Earlier this week, Justin Halpern phoned Movieline to discuss his whirlwind success, his Twitter technique and the sh*t his dad says about his CBS series.
Congratulations on all of your success. How does it feel to have your book on the New York Times Bestseller List?
It's unbelievable. Not even in my wildest dreams did I ever think that that would happen.
Do you think that your journey from Twitter to a book deal to a television show is the new American Dream?
[Laughs] I guess it is sort of a new-age American dream, I guess?
What kind of feedback have you been getting from people? I imagine that some writers who have been trying to break into the entertainment industry for years are jealous, while some are genuinely happy for you.
Yeah, I have gotten a lot of positive feedback. It's funny because I wrote on the internet before this and I think that if I had seen this happen to someone else, I would think, "What an a**hole." So I totally understand any kind of negative feedback, because not many people are given the chance to do exactly what I have been given a chance to do. I am pretty lucky. People have been overall really supportive, though. The only time I see guys get really angry [about my success] is on certain web sites... but I totally get it.
Are your brothers jealous that they didn't come up with the idea for the Twitter feed first?
No, no, no. I am the youngest. They don't care at all. I think only one of my brothers has actually even read my book. They just don't really care.
Not only did CBS order a full season of $#*! My Dad Says but they gave it one of the best time slots on the network -- right after Big Bang Theory.
I was shocked. I had no idea when we were writing the script if it would get picked up to pilot, even. And after that, we weren't sure we would be lucky enough to be picked up as a midseason replacement. We really had no idea that we would be picked up until I found out in New York at the upfronts. I was shocked.
Did your dad have any input in the casting process?
He wanted James Earl Jones to play him. Yeah, he was serious about it too. I thought he was joking. He thought it would be cool if James Earl Jones was the father of a white son. I said that it had to be kinda close to real life. He said it shouldn't matter.
I would have watched that show. Have you introduced your dad to William Shatner yet?
Yeah, he met Mr. Shatner once at the taping of the pilot. He was a little reluctant. We finally got him to come down to take a picture. So my dad and Mr. Shatner approach each other, Mr. Shatner says "Hello," my dad says "Hello," they take the picture and they both turn around and walk away from each other in opposite directions. That was it.
That's great.
They were both super cool about it. I don't think it was about being rude. They are old guys and you know old guys -- they don't really want to ham it up and shoot the sh*t and have little chit-chat conversations.
No. He doesn't have anything. He actually writes books on his own. He's retired so he doesn't care about any of that stuff. It was hard enough to get him to come to the pilot taping.
What kind of books does he write?
He was in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and he wrote a book about that when he got back from Vietnam. I actually just started reading his book a little bit ago. I asked him if I could read it awhile back and he was like, "No, it's f*cking sh*tty." So for awhile, I didn't want to read something that he hated because I figured if he hated it, it was probably bad. He's really tough on himself. It was really hard to find a copy of it because it is out of print. It was published in like '71 or '72 and i think it might have even been self-published.
Is he writing anything now?
Yeah, he writes stuff now. It's funny because I said to him, "Hey, I could probably help you find an agent or something like that" but he is really wary of that stuff. If he wrote a book, he doesn't want it to say "From the dad of $#*! My Dad Says!" That would be his worst nightmare.
How has your television writing experience been so far? Do you feel pressure to constantly prove that you are more than "that guy who started the funny Twitter feed?"
Definitely. First though, I have to prove that to the other writers on the show that I can write. And I should have to prove that, so I try to do the best that I can and work as hard as I possibly can. Hopefully some of the things that I write make the other writers laugh. But again, people have been incredibly nice to me. I could have walked into the writers' room and had people thinking, "I can't believe that i have to write with this kid who lucked out with this overnight success." But people haven't been like that.
Like a lot of pilots this season, you recast one of your leads. Can you talk about what happened with Ryan Devlin?
Yeah, he's a really good actor but it just didn't end up being the right fit. Sometimes, an actor just doesn't fit with the person they are playing off of. Sometimes, there is just something that is not quite working, and it was nothing that Ryan wasn't doing right. He's a really good actor and he will go on to have a really successful career, but it just didn't fit 100 percent the way that it should have. Unfortunately, we had to recast it.
When are we going to start seeing your dad on the interview circuit? I've heard that he's pretty reclusive, but can you think of any circumstance in which he would agree to be interviewed?
<span
class="pullquote right">I think the only way my dad would do an interview is if he got to meet Stephen Hawking. I bet if they could arrange for him to meet Stephen Hawking, he would do the interview. It's funny -- my dad does so much for me already but he doesn't do these interviews. I don't want to force him to do anything, but there are all these people asking us to sit down with them, and I could definitely sell way more books if he did. We've gotten offers to do cool shows like Nightline, Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel. [Laughs] But he thinks if he does one of them, he will get hounded to do a million of them. He hates talking to reporters but talked to them accidentally a few times.
Oh, really?
Yeah. My local news station in San Diego showed up at my parents' house one day. They knocked on the door and he opened it and it was like a full camera crew. He said, "Hello" and they were like, "Do you know your son writes stuff about you?" My dad said, "Yeah." Then they asked, "Well what do you have to say about that?" And he shut the door in their faces. That was on the local news.
Have you been approached about doing a $#*! My Dad Says movie yet?
When I first sent out my book proposal -- which is what got the networks and people in LA interested in the first place -- people starting calling and asking if I had thought about this as a movie. So that is the first idea anyone had for us -- we would go into meetings and execs would pitch a "really touching coming-of-age movie" and I said, "I don't think that would be a good movie. I am not the writer for that movie. I don't want to write that." So we stopped taking those meetings and after that, I started batting around the idea that this could work as a TV show.
Have you seen any of the internet conspiracy theories out there that you actually came up with the quotes for your Twitter feed and that your dad was just a clever gimmick?
I have seen conspiracy theories that CBS and Twitter collaborated on the feed knowing that they were going to release a book and create a television show. It's funny, because when I was living with my dad, I was hanging out with him for, like, eight hours a day. We would have these long conversations that would go on for hours before he would actually say one funny thing. People say it's fake and there is nothing I can really say to convince them otherwise. And it doesn't help that my dad won't do interviews. It's a little better now that he has accidentally talked to a few reporters and he was at the pilot taping so some people know he is real.
What I will do, though, is sometimes he will say a paragraph and and I will take the first and last sentences and squish them together to make it 140 characters or less. Lately, since I'm not around him, I use something he said to me, like, five or ten years ago.
Are you sitting there with a notepad when you are talking to him?
[Laughs] No. At the end of the day, I still want want to have a good relationship with my dad. He is actually one of my good friends, so it would suck if our relationship took a backseat to my career.
Did your dad like the pilot?
He did, but he had some trouble with certain things. He had some notes for me. In general, he really liked the show, but there were a few things he did not like.
What were some of his notes?
Let me think... He had a couple really good ones. Oh yeah. He told me, "You made the main kid too much of a pussy."
Ouch. Your avatar basically. How did you respond to that?
I just said, "OK thanks. We will try to work on that one, Dad."