Joey Hartsone, Screenwriter-Novelist-Episode #302

Storybeat with Steve Cuden

The phenomenal screenwriter and novelist, Joey Hartstone, had his first two feature films directed by no less than Rob Reiner. The first film, LBJ, which was named to Hollywood’s highly respected Black List in 2014, starred Woody Harrelson as LBJ. Joey’s second feature, “Shock and Awe,” featured Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, and Milla Jovovich.

He was a member of the writing staff for the first two seasons of “The Good Fight.” He is currently the showrunner and an executive producer of Showtime’s “Your Honor,” starring a favorite StoryBeat guest, Bryan Cranston.

Joey’s debut novel, “The Local,” a legal thriller about an East Texas patent attorney’s first murder case, was published in the spring of 2022 by Doubleday, and is being developed as a series with CBS Studios and King Size Productions. I’ve read “The Local” and can tell you it’s a brilliant, fast-paced, thoroughly entertaining legal murder mystery very much in the vein of John Grisham and Scott Turow. I highly recommend “The Local” to you and am very glad that it’s being developed for TV. Who knew Intellectual Property law could be so exciting?

Joey and his wife, Abby, are adapting the book “In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took on the US Army,” as a feature film with Star Thrower Entertainment.

For the record, Joey and I have known one another for many years having graduated together from UCLA’s famed MFA in Screenwriting program.