Craig and John plug a book by their very first sponsor and discuss elective brain surgery, before tackling an exhaustive but illuminating list of questions from listener Daniel Barkeley.

They’re residual questions about residuals, which seems very meta:

• Do TV show creators get compensated for every rerun?
• How do residuals differ from profit participations and foreign levies?
• And where does new media fall in all of this?

Thirteen conversations about a few things, on episode sixteen of Scriptnotes.

Podcast: Download

LINKS:

• Dark Men by Derek Haas on Amazon
• Popcorn Fiction short stories by screenwriters
• UltraViolet the studios’ digital locker platform
• Follies (New Broadway Cast Recording) on iTunes
• Jane Epenson’s Husbands
• Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy
• INTRO: Riptide main theme
• OUTRO: What More Can I Say by Jay-Z

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 12-15-11: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Craig and John look at why the books and seminars purporting to teach screenwriting are generally terrible, trying to reduce the hard work of the craft to a series of formulas and templates.

It’s a rare podcast in which I sway Craig’s opinion whatsoever, but if you listen really carefully, I think he leaves the show just slightly less negative about screenwriting books than he started. It’s all about degrees with Craig.

Plus, we get a visit from the LAPD, follow-up on residuals, and a bit more about unionizing videogame writers.

Podcast: Download

LINKS:

• Crime rates in Los Angeles (Wolfram-Alpha)
• Syd Field’s classic book Screenplay.
• Christopher Volger’s The Writer’s Journey
• Stuart’s review of Vogler’s book
• Linda Seger’s Making a Good Script Great

(Note that none of the books listed above are actually recommended. But we talk about them, so it feels fair to provide links.)

• Intro: Jem and the Holograms
• Outro: Exquisite Corpse by Casey Spooner

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 12-13-11: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Craig and John take a look at awards-season screeners before diving deep into a discussion of how residuals work and why they’re so important to screenwriters.

Plus, a visit from Craig’s cleaning lady, who thinks he’s insane.

Near the end of our discussion on residuals, I give some actual numbers on an actual movie. Percentages are abstract; money is money.

I chose Go because I had the most data on it, going back to 1999. It’s also useful because the movie was only moderately successful at the box office.

As you can see in the charts below, residuals taper off over the years — but that long tail still adds up:

Keep in mind, there’s a possibility that residuals could spike if another home video medium takes off — digital downloads or rentals, for example.

I went into the podcast thinking I could easily reverse the math to figure out how much the studio has made off the movie, but as Craig points out, it’s more complicated than it appears at first. Most home video is calculated as 1.5% of 20% of gross earnings, so in order to get an accurate number I would need to sort out how much of Go’s residuals are coming from home video (and not television licensing).

But we can still get a sense of minimums: Go brought in at least $30 million in the aftermarket, and likely much, much more.

Podcast: Download

LINKS:

• Downton Abbey, Season One on Netflix
• Father Ted on Netflix
• Security theater as defined on Wikipedia
• The WGA’s Residuals Survival Guide
• Intro: Tree Top Apple Juice commercial
• Outro: Country Lane by Telekinesis

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 11-30-11: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

John and Craig tackle reader questions about self distribution, pseudonyms, separated rights, and studios’ feelings about international versus domestic box office.

They also explain the fallacy of equating effort in with value out, discuss why the WGA should address sweepstake pitches and coverage for videogame writers, and offer a Kentucky-born 21+ cure for the common cold.

This and more on the thirteenth Scriptnotes.

Podcast: Download

LINKS:

• Director Todd Strauss-Schulson
• Sweepstakes Pitching on screenwriting.io
• Michael Mohan’s One Too Many Mornings
• Kevin Smith’s Red State
• Edward Burns’s Nice Guy Johnny
• The Polish Brothers’ For Lovers Only
• The Remnants on Vimeo
• The domestic/international box office split for Talladega Nights
• Scribblenauts for iOS
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Amazon
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on Amazon
• Uncharted 3 on Amazon
• Intro: Pac-Man: The Animated Series
• Outro: The Elder Scrolls V: SKYRIM Official Trailer

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 11-27-11: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Craig and John discuss musicals, split time lines, split personalities and the human brain.

How does your inner-screenwriter affect how you see plays? Why is writing the second act of a screenplay such a slog? And is hearing voices in your head an asset as a writer? All this and more in the twelfth episode of Scriptnotes.

We spend a good chunk of time talking about the iconic musical Follies, and while there are some good screenwriting lessons to learn, no one will judge you if you skip forward to our discussion of brain books (17:30) or second-act malaise (20:30).

Podcast: Download

If you haven’t Liked us and you like us, consider Liking us: facebook.com/scriptnotes.

LINKS:

• Herman Miller Embody chair (the one John couldn’t remember)
• Reprise! at UCLA
• Follies at the Marquis
• Follies (Wikipedia)
• Yvonne De Carlo
• Kindle
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), by Mindy Kaling
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes
• Intro: Thundercats
• Outro: Losing My Mind sung by Dorothy Collins

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 11-18-11: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

One of the many reasons I’m lucky to be married to my husband Mike is that he used to manage a bunch of movie theaters in LA, so he knows a lot about exhibition.

After listening to the Scriptnotes podcast on movie money, he had some additional figures to share.

Film rentals depend on various factors including length of run (the storied 90/10 split in opening week, but perhaps 30/70 in week 15) and location (“showcase” locations like Hollywood may have average film rentals around 35-40% due to studios’ eagerness to have the film at the most-visited or most-visible locations).

When I left exhibition in 2001, our average ticket price was about $6. Our film rental cost percentage was usually in the mid-50s. Assuming 55%, we paid the distributor $3.30 out of that $6 average ticket and kept $2.70.

Meanwhile, our average concession revenues were about $5 per transaction. However, only about 40% of customers bought something at concession, so the concession “per head” (analog to the average ticket price) was $2. So, revenue-wise, ticket sales were 75% of total revenues while our concession revenues were 25%.

However, concession cost of goods was about 15%, so out of the $2 concession sale per head, we paid 30¢ in expenses and kept $1.70. Given that, concession profits were 39% of the combined ticket and concession net.

Expenses are enormous, so even with super-high concession profits, exhibition was (and still is) always strapped for cash. You have a lot to pay out:

• Facility costs. This includes rent for the building, plus maintaining and upgrading furniture, fixtures, equipment.

• Staff and management payroll. Around 80% of employees were making within $1.50 of minimum wage, but you also have salaried management at both the theater and national level.

• Utilities and supplies, all the way down to soap and toilet paper.

One expense mentioned in the podcast was co-op ads. Co-ops were always a line item on our theatre P&L, and I was told that the studios placed the ad, but then charged every theatre whose name was listed in the theatre-list box below its proportional amount for the cost of that ad.

In LA, there are “showcase” theatres in the most important parts of the market (Santa Monica, Century City, Hollywood, Westwood) whose names appear larger in the co-ops, and for which actual show times are listed. Accordingly, the co-op cost to those locations is higher than for others.