Douglas McGrath, whose HBO documentary "Becoming Mike Nichols" debuts Monday night, has found success on the screen, the stage and the page. NY1's Budd Mishkin filed the following One on 1 profile.

Whether he's writing screenplays for movies he's directed, like "Emma," or a New Yorker magazine comedy piece in which he muses that Donald Trump is actually saying all these things to get out of the presidential race, Douglas McGrath is always seeking inspiration.

"Please let me get an idea. Please. Please," he says.

At the Midtown apartment that serves as his office, there are quotes on the wall from comedy icons like Carl Reiner.

"'What piece of ground do you stand on that nobody else stands on?' That's the best advice to any writer you could ever give," McGrath says.

There's also inspiration from those who have become friends and colleagues.

"I wanted to come because of people like Woody and Mike and Elaine. They had a kind of intelligence that I admired but didn’t possess," McGrath says.

Douglas McGrath isn't bragging when he refers to Woody Allen, Mike Nichols and Elaine May on a first-name basis. It's a reflection of his place in New York's worlds of writing, film and comedy.

Accordingly, when critic turned HBO producer Frank Rich wanted someone to direct a documentary about Mike Nichols, he called Douglas McGrath.

"It only took as long as it took to part my lips to say yes," McGrath says.

"Becoming Mike Nichols" features two interviews with Nichols only months before he died in 2014.

McGrath opted to focus on Nichols' early work, groundbreaking comedy with Elaine May, and success directing plays and movies.

"That guy had a brain not like anyone’s," McGrath says. "And you’d think, if there’s a chance to get that brain on film, I want to be a part of that."

PBS is also out with a documentary about Mike Nichols. Strangely enough, McGrath has been through this before. His well-regarded  film "Infamous," about Truman Capote, was released in 2006 just after "Capote," a better-known film that received five Oscar nominations.

Mishkin: No truth to the rumor that you are writing a Broadway musical about Alexander Hamilton?
McGrath: Don't tell anyone. I don't want that idea to get out.

It is on Broadway where McGrath is perhaps now best known, writing the book for the smash hit "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical."

"'Beautiful' is on the top of cabs now," McGrath says. "Jane and I get childishly excited when a cab goes by with 'Beautiful' on it."

Jane is his wife, Jane Read Martin.

"Beautiful" is the story of Carole King's early years with then-husband and songwriting partner Gerry Goffin and their friends, the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

On April 3, 2014, McGrath was one of the few who knew that Carole King was seeing "Beautiful" for the first time, so he stopped two women from leaving as the show was ending.

"I just looked at them and I said, 'I wouldn’t leave if I were you.' They stopped and say 'Well, why?' And I said, 'Just take my word for it. Don’t leave,'" McGrath says.

"It was a really beautiful night and a beautiful moment. And as I'm watching this happen, I'm conscious that someone is tugging on the sleeve of my coat. And I look, it's those two women. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you."

Long before "Beautiful" was playing to sold-out audiences, it existed only in McGrath's head. He conducted long interviews with all four songwriters, then struggled to write a compelling storyline.

"So I would just sit here listening to music and thinking, 'What's in that music that might connect with what's in those transcripts in their lives?'" McGrath says.

"And there were days where you would think, 'I don't know where it is yet, I don't know where it is.' But I do kind of have a faith, just having been through it so many times, that I'll find it."

McGrath says that sense of optimism stems from his parents, Easterners who moved to Texas for his father's job in the oil business.

McGrath grew up in the West Texas town of Midland.

"An arch-conservative town politically, and yet it has a kind of do-what-you-want attitude," he says.

McGrath went on to Choate Boarding School in Connecticut and then Princeton, where he wrote plays, did shows and generally thrived. Until his senior year. With no clear work options, he went on one job interview at an advertising agency.

"And the guy said to me when I sat down, and he couldn't be more bored or unencouraging, and he said, 'Why do you want to go into advertising?' And I remember thinking, 'People want to go into advertising?'" McGrath says.

Two phone calls would change McGrath's life.

The first came the night before college graduation in 1980 when a friend from Midland who worked at "Saturday Night Live" suggested that he apply for a writing position. The good news? He got it. The bad news? He got it.

"It's a show when it's great, it's really great, and when it's bad, it's really bad. But we were the worst," he says.

In the '80s, McGrath wrote some screenplays, an episode of LA Law and a column for the New Republic. He even tutored.

Then, in the early '90s, he got another important phone call, from his then-girlfriend, now-wife Jane. She had worked with Woody Allen, and the three had occasionally had dinner together.

In 1995, McGrath told NY1 how Jane called him to say Woody wanted to write a movie with him.

"I just said, 'Really, are you kidding? Don't kid me about this.' Because it was impossible to believe," McGrath said at the time.

The screenplay for "Bullets over Broadway" was nominated for an Oscar. It includes one line beloved by the film's admirers: "Don't speak. Please don't speak. Please don't speak."

Mishkin: How often will people say to you, "Don't speak"?
McGrath: Oh, a lot. All the time. They just can't talk about, if "Bullets" comes up, it's really less than 10 seconds before you hear, "Don't speak."

McGrath often cites lessons learned from working with Woody Allen.

"The greatest education I got in all the education I've had was working with Woody," he says. "He would so articulately explain why something would work or wouldn't work in his view."

And yet, at 58, he still occasionally sounds like a kid when reflecting on their friendship.

"I can't even believe when I say Woody, I mean Woody Allen and not Woody Heimschlitz from down around the corner. I never really get over it," McGrath says.

A movie of "Beautiful" is in the works, and McGrath is scheduled to adapt the book from the stage to the screen. It will likely be a labor of love, a lesson McGrath learned years ago at his first job in New York writing for "Saturday Night Live."

"There were many good things about the show, I'm not saying that. But I found the experience, as a rule, very unpleasant, and the money didn't make up for it," he says. "And that was a great early lesson for me, because I thought, the money, it's not the money. The money doesn't make you happy. You need it. I'm not being pie-in-the-sky about it. But the work is the joy. For me, the work is the joy. "