Archives for 2013

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/long-movies-producer-credits-and-price-fixing).

**John August:** Bonjour et bienvenue. Je m’appelle John August.

**Craig Mazin:** Je m’appelle Craig Mazin.

**John:** Et cet épisode 98 de Scriptnotes, un podcast pour les scénaristes et les choses qui sont intéressants pour les scénaristes.

Craig, comment ça va?

**Craig:** Bien. Eh…[laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** My French is really good when I read it. I’m terrible at speaking French.

**John:** I’m not especially good at speaking French, either. I’m a good French reader, usually, because you get your Latin roots, you can sort of make it all work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But conversation is challenging, which is challenging for me this week because I’m in Paris. And so I’m in Paris here with my family on vacation. And most of the time I get to speak English because my family speaks English. But when we were around my husband’s friends who speak French, I can follow the conversation if I dedicate every brain cell, but then it comes my turn to speak and I just sound like a third grader.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, I lock up. And it’s funny; I have enough where sometimes I can start conversations. So, when my wife and I were in French Polynesia, I could start a conversation with a waiter and my accent is all right. And then I would know, like instead of saying “oui” you oftentimes say “ouais,” which is like yup, or yeah, or ouais.

**John:** D’accord.

**Craig:** And then they think, “Oh, look, he speaks French, and then they really gear it up. And then I’m like, “Non, non, non. Si tu parles plus lentement, peut-être je te comprends.” [laughs]

**John:** What I have found to be the most fun and challenging scenario is whenever we go traveling overseas we do the little Pimsleur courses first, the little audio-only courses that are really good for like just the very basic like, “Hey, hello, how are you? I need help with this thing,” kind of stuff. And they’re completely audio. And you get a really good accent off of them because you’re not messed up at all by reading or trying to figure out how things are supposed to be written down. You’re just speaking.

So, I’ve done that for Mandarin Chinese. I have done it for Japanese. I’ve done it for a few other languages. And Korean was impossible. Like no one can actually speak Korean. I’m amazed that anyone can speak Korean.

But, I can do it for both Japanese and Mandarin. And I sound really convincing for about three sentences. And so someone will go back to me at full speed. I’m like, no, no, no, I really do not speak your language. I can just fake it.

**Craig:** Right. I was just lying. [laughs]

**John:** It’s just all a lie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I suckered you in and now I’ve got nothing.

**John:** Nope. But we have a lot today, because we have a lot of things that happened in the news and then we want to answer some questions that came in over the transom. So, let’s get started.

**Craig:** Great. Let’s do it!

**John:** The things I want to talk about today. First is two things in the news. Apple lost its first round in this federal lawsuit about price fixing. And I want to talk about not that so much, but what it actually means for Hollywood and sort of the business of what we do.

The Producers Guild reach a new agreement with the studios on credits for feature films and for television.

**Craig:** Producers, right?

**John:** Producers, not writers. Producers.

And, finally, there are a couple articles recently about how movies seem to have gotten so long and whether that’s a thing that can be rectified. And sort of where long movies come from. Let’s do that.

**Craig:** Let’s dive in.

**John:** First just some housekeeping, though, some Scriptnotes business. If you bought a t-shirt, it’s probably in your hands. If it’s not in your hands then you should email Stuart at orders@johnaugust.com. And Stuart, who is the person who mans that desk, will figure out where your shirt is, because most of the shirts — I think all of the shirts have been shipped out into the world.

**Craig:** I’m wearing my blue, soft shirt right now.

**John:** Is it nice?

**Craig:** It’s so soft.

**John:** It’s really truly soft.

**Craig:** It’s great.

**John:** And so we had promised like the softest shirt known to mankind. And I actually emailed out to everybody who ordered the blue shirt, because we ended up switching from one model to another model, but it’s a really, really soft shirt; it’s just a shirt that I preferred to the one that Stuart had picked.

There were some questions and confusion about the Golden Ticket. So, the Golden Ticket is when we sent out all these shirts we had these postcards in them and on one postcard, this was actually your idea, Craig, so I’m crediting and blaming you for this.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** We handwrote, you and I handwrote saying, “This is the Golden Ticket. If you have this ticket and this secret magic word, email us and we will give you your special prize.”

**Craig:** And has anyone claimed the prize?

**John:** No one has claimed the prize. But a lot of people have written into Stuart saying like, “I think I got the Golden Ticket because I got a special card in my…”

**Craig:** NO!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No, you’re not special, snowflake. Everyone got a card. There’s only person out there, and you know… — You know how businesses will do these rebate things where you buy something and it’s a rebate and all you have to do is mail it in. And they do that on purpose because they know no one will ever mail it in. I feel like the person who gets the Golden Ticket won’t even realize and they’re just going to chuck it.

**John:** Yeah. It’s entirely possible that that happened. Because we didn’t keep track of it. Truly, we just like stuffed things in envelopes and we never flipped them back over.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** And now Craig is drinking a beer.

**Craig:** No, it’s a Diet Dr. Pepper.

**John:** That’s his drink of choice. I can actually hear you pouring it into a glass. Are you pouring it into a glass?

**Craig:** No. No, that was a bus. [laughs] Listen, there’s a lot of noise here and you have to learn to discern the subtle difference between city bus and liquid hitting a glass.

**John:** It’s tough. I’m not good with those kind of skills.

**Craig:** Oh, god, that’s good Diet Dr. Pepper.

**John:** And so we’ll make sure we have some of those on hand for you for the live 100th Episode on July 25th in Hollywood.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Now, a bunch of people have asked, say like, “I didn’t get a ticket. How do I get a ticket? Can I please get a ticket?” We’re not at this point planning to release another block of tickets. But what we do know is that there will be some standby tickets available. And so like there will be an opportunity to line up and just come join us.

We will be tweeting about that the day before, so follow me or Craig on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. He’s @clmazin. And when we know what the scoop is we will tell you the scoop. There are only a certain number of people that can fit into that space, but we intend to get as many people who want to come see our show into that space as possible.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Cool. Let’s talk about some things. So, first off, this is a federal lawsuit that happened. This was Federal US government against Apple. And so originally it was the US government against Apple and a bunch of publishers, but the publishers all settled out. And so Apple was like the last man standing there.

And this was a federal lawsuit and the judge, Denise Cote, ruled that Apple conspired with five major publishers to raise the retail price of eBooks. So, the actual opinion that came out, this was yesterday as we’re recording this, was 160 pages. I’m not going to try to like summarize the summaries I’ve read. But it comes down to the question of by whether offering the publishers a chance to set the prices on the books, Apple effectively raised the prices for the whole eBook industry.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And she said, “Yeah, they did.”

**Craig:** It’s a very strange case to me, honestly.

**John:** It’s bizarre.

**Craig:** Yeah, what instigated it was Amazon. Amazon started selling eBooks, essentially is what it comes down to — eBooks. They started selling eBooks at $9.99, even if the price that Amazon was paying to the publishers for the books was greater than $9.99. And the reason they were doing that is classic loss-leader stuff: create a business, become the monopoly in that space, and then go ahead and raise the prices later once you’ve got everybody dialed in to using, I mean, really it’s about driving the Kindle. And it’s just about driving traffic to Amazon.

Amazon, to me, that’s the dangerous area is when you look at Amazon and their monopolistic practices. Apple comes along and says, “Well, we want to sell books, too.” And the book industry, it’s very industry. The book industry had a very interesting reaction to Amazon, because let’s say I sell a book to Amazon and the wholesale price to Amazon is $12. And Amazon turns around and sells it for $9.99. What do I care? I got my $12.

I think their general feeling was that Amazon was just setting them all up for a fall sooner or later, and in general driving down the prices of books isn’t a good thing.

**John:** Absolutely. And, also, look at the publisher’s perspective. They would rather you maybe buy that $25 hardcover book.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They don’t want the mental price point of books to be set at such a low thing that they can’t keep charging $20 for a book.

**Craig:** Right. So, Apple comes to them and they’re like, “Oh, good, finally. Somebody is going to do this a different way.” And initially I guess Apple was like, “We’ll do what Amazon does.” And the booksellers said, “How about something else? How about we use what’s called the Agency Model? Which is essentially how app sales work, where basically we set the price on our end. You just take a cut. You take a percentage.”

And Apple said, fine, let’s do that. Where they seem to have run into trouble is that they wanted to safeguard against basically being stuck selling a book for $15 when Amazon was selling the same book for $9.99. So, they got some deal where — I don’t even understand how they worked this out — but basically there were price tiers. It gets really confusing.

**John:** They created both price tiers and a most favored nation status where they had the option to sell for whatever the lowest existing price was for something.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And her argument, the judge’s argument, is that you combine these tiers, the most favored nations and the fact that you’re basically simultaneously dealing with all these publishers that de facto by making this deal the publishers were going to go back to Amazon and say, “Okay, now you’re going to take this new business model,” and the prices were going to go up. The prices did, in fact, go up across the board.

**Craig:** That’s what they did, right. They went back to Amazon and Amazon took that deal. But, I don’t understand how that’s Apple’s fault?

**John:** Well, Apple, I think, makes the very compelling argument that there was essentially no way they could enter this marketplace without coming into it basically exactly this situation. Any other entrance into what was essentially already a monopolistic situation was going to run into this area. Because if you try to do anything different you’re going to change the pricing because the pricing was bizarre. The pricing was not normal and so it’s not that you’re anti-competitive. You were trying to compete and by competing you were raising prices.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s basically, you know, Amazon legally can get away with selling books for $1 if they feel like it. But the second Apple basically says, “Hey publishers, let’s all get together and agree on a structure together,” that is seen as a collusive behavior, I guess. And that’s where she argues they violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.

**John:** Yeah. So, the publishers clearly had already gotten together in ways and that was really, even before Apple had gotten involved, they had gotten together and had conversations which were suspect. But they settled those out without admitting any fault. So, Apple is the only person left standing here. And they’re the ones who are going to have to defend themselves at this next level. And apparently what I’ve read about this, these cases often go to appeal. This could go to the Supreme Court. So, this is not the final round on this.

And so in the show notes at johnaugust.com for this episode I will put two good articles, I thought, that sort of talked through the bigger issues at play in this specific case. So, Adam C. Engst wrote a really good piece for TidBits. And Philip Elmer-DeWitt wrote a bigger piece at Fortune that explains what the appeal might be.

What I thought would be interesting for us to talk about though is sort of what ways is this analogous to what happens in studio business and in what ways is it not really applicable. Because if I look at the publishers, you look at the five big publishers that control most of the bestsellers. That seems pretty analogous to our big studio system, is that we have these big giant corporations that produce most of our film and television work.

What is different is there is nothing like an Amazon. There is not one place that is so… — There is not one retailer that is so dominant that you have to bend to their whims. At times there has been. I feel like Walmart probably was at a certain point where it didn’t have the majority of control but it had such a huge footprint that you had to sort of bow to them. But, I think it’s interesting to think about because we as a business would love to be able to control price for our DVDs.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And we can’t.

**Craig:** We can’t. Movie tickets are set by the theaters. And they basically, they don’t collude. They essentially look at what people are selling tickets for down the street and they adjust. Movie ticket prices vary all across the country.

When it comes to things like DVDs and stuff like that, the retailers set prices. There’s always a manufactured, a retail price that’s recommended, I would imagine. But the companies don’t fix those.

What came to mind for me was Netflix, because I was talking to a friend of mine who is retired now, but he used to be pretty high up in home video at one of the studios. And he said Netflix essentially is dumping product out there. It’s dumping these rentals out there for two bucks, or something like that. And essentially undermining the value of the libraries.

And I said, [laughs], so very naively, I said, “Well, why don’t the studios just get together and tell them you can’t do that anymore?” And he said, “That’s against the law.”

**John:** That’s against the law.

**Craig:** You know, that’s the problem. The studios can’t get together and say to Netflix, “We’re not letting you do that anymore. We’re going to…” You can’t even say, “We’re not going to give you our movies anymore” as a group.

So, then the problem is, well, if one studio does it, then the other ones are like, “Good. Less competition.” [laughs] Do you know what I mean? It’s like this is the problem. The studios can’t collude to protect their shared greedy interests. So, you have this kind of weird game theory problem of the commons, so to speak.

**John:** Let’s take a little history trip backwards. Because the studios have been involved in antitrust classically and that was back in the days of theaters. And so the studious used to be vertically integrated companies where they not only made movies but they exhibited movies and they used to own theaters. And I’m always going to blank out on the name of the thing that busted that up, but essentially the studios had to divest themselves of movie theaters.

And so movie theaters, the exhibitors who are sort of the equivalent of the retail sellers of movies, cannot be owned by the major studios. And that was a decision that was made.

If you look at broadcast, there classically were distinctions between making television and being able to broadcast television.

**Craig:** Fin-syn.

**John:** Yeah, fin-syn. To some degree there still is. There is some degree you can only own a certain number of broadcast outlets in certain markets, but that has changed over the time, too.

Where the money is now, though, is in video. And so it’s in being able to sell somebody a physical product, those discs. That’s why there have been concerns about like Redbox, when Redbox was a big worry, those vending machines that were dispensing DVDs as rentals that was driving down the prices or driving down the ability of studios to sell those things for purchase because people were just renting them for so super cheap.

Where I think it’s probably most applicable to this Apple lawsuit is in the digital purchase and digital — I guess really digital purchase of movies. Because when you’re dealing with a physical product, that physical product can be resold. There’s markets you’re never going to be able to control. And the same thing happened with books, too. Used book stores aren’t publisher’s favorite things, but they can’t really control that.

When you’re dealing with a digital good, so like that digital purchase of a movie, that’s the kind of thing that’s going to be much harder for the studio to set the price. And it’s conceivable that someone like an Amazon could come in and say, “Okay, we’ll buy your movie from the studio for $2 a copy, but we’re going to sell it for $1.” And the studios would not be delighted by that, at all.

**Craig:** No. I think for awhile the studios were talking about a joint venture where they would have some sort of collective Netflix service that they would own and control. I’m not sure they’re allowed to do that. I’m not sure the five studios can get together and create one company through which they distribute everything digitally. I think that might be antitrust.

I don’t know enough about it. All I know is that they’re in a total panic. And they keep trying, like they take little tiptoes at light the UltraViolet. And I just think they’ve got a real problem. And the law doesn’t help.

**John:** The law doesn’t help, because the law does not help protect against the race to the bottom which is what I think they’re most worried about.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And in the race to the bottom is that the prices will keep falling as low as they can possibly fall. And especially in digital goods, there seems to be like no bottom there. Movies are also, and TV shows, are also confounded by the fact that I don’t think piracy was a big issue in eBooks, because there weren’t really eBooks as piracy kicked in. And then there was Kindle.

I may naively be assuming that piracy isn’t a big issue with eBooks, but it certainly is a very big issue for movies and TV shows. And so ultimately they’re not only competing against Amazon, and Amazon is charging $0.99 for your show, and you wish they would charge $5 for your show; you’re dealing with the people who are selling it for zero dollars.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And so it’s a challenging situation for the studios. Now, what the possible solutions could be? You look at HBO, what they do with HBO GO. They control their channel. They control like literally the thing they make, how you actually get it in your home. That’s very useful.

Sony tried to do the same thing with Crackle. We’ll see if that works at all.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There may be some ways in which the studios can control the pipeline better for their product and not have to rely on the Netflix’s and the iTunes.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not sure. When I look at the landscape, I don’t see what the way out is other than literally rewriting the law, which happens. And every now and then you’ll see these big clashes between large companies, one of which is saying we need this to protect our business, and the other industry group is saying this is against the spirit of the internet and it is anti-freedom.

Everybody is lying. Well, I’m sorry, the companies that are saying, “We’re against this because it’s ant-freedom.” They’re lying. They’re against it because it’s going to hurt their bottom line. And when I watch the debate over internet neutrality and SOPA and PIPA and all the rest, and I’m watching Google insisting loudly that they’re the defenders of freedom. I’m like, oh please. Please! You don’t like what this would do to your bottom line. That’s it. Simple, right, so.

There will be — this will end up in congress sooner or later the way that copyright law seems to keep going in the favor of the studios and IP owners. But, I’m not sure we can put the toothpaste in this particular tube.

**John:** Yes. What I would say though as writers, we are going to be watching carefully to see how that toothpaste can be restored to some degree, or at least like not all the toothpaste squeezed out, because without home video there is no residuals. And without residuals the career of screenwriting is much more difficult to maintain.

**Craig:** For sure. There is no residuals, or there are greatly reduced residuals, and then beyond that the studios themselves have to pull back on the amount of films they make and the kind of films they make which reduces employment. It is a vicious cycle. It’s a bad, bad thing.

So, hopefully, I don’t know. Hopefully we can figure it out. Probably not. [laughs] I’m not too sanguine on this one.

**John:** See, I’m the one in Paris and you’re the one who’s like clearly depressed.

**Craig:** [French accent] I don’t know what to do. Life is shit.

**John:** Let’s segue to maybe happier news. I think it’s happier news. This is the Producers Guild announced this week they had reached an agreement with all the major studios.

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Which I’m glad you’re excited, too, because I think it’s a good idea. This is essentially what’s going to happen. The Producers Guild has negotiated separately, must importantly note separately, with all of the studios in order to reach what’s sort of an official credit for the producers on films.

And what the system will set up is that a film, or a TV show, can be taken to the Producers Guild. The Producers Guild will certify who actually deserves — in the case of a film, the producer credit. Who deserves the executive producer credit. And those individuals will have a p.g.a. after their name, to certify that they are the person who actually did the work.

And what is the work? Well, the code attaches specific weights to specific functions. And from the press release it says, “35% for development. 20% for preproduction. 20% for production. And 25% for post-production and marketing.” And it also includes the job descriptions, the guidelines, the rules intended to help you resolve credit disputes. And so hopefully those “Produced by” credit blocks will mean something.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Now, what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t keep a studio from giving somebody a producer credit.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** There can be producer credits, and that’s still the studio’s domain, but in order to have that p.g.a. after a producer’s name, it has to have gone through the producer’s arbitration process.

**Craig:** Yeah. Thank god for this. First of all, the Producers Guild is not actually a union. That’s the first thing we should point out. They’re not a labor union. They’re not recognized by the federal government. They are not a collection of employees who bargain as a unit for employment. That’s not what they do. They’re just using the word “guild” because, you know, the Directors Guild. It’s Hollywood. Everybody likes to just use the same word as everybody else.

And that’s why they had to kind of negotiate this individually because there is no management group, like for instance, we negotiate with the AMPTP.

I love that they’re doing this. It’s so funny to me that they basically stole the Writers Guild credit arbitration system of percentages, which we all loathe, but it is sort of the best of all bad possible versions of how to do these sorts of things. Because the truth is, just like we do with writing credits, it’s kind of an “I know it when I see it.”

On a movie, you all know, you go to the theater and you see these scrolls of names sometimes of producers, executive producers, co-producers, associate producers. What is the producer even doing and who is it? Well, finally, those of us who work in movies, there is a producer. There is one. There is one. That’s the guy or the woman. That’s it.

And it would be sure nice for those people who do all that work, I would think, to be able to say, “Yeah, yeah, it’s me. I’m the one.”

And, do you know why I really like it, John?

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** I really like it for the opposite. I like knowing who wasn’t the producer. [laughs] Because, man, and this is good for us as writers. There are so many people saying, “Oh, I produced this. I produced that.” Did you? Did you? I see you have a credit. I don’t know what that means.

If you have a writing credit, I know what that means. It means the Writers Guild said, “Yeah, you authored this movie in part in whole.” But I don’t know what your producer credit means. There’s 12 of you on this thing. Only one of you really did it, so it sure would be nice to know who the real producer is. For that reason alone I think it’s spectacular.

**John:** I think it’s good, too. I would also wonder if over the course of a few years, and as it becomes more commonplace, some people stop asking for that credit because they know they’re not going to get the stamp of approval. And it’s going to be sort of weird to have your name on there and everyone will know that you didn’t really actually produce that movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I thought it was also interesting how they broke up the allotments of sort of how much you had to do in order to get your credit. So, 35% for development. That’s a lot. That means you’re the person who came onboard early on, either reading the script or hiring the writer, working with the writer, getting the script up to the place where it could be green lit.

20% for preproduction, which is all the stuff leading up to getting cast, getting everything put together so you can actually budget, so you can actually make a movie. Only 20% for production, which is, I think, interesting, but also reasonable. Production is a huge Magilla monster, but it’s not all that is involved in making a movie.

**Craig:** I think they capped that in particular because they don’t like this notion of there’s been a credit bleed with UPMs and so called line producers who are now grabbing onto producer titles. And they don’t like that. I don’t blame them.

**John:** And then 25% for post-production and marketing. Post-production I can totally see. Marketing is an incredibility important producer function that the challenge will be of course that the producer credits are going to be determined before all that marketing is done. So, the producer is also involved in sort of like home video decisions and all those other things which are not going to be sort of factored into this part of it. But that’s the best you’re going to do in a perfect situation.

But I think it’s a terrific first step. I think it’s going to be a huge help in sort of knocking down some of the over-proliferation of credits in features and in television as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s going to be nice to know. And it just makes me grumpy when I see a lot of these names. It makes me grumpy when people overstate what they did on a movie. And I very much hope that what you’re suggesting does come true. That out of sheer embarrassment people just stop taking a credit that frankly is not reflective of what they’ve done.

**John:** Yes. Next, let’s talk about movies and long movies. So, this is an article that got sent to me that I thought was interesting, that pointed out that most — have you seen The Lone Ranger?

**Craig:** Haven’t seen it yet, no.

**John:** I haven’t seen it, either. I’ve been in France. Most of the reviews, there have been mixed reviews for The Lone Ranger, but almost every single review says that it’s too long. And it’s interesting because even some movies that got good reviews, it seems to be a common refrain, like, “That movie was just too long.” Like the last Batman.

**Craig:** “It’s too long. It’s too long,” they say. [laughs]

**John:** That last Batman was too long.

**Craig:** Was it? I liked it.

**John:** You liked it? I thought it was too long. I thought by the time we got to the sixth act I was ready for it to be done.

**Craig:** Hold on. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to put my umbrage in a jar and save it. And when you’re done I’m going to kick the jar over. [laughs]

**John:** That’s great. I can sort of anticipate what your umbrage will be, that like if a movie is working it is never too long.

**Craig:** Well, how about this? How about the people who are complaining about movies that are too long have to see every freaking movie. That’s their job. Of course they think the movies are too long.

**John:** No, I think audiences think the movie is too long though, too.

**Craig:** I don’t know. I’ve got some numbers to run by you about that.

**John:** All right, great. This article, and this is one by Alex Mayyasi on Priceonomics, was also speculating on the fact of like why are movies so long, because when you really consider that the 75-minute romantic comedy sells for the same ticket price as the 2.5-hour blockbuster.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there is some truth to that. It is sort of weird that we charge the same price no matter what it is. And so there should be economic incentive to make the shortest thing that will satisfy the customer, because they now have to spend anymore than you have to do.

Of course, we actually understand that the way you make movies is the movies you actually sort of first arrive at are vastly longer than the movies you actually release. And so you can say like, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have shot all that stuff that wasn’t going to be in the movie.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Well, yes, but you didn’t know what that stuff was.

**Craig:** That would be a neat trick!

**John:** That was the problem. Yeah. It’s the equivalent of like, you know, “Well, you should only develop the products that you’re actually going to release.” Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, of course.

**John:** Or like, you know, “Maybe we should only build the cars that we can sell.”

**Craig:** “Don’t invest in stocks that are going to go down. That just makes no sense.”

**John:** It doesn’t make any sense at all. People have been doing it wrong for all this time.

**Craig:** They’re just doing it wrong.

**John:** So, what I liked about the article is it was asking sort of the right naïve questions about sort of what is up with our movies and why we tend to make these really long movies. And is there a reason to start looking at the length of movies? Partly because, as writers, we’re often held to contracts that say like, “Your script can be no more than 120 pages.”

Directors are held to these contracts that say like, “Your movie can be no more than two hours long.” So, the directors aren’t really held to that contract. And the more powerful you are as a director, the longer your movie will tend to be.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not sure where this is coming from. I remember a time in the ’90s where people were complaining that movies were too short and that they were becoming junkie. And that the movies of the ’70s were routinely two hours, 2.5 hours. I don’t know what the running time of The Godfather is. It’s over two hours.

**John:** Yeah. It’s long.

**Craig:** And way, way back there were really long movies. I don’t, you know, this, the article that you sent me, the essay that you sent me, takes a lot of guesses. None of them seem very compelling to me. The one that seems least compelling is Peter Travers’, who I generally find remarkably uncompelling. He says, “Hollywood studios believe movies are weighed by the pound when it comes to Academy thinking. If it ain’t long, it ain’t winning. Stupid, I know, since The Artist and The King’s Speech weren’t long. But ever since Gone With the Wind and Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia, continuing through Titanic, Braveheart, Gladiator, and Lord of the Rings, they think Oscar will not take any epic seriously if it’s under two hours.”

That’s just stupid. That’s a stupid comment. First of all, nobody, nobody in Hollywood, ever thinks about Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, ever. Just so we’re clear about that. Ever.

Second of all, when they’re making movies they want people to show up. The reason movies are long aren’t because of Oscars. Check what the grosses are on The Artist and compare it to what the grosses are on, I don’t know, Ted. That’s not what it’s about.

It’s hard for these people to understand this. The reason some movies are long is because the filmmakers made a movie that that was that long. And every single movie you see in a theater has been tested in front of audience. Every single movie has been tested twice, three times, four times. And in all those tests, one of the first questions they ask the audience was, “Did it seem too long? Did it seem too short? Did it move too fast, too slow? Was it just right?”

We talk about pacing and length all the time. Well, if you make a movie and the movie is two hours long, and people say, “Yeah, actually, that was a great length.” Well, then, that’s that. Then we’re fine. And it’s not a problem. It’s just not a problem.

I personally don’t see that there’s this horrible thing happening where movies are too long. I think if we ask ourselves why are movies the length they are, it’s because the people who are making them want them to be that length. And the numbers that I pulled — a couple of numbers I want to run by you.

First of all, The Lone Ranger is an example of a movie where people start going, “Oh good, here’s a movie that we can all talk about why everything has gone wrong. And let’s draw lessons.”

So, one criticism made it into every review. The Lone Ranger is too long. The Lone Ranger had a running time of 149 minutes. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man’s Chest had a running time of 151 minutes. Made like a billion dollars. The first Pirates, if you say, “Well, that was a sequel,” had a running time of 136 minutes. So, do you really think that that 12 minutes was why The Lone Ranger, why people didn’t show up to The Lone Ranger? Do you think anybody said, “I’m not going to go to The Lone Ranger this weekend because it’s 12 minutes longer than the movie that we all went to?”

Of course not. It has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it. And the best example I can give of length, because I believe that there are some movies that you want to be short, like god, our spoof movies were like 70 minutes, because how much of that crap can you take, right? [laughs]

But, if you are allowed…

**John:** Who writes those things anyway?

**Craig:** Those spoof movies?

**John:** I mean, whoever writes those kind of movies should just be taken out and shot.

**Craig:** Shot!

**John:** They do no good for anybody.

**Craig:** That’s right. And their families should be shot. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Absolutely.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** I think we should round them all up.

**Craig:** They should be shot. But, one thing that I think is going on is that storytelling is becoming a little more complicated. Not in the strict sense of narrative, but rather what the audience appreciates. You can see it on television. The complexity of narrative in television series has just quadrupled, quintupled, whatever you want to call it. Go ahead and watch Breaking Bad, or The Wire, or The Sopranos and see how frankly complicated the narrative gets. Look at Game of Thrones. How many characters? They need the time, right? We become used to an expansion of time.

So, take the case of Pixar. Pixar’s first movie, Toy Story, was 77 minutes long. I’m going to run it in order now from Toy Story through Cars. So, Toy Story: A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, here are the running times: 77, 96, 92, 92, 100, 116, 117.

**John:** They’ve crept up.

**Craig:** They’ve crept up because they have more that they want to do. It’s fine. I don’t WALL-E to be 60 minutes. You know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m exhausted.

**John:** I do largely agree with you, obviously. I feel like there’s a reason why movies are a certain length. And part of the reason why we make certain movies and make certain movies at a certain length is because we want to differentiate them from what you would see in a one-hour television show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Sometimes movies need to be bigger because they are bigger. They are something that you could not possibly put on a small screen. And that’s a reason why, but also it speaks to the genres of movies that we’re making right now and why I think it’s much harder to make the simple little romantic comedy that we used to be able to make because simple little romantic comedies are now a half-hour single camera comedy and they’re not a feature film.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s just sort of what we’re doing right now. So, yes. And I also really do sympathize with The Lone Ranger just because it becomes the punching bag for whatever we want to say about movies right now. And so, you could say like, “Oh, it failed because it was this or that,” or because Johnny Depp has fallen off the star map.

Or, because it was a giant western, it probably made more than any other western ever did in its opening weekend. It’s just the expectations on it were so high that it was not possible to reach those expectations.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I would also sympathize on The Lone Ranger because nobody didn’t show up the first weekend because of its length. As you said, it’s like, you don’t know what the movie is until you see the movie. And you certainly don’t know that the movie is as long as it is before you see the movie.

**Craig:** When movies, big movies, don’t work, there is an explosion of punditry that is nauseating to me. As if we could somehow control this. As if by expressing the right analysis we can prevent this from ever happening again, or perhaps hold the idiots that would wander down that path again up to ridicule. Nonsense.

Go ahead and explain to me why things work. Go ahead and explain to me why things don’t work. And all I can do is look back at you and say, “Shut up. You don’t know. You don’t know.” There is a magic to these things when they work. And there is this weird creepy anti-magic when they don’t. And in the end here’s why it doesn’t work: people just didn’t like it. Not the genre. Not the actor. Not the length. Not the 3D. Not the time of the year. It just didn’t work!

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** That’s it. Stop writing articles. Geez, man. Everyone’s got write an article to try and explain this. You can’t. Stop it. Stop it! [laughs]

**John:** I agree. I loved The Heat. And I’m so happy that it did so well, but if it hadn’t done so well, if say a disaster had happened that weekend, you know, somewhere in the world, and people didn’t go to the movie theaters, people would have tried to write the articles on sort of why female buddy comedies can’t work.

And the fact that it did work, they’re not really writing those articles saying, “Hey, there’s a whole new genre of everything.” No, they’re taking that as just an aberration. Like, oh, there’s that one. So, yes, that’s happening.

**Craig:** It’s sick.

**John:** Because they’re always looking for the faults that they can point out rather than this is hooray for this success.

**Craig:** You know, John, it’s as if the people that write these articles are inherently miserable.

**John:** [laughs] It is possible.

**Craig:** It is possible.

**John:** We have a listener question that I want to get to. “As Scriptnotes has a following, I wonder — ” this is from Sam, by the way. “As Scriptnotes has a following, I wonder how visible you guys are to writers, producers, and executives within the industry. Do you know if they discuss topics you cover on any given week? I ask because the podcast is influencing me, but it can’t change much outside of what I put on the page. My hope would be that players working within the film industry listen to Scriptnotes and say, ‘Ah-ha!’ and change for the better, or at least a little bit.”

Craig, do you think we are making any difference in the film and television industry?

**Craig:** Oh my god. Probably not. [laughs] I mean, I think that if we are making a difference it’s with writers. I do know a lot of writers, a lot of professional writers listen to our podcast, which is very gratifying to me. And I hope that they are a little more enabled to go about their day and protect their work and improve their work because of something we’ve said. But, I can’t, in all humility, I can’t say that we do or don’t. I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t think we have a big influence in the industry overall. And I would say that because I don’t think people who are not writers really listen to our show very often.

Like my agent listens to the show most times, but not all the time. I think junior people would be more likely to listen to our show than sort of the senior people, just because they’re people who might listen to podcasts overall.

Writers who are on TV shows, I know quite a few of them listen to the show. That’s terrific. That’s wonderful. So, if in any way we’re sort of providing a voice and commentary to what they’re feeling and experiencing in their daily lives, I think that’s useful. I don’t know that it necessarily changes anything. I think it may change their individual behaviors and I guess collectively changing individual behaviors or attitudes could have a bigger impact, but I don’t think we have any sort of large scale impact in sort of how things overall work.

**Craig:** I’m okay with that. If maybe all we get out of this is that when you and I are in our sixties, the people running studios will look at us fondly. [laughs] We were part of their childhood.

**John:**[laughs] Absolutely.

**Craig:** And give us a job.

**John:** Remember way back when. We’ll be like one of those vintage commercials you see on YouTube for like those toys that you sort of half remember. It’s like, oh, that really was a thing.

**Craig:** That’s right! “You know you were born if the 2000s if you remember this.”

**John:** Oh. That little tank that you could put in the little code for like what sequence of moves you wanted it to make.

**Craig:** I remember that.

**John:** That was great. And Merlin.

**Craig:** I just see some guys like, “Hey, can I ask you? Why did you hire John August?”

“I was this Scriptnotes fan. I don’t know, man. I was a Scriptnotes fan. Whatever.” [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. “Worst decision I ever made was hiring him to do that adaptation of Smurfs 4.”

**Craig:** Smurfs 4!

**John:** Smurfs 4.

**Craig:** You’re not going to be able to get that.

**John:** I blanking out on what the name of The Smurfs is in France, but it’s completely different. It’s a completely different word.

**Craig:** Right. Because it comes from, is it…

**John:** Belgium.

**Craig:** …Belgium, man. It’s like Schnarfin or something like that.

**John:** Yeah. It’s something more like the Schnarfin kind of word here.

But as we were riding our Velibs around today. So, we’ve been riding the free bikes, the Velibs, which are just amazing. But we passed a total gas station that had ads for Smurfs 2. But they do the same thing they do in English where it’s like, you know, “What the Smurf?” But, of course, it’s whatever the other crazy French word is for it.

And so it was just so absurd we had to document it.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And take care of that.

**Craig:** Schmurfen? Schlarfen?

**John:** Schlarfen. Schlarfen sounds about right.

**Craig:** Is it Schlarfen? I’m going to look it up.

**John:** Yeah. Whatever it is, it’s fantastic and just as absurd as Smurf is.

**Craig:** I guess if I Google “French Smurf.”

**John:** God, it could be porn.

**Craig:** No, I have it on safe search, because I don’t want. It’s Schtroumpfs.

**John:** Yeah. Schtroumpfs.

**Craig:** What the Schtroumpfs?

**John:** What the Schtroumpfs?

**Craig:** Why couldn’t we handle Schtroumpfs here in the United States?

**John:** Ah, Smurf is actually a better word in English.

**Craig:** Mm. You might be onto something.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Schtroumpfs.

**John:** So, I’m ready for my One Cool Thing, which is what I actually just spoiled the reveal on, which is the Velib. Which, if you come to Paris, you need to check out the Velib which are the rental bikes that you can get here which are, it’s the perfect combination of sort of my environmental geekery and my true nerd data geekery in that you have these bikes which you can rent for up to half an hour for free.

You punch the little code. You disconnect it from this automated rack. And you get to ride around the city. And when you’re done you can pop it into any other rack and it is there for the next person to use.

It’s not perfect. And so sometimes you will find a bike and you will get on it and you will realize that this seat is broken, or that it is just not a functional bike in the way that you would like a functional bike to be. And then you have to swap it back out again.

I first rode these bikes when I was here with a group of screenwriters, Film France had flown over a group of screenwriters including Derek Haas and John Lee Hancock and some other fun writers. And showed us all around. And on that trip five years ago they had just started the Velib program. And so I took my first bike out and had a terrifying ride around, literally across a bridge, down a street, and across another bridge, and back to the rack, because the city was not very well set up for bikes.

The city has gotten much better set up for bikes. And so there are now actually bike lanes. And if you are a tourist visiting the city it is one of the most ideal ways to sort of see what Paris is like. I would highly recommend.

**Craig:** It sounds great.

**John:** Very good. And there are actually apps now that will help you figure out where the stations are, how many bikes are available, if there is space at the rack to return you bike, which is one of the big frustrations and challenges is that sometimes you’ll reach a rack and actually there’s no place to check your bike in. And so therefore you’re looking for one.

**Craig:** Oh, so there’s three of you and there’s only two spots, which must be so annoying.

**John:** It is quite annoying. That does happen. So, I would encourage you if you’re coming to Paris to check that out. If you are going to London you should check out the equivalent system there which I think Barclays runs it. New York has Citi Bike.

It is a good thing. I don’t know that Los Angeles will ever really be able to do it, because we’re just so spread out. Like the stations would be like 20 miles apart.

**Craig:** Los Angeles has the deal where you can just get BMWs. They’re in a rack. BMW 3 Series are in racks.

**John:** Well, I don’t know if you know this, Craig, but they actually have Auto Leap here which is the car equivalent. So, they have these racks of like four little mini cars. They are luxury cars. And so literally you check them out and you can drive them around and check them back in.

**Craig:** That’s cute. I like that.

**John:** It’s cute.

**Craig:** Well, my One Cool Thing is absolutely on theme with yours. I’ve been very good about not talking about Tesla stuff every week, even though I want to. But…

**John:** The Tesla is Craig’s amazing car, which is the best car in the world.

**Craig:** It is the best car in the world. That’s a fact. That has now been verified. It’s objective. It’s a fact. Science has indicated it so. [laughs]

So, Tesla has this interesting network called Superchargers, which I’m sure you guys have heard of, maybe. I’m sure maybe. You’re driving around in your Tesla and you want to go on a long trip and they’re putting in these free Supercharging stations where you pull in and you plug in to their charging station. It’s free. And it actually uses direct current to the battery which is like mainlining heroin to a battery.

And you can charge your Tesla from zero to 250 miles in something like a half an hour. So, you plug in, you go eat lunch, you come back, you’ve got another 250 miles. And they are rolling them out, I mean, their plan by 2014 is that they’re everywhere, but for now there is one in Barstow, so I can go back and forth to Vegas if I want. And there’s a string of them between LA and San Francisco, so you can go up and down as you wish.

But, there’s a little bit of a tradeoff there. It’s free, but you have to wait a little bit. You have to wait a half an hour. Okay, fine. What if you don’t have a half an hour? What if you’re on your way, you hit the Supercharging station, you’re down and you got to get a move?

So, they’re installing these battery swapping stations. Have you seen this video?

**John:** Oh my god, no. I have to see this. Send a link.

**Craig:** It’s the coolest! I will send a link. So, now your option is free half an hour or pay something like $60 and in two minutes you’re on your way. It’s sick. So, it’s like filling up with gas at that point, economically.

**John:** So, I don’t understand. Is the battery in the Tesla really that self-contained that they can just take the whole thing out and put it back in?

**Craig:** Yes! So, when they constructed this thing they built it specifically with this in mind. They just didn’t have the swapping technology dialed in yet. But now they’re starting to install them. You roll up on this thing that’s like an oil change. You roll up, but underneath is like an opening. And you say on your little touch screen, yeah, I want to swap my battery and it’s going to cost sixty bucks.

These things come up and unrivet your battery, pull it down, move it aside, save it for you. That’s your battery. Okay? You’re going to be able to get it back later. And then they put up a fresh battery, screw it into place, and you’re off. And they showed in this video they were able to battery swap two Tesla Model S’s in the time it took one Audi to fill up a gas tank completely. It’s that fast. It’s nuts.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** And the idea is that then on your way back you pull in and you get your battery back. It’s crazy. And infrastructurally, whether or not this becomes a thing, all I can say is you have to give Tesla credit for consistently pushing us all forward. It’s like there’s just this push from them that is undeniable. The way that Apple used to push computing forward. Even when it was a little clunky. Even when System 7 would freeze a lot. They’re pushing it. They’re always pushing. And I love it.

So, it’s a very Cool Thing. We’ll put a link to the video on the website. And just marvel at it. I marvel.

**John:** I really wish the Tesla Supercharging stations had a giant Tesla coil that was arcing and sort of sparking the whole time.

**Craig:** That would be cool.

**John:** Because that would make me want to go to it.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** It would also be kind of great if like when you drive up, like everything just goes into black and white. Maybe they can tint your windows in a certain way so you feel like you’re in some sort of like big giant mad scientist movie. That would be awesome.

**Craig:** I also would like it if the Supercharging stations were hooked into the grid in such a way that as you charge your car the city around you just went dark.

**John:** Ha! That would be lovely.

I also just think, like, god, all those batteries just feels, in one location, feels really dangerous.

**Craig:** Oh, I’m glad you brought that up. It would be, accept Tesla has put an enormous amount of technology into the way they constructed their batteries. There’s this problem with batteries essentially called runaway discharge, I think, or something like that, which is both a gynecological problem and also an issue with batteries. [laughs]

I’m sorry. So, in the case of a battery, because the Tesla battery is really an array of like, I don’t know, something like 500 little tiny batteries. And if one of them starts to discharge it can like trigger this chain reaction, and then there’s a fire, and it’s this whole thing.

Well, the way they designed it, all the batteries are essentially isolated from each other and then the whole thing appears to be coated in some sort of spectacular foam absorbing, whatever. The point is there hasn’t been one incident since the Model S has been on the road. Not one. The batteries appear to be remarkably safe.

**John:** Hooray! Great. So, a link to Craig’s video, and to articles about the Velib, and everything else we talked about on the show today will be at johnaugust.com/podcast, which is where you can always find the links to our show notes.

If you are listening to us through something that is not iTunes, it would be great if you went to iTunes and subscribed to us so we know how many people are subscribing to us. And if you’re there subscribing to us, you might as well leave a comment, because we love to read those.

Craig, last episode I pitched that if someone wanted to write us a new outro we would be doing an exhibition of people’s submissions for an outro for our show, which is the music that plays us out. So, the intro is [hums], and so I said, go crazy, go nuts. Do something exciting that can show your talents as a composer of music.

And so we have our first one today. And, Craig, it’s kind of amazing.

**Craig:** It’s awesome.

**John:** Yes. So, this is by Matthew Chilelli, who apparently lives in Los Angeles. He sent us this thing. He said it’s a “John Williams take on the Scriptnotes theme.”

**Craig:** It’s so cool. It’s really good.

**John:** And I think it’s just great.

**Craig:** Good work, Matthew. I love it.

**John:** So, Matthew, thank you very much for sending this through. If you want to send in your own outro theme, you can send it to ask@johnaugust.com. Ideally send us like a link to a SoundCloud or something, because otherwise we’re going to get choked with mp3s. But, we’d love to hear your take on it.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Craig, have a great week.

**Craig:** You too.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [TidBITS](http://tidbits.com/article/13912) on the Apple eBooks price fixing suit, and [Fortune](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/07/10/apple-ebook-verdict-appeal/)’s article on the same
* [The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/business/media/new-designation-signifies-i-was-really-a-producer-of-this-film.html?_r=1&) on the PGA’s new mark, and the [PGA](http://www.producersguild.org/blogpost/923036/164597/The-Producers-Mark–What-it-means-where-it-comes-from-and-how-you-can-get-it) on what it is and how you get it
* [Why are Hollywood movies so long?](http://priceonomics.com/why-are-hollywood-movies-so-long/)
* [Velib](http://en.velib.paris.fr/) bike sharing in Paris
* Tesla [battery swap](http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap) is worth watching
* [Send us](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) a link to your downloadable Scriptnotes outro

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/is-15-the-new-30).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 97, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** Good. I’m liking the sound of that 97.

**John:** It’s a lot of episodes.

**Craig:** It’s a ton.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** One of our best episodes was the one we just did last week, the live one.

**John:** Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So, we had a big crowd at the WGF and that was a good, fun time; got to see our people as we did our live Three Page Challenges. Once again, thank you to our brave volunteers for that.

**Craig:** Yeah. They were terrific. They took their medicine. And, you know, there was something to recommend about all of those. I have to give Stuart credit — I mean, I hate to do it…

**John:** Mm-hmm. Tough.

**Craig:** I know. I just don’t like over-praising. Or praising. [laughs] But, Stuart did a very good job of picking out three Three Page Challenges that were — none of which were bad. They were all good and just had interesting issues to address.

**John:** And it was only after Stuart sent us those samples that he realized, like oh my gosh, I picked only women. And so at first I emailed back saying pick one guy or male writing team so we have some diversity. But then you emailed back like, yeah, screw that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, who cares. I love — you know me, I’m very consistent. I ignore all that stuff. So, if we happen to get three women, good. And it was good, yes.

**John:** Hooray. So, that was our previous live podcast episode. Coming up on July 25 we have our next live episode, which is our 100th episode, which is very exciting. Tickets went on sale for it this past week. And they sold out super, super quick.

**Craig:** How fast did they actually go?

**John:** Within three minutes after I tweeted that they were sold out.

**Craig:** Dude, we’re Bon Jovi.

**John:** We are Bon Jovi. So, while that’s exciting, it’s also frustrating for people who didn’t get a chance to come who wanted to come. And so I feel awful about that situation. We’re trying to find out a way to release some more tickets so we can get some more people coming to our show.

If not, we’re also looking at ways to maybe live stream it or do other things, so people who cannot physically be with us can be with us emotionally as we celebrate 100 episodes of this podcast.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s a pretty remarkable thing, I have to say. I am grateful. I am legitimately grateful, as somebody who has a tiny, tiny Grinch-like dark, sooty marble for a heart. I am very grateful for people and their interest in our little podcast and what we talk about.

And a bit overwhelmed, frankly, by the interest in all of it. So, to everybody that jumped on that and bought tickets like we were, I don’t know, Nirvana in 1991, all I can say is thank you. And hopefully we’ll put on a good show for you.

**John:** Originally I was concerned that someone had like just bought 100 tickets all at once and has had a master plan to scalp them or something, but we got the word back today that the most any one person bought was six tickets. So, it’s not like there was some great cabal doing things.

So, it looks like highly motivated individuals bought those tickets, which is a great thing. We look forward to seeing a lot of people there and at future events. But today let’s talk about three topics that are of interest to screenwriters. Those would be the question of have first acts gotten shorter, and if so, why and what does that actually mean.

Second topic, the WGA released its annual report that shows that numbers are actually up significantly for writers, but only in TV.

And, finally, we’ll talk about the fight over the title The Butler. And what it means for a screenwriter who wants a certain title, but also what it means for the film industry and antitrust suits and famous lawyers.

**Craig:** And famous lawyers. So, quite a bit on our plate. I guess we should start with our first act.

**John:** Yes. So, this is actually motivated by my friend Rawson who sent an email asking, “Is it just me or is everybody asking for everything that used to happen in the first 30 pages to happen much faster?” Basically, the first act has to be much, much faster and shorter than it used to be. And he came up with a provocative title that very much feels like a Sex and the City question: Is 15 the new 30?

**Craig:** Yeah. I loved it when you forwarded me this from Rawson. I thought it was such a great observation, because it’s one of those things that I hadn’t really crystallized in my mind until I saw him write it out like that. I think it’s absolutely true that this is a pressure, a creative pressure, that’s been coming down increasingly lately to compress down first acts. I felt it in a huge way when I was writing Identity Thief. There was a lot of pressure on me to shorten that first act. I feel it all the time.

I went to go see World War Z…

**John:** I was going to bring up World War Z.

**Craig:** Yeah, and I really like that movie. That first act, I think, is a minute. [laughs] I think it’s a minute. There’s a scene where Brad Pitt wakes up with his family. They have a very kind of cereal-advertisement morning. They get in the car. And then zombies.

**John:** Yeah. So, we should define our terms, which is a good thing to do when we’re discussing whether something has changed is to talk about what it is we’re actually talking about. Let’s talk about what a first act is supposed to be, or what the function of a first act is in a screenplay.

And it’s one of those terms that’s kind of invented, but it’s a useful thing that we do talk about a lot in the Hollywood industry. So, classically in a play, an act is a very clear division, like the curtain comes down, or like this is where we’re stopping the show to move onto another thing. Obviously movies don’t do that. And so when we talk about a first act we’ve usually been talking about something that happens about 30 minutes in. And there are certain characteristics of what’s happened to this story at this point that indicates you’re at the end of the first act and you’re now moving into the second act.

And so sort of a laundry list to add to the kind of things I’m saying, generally you’ve reached a new place. Or, if you haven’t really gotten to a new place, you’ve reached a new direction. And your character is taking charge of the situation, or at least has a clearer idea of what his goals and motivations are. It’s to tell you what is specific about this story and what does this character need to achieve in order to get through to win this story.

What is your protagonist trying to accomplish? The game has changed in some significant way at this first act marker.

What else would you say is indicative of a first act?

**Craig:** Well, I guess a very simple way of thinking about it is that in the first act, not at the end of the first act, somewhere in the first act something happens to change the hero’s normal world/normal life, and at the end of the first act the hero has begun their journey to make things right again.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And for me, at least, I find that this first act is the most important act of a movie. It’s the most interesting act, for me. We’re creating a world. We’re building a world in the first act. We’re creating a person. We’re then introducing a problem. And then we’re pushing that person right to the edge of the nest and finally flicking them out.

And that first act has — it seems — has been squeezed and squeezed.

**John:** Let’s talk about some classic movies, movies that people are going to recognize what the first act is in that movie. Classic example is Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz, the line is “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** She’s literally moved from one place to another place. She is now in Oz and everything is different.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is when they reach the factory. That first act is getting them to the factory. The second act starts when they’re in the factory. So, everything you know about Charlie Bucket, and in my version of the movie, everything you know about Willy Wonka, there is setup that’s getting you there, so when you reach that second act you are, hopefully, ready to be on this journey.

**Craig:** Sure. Star Wars, I think probably when Luke realizes that his aunt and uncle have been burnt to death and there’s nothing left for him in this planet anymore and he decides to leave.

**John:** Yes. Little Miss Sunshine is when they hit the road to California.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They’ve gotten in the bus.

**Craig:** Yeah. The easiest ones are road trip movies. When they hit the road, the second act has begun.

**John:** Back to the Future, he gets stuck in 1955.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s about the right place. Comedies can sometimes be tougher, especially when you’re not going to a new place. I was looking up some, like Mean Girls, and what people thought was the act break in Mean Girls. And some people will differ on where they think the act break would be.

Mean Girls was when she finally decides, you know what, I’m not, I’m going to — she turns on the mean girls. So, she’s not going to try to become one of the mean girls, she’s going to bring them down. And that starts a different arc, where up to that point she’s been trying to assimilate. And at a certain point she says like, “I’m not going to try to assimilate. I’m going to bring them down.”

**Craig:** Yeah. At some point the meat of the adventure begins, whether the adventure is a legitimate adventure, or a character exploration. And sometimes in a high concept it’s when the high concept kicks in. So, in Groundhog Day when he wakes up that first time and it’s the same day again, that’s the end of the first act.

**John:** That’s a very classic first act shift. It’s also kind of those moments where what would be in the trailer that establishes what the premise of the movie is, that’s often been the first act break.

**Craig:** Yes, yes.

**John:** Not always, but often.

**Craig:** The stuff that comes before James Brown goes, “Ow! I feel good.” [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. Now, let’s go back to World War Z, because World War Z was one of the first things that popped into my mind because I just saw this last week. And there are no spoilers for us to say that very, very early on in the movie there are zombies running through the streets.

**Craig:** That’s not the end of the first act, per se.

**John:** No. And my question is you could argue that it feels like the end of the first act because like the world has profoundly changed. You could also say that was sort of the inciting incident.

**Craig:** Precisely.

**John:** That is the moment where everything has started to happen. And then you could call the end of the first act when they get to the ship that they’re sort of landing on.

**Craig:** It’s funny — I actually think the end of the first act is when he leaves to go to Korea. So, he begins his adventure and leaves them behind. And there’s that moment where he says, “I’m leaving, you’re staying, and I am beginning an adventure,” the purpose of which is not only to save the world but to return and fix things.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Still, it happens in such a compressed manner. And for that movie, I have to say, no quarrels. There wasn’t, and we never really do movie reviews here — I really liked World War Z. Some people complained a little bit that the characters were thin and I think, yes, absolutely, they were very, very thin. It was like Hero and Hero’s wife. But, that’s not where I… — I did not lack from enjoyment simply because the characters were thin. It was a little bit like watching a bible story or something, you know.

**John:** Yeah. What I found so fascinating about sort of how it chose to do it is it didn’t do really any of the work that we expect to see in the setup of a movie, like the setup of who these characters are.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, it was just the very broadest strokes on like, “This is a family. They seem to be doing pretty well.” And suddenly then we’re off to the races. And they tried to fill in some more stuff along the way, just sort of incidental conversations about what he used to do, what this was. But, in some ways it was surprising that it wasn’t filling in more of those details, because that’s what kind of kept you alive and alert for, because you kept listening for anything that would tell you who these people are or what is sort of unique or special.

**Craig:** Well, and one of the things about World War Z that is interesting is that the character ultimately doesn’t change. And because the character doesn’t change, we’re not dealing with a movie where there’s a traditional thematic arc. When you do have a traditional thematic arc and a character is going through some sort of internal combustion to end the movie in a philosophical place that is perfectly oppositional from where he or she began, you need that first act.

In comedy in particular I feel you need it, because comedy isn’t about a thousand zombies piling on top of each other like ants to get over a wall. Comedy is about the human condition. And so we need that first act desperately to meet somebody, establish who they are, establish what they believe. Kind of soak them in it for awhile.

**John:** Before the main plot engine really kicks in.

**Craig:** That’s right. And it’s okay for something to happen on page 10 that throws their world out of stasis. But it’s not okay for them to immediately then just jump into adventure. There needs to be a period of resistance and a period of contextualizing what happens and what this means for me. And then we begin the adventure.

**John:** So, a good example of that would be The Heat, which I don’t know if you’ve seen The Heat yet.

**Craig:** I haven’t seen it yet. I’m very excited to.

**John:** So, I thought it was fantastic. Melissa is fantastic and she’s obviously a friend of both of ours. But The Heat is very much — has a very classic first in act in that you meet the Sandra Bullock character, you meet the Melissa McCarthy character, separately. They cross paths probably about 15 pages into it.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Hate each other. Despise each other.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** At each other’s throats. And then probably around page 30 or so they have to partner together in order to get the plot of the movie to resolve. They both had their interests for why they’re going into it. And it’s very clear that we’re going to be watching this movie to see how their relationship develops over the course of this movie.

**Craig:** And you need the, if they meet each other… — So, okay, the way you just described it is sort of a perfect reason why you don’t want 15 to be the new 30. You need 15 pages to introduce two people and show them as they are separately, so that we understand what their strengths and limitations are, separately.

Then we need some time where they are together where we establish that they do not get along and why. And ideally it’s tied to their strengths and their weaknesses. Once we’ve done that groundwork, it’s perfectly fine at that point to kick the apple cart over and force them to head out into the field, whereby they will do the work of the plot as well as their own relationship. But we need those 30 pages.

And I’ve got to tell you, I mean, I don’t understand why there’s this big rush, rush, rush to shorten the first act. I think audiences love first acts.

**John:** So, my theory on why we feel this development pressure for shorter first acts is the people who’ve been reading the script have been reading the script for like six years.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, they know what the movie is and they know what’s going to happen. And they’re eager for what’s going to happen to happen. And so as they read the script or as they see early cuts of the movie they’re like, “Just get to it already. Just get to it.”

And that pressure is the pressure of someone who does not have fresh eyes, who is not seeing this for the first time. They’re seeing it as a person who knows every frame of the movie or every word that’s going to happen. And they’re eager to get to the thing much, much quicker.

**Craig:** I agree. And in comedy the pressure comes down often in this way: the big funny things that happen in comedies, the big set pieces, the sequences, typically are second act stuff. You’re first act doesn’t have a lot of big crazy sequences. And so naturally there’s this feeling of, “Uh, we need to get people laughing — faster, faster to the joke stuff. Go, go, go!”

And it’s a mistake because what we know on the other side of the thing, the making of the movie thing, is that it’s the setup that makes all that stuff work. And, look, nobody wants to sit there and watch an hour of setup. But there’s nothing wrong with 25 minutes of setup.

**John:** Now, devil’s advocate here. I think sometimes I’ve been reading scripts where I’m in this first act and it’s like, okay, I’ve got it. I got it. I got it. You’re just giving me the same thing again and again.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, in no way are we arguing for repetition, for boring scenes, or things that feel like they’re, you know, they’re lovely bits of set dressing that’s keeping us from getting to our real story. So, I think the challenge is still on the writer to make sure that at every moment you’re flipping the page because we’re deeply engaged and want to know what’s going to happen next.

And even if that what happens next is not the thing that kicks us into the second act, we want to be curious and fascinated about what’s going to happen next with this character. What this character is going to do so that as the story progresses we are deeply invested in them.

So, it’s in no way an opportunity for those three page scenes where characters talk about their lives and backstory, because that’s just awful.

**Craig:** Yeah. Frankly the opposite; I always think of the first ten pages in particular as very precious real estate where you have to pack in a lot. You want to make it vibrant, and informational, and interesting, and dramatic. Everything that you do in that first act has to have a purpose and that purpose must pay off. The bud must blossom at some point in the script, or it shouldn’t be there.

And, listen: it may be that your story doesn’t need a traditional 30 page first act. And that’s fine. But if you feel like it does, do it. I do it. I mean, the script I’m writing right now, the first act ends I think on page 31. And I’m okay with that. [laughs] We’ll see what the studio thinks.

**John:** Now, one of the common characteristics of the break between the first act and the second act is the characters reach a new place. But I would caution people from thinking that, “Oh, that means that in my thriller I can’t have them get to the cabin in the woods until page 30.” That’s not what that means.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You may get to the cabin in the woods on page five. But, the nature of the relationship between the characters are what the characters are facing would make that big change at the end of the first act, which would be some time down the road. So, we get to know who the characters are, what they’re expecting, what the tensions are above them, what the normal life is for them before everything goes crazy.

**Craig:** Yeah. Normal life is so important. I’m a huge believer in the concept of normal life and establishing what that means for characters, even if they’re lives are circumstantially not very normal. Okay, so you have a character whose job is to be a stunt person. So, what’s their normal day? Hurling out of a fifth story window on fire and crashing into a thing full of glass. Well, that’s their normal life. Show it.

But then something is going to happen to make that even less normal later down the line. Still, you need to always show what’s normal before you show what changes.

**John:** So, what are some actionable things that a writer can do to push back against this 15 is the new 30 idea?

**Craig:** Well, I can only tell you what I do, and basically it’s to make the case. I just keep making the case. And I don’t always win. One thing that I know is that there were scenes that were put in, for instance in Identity Thief there were a couple of scenes that were requested of me in the first act that I didn’t think needed to be there. And there was one scene that was taken out that I definitely think needed to be there and it ended up hurting later.

And I can always now go back and say, “Well, let us remember the lessons of this.” But, the truth of the matter is there is no magic shield. There will be times as a professional screenwriter where you can’t keep people from making a mistake. Even if you fall on your sword, somebody else will come along and write that mistake for them.

So, but I try. I just try and make the case as patiently as I can. I find that this is where directors help, making an alliance with a director helps. Directors want to make sure that their audience gets what’s going on, gets the logic, doesn’t feel rushed through, because one side effect of rushing through a first act is that you simply care less.

What about you?

**John:** I will bring it up. I will try to argue for why those scenes need to be there, why that moment needs to be there, why we need to understand who this person is in that moment. That said, I tend to be a person who does move very quickly. And I get stuff started very quickly. And so Go is a movie that is essentially three first acts. The Nines is a movie that is essentially three first acts. That’s a way that I feel comfortable writing. But even if you look at those, both those movies are sort of like three short films sort of stacked next to each other.

They do have that kind of classic development where you understand what the normal life is, you understand this is the choice the character has made that has kicked us into this next section where everything is different, and this is the resolution of what’s going to happen because of the choices that they made. And so even though they move much more briskly, I’m doing the things that need to be done in those times.

And if I were to try to do that first setup that was so quick for just the little section one of Go, and make that carry us over through the whole rage of the movie, it wouldn’t work. The fact is, in Go I’m able to stop the movie, set up these three new people at a new time, and let them run in their own story.

So, I tend to want to have things go quickly. But I still get those notes sometimes. With Preacher I kept getting the notes, “We need to get to the Saint of Killers faster.” And it’s like, well, then we’re not going to know who any of these people are. And that’s going to be a very frustrating thing.

**Craig:** A question that I often ask when I hear somebody say, “We need to get to blah-blah-blah faster,” the question I will have in response is, “Why?” And sometimes simply asking why will put them on their heels a little bit, because the truth is they don’t know why. They’ve just been told somewhere in the factory that faster is better.

I’m okay with going faster if you can tell me why. It’s simple.

**John:** Yeah. Our next topic, the WGA, the Writers Guild of America, each year has to file its annual report which shows not only what its finances are but sort of what the status is of writers for film and television and a few other people who get lumped into the Writers Guild. How much they’ve made. Who got employment? What was going on in the Writers Guild this year.

And so I think we’ve talked about this; each time it has come up on the podcast, sort of where the numbers are and where the numbers are moving towards. This would have been a very smart time for me to actually have the report in front of me.

**Craig:** I have it in front of me.

**John:** So why don’t you, Craig, give us the overview of sort of what has changed from this year from the previous year?

**Craig:** Sure. Well, first off, a little preamble: the Guild seems to be in fine fiscal health. In fact, it ended the year with a surplus, a $4.5 million operating surplus, which of course in my mind means, hey, why don’t you reduce our dues a little bit. But, that’s never going to happen. [laughs]

So, let’s talk about what changed.

**John:** I did notice that the strike fund seemed to be quite healthy.

**Craig:** Yeah, the strike fund is just fine. [laughs] Everything is fine. Honestly, the whole thing about dues is a discussion for a later date.

But, okay, so the overall picture when we talk about writers who have been hired and how much money we’ve made, interesting from this year to last year, a little bit fewer. A little bit fewer writers were hired, down by 1%. But the amount that they earned was up by 4%, which is actually a decent jump relative to last year and the year before. But when you break it out into TV and film, two totally different pictures emerge.

**John:** Yeah. So, television has increased by a nice clip, which is great. There are more writers employed in television than at any point in the last six years.

**Craig:** Yes. Television writers, the amount that were employed is up 2.3%, and that’s on top of year, after year, after year of increases in the amount that have been employed. And, also, their earnings are up and they’re up a whopping 10%. That’s a big jump. And consider this: if you look at year, to year, to year, to year, percent change versus prior year, starting in 2008 because everything is sort of based off of 2007 here as a sort of five-year review, up 1.4%. This is earnings, up 1.4%. Up 13.8%, up 7.6%, up 7%, up 10%.

TV is crushing it. In 2007, TV writers earned $456 million. In 2012, they earned $667 million. Wow.

So, surely that kind of success has carried over to features, right? [laughs]. No. Wah. Everybody get your trombones out. Make the sad note. Here we go.

How many writers have reported earnings? We’re down 6.7% from last year in feature film. And earnings, the amount of earned, money actually that we’ve pulled in, down 6%.

Here’s the worst part of all of this: if you look compare us to 2007, where television, there are more writers compared to 2007, and we’re way up by like 50% in terms of how much TV writers have earned. Opposite situation in screen. In screen from 2007 to now, 25% fewer writers employed as screenwriters. And earnings down 35%.

So, in 2007 there were 2,041 writers who reported earnings in screen. Last year, 1,537. Incredible. In 2007, $527 million in total earnings in screen. Last year, $343 million. Yikes.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a bloodbath, but honestly it feels consistent with what I know from people who are actually working is that many of my… — Those TV writers didn’t just magically appear. A lot of those people are feature film writers who are now working in television. And that’s completely consistent with the people I know, is that so many people who were feature writers have now moved to television. Or they took a TV show on the side, but are still trying to do feature work, but they’re not doing the feature work, they’re just doing television.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s the reality of the people who are making money right now is people who are writing on TV shows. And god bless that there are TV shows. You can’t imagine how awful this would be if those jobs didn’t exist in television, if we weren’t making more television than at any point in history.

**Craig:** It would be horrifying out there. When you look at in terms of residuals…

**John:** Yeah, we should stop and clarify for a second. So, earnings for this report, earnings means money that you’re actually making in that year for the work that you were doing in that year.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And because it is earnings in that year, the previous year’s numbers actually change a bit because things get reported after the fact. And so even the numbers that are coming in for this year, they’re not really final numbers. They’ll shift a bit based on people who report earnings that came in late in 2012.

**Craig:** That’s right. The residuals is the money that we earn on the reuse on that stuff that we write. And that is less of a snapshot of how the employment situation is and more of a snapshot of what the marketplace is like in terms of consumers, and what they’re buying, and what they’re consuming.

So, even though screenwriters have been decimated in terms of the numbers of us who are employed at all and how much we make when we are employed, residuals seems to be holding pretty steadily actually in screen. And they are up. In fact, they’re up in both. They’re up about 6% in television and 5.3% in screen. Television, you know, there’s more residuals there, which is not surprising, because there’s just so many more television shows.

What I thought was interesting as television generated $200 million in residuals. The Guild, and this is very Guildy of them — this is where sometimes they make me nuts because they get a little editorial in these things — the highlight of reuse of programs in new media, where the rental services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus drove significant growth from $4.21 million to $11.26 million in 2012. And that is impressive if you look at it just as, okay, $4.2 million to $11.26 million. Not so impressive when you look at it as $11.26 million out of $200 million.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And the reason that they’re banging that drum and making such a big deal about that is because they don’t want anyone to think for a second that we had that new media strike purposelessly.

**John:** Yeah. So, that number was up. My question for you is: when you’re buying something off of DirecTV, like you’re buying a show off DirecTV, or you’re buying something off of iTunes, that’s not included in this new media. That’s included in home video, correct?

**Craig:** No, I think that they’re calling “new media rental services,” I would imagine, would cover renting on iTunes, sure. Yeah.

**John:** Okay. But purchasing on iTunes might be…?

**Craig:** That’s different. Yeah, purchasing seems to be… — I mean, I guess, it’s hard to tell, frankly, because they may be lumping all new media into this, because where they say “where the rental services such as drove significant growth,” well that means, okay, so — but driving significant growth doesn’t mean you’re solely responsible for that growth. And certainly Netflix and Hulu are “such as” not “only.”

**John:** Yes. So, let’s talk sort of bigger picture here. If you are a feature film writer, you are likely making less money than you were before.

**Craig:** Yeah. Maybe.

**John:** A prototypical individual screenwriter was probably making less money than they were before, either by not being employed, or by making less per draft. And that seems to be consistent with at least the writers I’m talking with.

The fact that residuals are holding steady is good news if you’ve been employed for awhile because then you actually have some movies that have a life after theatrical.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, that may help tide you over. What is hard to gain any reassurance from looking at these reports is that there’s any end in sight for sort of what is going to happen to the feature film writer.

**Craig:** Well, there’s a little bit of an end in sight. I mean, first of all, let’s point out that your prototypical screenwriter probably doesn’t exist, that what’s happened is we’re looking at a mean average of two very different poles on a graph. It seems that the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer when it comes to screen. That’s at least a little bit of what our surveys and some of our anecdotes tell us.

So, the bell curve has become, you know, sort of a two-hump camel. But, there’s a little bit — a little bit — of hope. And where that little tiny bit of hope comes in is in home video, because home video is the area that collapsed under screen. That was the area, that was the marketplace, that was really propping screen up and thus propping up employment, and budgets, and the amount of movies that were made.

And when it collapsed it collapsed spectacularly. So, when you look at theatrical film videos from home video, in 2007 — sorry, let’s take 2008, because that was the high mark — in 2008, $47 million roughly in home video residuals.

**John:** So, that indicates a very healthy home video market because we’re talking a fraction of a percent equals…

**Craig:** That’s right. So, as the theory went, writers get a nickel for each DVD sold. So, all those nickels for DVDs added up to $47 million in 2008. In 2011, it was down to $30 million. That’s a huge drop in just three years. It’s just precipitous. That’s what has changed this business more than anything.

However, a little tiny bit of hope: in 2008, home video actually went up 1%. And you would think that going up 1% wouldn’t be cause for celebration, but after year-on-year declines of big, big jumps in percentage, you know, from $47 million all the way down to $30 million, holding steady is a big deal.

So, if you look at 2012 to 2007, home video on the whole dropped 30%. And remember what I said our earnings dropped? 35%. I mean, and 25% fewer writers. That’s the number, to me, that is the leading indicator here is home video. And if we can hold home video I think maybe we have a chance of just holding things where they are right now and maybe not having them get worse.

**John:** So, let me restate your thesis in a way, make sure we’re talking about the same thing. So, with the decline in home video, studios have been spending less money on writers for theatrical films because they’re feeling the pinch and they’re feeling we’re not going to be able to make our money out of things, therefore they’re spending less in development?

**Craig:** Yeah. I think basically they’re saying as home video declines the amount of films we make will also decline, and therefore the amount of screenwriters we employ will decline, and the budgets of many of those projects will also decline.

**John:** And those numbers are borne out by the actual numbers of theatrical films the major studios have made over these past few years has genuinely declined. And so with fewer films, there’s fewer writers. And subsequently there’s also fewer films in development because they’re expecting to make fewer down the road.

**Craig:** That’s right. And basically they’ve declined by about a third. So, the magic number for screenwriters is a third. Things are a third down. They’re roughly a third down in terms of how many of us are hired, roughly a third down on how much money they spend on us, roughly a third down on how many movies they make, and roughly a third down on what home video is generating.

**John:** Now, what we said before in terms of my experience is that a lot of feature writers have moved over to television and that it’s really they’re television writers now. I think those two numbers are also closely coupled because a lot of the reason why I think our theatrical home video is down is because television is up.

People have a certain number of hours in the day. I think the fact that we’re living in maybe a golden age of television and we have better television than we’ve ever had before is making someone choose to watch Homeland rather than rent that DVD, or watch that DVD, or buy that DVD at Target for that movie. And I think those are more closely related than you might at first glance notice.

**Craig:** That may be true. We know that it’s not a zero sum game, that new markets can be created. Before VHS, there simply wasn’t movie viewing at home. And then suddenly everyone was watching movies at home and it became a thing.

Also, let’s recall that the purchasing or renting of movies does not equate on a one-to-one with the watching of them. That’s how Blockbuster made its fortune. People buy movies they don’t watch. [laughs] They rent movies they don’t watch. And so the fact that they don’t have as many hours in the day doesn’t necessarily stop them from buying these things.

It is our hope that things have stabilized and maybe even if we can be greedy enough for a second to be hopeful, really hopeful, that they’ve not only stabilized but that the base of home video can now support growth in new media. And new media right now just simply doesn’t generate that much money for screenwriters. Last year it generated $5 million. Home video generated $30 million.

So, for people that sit there and insist that no one buys DVDs anymore, and that the world is all about iTunes, all I can say is, no, not yet, but hopefully soon. Hopefully soon.

**John:** So, with that, let’s go to our third topic of today which is The Butler. So, the backstory on this, there’s a lawsuit that’s occurring between Warner Bros. and the Weinstein Company. The Weinstein Company directed by Lee Daniels called, that they want to call The Butler, which is about a butler, I think it’s about a butler in Obama’s White House who has been a butler for a tremendously long time — an African American butler.

**Craig:** I think it’s based on a true story.

**John:** Based on a true story. And so this butler who has been serving the presidents for all of these years is now serving an African American president and sort of what that change is. And that’s Lee Daniels’ film.

So, the Weinstein Company wants the title, The Butler, and Warner is saying, no, because Warner controls copyright on a 1969, sorry, 1916…

**Craig:** Not copyright.

**John:** Well, actually they do own copyright, but copyright is not the issue here. They control the title, The Butler, because they have a 1916 silent film called The Butler.

**Craig:** The very popular 1916 film, The Butler.

**John:** Which apparently has not been shown theatrically in nearly a century. It’s not even like a big, giant movie.

**Craig:** No, nothing from 1916 is a big, giant movie. This is absolutely a sharp stick in Harvey’s eye. There’s no question about that. There’s no value in the silent film, The Butler. Here’s what’s going on… — I mean, look, I don’t know why the sharp stick is in the eye. Hollywood is a tough place.

**John:** Let’s back up because I had actually blogged about this years ago, because people would write in this question, like, “I have this title that I want to use, but there’s another movie from years ago with that title. Will I be able to use it?” And the answer is generally, “Probably.”

And people think you can copyright a title. You can’t copyright a title. Copyrights exist to protect literary works and other works, but like longer works. You can’t copyright a pure idea. And you can’t copyright a title.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, and if you have any questions, IMDb some common phrase and you will see there are hundred movies called Dead of Night, for example. That happens a lot.

You can trademark certain things, but not movie titles. So, you can trademark Transformers, because it was a toy line.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so there are some things which are protected because they’re trademarks. But there are very few things that are protected because of their trademark.

Rather, the system that we have set up is run by the MPAA and all the major studios are partners in this. And they have what’s called the Title Bureau. And when you are going into production on a movie you can register your title with the Title Bureau so that no one else could take that title.

But then there are negotiations if your title is considered to be too close to someone else’s title. And every time you submit your title, the other studios can say, “Uh-uh,” and raise their hands and say, “No, we do not accept that because of X, Y, or Z.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I had to go through this on The Nines. When we registered our title we had complaints from this movie 9. We had a complaint from The Whole Nine Yards. A lot of people raised complaints and one-by-one they sort of gave up their complaints and everything was cool and we were able to keep the title, The Nines. It happens all the time.

**Craig:** All the time. Yeah.

**John:** That’s why it is so remarkable that this happened in this case where they would not yield.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, my very first movie that I wrote with Greg Erb was called Space Cadet. And Lucas blocked it because he said he had a movie in development called Space Cadet, which he never made, obviously. So, we had to change it.

Here’s the deal with this title registration thing: everybody that’s involved in it does so voluntarily. If you’re a member of the MPAA, it’s a requirement of being a member of the MPAA, but there are actually very few studios that are true members of the MPAA, the big ones are. The little ones, like the Weinstein Company, for instance, they may not be official members of the MPAA, but they become members of the Title Registration Bureau. And by doing so they voluntarily agree to be bound by that bureau.

They say, “I am going to sign something that says that from now on I am subject to your arbitration if there’s a dispute over title.” Now, why would anyone do that? They do it because they want protection for their titles.

So, if I’m the Weinstein Company and I make, say, Pulp Fiction, I don’t want Warner Bros. to be able to put out a movie called Pulp Fiction five years later. And if you’re not part of the Title Registry Bureau, you can. So, it’s all about preservation and protecting yourself. In exchange for protection of your titles, you submit to the bureau so that other people’s titles can also be protected. In this case, it seems like the normal horse trading that goes on, the normal gentlemanly, senatorial back and forth has been pushed aside.

Typically, studios will horse trade with each other. If you file for a title, and Warner Bros. says, “Well, the thing is we have that 1916 silent movie called The Butler,” if it were Disney, Disney would call up and say, “Guys, come on. We could do that all day long to you, too. We’ve got a thousand movies in our library. Do you want us doing that next year to you? We’ll do it.”

“Nah, I don’t want you doing that to me. Let’s just agree to fight over real substantive ones.” That’s what the system is really there for.

In this case, Warner Bros., that’s why I said sharp stick in the eye, this is just vindictive. They’re just being vindictive. I don’t know why. Not my business. However, I think that Harvey is going to have a tough time here.

**John:** Yes. So, it is important to note that this was an arbitration, so it’s not a court case — it wasn’t a court case in this situation. But, now lawyers have been brought in. David Boies, who is a very famous attorney, was part of the team that filed the Prop 8, so I know David Boies, and he’s lovely, and great, and smart. So, he is filing these letters against Warner Bros. and against the arbitration people, the MPAA, saying, “Uh-uh, not cool. And, we’re going to keep pressing this.”

Basically, first off, by the time this podcast airs this may all be resolved, so we should talk in a more general sense, but he was arguing that the damages that Warner was claiming, so essentially Warner was going to make Weinstein Company pay a fee if they didn’t stop calling the movie The Butler, even in these promotional things up to this point.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which is, again, I’m sure part of that contract that was signed.

**Craig:** No doubt.

**John:** Boies makes an interesting case, though, is that on some level does having a title really mean that you’re permanently protected in all cases forever because you have that tile. And to what degree could they claim that anything called The Butler, or having the title Butler in it is going to be protected by Warner Bros. It’s going to be like off limits for all the people for all time.

Should there be some distinction between a movie that’s actually in the public consciousness, you know, like Pulp Fiction, versus this obscure title from a long time ago. Because, otherwise people could essentially just title squat and never let a title go, become available.

**Craig:** And they do. I mean, look, where he is going to run into trouble are the following areas. One, the Weinstein Company voluntarily entered into an agreement to be part of this Title Registry Bureau. They did so, and accrued benefits from being a member of that bureau. So, their titles have been protected by the bureau. And in becoming members they’ve voluntarily agreed to follow the rules that say basically whatever this arbitration decides, that’s it. I mean, binding arbitration is a real thing. Thank god it’s a real thing or else the courts would be even more crowded than they are.

The notion that you don’t have to belong to the Title Registry Bureau, you do it so that your title is protected, too. So, I mean, theoretically somebody could call it The Butler if they wanted. They’d just have to now open up all their other titles to people grabbing them.

**John:** I have a question about sort of the — antitrust got brought up. And antitrust is not going to really kick in on this case because it’s of Weinstein’s and Warner’s and all that situation, but it does strike me as this is an agreement between all the studios to protect titles in a way that a court could look at and say, “This is not cool. This is a way of stifling individual speech, corporate speech, through this collusion of powerful entities.”

**Craig:** Yeah, they could. And if he makes that argument I would be surprised, because the last thing the Weinstein Company wants is to start dismantling the very valuable quasi trust protections that the business has created for itself.

Look, I’m not a lawyer. I’m certainly not an antitrust lawyer. I’m not sure that this is antitrust because it’s voluntary. You don’t have to belong to this to be able to release movies.

However, where they could run into trouble is I think you need to belong to it if you want an MPAA rating.

**John:** Which is a big deal…

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** …because without that you can’t get theatrical distribution in many markets.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And everything else becomes much more complicated. For a long time you couldn’t get on iTunes without an MPAA rating.

**Craig:** Right, exactly. Now, that I’m not sure is the case. So, I’ll have to do a little research there. But if that is the case, then I would see, well, yeah, now you’re sort of bundling a “optional service” with a not-so-optional service, because you really can’t put your movie in theaters or on iTunes if it’s not rated.

But then again, you could…

**John:** You could argue the antitrust thing about the whole MPAA.

**Craig:** Correct. That’s my point.

**John:** The entire entity. The ratings system is easily, has as many problems with…

**Craig:** More. More.

**John:** …with antitrust.

**Craig:** And I guess that’s my point, is that the ratings system has somehow survived this kind of thing. And I believe it has. There’s no chance that the title registry bureau won’t. So, anyway, I think this is — David Boies is collecting some money while Harvey gets really, really angry. [laughs] But I don’t know how they win this one.

It’s offensive…

**John:** On some level, have they won already just by getting the popular attention on the title fight?

**Craig:** I don’t think anybody cares.

**John:** I think maybe the fact that it’s getting some minor New York attention, it probably feels good for Harvey, about this movie that I would never have heard of if it weren’t for this. He will have to change the title. Everyone will know what the new title is, because they’ll lose the suit. Or, it will be Lee Daniels Presents The Butler. And there will be some way that they’ll phrase out of it.

**Craig:** No, they won’t be able to get that either. I mean, look, underneath all of this I suspect, frankly, it’s just a flat out extortion scheme that Harvey didn’t want to go along with. There have been a billion cases where basically people who are squatting on titles have gotten bought off.

I mean, I know one producer, I will not say his name, who kind of blew me away with his grossness and told me a story that he basically made lists of things that sounded like provocative titles and then went and registered them with the Title Registry Bureau.

And I think you have to sort of show that there is some minor effort towards development. And the idea was if somebody does actually develop a film with that title they have to come to him and pay him. And he said he wants to get paid like $500,000.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** It’s so gross.

**John:** That’s gross.

Charlie’s Angels, the second Charlie’s Angels movie was called Charlie’s Angels: Forever, but that didn’t test well when they just were testing titles. And so Sony I think either had a list of other titles of things they owned or controlled, or just things they thought were cool titles. And so Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was the one that tested the best and that became the title of the movie.

**Craig:** Full Throttle.

**John:** Full Throttle.

**Craig:** Full.

**John:** There is a motorcycle sequence in it so it kind of matters, makes some sense, but it’s just…it was tenuous.

**Craig:** Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is sort of the movie version of Extreme for Doritos. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it seems good. [laughs] It’s Charlie’s Angels: Max.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Forever actually made more sense in that there were tremendous things in the script that were actually about sort of legacy and things going on…

**Craig:** Oh, John, no, no, no.

**John:** But no one cares about the deep thematic resonance…

**Craig:** Yeah, your themes of eternity and immortality were pushed aside because the Throttle, you see, needed to be full.

**John:** There was a Cirque du Soleil sequence in Charlie’s Angels for awhile that was never shot, but which would have been amazing, because you kind of want the Angels to fly, and then they could have actually flown.

**Craig:** That would have been cool. Why’d they cut that?

**John:** Yeah. Pretty. Because…

**Craig:** Oh, wait, I know, Half Throttle?

**John:** Half Throttle. All the Vegas stuff went away. And so it was at a Vegas, it was a heaven-themed Vegas casino.

**Craig:** Perfect.

**John:** It was good. And they also used to slide down the outside of the pyramid…

**Craig:** The Luxor, I was going to say. That’s the only casino you can slide down. Well, you know, years later yours truly was there watching a man parachute out of a helicopter. Flyover. It was close enough.

**John:** Fantastic. So, I wasn’t sure that in Hangover III that any of that was actually real. So, there was some help — there was some parachuting that was…?

**Craig:** It was real. The guy jumped out of a helicopter and parachuted over the strip. And actually did for real parachute over the Bellagio fountains.

**John:** I’m certain the insurance on that was crazy.

**Craig:** I don’t know. [laughs]

**John:** Not your responsibility. I love the big like not my problems.

**Craig:** Not my problem! I will say that the guy, the coordinator who handled that unit was awesome. Like, I just want to make a movie about that guy. And he does all the movies, I guess, and he’s just an amazing helicopter stunt pilot/parachute dude. What a life?!

**John:** It’s a great life.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a great life until something goes wrong and you’re done.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** But it’s a great life while you’re doing it.

**Craig:** While you’re doing it.

**John:** Yeah.

Craig, it’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Oh god. Do yours. [laughs]

**John:** I’ll do mine first. Mine was, I think, also sent to me by Rawson Thurber who gets the MVP award for like helping support the podcast this week. He sent this thing called The Hero’s Journey by Glove and Boots. And it’s these puppets who are talking about Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, the hero’s journey, and sort of like what it actually means in movies.

And so the movie that they’re actually sort of talking through is Happy Gilmore, which seems like a real stretch for it, but they have a plausible case. And I thought it was a really good introduction to sort of like what the Joseph Campbell Monomyth is and sort of what we talk about when we mean they call it the adventure and these are the kinds of characters who you see in this thing.

What I don’t think it does an especially good job at is the reality checking of not every great movie has the Joseph Campbell arch and Monomyth in it. And many movies that are terrible actually try to hit all those things and it doesn’t really work. So, it’s not a formula that guarantees that you will have a good movie, but it’s an interesting pattern you can see in many movies that you love, and it’s an interesting way of thinking about sort of what is a classic hero’s journey in film.

So, I would recommend that and it’s funny and goofy. And it reminded me of Wonder Showzen, which was a great show. For all I know it could be some of the same people doing it. But it was a good, fun thing. It was a little YouTube video worth your six minutes.

**Craig:** I’ll check that out. I do have a Cool Thing. I’ve been holding this one back for awhile, because again, I hate praising — myself or anyone. But I have a friend named Ken White. He’s a lawyer. He’s a defense attorney actually here in Southern California. I give him a lot of crap about defending criminals and all the rest, although somebody has to do it, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Ken is one of them, maybe the principal author, of a multi-author blog called Popehat. Popehat. Popehat.com.

And what I love about Ken is he’s — I mean, politically he and I are very similar. Just sort of strong libertarian streaks, no party allegiance, not afraid to point our fingers at anyone and go, pfft, like that. And he is an excellent writer. He’s an excellent writer and very good at explaining legal things. And there was one saga that he followed, I don’t if you were familiar with the Prenda Law case.

**John:** I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** So, there’s this whole thing about these copyright trolls, where these companies will buy up copyrights that are essentially worthless and then go after people who are maybe pirating them or maybe not, and just extorting settlement fees out of them.

And there was this company, Prenda, that basically, they were a law firm. And what they did was they…

**John:** By the way, Prenda is such a made up name.

**Craig:** Isn’t it amazing, right? Prenda.

So, Prenda is a law firm. And this law firm decided, “Look at all the money we can make. What we’re going to do is we’re going to basically start a shell company, as lawyers we’re going to start a shell company that will represent,” this is already a no-no. “That shell company will buy up a bunch of useless copyright for porn. Old copyright porn, okay. And then we’re going to go and basically find some ding-a-ling somewhere that downloaded four minutes of that porn, or not, send them a threatening letter and say basically you need to settle with us.”

And it was an amazing scam, because who wants to actually go to court over their porn downloading? Except one guy did. And oh my god did Prenda Law get their asses handed to them. And Ken just covered it beautifully and wrote about it in such a great, clear, instructional way, with plenty of doses of anger. And all the things you could want from a wonderful internet nerd. He is a great guy. And so I recommend that you all check out Popehat.com.

**John:** Fantastic. So, links to Popehat.com and this Hero’s Journey clip on YouTube and all the things we were talking about on today’s podcast you can find at johnaugust.com/podcast.

If you have a question for us, if it’s longer you can write to ask@johnaugust.com. And Stuart sort of sorts through those and helps find the good questions out of those batches. But if you have a small thing you want to say to Craig or to me, Craig is @clmazin on Twitter. I am @johnaugust on Twitter.

We have a Facebook page that we never actually mention, but people sometimes come there and like us.

**Craig:** They do?

**John:** We do have a Facebook page.

**Craig:** Huh. I’m plugged in as always.

**John:** Yeah. If you are listening to this in iTunes and want to give us a rating, that would be fantastic. We’d love that. It helps other people find our show. If you are not listening to us on iTunes, it would be great if you subscribed, because that way we would sort of know how many people are out there listening to our show.

And I think that’s it.

**Craig:** I think we should get Bon Jovi to sing us out.

**John:** That would be fantastic.

**Craig:** We’re the Bon Jovi of screenwriting podcasts.

**John:** Yes. So, actually we have like two minutes here so I’m going to just launch into this right now. Because one of the things I want to be doing after this 100 episode madness has cleared is originally when I was doing the outros for these shows I would like find some goofy thing on YouTube that seemed to be about what we were talking about. And I would use that audio as the outro, which was fun, but I didn’t actually clear any of those clips.

And so in backups we’ve clipped that out because like, eh, I would hate for some weirdo, some Prenda Law person to come after for me using that.

**Craig:** Prenda.

**John:** So, what I’ve started doing is just took our [hums theme] theme and just built that into different little arrangements in GarageBand, which was fun and goofy for me to do. But, I would love some of our listeners to do the same kind of thing, and to give us an outro that uses [hums theme], and build something cool out of it.

So, if listeners would like to do that, the same address I gave to you before, ask@johnaugust.com, is the perfect place to do that. And just send us a link to something you’ve made.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** We’ll have more details up at some point with — it’s not a competition, it’s just an exhibition of…

**Craig:** It’s a competition. I’ll be judging. [laughs]

**John:** Craig will be silently judging what people are doing.

**Craig:** Silently judging.

**John:** But I really mean just if you have an interesting sound or a free couple hours on a Saturday and want to do something, I have a hunch that we have some very talented listeners who are not just writers, but who can also do musical kind of things.

**Craig:** Yeah, man.

**John:** So, if anyone would like to do a little outro, to be less than 30 seconds. It should be accessible to us in some way as a mp3 file so we can clip it onto the end of this. And if we do use your thing we will give you a link and a shout out in the show.

**Craig:** Nice! Man, this podcast is getting good. It took us 97 episodes. I feel like we’re just about there to good.

**John:** We’re in a pretty good place. I think in the Behind the Podcast we’re almost at a place where “and then drugs came into the picture.”

**Craig:** Oh, exactly, like, “Everything was going great, and then…” This is it, oh, listen to that. The drugs [sirens blare in background]…they’re coming for me. Drugs.

Well, listen, the drugs will be kicking in. That’s the title of this podcast. [laughs] And then the drugs kicked in.

**John:** All right, Craig, have yourself a great week.

**Craig:** You, too, man. Bye.

**John:** I’ll talk to you next time.

LINKS:

* The live [100th episode](http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2013/07/script-notes.html) is sold out!
* WGA’s [2013 Annual Financial Report](http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/annual_reports/annualreport13.pdf)
* [John’s 2011 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2011/you-cant-copyright-titles) on copyrighting movie titles
* [You got served: Weinstein fighting for ‘The Butler’ title](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/goldstandard/la-et-mn-butler-name-change-20130703,0,6660171.story) from the LA Times
* [The Hero’s Journey](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZxs_jGN7Pg&feature=player_embedded) by Glove and Boots
* [Popehat.com](http://www.popehat.com/) and their [posts on Prenda Law](http://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/)