Justin Halpern, GET LOST

[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked! I'm Zibi Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show

[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling, reinvention, and life itself

[0:11]because when you talk about books, you're really talking about life. So get ready to hear from

[0:16]today's best authors, the best-selling and the not yet discovered. Come find your next great read

[0:22]and the story behind it. Enjoy! Justin Halburn is the author of Get Lost. He is a golden globe

[0:31]and Emmy-nominated creator, showrunner, director, and executive producer through his and his

[0:36]creative partner, Patrick Schumacher's company, Delicious Non-Sequiter Productions, which is currently

[0:42]under an overall deal with Warner Bros. Television. He is the executive producer and co-showrunner

[0:47]of the Emmy-winning hit series Abbott Elementary on ABC alongside Quinta Brunson, who by the way was

[0:53]also on this podcast and Patrick Schumacher. The series has been nominated for Best Comedy

[0:58]series in both 2022 and 2024, among other honors. Justin is the author of The New York Times

[1:04]Best Selling Book, Shit My Dad Says, and I Suck At Girls. Get Lost is his debut novel. Welcome,

[1:10]Justin, thanks so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about your new novel Get Lost. Congratulations.

[1:16]Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. I have been sort of following you, well that sounds creepy,

[1:21]but I read Shit My Dad Says, I Suck At Girls, like I've been following a lot for a long time.

[1:27]Yeah, I thought that was hilarious. I am a fan such a fan. So when I heard you were writing a novel,

[1:33]I was so excited and it did not disappoint. So congratulations. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate

[1:38]that. Yeah, I was a little nervous about it. No, no. It's really great. It's

[1:44]propulsive and the characters are, you know, Lyla is so funny and dark and mean, but like so like

[1:52]likable. I know you have a whole debate about this, but likable even in her like frank

[1:57]rudeness. It's like endearing in some way. I can't even explain it, but anyway, I'm a fan. Everything

[2:02]she said was hilarious. Oh, thank you. Yeah, my goal was to start that book where you dislike,

[2:10]you may dislike her and like her father like dicks and by the end of it, you've either flip

[2:15]flop or you've come to a different understanding of both of them. So why don't you tell listeners a little

[2:20]bit about Get Lost? The basic sort of premise of the book is that, you know, this woman Lyla,

[2:25]she's in her early 30s. She's estranged from her dad and she gets a call at the start of the book

[2:30]that says her mom's gone missing and she's like, my mom sad that goes missing a lot. She has mental

[2:36]health issues. It's not fine, but it's fine. She'll come back. She always comes back and they say,

[2:44]well, this time might be a little different because the cops think that you're dad killed her.

[2:49]And so she goes back to her small town in Central Valley, California and she with the help of her dad

[2:57]tries to figure out where her mom went where she is. And so that's the basic premise of the book,

[3:02]but I can definitely get into kind of what I was trying to achieve with it.

[3:06]Yes, a hundred percent. And by the way, you have seen

[3:11]earlyish on about when she's waiting when Lyla is waiting at the at the jail for her,

[3:17]or the sheriff's office, wherever for her dad to come out and she was giving advice to someone

[3:21]next to her about how you have to stand and kind of lurk about to get attention. So I was literally

[3:25]at a doctor's appointment for my son earlier today. And I was like, I'm going to do the standing

[3:30]thing, which I have done in the past, but I was like, I'm going to channel Lyla here and stand

[3:34]and hover around this reception desk to get into see the doctor faster, which I think worked.

[3:39]You know, it's funny is that specific moment in the book was one of, to me, one of the most

[3:44]important moments in the book. Like because I originally went ahead, written the book, she's so

[3:50]sort of caustic and abrasive. And it felt like I was like, I feel like I'm missing the humanity

[3:57]in her early on. You get to plenty of it later. But I was like, there are people that she has

[4:03]empathy for and like feels for. And so that moment I put that moment in there, because I grew up

[4:10]the child that would doctor. And that was what he would always say. He would always say, he would

[4:14]like, when he we would go into ER, whatever, or we go, you would always just stand right by it

[4:19]because he's like, they'll always come ask you what's going on if you're standing. They hate it.

[4:24]It's like, it makes them, it makes them uneasy. And so I felt like she had been through

[4:28]like in the in the in the show, I'm sorry, in the show, in the book, you know, she's been through

[4:34]so many institutions. She's been in foster care. She's been, you know, in police custody before.

[4:40]She's been so many places that are sort of bureaucratic that I wanted to show that she understands

[4:46]the way that these bureaucracies move and that these are some sort of like hard-earned knowledge

[4:53]that she had. But really and truly, I think the thing that I was most interested in is

[4:58]well, there was two things that prompted the book. The first is simpler and much more about the

[5:02]mystery element, which is that I saw article about this small bar in Central California where

[5:11]it was like 15 years, it was tiny, like 15 years square foot bar and it had one interest and one exit

[5:16]and a man walked into it and then he never walked out and no one ever found it. And they had video

[5:23]on the exit and they had video on the entrance and they never found the guy. And so immediately just

[5:28]that was interesting to me like that idea of well, obviously you didn't vanish, but what happened.

[5:34]And so the other part of it was I was like 2023 and I'm a television writer. So I was walking

[5:40]the sort of strike line. We were on strike against studios. And so I was walking the picket line

[5:46]every day like three, four hours a day. And I just had time to think and I wasn't going to write a

[5:51]screenplay and I wasn't going to write a TV show. I was on strike. And so I started to get this idea

[5:56]of just these two characters. And this I, the large idea I had was kind of like, how is it for a kid

[6:02]of someone who takes up all the oxygen in the room? Like of someone who is like beloved of someone

[6:09]who is, it's so easy for them to be with people and people like them and it takes no effort on

[6:15]their part. What does it feel like if you're the child of someone like that? And it's hard for

[6:20]you to connect to people. And then it started to morph into what if you're actually a good person

[6:25]and they're kind of a piece of shit. You know, like what is that? How that must like really hurt,

[6:32]you know, and I started thinking about this idea of like, I want to write a book that's fun and funny

[6:37]and has a mystery, but I want to get into this idea of how sometimes our anger at the people that

[6:44]we love, it holds us back and it limits us and we can't move forward in our lives until we can set

[6:51]it aside. Even if an apology never comes, right? There's a lot of stories about apologies and I didn't

[6:56]want to write a story about someone seeking an apology. I wanted to write a story about how do you move

[7:02]forward? If you know, you'll never get that apology. Like you know, it'll never come. How do you set

[7:08]aside that anger and move forward in your life? And so that was kind of the theme that I wanted to

[7:15]tackle. Oh, I love that. And where did the significance of the lighthouse's come in and did you ever

[7:21]have a lighthouse and hide anything in it yourself? It's an identity, but so I grew up in this area

[7:29]of San Diego called Point Loma and it's basically when I grew up it was just a military community,

[7:33]it's now well much fancier. But when I was growing up, it was all people, my dad was in the

[7:39]it was all people who were in the Navy. That was it. And there was a lighthouse at the end

[7:44]of it's a peninsula and there's a lighthouse at the end of the peninsula called Cabrio Monument.

[7:48]And people, I didn't realize sort of the culture around Lighthouse's until I remember going

[7:55]to a friend's house and his mom had like tons of Lighthouse's and I was like, this is a little

[8:01]creepy. And she was like, no, Lighthouse's are the guiding light in a dark and stormy, you know,

[8:08]there was a lot of symbolism and a lot of power that a lighthouse had for people. And I think

[8:14]also when you have like, I have had people in my life who have had real mental health struggles.

[8:19]And I think when you are so loosely tethered to the earth, you know, when you are just barely

[8:26]hanging on and having some real mental health crises, I think you look for little things that

[8:32]can keep you on this earth. And so I think that that was the idea is that Lila's mom in this

[8:39]book is just like, she's barely hanging on always. And in order to sort of like feel like she is

[8:46]a person of this planet, she collects these lighthouses and she has them all over her house as

[8:53]these constant reminders of like, it's dark right now. It's super dark, but you can find that

[8:58]one light. You can find it, you know, and I think that that was, and I also wanted to show that

[9:04]like sometimes when you're having these mental health issues, it's hard for the people who love

[9:09]you to be around you and help. And so you isolate, you isolate, and you isolate, and so that was kind

[9:15]of the thinking of you at Lighthouse. Can you share about where in your life you encountered all

[9:19]of the mental illness? Yeah. So I had a couple of ants that I was very, very close to that really

[9:26]battled it. And it was really hard for them to I think they they had a really tough childhood

[9:34]in my mom as well growing up. And I think they had a lot of like abandonment. They had a lot of

[9:39]just like moving in and out of orphanages and it was really, really hard for them. And I think that

[9:45]they never found a place that felt like home if that means that makes sense. And I think because

[9:53]of that my mom did and she married my dad and and I think they built a home together.

[10:00]But I think some of my her sisters weren't quite as lucky and I think that it really took a toll on them mentally and I think they developed a lot of mental health issues and and I would see them struggle with them and I'd see my mom spend hours and hours and hours trying to help them trying so hard like beyond what anyone would consider like past the like I've done my duty like way past that

[10:27]because she loved them and she didn't want to give up on them you know and I think that that that informed a little bit of wireless relationship with her mom I think it's harder when you're a child and your parent has that because at some point you feel like well this relationship was supposed to be flipped I was supposed to have been taking care of by my parent and now I'm exclusively having to tend to my parent who is a complete and you know just like total

[10:57]mess for lack of a better term and so I I thought that like a child might give up earlier because they have a whole life that they need to build for themselves in a way that like you know my mom did she stayed the course the whole way you know. Thank you for sharing.

[11:27]a huge advocate right like some of those values are priceless to internalize like you can say oh I'm going to be a good mom by doing xyz for my kid but actually she's being a good mom by teaching you how to care for others. Oh absolutely I think that's that's I tell it all the time like the sort of modeling besides from just what a great parent she was there is just sort of the modeling of. Potentially more powerful than if she could have said and she said lots of amazing things.

[11:57]yeah amazing so when did you get into the TV writing I know you're writing for Abbott elementary now that's so cool I actually went to Brenton on like years ago. Yes yes I did I wonder if she even remembers it used to be called mom's time to read books but I had her on for her book who means well or something. Yes she means well. She means well she means well but anyway obviously that show has taken off how is that whole thing changed your life and how did you get there. Yeah I mean it totally changed my life.

[12:27]partner and I Patrick Schumacher has been my writing partner for 25 years we write everything everything we write in TV movies we write together and he and I had written a pilot and then we we cast the pilot and we the original role was for like a blonde valley girl who was like worked at a check of cheese and went to came in and read for it went to if you don't know I'm sure you do but for the listener she's a 4 foot 11 black woman.

[12:57]and she read and she was just so good and so such a stand out that we just changed the character for to be her I mean to fit her and so we shot the pilot and the pilot went through a lot of iterations it was not good but she was fantastic in it she was incredible in the pilot like in the testing you'd see like any time she was on screen the dials would go way up and when she was off screen to house to go back down.

[13:27]the writer creator we had become friends with her on the set and we said listen if there's anything you ever want to do if you ever have any ideas anything like that come talk to us like come come pitch it to us and she pitched us this idea for Abidile mentry but it was sort of like her mom was a teacher and it was the basic building blocks of Abidile mentry she came in and we were like wow that's great and original she wanted to do it as an animated show because she was busy and we were busy and so we had sort of talked about it and then we didn't kind of busy.

[13:57]she was busy and so we we sort of didn't we talked about it a little bit but every time my partner I would start to like generate ideas for a new show we would just be like had ideas to get idea like and just the way that her way into it was a good idea and her voice is so unique and good.

[14:27]and he was like do you want to write home and then while he was given a write home he was like you know just now I talk about this that show we talked about it was at the time it's called Herity Elementary because it was named after her own lunch or school would you ever consider doing it live action yes there and she was like you know I've been thinking about that too and I was like well we thought about starring in it and that and two weeks later you know she came in we started developing the pitch with her and then two weeks later we were like three weeks later we were like out the door with that pitch taken out the cell.

[14:57]and it completely like Pat and I have been working writers very gratefully from many years and years before that we had as well but it's so rare you get the chance to create something or be a part of the creation of something that just like it like it burst through the side guys you know and so when that happens it it opened up so many more doors for us that were previously like only cracked open.

[15:27]like you know working on that show has been the blessing of my life I would say completely like went to completely change my life. I love that I wonder what was she on the set even for because if she hadn't met she if she hadn't been there that day and you hadn't crossed paths maybe this whole thing wouldn't have had I think she had like a general I can't remember actually I think it was like a general meeting about something like she had been doing pilots like they had been shot but she'd been like writing and selling pilots before that so I think she was on.

[15:57]I think whoever that person was should be in the show's acknowledgement somewhere but probably so. Oh that's great is there anything that it opened up that has been on your wishlist forever that now you have the opportunity to do. Said from right this novel. Well yeah writing the novels a big one but yeah. We're actually turning I suck a girls into a show that's going to that's on Netflix it's going to be a machine offices of it right now it's going to be on.

[16:27]it's fun because you know we had actually turned I suck girls into a show 12 or 13 years ago but it was very much based around this one particular time and it was my father and me and it was kind of a father son thing and. And originally the thing that I really wanted to do is I always wanted to patent I always wanted to do like a teenage.

[16:47]Our rated teenage show that this like very much based on the teenagers the adults are sort of you know secondary and and that it was just about sort of the idea that your you every decision feels so important when you're teen and that you have no idea what you're doing.

[17:07]And that like really and truly you're just trying to figure out who you are and what skin you're going to like ultimately wear and so that was the idea that we wanted to do and we got to do it like we're getting to do it which is really fun for us. That is so cool. Oh I love them. Do you feel like you know who you are now. I'm getting closer.

[17:29]Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I think about this a lot. I think about how I'm I'm living the life based upon decisions that 23 to 26 year old me made, but I would never 45 year old me wouldn't have wanted to hang out with 23.

[17:51]Right. And I think that's something that's so weird about about being young is that you are you are the representative for a much older version of you that's going to have to live with everything you've done.

[18:02]And I think that's a fascinating idea that is you know really hard to sometimes.

[18:09]But I think I, I think I am closer to sort of figuring out how I can exist in this world and feel good about it, which is a challenge.

[18:19]Yeah challenge for all of us.

[18:22]What chapter would you say in your own life are you leaving and what chapter are you entering?

[18:28]Well, I have two kids. They're 10 and 13. And I feel like I am leaving the chapter of like my life is an absolute fucking tornado.

[18:39]You know, like when you have kids that age, like when they're like, you know, anywhere from like basically born to like eight.

[18:46]It's, it feels like there is no, you are treading water and feels so hectic and you're always tired and it just and so I feel like I'm, I'm leaving that world of chaos and kind of trying to like like that storm is still drizzling, but it's like about ends.

[19:06]And, and now I'm like, okay, now wait, oh right, we can actually like move towards the destination. We don't have stuff like stay afloat.

[19:14]Love that. I have my two younger kids are 11 and almost 13. So I'm with you.

[19:20]Oh same. Yeah, like, and I look at families in the airport with the strollers and I'm just like.

[19:27]Thank you airports where I noticed it the most actually it's funny bringing that up the airport where I'm like, oh yeah, I don't have to do any that stuff.

[19:33]Yeah, like travel with this car seat, do all that kind of stuff and I don't have to if I turn my head for two seconds. I don't have to worry that I no longer have a trial.

[19:42]Yeah, I know I never I never went the route of putting the leash on the kids, but I did see families doing that and thinking like that wouldn't be such a bad cop.

[19:51]Yeah, you start to you start to empathize with everything every parent does get it.

[19:56]Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, on the on the getting lost.

[20:00]You know, the kids running away this book anyway. Well, Justin, thank you so much. And thank you for this highly entertaining

[20:06]book. I'm excited. You'll be at the bookstore and

[20:10]Now I'm excited for I suck a girl's the show. So oh

[20:15]Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm really excited to come to your your store. My friend

[20:19]Bill Lawrence is gonna be there with me which will be really really fun

[20:23]Bill is a great guy and actually one of my sort of mentors he gave me my first job and television

[20:29]It's been he's been entertaining TV people or entertaining people through the TV for many many many years

[20:35]He's always great person. So I'm excited to be there. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you

[20:41]Zibi. All right. Take care. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi formerly mom's don't have time to read books

[20:50]If you loved the show tell a friend leave a review follow me on instagram at zibi Owens and spread the word

[20:57]Thanks so much. Oh and bye the books