Always a writer in one shape or form, Jonathon Stewart set off to Hollywood immediately after graduation to become a writer and director in Hollywood. He has achieved the dream after years of work and an outlook that has always pointed him to the multifaceted lives that humans lead. Find out how finding the human story—whether in a non-human animated character or the protagonist of a period biopic—all about simultaneously seeing both the whimsy and drama of life.
Guest Jonathon “Stew” Stewart, Dartmouth '96, set off to Hollywood immediately after graduation to become a writer and director in Hollywood. Without ready-made connections or a pre-determined path, he had to stumbled around in the beginning until a few observations of the sublime and the ridiculous within his own family made him take stock anew and recommit to the path he’d chosen. Embarking on a collaboration with fellow Dartmouth writer Eyal Podell ’97, he worked on a biopic script about a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright’s before taking the plunge into a similar project on Theordore Geisel. The Dr. Seuss script, though not without its barriers to an easy road to the box office, became the duo’s calling card around Hollywood and ultimately opened doors to animated film projects and other creative initiatives that require just the tricky balance of humanity the pair have continued to perfect.
In this episode, find out from Stew how finding the human story--whether in a non-human animated character or the protagonist of a period biopic--is all about simultaneously seeing both the whimsy and drama of life…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Jonathan Stewart is a screenwriter, director, and author, who—with writing partner Eyal Podell, Dartmouth ’97—has straddled big budget animation and period biopic projects, pulling both the humanity and whimsy out of such characters as Lightning McQueen, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, and our own Dr. Seuess. Find out about his creative projects (as well as a very cool coffee endeavor called Java Stew) at jstew.com.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Jonathon Stewart: I am drawn to human emotion and real relationships and connections and the pathos of being human. But at the same time, you know, life is funny.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Always a writer in one shape or form, Jonathon Stewart, Dartmouth ’96, set off to Hollywood immediately after graduation to become a writer and director in Hollywood. He's achieved the dream after years of work and an outlook that has always pointed him to the multifaceted lives that humans lead. Find out how finding the human story, whether in a non-human animated character or the protagonist of a period biopic is all about simultaneously seeing both the whimsy and the drama of life on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
So today I'm here with my friend, Jonathon Stewart, otherwise known as Stew to most. And we're going to talk today about the importance of relationships in setting us on some paths and nudging us down them in various ways in this lifetime. So welcome. I'm so glad you're here with me today, Stew.
JS: Thanks for having me. It's so good to, so good to connect with you. It's awesome.
LJR: Yeah. So I start these the same way every time asking the same two questions. When we were in college, who were you and who, as we were leaving college, did you think he would become?
JS: That is a great question that you start off every podcast with. And one that's definitely layered. You know, when we were in college, particularly senior year, but sort of all throughout Dartmouth, I think I was always kind of searching for who I was and trying to figure that out. Like a lot of us, then one thing I knew is I didn't want to go into corporate recruiting in college, that was about as far as I had gotten. I think at one point I was planning to be in an acapella group in Rhode Island with a couple of friends that would have been an amazing experience, but never came to fruition. And ultimately just decided to move to Los Angeles because I enjoy film as much as I do and kind of stumbled into it in college and took all the filmmaking classes I could at Dartmouth. It just felt like, it felt like the right thing, instinctually, and I didn't know what I was going to do once I got out here other than try to make movies and write and direct and all of that. And you know, back in 1996, you know, the internet was in its infancy. The networks of people and alumni that we have today were nothing like that. So that soul search definitely sort of continued into my first couple of years in LA. I mean, it continues to this day, but not quite as severely as it was in those early formative years of adulting.
LJR: Yeah. But you are not naive. I mean, I think you knew: Life and Hollywood, regardless of how many classes that you take, like really requires that whole networking thing and a lot of disappointment and rejection and all of that. So you weren't naive, but were you prepared? Like, did you know how it was going to be those first couple years?
JS: Yeah, I mean, I think I was…it speaks to sort of a larger mentality that I think I carried with me forever as an only child and sort of just kind of forging my way in the world, which is just to kind of throw yourself into something and figure out how to do it and know that I will survive one way or another. It's a difficult way to do things because instead of, you know, immediately being pointed in the right direction for something, you kind of have to look at this whole sea of possibilities and really kind of figure out your path within all of those. And so, yeah, I was certainly not naive about any of that, but I remember vividly having a sense, leaving Dartmouth and being ready to leave Dartmouth and coming out here. And it just being a new beginning and not really knowing what that would mean at all. Like not, not…And I think because of that, it took me a number of years to kind of figure out exactly how to find the right work in Hollywood in terms of how to build the right networks in terms of where to focus my time and energy. You know, it was in some ways this circuitous route, but in other ways, you know, sort of led me to where I needed to be ultimately. So, it's, you know, it's a process for sure.
LJR: Right. And you shared with me that kind of talking about the sea of possibilities and finding your way there was some stuff going on in your family that kind of gave you some different perspectives. Tell us.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I moved out in the summer of 1996 and lived in Westwood. Dan Palumbo 96 and Duff Kuhnert 96. And the three of us sort of terrorized UCLA campus for a year, felt really old at the ripe old age of 22 and a half. But I vividly remember the summer of 1997, the getting a phone call from my parents who called at the same time, which was very rare and actually started the conversation by saying you should be sitting down, which is never good. And they let me know they were getting a divorce after 25 years of being married. And that was you know, out of the blue, it was never like, you know, they were fighting or arguing or, you know, it was just literally like totally unexpected. And then in the same breath, my dad, who was a Presbyterian minister at the time, let me know that he was gay and that also was completely, totally out of the blue. Like it would be like anybody's father saying Oh, Hey, by the way. And you know, so I kind of, I took it all very much in stride in the call and was as supportive as I could be in my sort of semi state of shock, you know. Got off the phone and was just like, wow. You know, and Dan and Duff were there and I was like, Guess what? So, you know, that definitely was sort of a, you know, a revelation in terms of thinking about the fact that people who are in their mid to late forties can have sort of these life altering discussions amongst their own relationships and soul searching for themselves.
And then, you know, the part B to that story is that, you know, six months later, my mom came out to visit me in LA by herself. And it was around Halloween and we were just kinda talking through this, that, or the other thing. And, and she said, oh, I should tell you, there's something I've been meaning to tell you as well. I'm like what you're gay, too? And, yes. So within six months of each other, you know, as an only child with no siblings to call up and be like both my parents came out and you know, obviously that sparked a whole lot of conversation about like, when did you know, when did each other know, have you always been gay and you know, the thing that it really made me realize is that we do keep evolving as people. And there are things about ourselves that we may or may not know. And life is a continual journey of discovery. You know, that, that certainly affected my perspective in terms of how I was living my life in LA.
LJR: Yeah, but probably more in the kind of introspection of, oh, okay. I probably have many lives in me and I can go live them, but not so much action oriented until the next thing that happened. Right?
JS: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's a really good point you bring up, which is that I, I do, I think that there are many possibilities within each of us. And I, you know, there are times throughout the course of my life that I've been like, oh, well, I should stop doing what I'm doing and learn how to be a pilot or, you know, and, and I chased that. And by the nature of what I've done over the course of the last 25 years, since Dartmouth, you know, I've had 30 different jobs and a lot of that has been sort of just to do whatever you need to do in order to maintain a creatively focused a work-life. But there are times when I've, I've said let's just try something totally different. And, and, and ultimately, you know, I do believe that that that path will emerge as well.
But backing up just a second, 1997 was one of the craziest years of my adult life, learning these things about my parents. The Christmas that I went home, the end of 1997 was the most bizarre trip home I've ever experienced. I spent Christmas Eve afternoon in a gay bar in Columbus, Ohio with my father called the Plugged Nickel. And he and I had our first drink that we'd ever had together officially. My dad smoked a Marlboro red. You know, this is my Presbyterian minister father. Like, you know.
LJR: You're a writer and you could not write this.
JS: I literally stranger than fiction. And it was, it was…the bar was empty and there was like one other, you know, elderly, very queeny guy that was like rubbing my shoulders. And, you know, I, the…You know, mind blown. And at the same time, the writer in me was definitely like, please remember this, remember, take notes. You gotta, you gotta remember this.
It was super awkward. And you know, I think my, my father harbored a lot of shame and a lot of grappling with what he was going through and certainly had not figured it all out at that time. But anyway, that evening Christmas Eve night, I went to a candlelight church service with a group of 20 lesbians that sat in a circle and, and, you know, basically sang kumbaya. So once again, I was just like, this is absolute insanity, but here's my life, right? This is, this is what it looks like now. So the sad part about all of this is that around the same time, my father also started getting sick. And within a couple months of Christmas that year, he was really sick and it turned out he had this undiagnosed case of hepatitis B that we think he picked up working as a chaplain in the hospital where he worked for a couple of years at that point. And he essentially went downhill pretty fast. And so by June of the following year, my mom was like, it's…you need to come home. And so I spent a couple of weeks watching my father die and he passed away on the 4th of July. I vividly remember stepping out of the hospice where he was being taken care of and fireworks went off and it was just this sort of crazy surreal moment. That took me a long time to figure out and process. And my father died still, I think, not fully realizing who he was as a person, and certainly felt like he had more of his journey ahead to me, especially at the time, you know. Basically sort of packed back up and came back to LA after that.
And at that point I'd been working a number of temp jobs in the film industry. And I'd worked at a Walt Disney feature animation in human resources, scanning resumes and doing things that it is not a job anymore. And, and you know, when I got back, it was really like, you know what? I came out here to make movies, whether it's to write them or direct them or both, and that's what I need to be doing. So I really made a big, a big switch in terms of my focus, which was, you know, less about trying to figure out some sort of track or some sort of predetermined path in order to make this. And just said, I just need to, I just need to do it.
And again, this takes us back to this idea of like, there's no rule book for any of this. There's no, like, here's what you're supposed to do. It was, you know, it's picking up tools as you go and, and, and meeting people and collaborating and trying to figure all that out together. And you know, within I think six months after that I had produced my first short film, which I put together a professional film crew to actually do. It was a little mockumentary about traffic in Los Angeles, which is mock-worthy. Of course it was not brilliant, but it definitely was a stepping stone and an important piece of sort of kicking me in the right direction in terms of what I would ultimately end up doing creatively.
LJR: Right. And I mean, you talked about teams and collaboration and really movie-making is a team sport. And it seems as though you kind of found your way because of that. So talk to me about your process now and how that can kind of came to be.
JS: That was still back in, in 1998. And I spent a number of years after that, really just doing anything I could, you know, whether it was making music videos or little infomercials or working on independent films or writing things on my own. It was a period of learning really, you know, and figuring out how to do a craft or several crafts that are actually professional crafts. And not just like things that you just, you know, whip out and know how to do all of a sudden, particularly the craft of writing, which I, you know, I've always my whole life I've always been a writer one way or another. It’s convenient because it is something you can generally do on your own and on your own time. And yeah. The schedule is a little more flexible, but ultimately several years later, in 2006, having written a number of things and never really had anything that had really taken off Eyal Podel, who is a ’97 at Dartmouth and had been out here since he graduated also. And, you know, he used to be an actor..is still as an actor and had been sort of doing the same things too. And we'd been passing, writing books back and forth and reading each other's stuff and offering critiques and then a part of like movie circles and that sort of thing. And he pitched me an idea that he was thinking about writing about his great uncle, who was a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright's in the 1950s. And this story about how this community outside of New York city in Westchester county called Usonia was built based on these Frank Lloyd Wright principles and what an amazing unique community it was. And it was sort of in this rebellious spirit. It was a great story. And I was like, that sounds awesome. You should write that. Like, you know that you seem passionate about it. It's got all the bones for a really great story. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well would you want to write it with me? Yeah. You know, why not? We'd never, I'd never written anything with anybody else before, but we decided to dive into it. Figuring out our creative process started by like, who types, like who sits over the keyboard? How do we, how do we do this? And obviously has evolved lifetimes since then, but it all has been my writing partner for the 14 years since then, you know, we're still, still going strong at this point. So the Frank Lloyd Wright biopic was good and got kind of pitched rush after round. And it led to a very interesting thing that I wouldn't have expected.
LJR: So tell me more about that.
JS: Yeah. So the Frank Lloyd Wright script did turn out really well. It was a great story. Sort of about choosing family or legacy and wondering if those things can coexist. And so people who actually took the time to read it, because it was a period piece about architecture with a seventy-year-old protagonist…Not exactly your marquee movie ide. The people that actually took the time to read it really responded to it well, and we, you know, at one point we had Robert Redford attached to it. And we felt like this was going to be the thing that really kind of launched us into being professional writers. And we had some independent financing set up for this movie. And then, you know, the, the big economic slump hit and that kind of took out all of our investors. And, you know, as deals in Hollywood do, it fell apart pretty quickly. But you know, it became a sort of...it's a calling card that we were still able to send out.
And I think, you know, several years later in 2010, Eyal and I were talking about what we wanted to do next, and I’d just gotten an email blast from Dartmouth actually. And the professor, Don Pease, he had written a new book about the life of Ted Geisel. And he was doing a tour around the country and it was like, read the book, come, come meet him. And, and Eyal and I looked at each other and were kind of like, you know, we've done biopics before to great success. Has anybody ever done a biopic about Dr. Seuss? Like we know all of his stories and those have obviously been made into various forms of entertainment over the years, but do we know anything about this guy's actual life? And we thought it was a great idea and we're like, As an interesting life, but we don't know. And, you know, Wikipedia search later, it turns out this guy lived this life that was like 10 lifetimes. And so then the question became, you know, how do you even encompass that in a single story? So we initially came around this idea of like, almost like a Shakespeare in Love sort of paradigm, which was painting the inspiration of all the stories that became his books, including a lot of experiences which was so much fun. And we got to learn so much about the history of certain things like the Jack-o-Lantern and his formative days there. And, you know, this was back in the 1920s, of course. And it was, it was just a really, it was a really fun script to write, and it became the sort of love letter to Dartmouth. And certainly a love letter to Dr. Seuss. And it went through a number of crazy iterations, including the fact that Johnny Depp stepped into a movie that was a biopic about Dr. Seuss, literally five days after we finished the first draft of this thing. And Chris Meledandri, who is also a Dartmouth grad, was attached to produce it. And we were just like, how does this happen? You know, so, a couple of days of hard drinking, we came to our senses and said, all right, listen, if Johnny Depp is doing a version of this movie that is big and he describes it as characters, you know, coming out of his head and all this, you know, sort of wacky, zany stuff, you know, we were like, okay, fine. We'll let this be the Peter Pan version. And we'll do the Finding Neverland version. And we look to inspirations in terms of movies that we really like, like Dead Poet's Society, Good Will Hunting, sort of these movies that when you look at them, they are actually serious adult dramas, dealing with abuse and suicide and, and all sorts of complicated things. And of course, Dr. Suess had this crazy life to where his first wife committed suicide. And we had initially been like, we can't possibly put that in the movie. And then after this moment, or can we? You know, maybe this is just a whole different route. And so it gave the project this challenge that it ran into actually gave us a new perspective in terms of how to craft the story. And it really cracked it open into this different thing altogether. It still had some of the fun whimsy that we had originally conceived. But it also now had this really deep, emotional core that just kind of elevated the whole thing. So we finished writing that and we're still shopping around the Frank Lloyd Wright script, which landed in the hands of Eyal’s sister’s boss’s colleague.
LJR: I love it. So Hollywood.
JS: It’s just how Hollywood works.
LJR: Somebody’s hairdresser’s probably involved. I love it.
JS: Exactly. And we had, you know, we must have had 50 irons like this out that were all sort of long shot reads. The number of times that you send out a script as a writer and just hear nothing back or, you know, have the conversation like it's been another two weeks. Should we email it? Can we nudge them again? Or but this one, this woman Jen Gordon actually read the Frank Llyod Wright piece within a couple of days of getting it and responded right away. And she said, we don't really know what to do with a period piece about architecture with a seventy-year-old protagonist, which we had heard a million times before of course. She said, but do you have anything else that, you know, might be more commercial or have a bigger hook or anything like that? So we sent over this hot off the press, raw draft of Seuss. And she read it and loved it and said, I want to introduce you to a manager friend of mine and an agent friend of mine. They will know what to do with this. And we said, great, that's awesome. And we sat down with each of them sort of independently. You know, they came together and said, listen, this is not the kind of movie that we can sell very easily because there's some rights issues and it's a period piece and it's a drama and these are all things that make for a difficult sale, but it is something that we can launch you onto the town with, you know. Eyal and I kind of kicked each other under the table and we were like, okay, you know, go ahead, you know, launch us on. But to their word, you know, made a bunch of phone calls and sent out the script on a Tuesday morning. And by Tuesday afternoon, we had probably 10 calls back from people who love the script and wanted to meet with us. And that turned into a hundred meetings over the course of the next several months. And really just became a true door opening calling card in a really powerful way, and ultimately led to us getting our first job on a terribly difficult rewrite for next to no money and with very many competing interests in terms of what was being done with this thing. And it had been around forever and it was, it was a very eye-opening first real job. But then not terribly long after also led to a meeting with Pixar and amazing, amazingly smart couple of people there that went really, really well. And, you know, they, they basically said, well, listen, we hire about one writer a year. It has to be up in Oakland and or Emeryville. And there's nothing that we have right now that would fit with your sentimentality, but we'll, we'll put you in the Rolodex. And we were like, Okay. Cool, cool meeting. Great. Awesome to be in the Pixar Rolodex. And then less than six months later, we got a call from the same woman that we met with the Pixar, who said, Hey, guess what? We may actually have something for you guys to take a look at. And it was Cars 3, and it was the first draft, which was this super weird movie about Lightning McQueen and a bad guy, having a body swap thing. And Lightning McQueen ends up in jail. And it was just, you know,
LJR: I can't really see as well suited to the 70-year-old-protagonist. Like where did she see that?
What is that? That's probably a brilliant mind that can do that. But what, what is that?
JS: That is super interesting. That's actually a really good question and has become sort of the seminal moment in defining who we are as writers in Hollywood. You know, she, she basically kind of pitched us and gave us this first sort of marketing hook, which was, look, you may think from this script, that's about art and marriage and suicide. How do you hire people to write animation based off that? But she kind of said, well, look, there's this whimsy, there's a real whimsical nature to this script. And, and Ted Geisel is this very whimsical, playful character. And so it really created this persona for us as a writing team that we could write real character-based emotional drama, but at the same time, we could do it with a light touch that suited itself towards family adventure movies, and certainly became the basis for our career in animation. So to this day, we spend probably 50% of our time working on. Big family adventure movies, or animation. We almost always have one animation project going at any given time. And then also this other side, which is completely different, but no less fulfilling, which is this ripped from the headlines, biopic adult drama bucket of things that we do. And we've actually found in the last couple of years that those things have stored, started to kind of come together and hold hands a little bit. And we've gotten to write some, some really interesting stuff. We wrote a movie last year called My Daughter's Quinceanera, which is essentially Father of the Bride, that old Steve Martin movie, except around a quinceanera and a is a total father-daughter story. And we were like, there's no way two 40-something white guys can write on a movie called My Daughter's Quinceanera. Yeah. But it really grabbed us. Cause it was, you know, we both have daughters and we both, it was just something that was sort of right up our alley and Eva Longoria is producing it again. It's just, it really did all sort of stem from this first moment of Pixar reading our stuff and saying, oh well, it's, it's both. It's got, you know, whimsy and drama.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. They're so good at like taking their storytelling seriously. Right? You can, you can have a body switch car or whatever. I'm still like they're human characters. And so I think that's interesting that she saw that side. She was able to go from whimsy to drama and say, we need that. I'm honestly like thinking back to your, you know, 23-, 24-year-old crazy year, and saying you had that right. You had the ability to be like, my parents are gay. Like what? Like that incredulity, but also like this, okay, we're going to go with this and it's going to be whatever it is. And I'm going to find myself in this bar and at this kumbaya circle, and yet there's real humanity there. And you were able to see both you, weren't kind of like too young to say, wow, I'm just going to not pay attention to this. So you were, you were really present and I'm imagining that's informed, like the kind of writing that you do and the kind of things that now you're being drawn to, or are being drawn.
JS: Yeah, that's a really interesting sort of full-circle observation, you know? But yeah, I mean, I think I have a philosophy or a set of philosophies that I am drawn to human emotion and real relationships and connections and the pathos of being human and the fact that we all face difficulties and we all face death ultimately is not something…it's inescapable. It's not something that any of us will ever be able to cheat. But at the same time, you know, life is funny too. And I'm a big fan of irony and I'm a big fan of the way things co-mingle and just try to do the best I can to really be paying attention to all of it and not get too lost in the tough stuff, you know, which happens. It happens to the best of us, but I think being able to see things for what they are and to remember that we only have a limited amount of time in these shoes on this planet, you know, why not really try to embrace them as much as possible.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's been an amazing road so far, and you're going to take all of those qualities and really do a great things even more than you already have. So I'm so excited that you shared this part of your path with us and glad we can reconnect.
LJR: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Leslie.
JS: That was Jonathan Stewart screenwriter director who, with writing partner, Eyal Podel, Dartmouth ’97 has straddled big-budget animation and period biopic projects, pulling both the humanity and whimsy out of such characters as Lightning McQueen, a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright, and our own Dr. Seuss. Find him at JStew, that’s jstew.com and find me Leslie Jennings Rowley at RoadsTakenShow.com with another friend on the next episode of Roads Taken.