In addition to my actual job of screenwriting and directing, I currently do all the tech stuff: the websites, the wiring, the coding, the iPhone app that’s thisclose to beta testing. And I enjoy it. The luxury of a writer’s life is the freedom to explore and obsess.

But the list of things I’d like to do is so much longer than what I could conceivably do that it makes sense to bring in somebody with similar ambitions and a specific mandate. Rather than, “Wouldn’t it be neat if…” I’d like to be saying, “Hey, figure out a way to do this.”

So I’m hiring somebody who can.

My assistant, Matt, will continue to handle my schedule, travel, research and proofreading. The new person will handle stuff related to this website and many new projects.

I see this as a full-time job. Salary would be commensurate with experience, and there’s health insurance.

I’d prefer the person live in Los Angeles for occasional face-to-face discussions, but she or he would be working outside the office most of the time. The new guy would be free to — encouraged to — pursue outside projects, as long as the real work came first.

After a string of terrific and very different assistants, I’ve learned that hiring someone is never a matter of checklists. Each employee brings experiences and abilities that change the nature of the job.

But I can safely predict this person will need to be very digital, with a good balance of design sense and general geekery. A good candidate for this position would be able to talk about most of the following with ease:

• Great opening title sequences of the last year.

• Pros and cons of breaking out CSS into multiple files.

• The feeds aren’t updating right. Is the problem on WordPress, Feedburner or somewhere else?

• Whatever happened to the Stone typefaces?

• Books you’ve bought just for the cover.

• Is that short URL scheme a good idea?

• Why isn’t Google hitting this page? What SEO should we bother with, and what should we ignore?

• Is it worth outsourcing comments to something like Disqus? Could we get Scrippets to work with it?

• If you were marketing a web series about giant killer plants, what outlets would you target and how?

• Since jQuery’s already loading, what else could/should we have it do?

• Getting an offsite backup server going.

• How quickly can we get The Variant onto the new Apple device?

• If we needed to swap hosts in 24 hours, what are the first six things to do?

• Five desert island typefaces, and whether TypeKit is worth it.

• Setting up A/B test pages to track two possible layouts.

A great candidate might also have expertise in several of the following:

• Coding everything from PHP to Flash to Ruby to Objective-C

• Motion graphics and VFX

• Shooting and editing

• Gadgetry and game development

You’ll notice that “writing” is nowhere in these criteria. To date, all of my assistants have been screenwriters, and all of them are now working in the industry. But I don’t see this new position as being a particularly good stepping stone for an aspiring screenwriter.

But it is likely a stepping stone for something else, and a paid opportunity to explore some areas of interest for a year or two. In addition to maintaining existing properties, there’s a range of new projects I’d like to tackle.

Here’s the hiring process:

1. Candidates email digital@johnaugust.com. Include a bio with work experience and background, interests, and (most importantly) links to work you’ve done. I’m particularly interested in seeing websites you’ve designed, along with an explanation of their goals and techniques. But I’m also curious about other projects, like iPhone apps or short films or something else you think I’d be interested in. I’ll be hiring a person, not a portfolio, so let me get a sense of what you’re like.

2. By the second week of February, I’ll narrow down my choices to a few great candidates. I’ll give each candidate a small budget and a reasonable deadline to come up with a site for a specific project, such as The Remnants. We’ll have coffee and talk about what you did and why.

3. I’ll pick the person who seems the best fit.

Do not apply in the comments. Let’s save the comments section for feedback about the nature of the job and general discussion.

I have one of the 18,000 California same-sex marriages that remained in effect after the proposition passed in 2008. But it’s a piecemeal situation: the State of California considers me married, but Illinois doesn’t. Iowa does; Idaho doesn’t.

And as far as the U.S. government, I’m a single man.

This lawsuit challenges Proposition 8 on grounds that it violates the equal protection and due process protections of the U.S. Constitution. And if it turns out right, it could be a game changer like Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state laws on interracial marriage.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided last week to block video from the trial, I lost my chance to see what was happening in the courtroom. Sure, I could follow the updates on Twitter, but the fortune cookie-length summaries didn’t feel like enough connection to a landmark case.

So I flew up to San Francisco to watch the trial.

The proceedings are open to the public. All that’s required is a civic interest and a photo ID.

There’s already ample online coverage about what’s happening, and what’s being said. But none of them put me in the room. With that goal, I want to provide a sketch of what it feels like to be there, since most Americans will never sit inside a federal district court.

Setting

The 17th-floor courtroom is impressive, both in appointment and scale; you could fit a basketball court snuggly in its footprint. Grooved planks of cappuccino-colored wood stretch up to a barrel-vaulted ceiling. At the front of the room, a massive wall of pale polished stone backs the judge’s bench. A single, undersized judicial seal hangs above. To the right of the judge, an American flag drapes around its pole, making it seem like the cloth is simply tacked to the wall by the brass eagle on top.

The court clerk and reporter sit on an elevated platform directly in front of the judge, a tangle of cables dripping over the edge.¹ The witness sits to the judge’s left. A single podium faces the judge, and it’s from this spot that attorneys must direct their questions to the bench or the witness. There’s no pacing around. There’s also no way to physically approach the judge for a sidebar conversation.

Every courtroom drama you’ve seen has long tables for the prosecution and defense teams. Take those tables and rotate them 90 degrees. Place twelve chairs around each and you have room for a lot more lawyers, each working off a laptop or a black flat-panel monitor. The plaintiffs’ team fills every seat at their table, while the defense has between five and seven staffers at work, with additional support staff at side chairs or tables. Wire shelves hold rows of binders. It’s all very tightly packed. Any attempt to approach the podium means stepping around others.

There is no jury in this trial. The space where a jury box would be has consumer-grade videocameras on tripods² and two sketch artists. One of them, a man who looks like actor Richard Jenkins, keeps raising binoculars to get a closer look at his subject.

Roughly a third of the floor space is devoted to six divided rows of benches for observers at the back of the courtroom. They’re pews, really, which adds to the churchy feel of the chamber. The first two rows are devoted to counsel and badge-wearing media. The back rows are open to the public. Altogether, maybe 100 observers can watch.

Unlike a conventional trial, the plaintiffs (a gay couple and a lesbian couple) sit with the crowd. There is really no other place to put them.

The chamber has no windows. Occasionally, you can hear thunder from the storms, but the room otherwise seems detached from the outside world.

Characters

Everyone springs to their feet when Judge Vaughn Walker enters. Now in his mid-60s, his Cronkite-ish voice would make him a good narrator for a History Channel documentary. Beyond an opening conversation with the opposing attorneys about newly-filed motions, he says little during the day. Based on recaps of previous days’ events, I expect him to be asking more questions directly of witnesses and counsel, but he mostly seems content to listen. ³

You see little visible difference between the two legal teams. They are both predominately white, predominately men, and invariably dressed in dark suits. ⁴ Crossing paths at the bathroom, you are never sure who is on which side. But everyone is polite, holding doors and squeezing tight in the elevator.

For each witness on the stand, one member of each legal team is empowered to speak. Everyone else keeps to leaning-in whispers or silently mouthed words as binders are passed. Post-It notes are passed back and forth, with additional staffers squeezing in through a side door that’s partially blocked by a large monitor.

Witness testimony is often accompanied by demonstratives, PowerPoint slides that show a graph or related text excerpt. Both teams have staffers assigned to getting these on-screen, along with other pieces of evidence such as video clips. The defendants had brief trouble getting video to play with a clip from the Yes on 8 campaign, but the day was otherwise free of technical issues.

Structure

For each witness, there’s a direct questioning, a cross-examination, and a redirect. During each phase, everything is more or less locked down. Attorneys and observers can (quietly) enter or exit the room, but everyone is expected to sit down and shut up. Judge Walker permits laptops and cell phones for email and tweeting, but beyond the light tapping of fingers on keyboards, it’s library-quiet in the room.⁵

That all changes the moment it moves from direct to cross, or cross to redirect. Suddenly, it’s a flurry of pent-up action and re-setting. It reminds me most of film production, with crews swarming the set the moment the director yells cut. Staffers bring new binders and huddle for quick conversations.

The judge calls a ten-minute break in the morning, and another one later in the afternoon. At lunch, everyone heads downstairs to the commissary on the second floor. I have lunch with the plaintiffs. It’s a small world; Jeffrey Zarrillo manages the same movie theaters in Burbank my husband used to run, and we know some of the same people.

While there is a lot of trial coverage online, I don’t see any traditional media all day. No cameras, no tape recorders, nothing.

The day’s work ends at 4 p.m., after the plaintiff’s redirect of Professor Lee Badgett.

Dialogue

In a trial without a jury, attorneys are not trying to elicit sympathy. That’s not say there are not emotional moments; several witnesses have teared up on the stand. But feelings are not as important as facts. Both sides are trying to get things on the record, which means getting witnesses on the stand to say what they need to say.

For direct testimony, this is pretty straightforward. The attorney asks a structured series of questions that allows the witness to make the required points.

During the cross-examination, the opposing attorney tries to make his case, either by presenting contrary evidence or drilling into a something the witness said. As an observer, this often feels like hearing the setup to a joke, trying to anticipate the punchline. The attorney asks a series of questions, and you wonder, “Where is he going with this?”

A few years ago, I had to give a deposition in a civil trial. I started the day giving very detailed answers, treating it like an EPK interview for a movie I’d written. Then I realized that every new thing I said introduced four more questions. By the fifth hour, I’d figured out the advice generally given to witnesses: listen, evaluate, formulate, talk. And then shut up.

We have a natural instinct to move things along and fill awkward silences, but the best witnesses take their time, unhurried and unflappable. When asked, “Would you also agree..,” they don’t. They restate their points in simple terms.

It’s nothing like movie or TV courtrooms with their zippy rhetorical boxing. Rather, it’s slow and calculated, like a chess match. During one particularly soporific stretch, the defense asked Professor Badgett to work through a lot of hypothetical math. Written figures are dry; spoken figures are numbing. To her credit as a witness, she cooperated without ever indulging his conclusions. But the audience thinned noticeably as the cross-examination reached its third hour.

The verdict

The trial is expected to wrap up as early as next week, so anyone hoping to see it in person should plan on getting there soon.

Depending on the testimony, it can be riveting or dull. Like church, you may find yourself squirming, trying to find new ways to sit on the benches without your tailbones breaking through your flesh.

But no matter how strongly you feel on the issue of same-sex marriage, it’s a fascinating opportunity to see a part of government that otherwise functions off-screen. I’d recommend a day in court to any interested citizen.

For a broader overview of the issues in this case, I’d point you to an excellent piece in the New Yorker.

1. The court reporter’s transcript shows up in real-time on attorney’s laptops. I found myself reading it at times, amazed at her ability to keep up.
2. The video is carried via closed circuit to a spillover courtroom for the public.
3. Except this: Judge Walker admonishes San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera for an underling’s poorly-executed deposition, saying that the aide needed a “woodshedding.” It’s a really uncomfortable moment, like a professor announcing a student’s failing grade while passing back exams.
4. After a careful census, I decided the men on the plaintiff’s team had slightly longer, shaggier hair.
5. I had forgotten my iPhone charging cable, so I kept my phone switched off to save the battery. This e-chastity ended up being a good thing, as it forced me to pay attention and take notes on paper, which became this sketch. A kind-hearted woman let me borrow her cable to charge up before my flight home.

February 3rd
The Creative Collaboration – Moderator John August and panelists Jason Reitman (Up in the Air), editor Dana Glauberman, cinematographer Eric Steelberg and other members of the creative team will spend an evening exploring the collaborative process that takes a film from script to screen, including: research, production design, lighting, camera placement, and more.

February 10th
Sound Design – Moderator John August will converse with directors and sound designers about creating a powerful film soundtrack, from sound effects and location sound to the final mix. Panelists to be announced.¹

The panels are part of a month-long series that include discussions about acting, casting and comedy. Passes for the whole thing are available online.

1. I know who they’re trying to get, and if happens, I will do a Snoopy dance.

Lost in the discussion is that I never insisted ScriptShadow be shut down, but rather pushed it to stay true to its stated mission. ScriptShadow’s many defenders see the site as an invaluable resource for aspiring writers.

So far, few of them have addressed my two proposed changes:

1. Review screenplays of movies once they’ve come out.
2. Ask the writers before posting reviews of unproduced scripts.

“Carson” doesn’t review scripts after the movie has come out. Why not? If the purpose of his site is to celebrate writers and acquaint newbies with the craft, isn’t that in fact a more valuable exercise, showing how the words on the page translate to the screen?

I think we all know why he doesn’t want to review existing movies: he’d lose the buzz that comes with having the first opinion. It’s part of the reason we want to go to movies on opening weekend, or stand for hours in the Sundance snow to see a movie we wouldn’t walk across the street to see in March.

I’m not faulting him for human nature, but rather disingenuousness. It’s cool to be first. But don’t claim that being first on reviewing an old draft of Supermax is somehow improving the world for screenwriters.

The second point, asking writers before posting reviews, is an acknowledgement that some unproduced/unsold writers benefit from exposure.

Would they benefit less if Carson asked first? No.

There are many great scripts that never get produced, just as there are many great books that never get published. If Carson truly wants to shine a spotlight on these unheralded gems, he should have the courtesy to ask the writer first, rather than review whatever random draft he comes across. For all he knows, he’s reading the version written for the executive who insisted on heavy voiceover, “Y’know, so the audience will know what he’s thinking.”

On the point that ScriptShadow is letting readers outside Hollywood read screenplays: Google “title of the movie” screenplay. If the first page doesn’t have a direct link, another minute of searching will find huge libraries. Reading these scripts to actual films that got made will serve any aspiring writer much better than the second draft of a vampire dog thriller in development at Lionsgate.

Carson Reeves emailed this afternoon, asking that I remove his real name from the comments. I did so with the hope that he’ll address some of the concerns raised.

Here’s the official press release, with additional commentary:

LOS ANGELES, CA (August 3, 2009) – Filmmaker John August has optioned How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely through his company Quote-Unquote Films. August optioned the hilarious novel with an eye to adapt and direct. The novel, published by Grove/Atlantic, has garnered excelled reviews across the board and was Amazon’s July 2009 title of the month.

The great reviews include one by Janet Maslin in the NY Times, who quotes so many funny lines from the book that you might worry she’s spoiling it. She isn’t. She can’t.

Hely’s book has an unbelievably high joke-to-page ratio, the literary equivalent of a 30 Rock episode. (Which seems fitting, since Hely is now a writer on that show.)

The book tells the story of Pete Tarslaw, an ambitiously underachieving college grad who writes a shamelessly maudlin and derivative Great American Novel for the sole purpose of upstaging his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. When the book becomes a bestseller, he finds himself sucked into a strange coterie of mega-authors and their attendants.

I wrote that summary, but it omits something that makes reading the book so worthwhile: excerpts from all the other mega-authors’ books, such as Teeth of the Winged Lion by Nick Boyle. It’s hard to write well, but writing badly well is a special talent.

The book also features special publishing-related miscellany, such as this fake New York Times Bestsellers list, which even includes “Great Fish.”

On the title, August said “It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a really long time. Like Go, it’s about thinking you have the system all figured out, realizing you don’t, then faking it. Characters who do the wrong things for misguided reasons are the heart of comedy.”

Let’s break down my quote.

First, I restate that the book is funny, in case that gets dropped out of any stories based on the press release.

Second, I refer back to an earlier comedy I wrote, because a lot of folks might think of my credits as being more funny-peculiar than funny-ha-ha.

Finally, I try to restate the premise in a way that seems more universal: it’s not a funny book about books; it’s a funny book about a guy on a journey.

Why he bought it himself: “It’s the kind of book I could hear studios saying is too smart. I knew I’d spend many meetings convincing them that it wasn’t nearly as smart as they thought it was. So I’d rather just give them a script so they can see what it is.”

There’s stuff in the book that’s funny only because it’s in a book, such as those great excerpts. The danger is that a studio exec reading it says, “Well, that part’s not cinematic.” And it’s true, some parts won’t translate as a movie.

But the premise, the characters and the plot of the book all translate really well. It’s better for me to show what I can do in a script than focus on what I can’t bring over from the book.

Ken Richman, Esq, negotiated on behalf of August with Anna DeRoy of WME handling the novel.

It’s the first book rights I’ve bought since Big Fish in 1999 — and technically that was Sony buying it for me.

In case you think that this was all Hollywood-insider dealmaking, let me talk you through the process.

In May, I was in New York, working on a yet-to-be-announced project. The hotel I was staying at had USA Today, which I don’t normally read. But I happened to spot this article describing Hely’s soon-to-be-published book, and thought it sounded funny.

So I tracked down Pete Tarslaw’s blog on Google, figured it was probably Hely, and emailed asking for an advance copy:

hey steve hely, can I get an advance copy of your book?

By description, it sounds very, very great.

– John August, the screenwriter

ps. I will also pester you on Facebook.

He sent me the book. I read it the next day. A week later, I met with him at Susina, the coffeeshop featured in The Nines. Lawyers started talking, and eventually we got a deal in place. (So yes, there was Hollywood dealmaking. But it came very late in the process.)

As far as making a movie, that process is just starting now. I’ll be writing a draft, and then figuring out the how/when/where/who.

In the meantime, read his book. It is available pretty much everywhere, but it’s cheap on Amazon ($10.98), and only $8.80 on Kindle. While you’re waiting for the FedEx truck, you can also check out a lengthy excerpt.

Update: Here’s a better link for the excerpt.

Again: Really sorry about Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

If you missed it, you can catch the clip in the archives, or download it here.

The “test screenings” I did with The Variant were hugely helpful, and led to some significant trim and changes, including the title and the very first sentence.

If you’d like to read that early feedback, I’ve unlocked the password protection so you can see their comments on the first draft and the revised version. (Obviously, both links are chock full of spoilers.)

The update fixes a rare compatibility issue with the new WordPress 2.8. If you have Scrippets installed, the update notice should show up on your plugins page.

Everyone says having your show cancelled is like a death but I’ve been dead before and at least when you’re dead you don’t get thrown off the Warner Bros. lot for haunting your old parking space. They probably mean it’s like the death of a friend or a family member but that shit only hurts when it’s YOUR friend or family member and even then it’s mitigated by age, lifestyle and whether that person was a Hollywood friend or a real one and whether that family member left you money.

Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday.

Josh’s post are so long and so infrequent he’s more an essayist than a blogger. Still, we should cherish what we get. Read the whole thing.

New Hampshire gets it done.

Don’t get me wrong: I love screenwriting. But it’s limited.

So when a friend asked me to write a short story, I jumped at the chance. The thing I wrote, The Variant, was and maybe still is supposed to be part of an anthology of short stories written by well-known screenwriters. It falls in that loose genre of spy-fi which encompasses both The Prisoner and Jorge Luis Borges.

After leaving it to sit on the shelf a few months, I considered sending the story out to the usual magazines that publish short fiction. But it’s not really a New Yorker story. It probably belongs in a sci-fi quarterly, one that I would never buy unless specifically instructed. And I would have a hard time nudging all my friends to drop five dollars on a magazine they had never heard of.

So, in the spirit of iPhone apps and Jonathan Coulton tracks,¹ I’m releasing it myself for 99 cents. You can get it as a pretty .pdf, or on your Kindle through Amazon. ²

You can find all these options here: johnagust.com/variant

This is all an experiment, obviously. I’m lucky to have a career where it doesn’t matter if this generates $15 or $1,500. But I’m curious whether this is a feasible model for a writer. In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting the results.

I’m well aware that there are going to be some people who simply can’t pay 99 cents for something online. And while I can’t anticipate every scenario, I’ve set up an email account (sales@johnaugust.com) to figure out solutions.

1. I discovered the delivery system (E-Junkie) through Coulton.
2. And if you live in the U.S, keep in mind that every iPhone can now read Kindle books with the Kindle app.