2017 winter commencement address: “Find your story, live it every day”

Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, top Hollywood writers and producers and graduates of UW–Madison, delivered the following winter commencement address on Dec. 17, 2017.

 

HOROWITZ

Thank you, Chancellor Blank, faculty, senior class officers, honored guests, parents, and of course, the class of 2017. We’re thrilled to be here.

 

KITSIS

And thank you for the incredibly kind introduction. To be asked to speak to you on this momentous day is a massive honor that the two of us still can’t quite believe we’ve been given. We thought long and hard and agonized over what to say… because, to be honest, this is an intimidating undertaking. I mean come on, look at this place… the Kohl Center… a lot of incredible moments have happened here.

 

HOROWITZ

Our first instinct was to dispense with a speech entirely and just shoot free throws – no one graduates until we both hit one. But then we decided you guys don’t need to be here another four years.

 

KITSIS

There’s not a day that goes by where we don’t think about Madison and miss the time we spent here. It’s a special place and a special school. It’s where we found our dreams and decided to follow them. Dreams that seemed crazy at the time – maybe still seem crazy. But something about this place gave us the confidence.  There’s a spirit here and it’s infectious.

 

HOROWITZ

That’s what makes it so special to be back.  Our friendship and our careers started just a few blocks from here. . . that’s where we had our “meet cute.”

In movies and television, when a couple meets and falls in love – or starts a lifelong creative partnership — it’s called a “meet cute” — meaning that the way they meet is generally constructed to be funny and charming.

 

KITSIS

Think Harry meeting Sally on a cross-country road trip where they argued endlessly before inevitably falling in love. Or Meredith Grey having a one night stand with McDreamy, then discovering he’s the doctor she’ll be learning from. Or Emma Stone honking at Ryan Gosling in a fit of road rage in “La La Land.”

 

HOROWITZ

Or Eddy and Adam meeting in the basement of Vilas Hall.

Yeah.  We had our meet cute just a few blocks from here in Vilas Hall in Comm Arts 355 — Intro to Film Production. One unit in the class had us filming and editing Super 8 films on a Moviola. Yes, movies used to be made on actual film, not digital.

 

KITSIS

It was a Saturday in Vilas Hall. I was working on my masterpiece. It was quite pretentious. I couldn’t wait to see it come together. So I threaded it up. Flicked the switch, and ran it … I stared into the view screen and —my masterpiece?  It was upside down. So I turned to the guy next to me and said: “Hey, is your machine broken too?”

 

HOROWITZ

I looked at him. Couldn’t quite believe it. Then leaned over and gently flipped his film over. “Is that better?” He nodded. Eddy had threaded his film in backwards. And with a flick of the wrist, I had solved the problem.

 

KITSIS

I looked at this guy and said – he’s got something.

 

HOROWITZ

And I looked at this guy and said – he’s an idiot. But that didn’t prevent me from hitching my wagon to him for the next 25 years.

 

KITSIS

Yeah. So who’s the idiot now?

 

HOROWITZ

It actually wasn’t that simple. That was how we met, but not how we got together as partners. Cut to a few months later. Summer break. I was working as an intern at a talent agency in Los Angeles. Coming from New York by way of Madison, I had no idea how important cars were in L.A. Here’s a tip for any Badger thinking of moving there – they’re VERY important. Anyway, I was taking the bus to work. A nearly 2-hour ride from my friend’s couch in Venice. When I stepped off the bus and walked to the office building, I heard a car honk. I looked up and it was Eddy.

 

KITSIS

I was working as a production assistant and making deliveries for a TV movie. And I was lost. So blind luck or fate or Badger destiny, whatever you want to call it, had me stop at the traffic light as Adam got off the bus. I immediately pulled over and I asked for directions.

 

HOROWITZ

I was getting off a BUS. I had no clue where to send him. And there we were, two incredibly naïve Badgers lost in L.A. But it somehow seemed meant to be. And our partnership was born. We moved back to Madison for our last two years of school and started working together in earnest to begin our careers. They say in Hollywood, where you start can tell you so much about who you are. And who you will become. Quentin Tarantino reinvented independent cinema with his debut “Reservoir Dogs.” Damien Chazelle came roaring out the gate with “Whiplash.” Orson Welles started with “Citizen Kane.”

 

KITSIS

Eddy and Adam?  We started with a public access cable show on Madison station WYOU called “Hot Tonight.” Someone in the Comm Arts Department saw how passionate we were about making film and television and helped us secure a half hour a week on public access — which we have no idea if it still exists — but today is probably the equivalent of creating a web series. Yeah, there weren’t many awards. But it did actually air, briefly, and involved some awful attempts at sketch comedy using local sponsors like Parthenon Gyros and Rocky Rococo Pizza . . . Are they still around? Awesome! Anyway, it was a less than auspicious beginning, and we didn’t win any Emmys but we did get some free slices of pizza.

 

HOROWITZ

But more importantly, it allowed us to bring our imagination to life for the very first time. Insane as it sounds, it filled us with the crazy belief that we could take this show on the road. From Parthenon Gyros, the next stop was obvious: Hollywood, California.

 

KITSIS

The following 25 years were quite eventful. After graduation, we moved to Hollywood. Took whatever jobs we could, hoping to learn anything and everything. I was an assistant to movie producers Joel Silver and Scott Rudin. Adam was a production assistant on shows like “Tales from the Crypt.” No task was too small.

 

HOROWITZ

Didn’t matter if it was picking up dry cleaning, delivering scripts, or bailing someone’s kid out of jail. Yeah, really, that happened. It didn’t matter, we were in Hollywood.  We were learning. And all the while, we were writing at night and on weekends, until we got our first big break writing for ABC on a short-lived remake of “Fantasy Island.” Yes, it was six short months, but it got us started writing television. The next decade we spent going from show to show, learning what we could from incredible mentors until we spent six seasons writing and producing “Lost.” And then we wrote the movie “Tron: Legacy” and from there, created “Once Upon A Time,” which is currently in its seventh season.

 

KITSIS

So what could two guys who spent years writing crazy stories about smoke monsters on an island, dwarves hatching from eggs, malevolent computer programs bent on destroying the world, possibly have to offer on this really special and incredibly — actually mild —day?

 

HOROWITZ

Yeah, we thought it would be cold. We wrote down cold.

 

KITSIS

It’s not so bad, though. Anyway, that’s when it occurred to us exactly what to do. Back out. Turn it down. Run screaming as far away as possible. Tell the university we couldn’t do it.

 

HOROWITZ

But before we could inform Chancellor Blank of the grave mistake the senior class officers had made in their selection of speakers, something occurred to us. Perhaps there WAS something we had to offer. Maybe, just maybe, the storytelling process itself might be relevant. Most of the time, in television, stories are constructed in a room jammed full of writers that is, called of all things … a writers room. Yeah, you’d think writers would come up with something a bit more clever. But that’s it. The writers room. And inside, a few rules have emerged and we thought we’d share them with you today.

 

KITSIS

Rule #1: Don’t be a hollow bunny.

In the writers room we have a saying — “beware of hollow bunnies.” You know how at Easter there are two kinds of chocolate bunnies you buy? They both look great, but one, when you bite into it, crumbles and falls apart, because it’s hollow. It turns out it’s cheap. It just looked good. The other is solid through and through. Well, similar concepts apply to storytelling. For example, when we were coming up with the idea of “Once Upon A Time,” we knew we wanted to take classic fairy tales and bring them into the real world. But that meant these characters couldn’t be one dimensional cartoons. They had to feel like real people.

 

HOROWITZ

In the animated movie “Snow White,” the Evil Queen wanted to kill Snow because a mirror said she was prettier than her. Pretty shallow, right? That’s a hollow bunny. We needed to make the Evil Queen real. So we created a history for her filled with love and loss and regret and betrayal. Instead of being superficially jealous over her stepdaughter’s beauty, we had Snow White destroy the Queen’s life by betraying her trust as a child. Now both were culpable. Now it was complicated. Now we had something. A solid bunny.

 

KITSIS

As we discovered this storytelling truth, we realized it applies so much beyond writing.  Look inward – WHY do you want what you want? What’s important to you? Leaving college with a diploma and getting a successful job is great but not enough. Experience life. Be well-rounded. Career and money aren’t everything. Success doesn’t mean you’re interesting. Or, more importantly, fulfilled. Characters in movies and television shouldn’t be one-dimensional, and neither should you. Don’t be a hollow bunny.

 

HOROWITZ

Rule #2: Don’t be afraid to tear down the board.

In writers rooms, stories are carefully and meticulously constructed moment by moment on big dry erase boards that surround the room. It can take weeks or months to do it.  So oftentimes you can become precious with your work. When writing the pilot of “Once Upon A Time,” for example, we had what we thought was an amazing opening scene where characters in the enchanted forest were consumed by a terrible curse from the Evil Queen and banished to the worst place in the universe: Columbus, Ohio.

 

KITSIS

Just kidding, we have nothing but respect for our Buckeye brethren. No, we don’t. We hate them and we’ll get them next year!

 

HOROWITZ

Anyway, so that was a different version of the pilot that didn’t air, but one we probably should have gone with. In our version, the curse took them to our world, the one place where evil can win. They were trapped in a dreary town. But now we had a problem …

 

KITSIS

We couldn’t figure out where the story went from there.  It started great but then fizzled out. We banged our heads against the wall for ages. Until we realized — that curse swallowing our characters wasn’t the beginning of the story, it was the end. We had loved our opening so much that we were afraid to start over. But once we tore down the board and DID start over, the REAL story presented itself to us. We had to BUILD to that awesome scene. We had to open our minds to new ideas and new possibilities.

 

HOROWITZ

Don’t be afraid to tear down the board.  Don’t settle. Life will present you with many paths. Don’t be afraid to start over if one is a dead end. You may feel like you invested so much time and energy going in one direction that it feels like a waste to undo your hard work. But it’s not. Every moment, every choice, every misstep, every mistake prepares you for the next one. But most importantly, that means keeping an open mind. It’s easy to get locked into one way of thinking.  Divorce yourself of that and the world will open up to you. And if you do that, you will never stop learning. We’ve been writing for 25 years and we still start every project with the same goal: learning something new and getting better. And we try to apply that to every area in life.  Your time in school may be over, but your education is just beginning.

 

KITSIS

Rule #3: avoid typecasting.

What is typecasting? It’s a phenomenon, usually with actors, where a performer almost always plays the same kind of part. Think Bryan Cranston … years and years as the wacky dad on “Malcolm in the Middle.” Then all of a sudden he’s cooking meth in a trailer on “Breaking Bad.” He broke out of his typecasting. Writers experience this too.

 

HOROWITZ

Early in our career we were typecast. We spent two wonderful years writing on a show called “Popular.” It was a high school show about young people and their relationships coming of age. From there we spent a year writing a show called “Felicity,” a show about young people and their relationships coming of age. From there, we wrote an episode of “One Tree Hill,” a show about young people coming of age and their relationships. And then we wrote on a show called “Life As We Know It,” a show about young people coming of… I think you get the idea.

 

KITSIS

And the truth was – we were sick of it. We were bored. We weren’t really writing things we wanted to write.  Because we were afraid to. Don’t let fear stop you. The problem wasn’t our abilities – it was our fear. One of our mentors, Carlton Cuse, gave us this advice. He said that while we were quite good at writing these shows, we were writing the wrong thing. We should be doing the things we love. We had found an easy and safe path and were sticking to it.

 

HOROWITZ

 

Once we decided to look inward and ask what kinds of stories we really wanted to tell, it opened incredible doors for us. We went to work on “Lost” — and we were terrified. It was far different than anything we had ever done. Which is exactly why we had to try it. And ultimately it led to one of the most rewarding career experiences we’ve had. We quickly learned that we had been held back by typecasting.  But it wasn’t the business that did it. It was ourselves. We didn’t believe we could write something like “Lost” or “Tron” or “Once Upon A Time.” So we didn’t try. But when we did? Everything changed. Don’t typecast yourself. Be the kind of person you WANT to be. So start there. If YOU don’t believe in yourself and what you can do, no one else will.

 

KITSIS

Rule #4: it’s the journey, not the destination.

In episodic television, in success, you’re telling 100 or more stories. Where the story ends is far less important than how you get there. On a superficial level, yes audiences want to know answers — why is there a polar bear on this remote island? But the truth is, most of those questions can be answered with simple yesses or nos. Or a few sentences of explanation. If you’re going to ask an audience to stay with you for years, you have to give them something more. They’re with you for the experience. For the ride. And that’s what matters.

 

HOROWITZ

You didn’t go to college, counting every day until this ceremony. When you came here, did you only think about graduation? Getting this diploma?  Listening to this speech?  We sure hope not. And we suspect not. Think about your favorite moments in Madison. That’s what awaits you.  Where you end up is not the point. Life is full of moments on the way to wherever you go. Live in those moments because you don’t know where you’re going to end up.  And that’s okay. Our journey since Madison has been filled with ups and downs, lefts and rights. Unexpected twists and turns. And not just on the page or screen but in our personal lives and with our families. Remember that goals are important, but each moment we take on the journey to that goal is equally if not more important.

 

KITSIS

You’re about to leave this place that is quite wonderful.   Where you go next is a mystery. But embrace that. Don’t concern yourself as much with what lies at the end of the road, because, hopefully that’s a long way off. These last four years are a microcosm of what’s to come. All the fun and achievements and setbacks, and reversals of fortune that you experienced? That’s the excitement and drama we try to capture on the screen, but it’s there in your life every day.  Don’t run away from it. Embrace it. Live it. Use it. Whether it appears success or failure is imminent doesn’t matter, you’re building something. It’s like in the writers room, we build our stories piece by piece, moment by moment. Your future is no different, only, believe it or not, you have far more control. We’re limited by budgets and audiences and ratings and box office … but in life you’re only limited by yourself. Which is to say, you have no limits.

 

HOROWITZ

So that’s it. That’s our wisdom. Go out there and find a story. Find your story. Live it every day, and know that no matter what happens it will be uniquely yours. Make it what you want, and don’t stop until it is.

 

KITSIS

Congratulations Class of 2017, and on, Wisconsin!