A restaurant's best dishes tell stories. Their flavors embed themselves in our memory like song lyrics or lines from a movie. So much so that a little slice of a restaurant's story can become part of our own. I'm Danny Chow, and this is Shift Meal, a new video podcast from The Ringer where we're sharing a bite and chopping it up with chefs and restaurant people during their off hours. Look out for episodes of Shift Meal on Ringer Food starting September 18th.

This episode is brought to you by STARS. Starring Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin, Dewanda Weiss, and Gabrielle Creevey comes the STARS series Three Women. Based on a True Story, and the best-selling book by Lisa Taddeo. Three Women follows grieving writer Gia as she persuades three ordinary women to tell her their stories and radically overturn all their lives. Watch the season premiere of Three Women, September 13th, only on Starz and the Starz app. This episode is brought to you by AMC+. Fan favorites Daryl and Carol are back in the highly anticipated next chapter of The Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon, The Book of Carol. Binge season one in the AMC collection on Netflix and always on AMC+. Catch up on what The Hollywood Reporter called the best version of Walking Dead storytelling since the early seasons of The Mothership. And don't miss the premiere of season two, September 29th, exclusively on AMC+. AMC is the home of the Walking Dead universe. Now with more ways to watch. Learn more at amcplus.com. It is Wednesday, September 18th. Being a gainfully employed Hollywood screenwriter has never been easy, just ask the faculty at most second-tier film schools. But these days, it can feel like a pipe dream. There aren't really reliable stats on writing jobs in film and TV projects after the Writers Guild strike last summer, but it's safe to say the expected jump once that walkout was settled has not materialized. Film LA, the nonprofit that tracks Los Angeles production, they've noted double-digit drops each quarter of 2024. Globally, film and TV production has lagged about 7% in the first quarter of 2024. I think it's actually worse after that. We're not seeing this V-shaped recovery in writer employment, a local economist told the LA Times this summer. We know the reasons, the streaming correction, rising production costs, all the other things we talk about on the show. I don't want to relitigate the causes of the slump today. Instead, I want to talk about how to overcome them. Projects are selling. There is opportunity out there for writers. It's just much more limited than it was. So I wanted to talk about that and discuss everything writer with the king of aspiring writers, Franklin Leonard. He's been on the show before. Franklin founded the Blacklist back in 2005. Wow, almost 20 years. If you don't know what that is, it's the annual list of top unproduced screenplays in town. It's voted on by industry insiders. It's become pretty influential. Movies get made off of it. Franklin's got a whole business around the blacklist now. He works with aspiring writers all the time, and he's expanding it now to include novels. We'll talk about that a little bit. So today it's the state of the screenwriter. Is it really as bad as everyone says? And how can someone possibly break through? From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town. All right, we are here with Franklin Leonard, founder and CEO of The Blacklist, everybody's buddy at film festivals, general man around town. Welcome. What's up, man? How's it going? Good to see you. Good to see you, too. It's been a while since you've been on the show.