. You know, like, there were some, like, ridiculous perks for a TV show, especially then with a micro budget. But

40:10Jawad MirYeah

40:10Leslie Bohem... But I think also because I wound up writing the whole thing, it was just inevitably, for good or bad, gonna be consistent, you know…

40:17Jawad MirYeah

40:17Leslie Bohem... 'cause it was the same, you know, the same voice, so.

40:20Jawad MirYeah. No, for sure. For sure. And what was the reason? Was it... I mean, you said there was 20 hours allotment, right, at the Sci-Fi Channel. To break it into, I mean, an hour and 22 minutes episode, now it's a very common thing. You know, you watch…

40:36Leslie BohemIt…

40:36Jawad Mir... Stranger Things. Back then, it was like... You know, I don't think it was that common as far as I know at that point.

40:43Leslie BohemYeah, they... It... I think they were... You know, tha… that had sort of been a movie of the week format of much earlier television.

40:50Jawad MirOh, okay.

40:50Leslie BohemBut they had this, the... You know, they broadcast it five nights a week for two weeks. It was every, it was on every night.

41:00Jawad MirYeah.

41:01Leslie BohemWhich was really cool. I mean, I don't know, like whoever…

41:03Jawad MirBack then, it was unheard of like that

41:05Leslie Bohem... The one time in my life when I thought, "Wow, I actually did something that someone noticed," was I went to get cat food or something in this mall, and there was a beauty parlor, and it was on, it was playing on all the TVs in the beauty parlor. I was like, "God, people are actually watching this." I was like, "This is amazing." and it di… you know, it did, it did well, and so, like, by the second week, it was kind of a big deal for the two weeks that it was a deal. But, it was a, it was an, I mean, a really interesting way to broadcast, 'cause it, you know, it wasn't like... There wasn't exactly what they used to call the water cooler, 'cause, you know, it wasn't like…

41:43Jawad MirYeah

41:43Leslie Bohem... "What's gonna happen on Game of Thrones this week?" You know? It was like, "What's gonna happen tonight?"

41:47Jawad MirRight.

41:47Leslie BohemSo it was a really exciting two weeks.

41:50Jawad MirI bet. And how was your... I... In television, in movie industry, when the movie opens up on a weekend, by Monday you find out if, you know, you got, you got sunk or you were taken to the sky. In terms of television

42:05Leslie BohemWe knew on…

42:06Jawad MirThe ratings

42:06Leslie Bohem... We knew…

42:07Jawad MirThe ratings were…

42:09Leslie BohemI... We were excited on Tuesday morning after Monday night, and by Wednesday morning we knew it was a hit. It was, you know, it's like…

42:16Jawad MirAnd were the viewership consistent, or did it drop…

42:18Leslie BohemYeah

42:18Jawad Mir... Or did it increase?

42:20Leslie BohemI th… I think it went... I, they started to, like I s… I don't remember how they did this, but maybe by Wednesday they were showing the f…

42:28Jawad MirYeah

42:28Leslie Bohem... They were showing the first two episodes, so you... Like by the end of the week, you could watch all five. You know? So if you…

42:35Jawad MirOkay.

42:35Leslie BohemSo, and so we consistently went up for the two weeks.

42:39Jawad MirYeah. You… In terms of, you know, your personal... I mean, you me… kind of mentioned one of your favorite scene was Joel's performance of, you know, after he killed his wife and comes home to his son, to his son. What was probably the most personal moment for you in that series? Not personal in a sense that something that ties close to your life story, but something that was very meaningful to you, that you somehow connected with at a very deep level.

43:11Leslie BohemWell, this is so we… There are a couple. There's, there's, weirdly in the, I believe it's the fourth episode is the Vietnam junkie episode. So it's, it's hippie days, and I used all the songs of my youth. So, you know, when I dropped out of college, I was gonna be The Grateful Dead, and so when Ripple shows up at the end of that episode, it chokes me up every time I watch it, and it's not like it's just... It's utterly personal. It's just... 'Cause that song meant a lot to me when I was 20.

43:43Jawad MirYeah.

43:43Leslie BohemYou know, I couldn't tell you it's the best song ever written or anything like that. I just love the song, and there it was, and I got to use it and, you know, so that got me on a personal level. And, when you finally realize that the narration you've been heardi… hearing is Dakota writing in her journal, and she's in the recording studio with her mom, that's my voice coming out of the guy in the band. That's a song I wrote. So

44:09Leslie BohemOn a, on a particularly, like, show-offy level, I was like, "Yeah, they're ac… You know, my band broke up. I'm still in a band on television."

44:18Jawad MirYeah. That's pretty, that's pretty cool. Go on. Sorry.

44:22Leslie BohemYeah, and, you know, I actually, I... To... You know, it was a real struggle to figure out how to end it in a way that didn't give pat answers and that was a little bit, you know, obscure and bittersweet, and I kinda think we nailed the ending so that I like the ending.

44:44Jawad MirYes, and i… i… you know, I felt like watching... What I loved about it was this... I, honestly, I had f… completely forgotten that it took, it took place over four decades.

44:59Leslie BohemYeah.

44:59Jawad MirWhen I watched it a couple of weeks ago, I had... I just knew the concept, but I had completely forgotten. When the time started shifting, I'm like, "Wait a second. Is this going all the way to the '90s?" And what I found was really cool was the i… the way you were able to connect all the characters and their personal stories as a writer should, but the way you did it was just so cool. And then…

45:23Leslie BohemYes

45:25Jawad Mir... The main thing was never a, the UFOs. It was more so about, you know, somebody in a bad relationship or somebody getting…

45:32Leslie BohemYeah

45:32Jawad Mir... Jealous or somebody feeling this way or that way, and that's what resonates with people at the end of the day, at the end of the day, which you delivered, beautifully.

45:41Leslie BohemWell, thank you. That's, that's great to hear. I…

45:45Jawad MirYeah

45:45Leslie Bohem... I feel, I feel like I wanna go watch it.

45:48Jawad MirYou should. You should. It's... I will tell you, it's, it's... You know, in this day and age, watching an hour-and-a-half episode, 10 ep… 10 episodes in the span of a week was a lot, but at the same time, I wanted to watch them, you know, almost, like, every day just so that you don't forget about the characters, and sometimes that happens when you watch after a week.

46:08Leslie BohemYeah.

46:08Jawad MirI don't know how we used to watch TV back then.

46:10Leslie BohemWell, I guess, I mean, 'cause I guess by the way they broadcast it was almost like binge-watching before there was binge-watching 'cause you did, like... And that, honestly, maybe that, you know, that helped with the doing so well was…

46:25Jawad MirYou never know

46:25Leslie Bohem... I'm, I mean, you know, 'cause everybody could follow it. I mean, you know, clearly what, you know, part of what helped with it doing so well was it's a Steven Spielberg show about aliens, which is a wonderful thing, you know? It's like, I mean, like, getting to actually be on that, you know?

46:41Jawad MirYeah, of course.

46:41Leslie BohemIf you like Close Encounters and E.T., you might like Taken. You know, it's like, yeah. I mean, thank you. That's, that's a pretty…

46:48Jawad MirNo, it definitely had, for me, it definitely had more connection with Close Encounters than it did with E.T. Because of the way the abductions were and all that. So the E.T. Was more about, like, a friendly alien and, more…

47:02Leslie BohemYeah

47:02Jawad Mir... A family and broken marriage and all that.

47:05Leslie BohemSure.

47:05Jawad MirWhen you are... What is some of your favorite television writing, in the past or now or back then when you were working on Taken?

47:15Leslie BohemIn the past, Twilight Zone. It's like…

47:20Jawad MirOkay.

47:20Leslie BohemIt's why I'm a writer, you know? It's just like, that, like, to this day, I watch those, and I don't know how Rod Serling did that in 22 minutes, you know? Like, they're just, they're…

47:32Jawad MirYeah

47:32Leslie Bohem... They're not, they're not, "Oh, look, I'm watching an old show, and isn't that great?" It's like they're, they're perfect. In the more modern world, I mean, in comedy, you already mentioned Seinfeld, you know? Like, that…

47:46Jawad MirYeah

47:46Leslie Bohem... I just love that show. I think in the golden age, The Sopranos to me is the gold standard, you know? Like, I love a lot of other shows. I love Breaking Bad. I like Mad Men a lot, you know? But The Sopranos just like, they were like athletes in the zone. They could do nothing wrong, you know? It's the fifth season, and a character who's never had a line of dialogue is gonna move to New Hampshire and fall in love. It's like, what? Like, and it worked, you know? And I still like, Tony's near-death experience. Those episodes are some of my favorite things ever in television. I'm trying to think what I... There's lots of stuff I love. Right now I'm really digging the Perry…

48:31Jawad MirThat's a great... I'm…

48:32Leslie BohemI'm really digging the Perry... I'm digging The Perry Mason show right now. I think it's really…

48:35Jawad MirBut the great thing about Sopranos was I think that... Well, I don't know the history of HBO, but that put HBO on the map.

48:43Leslie BohemAbsolutely.

48:44Jawad MirAnd it also changed the tone of television, you know? Especially… One of the things that when you're, you know, whether you're writing a, I don't know, a short film, a TV serial, or a feature film, most of the movies, if you look through history or even television, the reason if the people remember them is because the characters have vulnerabilities, ridiculous vulnerabilities. And when you show a character being, you know, okay and knows how... You know, like a superhero, for example, right? Personally, for me, I'm not a superhero fan.

49:20Leslie BohemNeither am I.

49:22Jawad MirI've, I've never grown up on…

49:23Leslie BohemThat's why numerous will ever work again.

49:25Jawad MirAnd I don't know many, I think I've only s… the only trilogy I've seen is the Tim Burton one, this p… part one and two back in the '90s.

49:34Leslie BohemOh, sure.

49:35Jawad MirAnd then the Batman trilogy by Christopher Nolan, and I don't classify them as superhero movies, especially the Christopher Nolan one because it's about a broken guy trying to find his place. And going back to what I was saying was the idea of having a, in writing, like an antagonist along with a protagonist, you know, that to me attracts in that subconscious or conscious level way more. Like, when you have a strong antagonist, it makes you feel for the protagonist way more as opposed to just being the protagonist alone. Would you, would you agree with that?

50:06Leslie BohemOh, yeah. Absolutely. There's also, you know, like one of those truisms is, like, n… nobody thinks they're the bad guy, you know? But that…

50:13Jawad MirYeah, exactly. Exactly

50:14Leslie Bohem... That's, that's seriously true. Yeah, and I think i... You know, what's interesting is when... And David Chase is j… you know, like, because one of my other favorite shows of all time is The Rockford Files, and David Chase wrote on The Rockford Files, and there are countless Rockford Files references all over The Sopranos, and he, you know, he, like he slipped one by the goalie. They just, they weren't looking, you know? And nobody realized it was gonna blow up and be this huge thing, and you can watch, like, the times when the movies or television get really good are when, like, again, back to when somebody doesn't think they know the formula. I mean…

50:53Jawad MirYeah. Yeah

50:53Leslie Bohem... What HBO did immediately after The Sopranos was made two very good shows that were still trying to be The Sopranos. How about a dysfunctional Mormon family? How about a dysfunctional funeral home family, you know? And so as good as both of those shows are, and they're both really good shows, but they still, I remember when they came out still feeling like they're trying to do that TV thing.

51:15Jawad MirYeah.

51:15Leslie BohemYou know, we've had a talking horse. How about a flying nun? You know, it's just like...

51:20Jawad MirYeah, a lot, I mean, a lot of TV networks do it still now, right, because it's all about the money at the end of the day. I mean, even with Games of Thrones are, they're coming up with, like, three or four series, at least the last time I read. I don't know if they're, they've... I think one of them aired and it got tanked, or they finished one episode and then they canceled it before it even got aired.

51:37Leslie BohemI don't know.

51:37Jawad MirYeah. But, you know, on Taken, what was, while being on the set, if you can remember any story, and I'm not looking for any controversy, less just something as a creative person, as a filmmaker or the audience who is listening to this and watching this, something that came... And there's a lot of things that happen on the set every single day that you gotta find a solution to, right? How, what, any story that you remember that took place in that

52:11Leslie BohemWell, the biggest one really was that, the, all that stuff falling out for the, for Joel killing his wife. You know, the, that was really the biggest, like, set crisis that we have to solve, and the solution makes things better.

52:25Jawad MirAnd how long did it take for the solution to come into play? Like, very quickly, or?

52:31Leslie BohemJust, "What do we do? We got a car and a guy and a gun. What do we do?" You know, "We don't have a road, and we don't have a stunt, and we don't, you know, like, all we have is this stretch of highway, and what do we do?" and as I said, Sergio's a great director, and it was just like we, I, you know, it was just us going back and forth going like, "How can we make this as nasty and scary as possible?" And that was it. Not really, like, other than that, I don't have g… like, my set stories were mostly, "Wow, this looks just like I pictured it," or, you know, or, "This looks better than I pictured it," or, you know, like, they were not, there was nothing really dramatic in term… I mean, I don't even have any good gossipy stories that I wouldn't tell.

53:20Jawad MirNo, I'm not looking for gossip. I'm always…

53:22Leslie BohemNo, I know, but I mean, I wish I had a good one, but…

53:24Jawad MirYeah I'm always intrigued that, you know, being on a set of any kind of production, sh… things go wrong, like, you know?

53:32Leslie BohemYeah.

53:32Jawad MirAnd then, it's up to the director to figure out instead of putting his head down, it, you know, because he's captaining or she's captaining the ship, to figure out, or even the showner, showrunner in your case, to figure out a solution. And I, you know, it's funny if you've ever seen that show on, Netflix called Movies That Made Us.

53:52Leslie BohemYeah.

53:53Jawad MirYou know how they talk about Die Hard and Aliens and the amount of crap they went through, you know?

53:59Leslie BohemOh.

53:59Jawad MirAnd we watch it in such quick, e… excitement and entertainment in the two and a half hours, but the amount of crap they went through to get it made, it just goes to show that was totally worth it.

54:11Leslie BohemA lot, yeah, I think, you know, a lot, a lot of our crap happened before we started. And, I, they, y… you know, then it, we were all just so frantic to, you know, we were, like, everybody was working, and it's like crazy guns, so it was, it was really, you know, w… like we didn't have enough time to really screw it up, you know, 'cause we just, that was one of the great things about television is it, especially then, it just moved so fast that…

54:38Jawad MirYeah

54:38Leslie Bohem... You know, you might not get it perfect, but you didn't have time to get it wrong, you know? So that was kinda helpful.

54:45Jawad MirHow many shoot days were there? I mean, I would imagine several months.

54:51Leslie BohemThey were very short sh… I honestly don't remember. They were super short shoots, you know, like

54:57Jawad MirBut were you guys going, like were you guys shooting each episode, finishing it, and then moving on to? Or were there parts, if you're a… already at one location, why not just save money and do that, or was that…

55:08Leslie BohemNo, we were... I mean, th… there's probably some cribbing in the editing room, you know, like a reaction shot that might have come from a different episode or something. I mean, there's, you know… ... That you can't do that without, you know, strict rules from the Directors Guild, obviously. You know, like, you can't steal somebody else's work without paying for it. But we did, we didn't do a lot of, like, we could pick that up for the next episode stuff. You know, there were some, like I think there's a couple where the location stayed the same for a couple of episodes, stuff like that.

55:40Jawad MirBut would each episode take a month to produce, production-wise?

55:44Leslie BohemI think less than that. I think, like, three weeks.

55:46Jawad MirReally, yeah?

55:47Leslie BohemYeah. Yeah.

55:48Jawad MirThat's pretty quick.

55:49Leslie BohemI, honestly, it's, it's, it's a crazy blur to me, you know? I was, I was going back and forth a lot. I was writing like crazy. I was in an editing room. I had a four-year-old son, so, I couldn't tell you.

56:02Jawad MirWhat is one of the most fondest memory, if I'm asking you this question right now, the thing that comes to your mind? It could be something really small or something big or medium.

56:12Leslie BohemTo, Emmylou Harris recording my song. Like…

56:17Jawad MirOkay

56:17Leslie Bohem... Far and away. I mean, I, when I, the, our mu… music supervisor knew her, and I w… you know, it was kind of li… like, it was gonna cost more than the music budget for that episode. And I remember talking to the DreamWorks executives, my friend Darryl Frank, and I was like, "It's gonna cost a little bit more, but I can get Emmylou." He was like, "You can get Emmylou Harris? Like, whatever you wanna spend." And…

56:43Jawad MirWow

56:44Leslie Bohem... I, it was not that expensive. But I remember getting the... I didn't get to go to Nashville to watch her record, but I got the tape of her doing it. And I drove over to the drummer from my old bands, I drove over to his house. I hadn't seen him in maybe six months.

57:03Jawad MirRight.

57:03Leslie BohemAnd I just, like, I went in and I was like, "Just put this on." And he knew the song, and so we, he, we put it on, and we both just sat there and started crying. It was just, we were like…

57:12Jawad MirWow

57:12Leslie Bohem... "I can't believe that happened." So that would be my... I mean, it's weird that, you know, I mean, we won an Emmy award. That, I should tell you that was my fondest memory.

57:20Jawad MirYeah.

57:20Leslie BohemBut honestly, that, like, just, like, I could not believe that voice was singing my song, so that w… that was kind of it for me.

57:27Jawad MirI'm sure. I'm sure. Were you a big, fan of that, Cameron Crowe movie, Almost Famous?

57:34Leslie BohemI, yeah, I liked the movie a lot.

57:36Jawad MirYeah.

57:37Leslie BohemYeah.

57:37Jawad MirI'm just asking in terms of the connection to the music and all that.

57:39Leslie BohemYeah. It wa… it was, it, I knew him a little bit back then in his rock 'n' roll days and

57:48Jawad MirOh, s… back before he became a filmmaker?

57:49Leslie BohemYeah. And, he, it w… it was like he, you know, he g… he got that world, like, nailed, you know? And it's rare to see anybody get... It's, it's a very hard thing to write about. Like, people get music wrong a lot when they try to get it on screen, I think.

58:05Jawad MirHow so?

58:07Leslie BohemWhen it gets a little tropey, you know, the evil manager or, you know, or that just, they're, sort of the, or the clothes look wrong or the music's not right. You know, it's, it's very hard to do. There's a great movie about country music called Payday from the '70s that nailed the music scene perfectly. Spinal Tap, of course, but it's just, it's hard.

58:33Jawad MirYeah. I'm just n… taking a note of this. You also worked on, I mean, we talked about Dante's Peak, but you also did another, film that I really enjoyed back in the '90s, Daylight.

58:45Leslie BohemOh, thank you.

58:47Jawad MirYeah. It's a pretty simple concept, but were you involved in it just as a writer, or were you also as a producer on that?

58:56Leslie BohemI, it was the... I was having lunch with a producer named Joe Singer, and I was at ebb in my career. You know, like I'd, like all the things I bought with my Nightmare on Elm Street money were breaking, and my rent was due. And, he said something to me like, "Well, everybody knows you're a good writer, but you don't think commercially." And Towering Inferno had just been on TV.

59:25Leslie BohemAnd so I was just being kind of bitchy, and I was like, "Well, I like commercial movies. I like disaster movies. Like, what if I trap 50 people in the Holland Tunnel on a really hot day?" And then we both were, like, quiet for, you know, like a minute. We're like, "Oh, that's a really good idea." That's kind of like one of those ideas, you know, that you're supposed to be able to say in one sentence.

59:46Jawad MirYeah.

59:46Leslie BohemSo I said, "Get me to New York, get me in a tunnel, and I'll write a script in six weeks." And so he did those things. It was, again, pre-9/11, so they closed the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel so I could go look at it.

1:00:03Jawad MirWow.

1:00:03Leslie BohemAnd then I had this long, hard talk with myself, which basically I was like, "You can't keep saying these people are so stupid, 'cause if they're so stupid, why don't you have more of their money?" You know, like, just play by the rules. Like, so I read all the big action scripts that had sold in the last six months, and then I wrote this script that was just all messed up and full of all the weird stuff that I always do. But it did have people trapped in the Holland Tunnel. It was just, they were, I'd like to think, more interesting people than usually get trapped in the Holland Tunnel. And then, we sold the script, and then they made a movie that had very little to do with my script. Which is how that worked in those days. I think there's…

1:00:51Jawad MirWell, you got Sylvester Stallone in it, so that was pretty big.

1:00:53Leslie BohemYeah. I think there's one line of my dialogue left in the movie, which is, "The tunnel extends for 300 feet under the river," whatever the... And, The tu… everything in the 10 minutes where the tunnel blows up is the way I wrote it to blow up. Well, something I, like, occasionally if I, if I'm, you know, talking to young writers about, you know, what you do when you write a screenplay, and basically they think you write what comes out of the people's mouths usually first. And I was like…

1:01:21Jawad MirYeah

1:01:21Leslie Bohem... "See this movie? This is the part I wrote, the part that doesn't have any dialogue where shit blows up." That's the part I wrote. I haven't seen that. I watched a little bit of it recently 'cause it was on TV. I haven't seen it since it came out, but, it looked like it was pretty good, actually.

1:01:37Jawad MirI haven't seen it in a while…

1:01:37Leslie BohemLike, it's like I had nothing to do with it, so I'm saying, "Oh, well, it looked, it looked... I mean, you know, looked kinda cool."

1:01:43Jawad MirBut one of the things you mentioned is interesting, and I think as creative people, we... It's, it's, it's not a good thing to say, but I think it's important for all of us to go through it. You know, you said that when you were barely breaking even and, you know, you don't think commercially and you were forced, because of your situation, you were forced to become uncomfortable, and that's when things started getting better.

1:02:09Leslie BohemTrue. Yeah.

1:02:10Jawad MirAnd I, and I feel that is so important. I mean, you look at everybody's career, not just in film. You know, you look at Elon Musk, you look at Steve Jobs, and all the people. You have to go through… Pardon me?

1:02:24Leslie BohemSorry, I'm just laughing.

1:02:30Jawad MirYou... What, my point is that you have to go through all the, all that suffering and that pain in order to realize that, you know, if you're really able to withstand that and come out of it on the other side. And would you give that advice to, you know, young people who are trying to break in any industry for that matter?

1:02:49Leslie BohemI-I... To be uncomfortable or, I mean…

1:02:52Jawad MirYeah. To put yourself…

1:02:54Leslie BohemYeah, I…

1:02:54Jawad Mir... In a situation where you're uncomfortable.

1:02:57Leslie BohemYeah, I mean, it's also great if you can put yourself in a situation where you have no other option, you know? 'Cause, 'cause…

1:03:03Jawad MirThat's true, too

1:03:05Leslie Bohem... Which, you know, like, that, easy for me to say 'cause, you know, it's, it's like I kind of…

1:03:09Jawad MirWell, nowadays, but back then it wasn't, right?

1:03:10Leslie BohemYeah. But I mean, I, like, I wa… I wa… I wasn't gonna be, you know, unhoused if I didn't sell the script. I was just gonna have to figure out how to be a, you know, 40-year-old ex-bass player, which I, you know, would probably would've worked out on some level. I mean, you know, on some... I mean, I feel a little privileged to be giving that advice, but, I…

1:03:31Jawad MirNo, there's nothing, there's nothing privileged about it. You were…

1:03:32Leslie BohemI, but on some level, you've gotta be... You know, it's, it's, I mean you have to... It's, there are, the, I was gonna say, you know, there, it's, there are probably easier ways to make a living, but this is, I mean, this is a s… I mean, I'm a grown man and people pay me to make stuff up, so, like, I, that's not working for a living as far as I'm concerned. That's, that's, that's…

1:03:55Jawad MirYeah

1:03:55Leslie Bohem... I'm very lucky. So, and I d… like, yeah, so I'm never quite sure what I would say in that advice. I mean, you know, like, half of me is on the, "Don't give up your day job" train, and the other half is on the, "Follow your dreams" trains.

1:04:15Jawad MirYeah. It's a, it's a tough thing, right? Like, either you…

1:04:17Leslie BohemYeah

1:04:17Jawad Mir... Have job security or you have happiness, you know? Which, working on both…

1:04:21Leslie BohemYeah. Well, also 'cause…

1:04:22Jawad Mir... That's great, that's awesome, but...

1:04:24Leslie BohemYeah. Well, also 'cause, you know, like a lot of what I do is on the commercial end of the artistic spectrum, so it, that end tends to pay better than being a poet, you know? So…

1:04:35Jawad MirYeah

1:04:35Leslie Bohem... So the, but so the advice is a little bit different because if you're gonna be on that end of the spectrum, you're gonna be working for people who deservedly wanna get something for the stupid amounts of money they're spending, so there are certain rules you need to play by, you know? And that's, that's fair.

1:04:54Jawad MirFair enough. What's, if, unless, you have, anything you can't reveal, just the last couple of questions. What's the next few projects that you're working on that are official or you are allowed to talk about?

1:05:07Leslie BohemI'm writing a s… I'm writing a spaghetti western for Fox TV, for a series. That's what I... That's what all the cards look on the board are like for.

1:05:17Jawad MirAnd when is that supposed to come out?

1:05:19Leslie BohemNo idea. We're just at the beginning, so.

1:05:22Jawad MirNo idea. So it may not be for another year or two, but more than likely.

1:05:25Leslie BohemYeah.

1:05:25Jawad MirYeah.

1:05:25Leslie BohemIt's, it's hard to say, but, it's some of the most f… You know, my dad did a western in the '50s called Rawhide, and so it's, it's really... Like, me getting to type the words interior saloon, it just makes me smile every time I'm in a saloon of like, I cannot believe I'm writing cowboy stuff. So it's really fun.

1:05:49Jawad MirOn that note, you mentioned about your dad and, is there e… ever a plan to write something about your parents, in terms of maybe a movie?

1:05:58Leslie BohemYou know, it's f… when I, when I wrote Twenty Bucks, which is, was a script of my dad's, which I rewrote, and it's not... There none of his script in it, but when I watch the movie now, it's all about parents and children. Every relationship in the movie i… is some sort of parent-child relationship. And I didn't do that on purpose. It's not like what I was saying about Taken where everything was gonna be about people being taken by something. But it winds up being thematically, like, completely, you know, at least how I felt when I was 40, about I'm, you know... Not just fathers and sons. There's, you know, mother-daughter stuff there. It's, like, any combination of... I'm doing this to make the combination. I've written, you know, like, essays, fiction about my family more, but not in any... I had a r… That's funny you ask, 'cause I had a really lofty series I could never sell that was basically my parents' love story, 'cause they crossed paths a lot before they ever met.

1:07:04Leslie BohemYou know, so, you know… ... So it was sort of an,.. And my dad came through Ellis Island, and my mom's parents were immigrants, so it had a lot of that to it. And I think about going back to that once in a while. It's a l… it's, it's daunting. I mean, you know, it's like, historical fiction on any level is just, you know…

1:07:21Jawad MirYeah

1:07:22Leslie Bohem... That's the heavy lifting. Not to mention d…

1:07:25Jawad MirWell…

1:07:25Leslie Bohem... Dealing with your family demons…

1:07:26Jawad MirYeah

1:07:26Leslie Bohem... Which might also be heavy lifting.

1:07:28Jawad MirWell, I mean, Spielberg took, what, 60 years to make The Fabelmans. I mean...

1:07:32Leslie BohemYeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

1:07:35Jawad MirBut on that note, Les, thank you so much for your time and…

1:07:38Leslie BohemYeah, thanks for having me. And I'm, I'll

1:07:40Jawad MirI... If there's anything else you wanna add.

1:07:43Leslie BohemI think you asked a lot of great questions, so hopefully I gave some okay answers.

1:07:48Jawad MirNo, you were, you were great. It was great to revisit Taken, and thank you for making Taken and writing Taken, because I watched it again, like I said, a week or so ago, and watching something 20 years old to see if it still holds up, I will say it holds up, so congrats.

1:08:06Leslie BohemGreat. I'm relieved to hear that. Well, it's great meeting you.

1:08:11Jawad MirLikewise.

1:08:12Leslie BohemWell, all right. Talk to you soon.

1:08:13Jawad MirI would love to talk to you more probably about Dante's Peak and Daylight in detail maybe a little bit later on.

1:08:18Leslie BohemSure, anytime.

1:08:19Jawad MirGreat. Thank you so much, Les.

1:08:21Leslie BohemOkay.

1:08:21Jawad MirThank you.

1:08:30Leslie BohemBye.