Archives for 2013

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/notes-on-the-death-of-the-film-industry).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 95 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** Doing pretty good. I’ve got my son with me today. He’s not going to be a guest speaker. He’s 11, so he has nothing to say about any of this. He’s in the other room; I told him to read. So my guess is he’s in the other room not reading.

**John:** Is he on the iPad?

**Craig:** Probably.

**John:** Yeah. The iPad is just such crack for anybody… — Really, it’s crack for everybody, but like for kids especially, that sense of like, well, they want the iPad and it becomes the one thing I can threaten to take away from my daughter or actually just take away from daughter to actually have a consequence.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so it goes up on top of the refrigerator when there are problems.

**Craig:** You’re absolutely right. It is crack for kids. If you ever go to a kids’ science museum or something like that, those museums exist simply to allow children to press buttons.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** They love to press buttons and see lights come on. They learn nothing from the buttons and the lights.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** If you have 12, you could have a science museum where they’ve actually Jurassic Parked real dinosaurs to life, and kids would not be looking at the dinosaurs; they would be touching a button that makes a light go on.

**John:** Yeah. And god help you if a button — if the light bulb in the button has gone out, because they don’t see the cause and effect. They really just want the light to come on for that thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. They will whack the button over and over. My son crossing the street today hit the street crossing button four thousand times.

**John:** Yeah. Just because. And a lot of times the street crossing buttons, they have no physical button anymore. They’re just sensing that something has happened. And that can be frustrating. Or, also, the elevators now that do the sense your finger, like you tap it, but there’s nothing to actually press in, and so that doesn’t light up. That’s a frustration for all of us. Like, you know, did it really happen? It’s a tree falling in the forest, but if a button was pressed and it doesn’t give you visible results…

**Craig:** Right. That’s horrifying.

**John:** Yeah. You never know. It’s horrifying.

**Craig:** Horrifying.

**John:** Well, today we’re going to be talking about visible results and things that are unknown. We’re going to be talking about the film industry and the reports of its imminent demise.

**Craig:** It’s over. It’s all over!

**John:** So, over the past couple weeks we’ve had four prominent filmmakers talk about how they perceive the film industry going on a path that is unsustainable and it raises the question are things fundamentally broken. Is this just a change we’re going through? So, we can talk about that and we’ll really dig into that for this hour.

But first we have news and things to talk through.

First off, thank you to everyone who bought t-shirts. A lot more people bought t-shirts than we were expecting, but we will be able to send those out starting July 1.

**Craig:** Amazing.

**John:** Statistically blue outsold orange about two to one.

**Craig:** Good. So, Umbrage-Blue outsold Rational-Orange.

**John:** Yeah, so of course I billed it as Umbrage-Orange and Rational-Blue, which would naturally make sense, orange being the color of outrage and frustration. But, I could understand why people went for the blue even though it’s not really the Scriptnotes color, because it’s just easy to wear a blue shirt.

**Craig:** It’s much easier to wear a blue shirt. Orange is orange, after all. Plus, we did make a huge deal about Stuart saying it was the softest shirt ever.

**John:** Yes. We really did make a big deal out of that. So, we’ll see. And, I mean, Stuart — I hope he’s right.

**Craig:** Boy.

**John:** Now, the shirts were actually by different manufacturers, so they genuinely are different shirts. The orange ones were American Apparel. The blue ones were by another manufacturer, and that’s why they were physically different. And Stuart wanted to describe to me why they were different. And so that’s how he came upon the language of them being the softest shirt he ever touched.

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to personally — I’m grabbing a blue one.

**John:** All right. Now, we also added women’s sizes at the very last minute, like actually the store was already up and I said, well, could we add women’s sizes. And they were like, yeah, we could do that. So, we did that and I’m glad we did because we sold quite a few women’s shirts. Weirdly, of all the categories of all the shirts, the only shirt we did not sell — we did not sell one single women’s extra-small in orange.

**Craig:** An extra-small t-shirt makes no sense for anyone. I don’t care if you’re a dwarf. It makes no sense. Because we all know that t-shirts shrink. Everybody buys a t-shirt a little… — First of all, it’s a t-shirt; it’s not Lycra. We don’t want to wear a sausage casing. So, we want it a little loose. And we know it’s going to shrink, so we always buy up a little bit. Like, do you wear a large?

**John:** I wear a large in American Apparel. A medium in other things.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I’ll typically wear a large t-shirt. I will never wear a medium t-shirt. I just don’t want a t-shirt touching me that close. Large. That feels right.

But, yeah, women’s extra-small? Who could possibly wear that? A fetus?

**John:** There are women who are quite small. There are women who are quite petite. And Stuart was describing one of his roommates who actually has to buy child sizes because she’s such a small person. So, that’s a real thing.

**Craig:** So, really she should buy the child’s extra-large.

**John:** Now, if you want a Scriptnotes t-shirt for your son, does your son wear adult sizes or does your son still wear kid sizes?

**Craig:** Oh my god, are you kidding me? My 11-year-old…

**John:** Your son is a giant, right?

**Craig:** My 11-year-old son with size 10 feet? Yeah, he wears adult clothing now.

**John:** We are printing one extra t-shirt for my daughter which will be in a child size. And they’ll just throw it on the press and it will be cute.

**Craig:** My son can absolutely wear, I mean, I think an adult medium is probably what he does.

**John:** Yeah. So, shirts are going to be going out July 1. Also on July 1 we will be starting to sell tickets hopefully for the 100th Episode of Scriptnotes, the live taping that we’re doing in Hollywood.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** So, on that day there will be a link for where you can come and buy them and come see us and talk with us. But, this Saturday, June 29, we will be part of the Writers Guild Foundation Craft Day and we’re going to be recording Episode 96 there. So, I f you want to come see us live, that would be a fantastic chance because Craft Day, actually I think this is going to turn out to be really cool. So, I was looking at the description which was more elaborately filled out than last time I talked about it. The other guests at Craft Day are pretty cool.

So, it’s a whole day event. There’s a panel on Why I Wrote It, with Travis Beacham, Evan Daugherty, Karl Gajdusek, Marti Noxon, and Edward Ricourt.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Those screenwriters talking about why they wrote certain things. Why We Chose It, which is people from the Austin Film Festival, The Black List, the Nicholl Fellowship people to talk about sort of why they picked and singled out certain scripts and sort of how that whole process works.

**Craig:** Yeah. And Matt and Greg are sort of — they’re running the competitions, the actual script competitions. So, that would definitely be good for you guys.

**John:** And we’ve said this on this podcast many, many times, the only things you should really be thinking about for competitions probably are Austin Film Festival and Nicholl Fellowships. And those people will be there.

**Craig:** Those are the two guys, yeah.

**John:** And the third panel is Why We Bought It, a panel of producers and execs talking about what’s selling and why they buy the things that they buy. So, those seem like good panels and useful things for aspiring screenwriters.

Now, on our Scriptnotes thing, which is the first thing of the day, we are going to be doing a Three Page Challenge, or a couple Three Page Challenges live there on stage. So, people have been emailing in with their normal Three Page Challenge entries but saying, “I will be there at the live Craft Day.” And so we will be going through that list and pulling out people who are actually going to be there physically so we can talk with them about what they did, what worked great, what could have worked better.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** So, join us for that.

**Craig:** And that is the idea that before we show up… — I talk as if — I play both the part of the guy that doesn’t know what’s going on, but also when I’m not playing the part of the guy that doesn’t know what’s going on, I actually am the guy that does not know what’s going on. [laughs]

So, is the idea that we’re going to put those Three Page Challenge scripts on your website prior to this event so that people can read them and kind of have them, or are we handing them out there?

**John:** We are literally handing them out there. And in these handouts will also be some stuff which will never go on the website because I don’t want them to be on the website. So, I will be actually giving some Three Pages from my unproduced scripts and you may choose to do that or not choose to do that.

**Craig:** Oh, sure, I might do that.

**John:** And so literally I want to do this on paper with watermarks and saying “Please do not distribute these, because this is just for the people in the room so we can talk about it in the room, but I just don’t want these things going out over the internet.”

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, come to us and see us. Tickets for the Writers Guild Foundation Event are at wgfoundation.org. And there are still some tickets left. So, if you’re interested and you’re listening to this on the Tuesday that we are putting this podcast up, you should be able to get a ticket to it.

**Craig:** And just so people know, the Writers Guild Foundation is not part of the Writers Guild Union. It’s vaguely associated with it, but it’s a non-profit. It’s a 501(c)(3). It’s a non-profit that raises money to support the screenwriting community. For instance, the Writers Guild Foundation supports the Writers Guild Foundation Library, which is at the Writers Guild Building, where people can go in and read classic scripts or not-so-classic scripts.

They do a lot of wonderful things for screenwriters and for screenwriting education. So, it’s charity, people.

**John:** Yeah, like they do the Veterans Outreach Program.

**Craig:** Right, they do.

**John:** Which is partnering working screenwriters with retuning soldiers and veterans to get their stories to the screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re great people. And I’m a supporter, as I know you are. And I’m glad to be doing this for them.

**John:** Hooray. So, let’s get to our main topic today which is the death of Hollywood, which would seem to be something to discuss considering many people listening to our podcast would hope to work in Hollywood. And based on the reports of four very prominent filmmakers — well, three very prominent filmmakers and a producer you haven’t heard of even though you’ve seen all her movies — Hollywood is pretty much doomed.

**Craig:** Right. It’s doomed.

**John:** So, you should maybe steer yourself in a different direction.

So, I guess this all started — this last round I would say was started with the Spielberg and Lucas conversation, because that got the most press attention most recently.

So, this was at the June 12 dedication of the Interactive Media Building at USC Cinema. USC’s film school is amazing now. They’ve built all these great buildings and programs, but the new one they opened up was the Interactive Media Building.

And at this Spielberg and Lucas spoke and they were on a little panel. And so here are some things they said. Spielberg said, “There’s going to be a meltdown or an implosion where three or four or even a half dozen of these mega budget movies are going to come crashing to the ground and its going to change the paradigm again.” So, he was a predicting a…

**Craig:** Multiple John Carters of Mars.

**John:** Exactly. And what Lucas said was, “What you’re going to end up with is fewer theaters, bigger theaters, with a lot of nice things in them. Going to movies is going to cost you $50, maybe $100, maybe $150.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Spielberg says, “Like a Broadway play.” Lucas says, “Like Broadway, or going to a football game.”

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** Lucas continues, “I think eventually the Lincolns will go away and they’re going to be on television.” And Spielberg says, “That almost happened to the actual Lincoln. It almost went to HBO.”

So, let’s talk about the Lucas and Spielberg perspective on this first because there’s really two threads I see here. First off is Hollywood’s push towards the mega-blockbuster as the main thing they’re making. And with that, they’re not making the Lincolns. They’re not making the prestige pictures to the same degree.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Okay.

**John:** And second topic would be Lucas’ idea that there will be variable pricing or super event pricing for the big movies, which would differentiate them from smaller movies. Like an indie might still be like a $10 ticket, but a giant blockbuster will be a $50 ticket.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Let’s start with the Spielberg idea, because this idea that we’ve become an industry of making these mega-blockbusters that cost $200 million and therefore have to make $400 million worldwide to become considered even a modest success. True?

**Craig:** If it’s at all true, it’s true because of the two people that are complaining about it, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I mean, this is what blows my mind. First of all, I don’t think it is true. But, let’s just take a step back.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are specifically the two people that turned modern moviemaking into blockbuster moviemaking. You can’t put it at anyone else’s feet. Those two guys did it. And it is bizarre to me that they have suddenly decided that it’s a bad thing. And I have a theory about why they’re complaining about it, and it kind of connects them to Soderbergh who we’re going to hear from in a minute or two, as well as Lynda Obst.

But, the fact is that people have loved big blockbuster movies. They’ve loved them since Lucas and Spielberg invented the modern blockbuster. That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t make smaller movies, or medium-sized movies, not does it mean that those small or medium-sized movies don’t find audiences. They do.

We have absolutely pushed the envelope of size. I’ll agree with them on that. Big movies are now enormously big. Much, much bigger than they ever were before, both in terms of their budget and scale and also in terms of the audience they’re pulling in. But…

**John:** Let’s talk for a moment about why they’ve gotten bigger, not just sort of the budget wise, but why we’re pushing towards making these giant things. And the foreign seems to be the consensus for why we’re making these huge movies because these huge movies actually do work overseas in ways that smaller moves don’t tend to work overseas. The argument being that a much bigger percentage of a film’s ultimate gross will come from overseas and it is the giant movies that end up working overseas, whereas smaller movies don’t tend to work overseas.

**Craig:** Kind of. I mean, let’s remember that all things being equal we’ll make more money here than there because we get a bigger percentage of it here than we do there.

**John:** Bring it back.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, it’s not quite a one-to-one comparison. I think that the reliance on size probably has something to do with our sense of divided attention, our need to make the movie going experience somehow special or an event for people when they go.

And, also, it’s hard to kind of overlook what James Cameron has done. James Cameron has only made two movies, I mean, two real movies. I mean, he’s made documentaries and things, but he made Titanic and Avatar if you look at the last, whatever it is, about 15 years I guess.

**John:** Yeah. And they’re the biggest movies of all time.

**Craig:** They’re the biggest movies of all time. It’s almost like everybody is looking and saying, well, some people are making movies, some people are making huge movies like say The Avengers or Iron Man. And then there’s one guy that seems to be making some other product that is so mind-boggling to people that they just buy it, they buy tickets for it at a rate that is hard to comprehend.

It’s natural that of course people are going to want to try and make some of those bigger movies, and yes, some of them will do amazingly well. Some of them will crash and burn. I will tell you that when they do well they ultimately make more money than the crashes and burns lose. And yet studios simply can’t live on cake alone. They do make other kinds of movies, thank god, because you know what? I don’t write those big huge movies. Neither do you.

**John:** I really don’t either. So, let’s talk about — Scott Mendelson in Forbes had an article questioning Lucas and Spielberg’s rant a bit. And he made a good point that, you know, Spielberg is saying that we’re going to have some of these big movies tank and then everything is going to change. But really if you look at the last few years we’ve had some of these big movies tank and it hasn’t had that effect at all, really.

So, if you look at Jack the Giant Slayer, John Carter, Battleship, Green Lantern, Rise of the Guardians, all those movies were pretty spectacular disappointments/disasters. But they didn’t end up sinking any of those studios because studios had other movies to do. And I would question the degree to which any one studio would fall based on making two or three big movies that didn’t work. Executives would go away, but I don’t know that the film industry would go away or those individual producers.

**Craig:** Even the executives aren’t going away. I mean, Battleship happened and nobody got fired. Because the truth is the same people over there are overseeing the Fast and Furious movies.

**John:** Yeah. And there are also some old fashioned movies that we’re still making that are doing well. 42 is an example of a movie that made almost $100 million which was a very good classic American movie. We’re making originals that succeed. So, The Purge was an original idea that did well for us. Now You See Me was not that expensive, did well. Identity Thief, an original movie that made a lot of movie. Spring Breakers made a lot of money.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, we are still making some original movies. So, they may not be the movies that Spielberg and Lucas are trying to make and there may be a selectivity bias.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Look, The Blind Side, it was literally a blockbuster that was made for $40 million and was absolutely not some sort of big enormous movie.

Look, let’s talk for a second about this whole question of “I think eventually the Lincolns will go away.” No. Here’s the thing: The Lincolns won’t go away. Well, maybe that kind of movie will go away. See, the thing is, you can’t make a movie like Lincoln with the kind of budget that Lincoln requires unless you’re Steven Spielberg.

See, the thing is nobody wants to take that chance to spend whatever… — I mean, Lincoln had to have cost a lot of money.

**John:** Yeah, 60 is a number that’s popping into my head but I don’t know that it’s accurate or not.

**Craig:** My guess is more, but let’s just say, $60 million is a lot of movie to make for a period historical drama. It’s a lot, because you just don’t know if it’s going to attract that many people to the theater. I went. I liked it. But, this is just life. And it’s not charity; if moves were charity than Spielberg should take his considerable fortune and just start making charitable films. But he doesn’t; in fact, he’s a business man who owns a huge part of a theme park based on blockbusters that he’s currently decrying.

You can still make Lincolns; you just can’t make them for $60 million. You can make them for $30 million, the way that Kathryn Bigelow is doing it when she makes political movies. You can do period pieces and historical studies. John Lee Hancock who did Blind Side has a lovely movie that’s going to be out this fall about the writing of Mary Poppins. And it’s essentially a biopic of Pam Travers, the author of Mary Poppins. That’s about as small as it gets, you know. I think it probably costs about $40 million, I’m guessing, maybe $35 million. Absolutely.

**John:** They’ll make it.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. If you want to be Steven Spielberg and have this huge cast and $70 million of stuff, then maybe no.

**John:** So, let’s feed this back into the previous rant which is Steven Soderbergh’s rant, which was April 27 of this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And so he was giving the big keystone speech of it. I guess it was — I don’t know if it was opening night or closing night, but he was giving the big speech.

And the speech is, I think some people criticized it as being rambling because it did sort of go all over to different topics. I’ve narrowed it down to a few key points. One of the things I took away was, “The simplest way that I can describe it is that a movie is something you see and cinema is something that is made.” So, he’s talking about we need to stop thinking about cinema as being just what happens on the big screen but like making movies for HBO, we need to consider that, “Well that can be cinema if the goal of what you’re doing is to create a singular vision. Cinema is specificity of vision. It’s a way of approaching everything that matters.”

It’s about making a movie that is unique to — I’m now paraphrasing — but unique to your vision versus somebody else’s vision.

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** And that, I think, is a meaningful distinction and it may be a reason why just because we stop making Lincoln for the big screen, maybe — or we stop making Spielberg’s Lincoln for the big screen — and we start making it for HBO, that doesn’t mean that culture has failed or that moviemaking has failed or cinema has failed. We just put it to a different screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s true. I have no problem with — I don’t connect the value of movies or cinema or whatever synonym he wishes to use and attempt to bifurcate. I don’t attach quality to medium, if it’s wonderful and it’s on TV or it’s wonderful and on film, on screen in the theater, great.

My issue with him is that he says, “That cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a signature or fingerprint. It isn’t made by a committee. It isn’t made by a company. And it isn’t made by the audience. It means that if this filmmaker didn’t do it, it either wouldn’t exist at all or it wouldn’t exist in anything like this form.”

Well, that’s just classic director chauvinism and it’s remarkable for a man that doesn’t write any of his own movies. So, here’s a guy who picks up a screenplay somebody else writes and has decided that it’s happening because of the specificity of his vision. Well, that’s a neat trick. [laughs]

Yeah, there is a committee. It absolutely is made by a committee, Steven Soderbergh. It’s made by you. It’s made by your screenwriter. It’s made by your producer. And it’s made by your cast and your editor. Yeah. There is a committee. You may consider yourself the ultimate arbiter. You may be the chair person of that creative committee, but it’s a committee. There are other people involved whose visions are integral to the movies you make. And to suggest otherwise, frankly, is just dumb.

**John:** Okay, I will push back from his perspective is that regardless of whether you’re talking one filmmaker or this core group of filmmakers, he is arguing that the studios aren’t even trying to make movies that are cinema. They’re not even trying to make movies that have a unique vision. Instead they are trying to, far too often, make the biggest thing they can possibly make that could have been made by anybody rather than it could only have been made by this person, or this group of people.

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** So, an example, as I was trying to think of like, well, what could he be talking about, what are the counter examples to his argument.

**Craig:** I have one.

**John:** So, look at Christopher Nolan.

**Craig:** Yeah, Inception. Like, explain Inception.

**John:** Well, exactly. And sometimes those exceptions are interesting test cases to look at sort of what studios could be doing much better. So, I think if studios were taking more gambles on filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, filmmakers like Rian Johnson, I think we might have a more interesting batch of movies coming out, a more unique batch of movies coming out, and some really terrifically successful movies coming out.

**Craig:** Yeah, but they do. I mean, my point is that Sony releases Looper. And the releasing of Looper is where all the money is. It probably costs more to advertise it and release it than to make it. Warner Bros., I mean, you could say, “Well, is it a risk that they’re taking on Nolan?” No, Nolan is a cash cow for them and they’re doing him a favor and it totally paid off because Nolan is a genius.

But, by the same token, I think all studios constantly make these bets. If they’re trying to do something, the studio is trying to do something and it’s a programmer, then it’s a programmer and I understand that. And Soderbergh isn’t in that business. Very well. But, you know, somebody took a gamble on him making Ocean’s Eleven which was a big, huge movie.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I don’t — so much of this, frankly, just seems like older men grouching because shit ain’t going the way it used to go for them. I’m just going to be really, really frank. Because I do think there are problems in our business right now. I don’t like a lot of the stuff I see. I don’t. I’m not talking about the movies; I’m talking about the way the business is moving. But I also find this weird grouching from guys that used to basically just do whatever they wanted to do and now are having to deal with a little bit of reality, it’s a little bizarre to me. You know, particularly in the case of Spielberg and Lucas, it is like, guys, you know, you could make any movie you want! You could! You just don’t.

Or you complain that nobody saw Red Tails. Well, whose fault is that? I mean, that’s our fault now? That’s Hollywood’s fault that nobody went to go see Red Tails? We’re sorry. We didn’t want to go see it. We’ve all made movies people don’t want to go see. It happens.

Soderbergh said he was retiring years ago and made more movies since his retirement announcement than anybody, some of which I’ve really liked, some of which I haven’t. Who cares? The guy has cemented his place in film history. He’s made a lot of terrific movies. But what is he complaining about here? He just seems angry, frankly, that people aren’t going to see his movies. You know, if people were just going to go see his movies more, my guess is that he would be happier with the way that Hollywood is going.

**John:** I think you’re cherry picking Soderbergh a little bit here, because he does literally say, “So, here’s a thought. Maybe nothing is wrong. Taken from a 30,000 foot view, nothing is wrong, and my feeling that studios are kind of like Detroit before the bailout is totally unsupportable.” He does allow for the possibility that he is just seeing this wrong. And I think that is a very valid perspective is that when you had the ability to make any movie, and now you don’t have the ability to make any movie, of course you’re going to perceive that something is fundamentally broken.

But, it may just be that something has fundamentally changed, which I think is a good segue to the third or actually the fourth filmmaker who sort of enters into this conversation is Lynda Obst. So, Lynda Obst is a producer who has made many, many movies for Hollywood. Sleepless in Seattle, but also a lot more.

She has a book out called Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business, which I have not read. You haven’t read it either, have you?

**Craig:** No. I don’t think it’s out yet, is it?

**John:** I think it’s shipping now.

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** If it’s shipping then I’ll put a link to it, but if not…

**Craig:** Hopefully they fix their strange error. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. But Obst has been doing a lot of press for it the last two weeks and so I went through and sort of found some of the things, including an excerpt from her book.

She explains the book or sets up the book as being an exploration through interviews with studio executives, producers, and writers, searching for answers about how the film industry has changed. She says, “I set off to figure out what the hell was going on because I couldn’t figure it out myself. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to get the same kinds of movies made that I was able to get made in the first half of my career.”

She describes a massive upheaval which separates the “old abnormal” from the “new abnormal.” So, trying to pretend, it wasn’t like everything was always perfect back before. It was really, really messed up. It’s just messed up in a different way now. And she talks about the three ways that are sort of trending in Hollywood right now, which are the tent-poles, the big giant super blockbusters, the tadpoles which are the small budget indie films, and television, which I think are useful ways to think about sort of what is actually happening and getting made these days.

**Craig:** To an extent. Again, I don’t want to come off as somebody that’s cheerleading an industry that is doing just great. It’s not. There is — the real truth here — what they’re all dancing around is the elimination of that middle, you know, just as we talked about the screenwriting business being one of the elimination of the middle. So, now you just have A-list and new guys.

Similarly in movies, we have the mega movies, we have the little movies, and that middle, which is where the business used to churn out lots of interesting — or not interesting fare — but lots of stuff, seemingly has gone away, particularly in the areas of dramas for adults.

And yet, Argo. And yet, year after year we see interesting films come out that challenge that completely. Zero Dark Thirty and so on and so on. So, they happen. They just don’t happen as frequently. And so interestingly the business has shed a lot of people. A lot of people that used to work, frankly, don’t work anymore. Yeah. There’s a grumpy vibe in the air, no question. No question. But…

**John:** Well, let’s talk for a second, because you can say, yes, we’re making Zero Dark Thirty. And, yes, we’re making Argo. And, yes, we’re making Silver Linings Playbook, which are wonderful. But, because we’re making fewer of those movies it also means we’re developing fewer of those movies, which from a screenwriter’s point of view makes it much harder to be one of those very few projects that is developed to come into one of those projects.

And so I think romantic comedies is a really interesting place to take a look here because Silver Linings Playbook is arguably the last romantic comedy that has done anything like business in the last two years. And we used to make romantic comedies all the time.

Two possibilities of why we don’t make more romantic comedies. First off is that they’re just not working domestically for whatever reason. Second possibility is that they don’t travel overseas at all because they’re too specific to an American audience. And so we’re not able to make that piece of the pie in the overseas that you would be able to make in other kinds of movies.

**Craig:** I don’t believe that. I don’t. I don’t believe that the reason that romantic comedies have fallen off is because Chinese and Indian audiences are less interested.

First of all, the emphasis on China is absurd. They let so few movies in anyway. India has its own very vibrant film market. I mean, if I’m worrying about overseas markets, I’m worrying more about Russia, and Germany, and Brazil, and France, and England.

But, that aside, I think the reason that romantic comedies have fallen off somewhat is because we got sick of them. We are waiting for the romantic comedy genre to be reinvented and reinvigorated. And, also, romantic comedies traditionally have been so actor dependent, particularly on American falling in love with a woman. And Julia Roberts was kind of our last great romantic comedy star. Reese Witherspoon kind of had a little bit of that. Jennifer Lopez, sort of, a little bit. Everybody just seemed kind of pale imitation of Julia Roberts who was queenly in her reign.

It’s funny, whatever you think about Julia Roberts now, or her films that she’s made recently, Julia Roberts at run is a great Hollywood run. She is a first ballot Hollywood Hall of Famer. A classic movie star. And we haven’t had that kind of actor in awhile to sort of say, “I want to see this person in romantic comedies.”

And that may have something to do also with the fact that women actors are just less interested in playing those parts. That culturally we’ve just — not as interested in romantic comedy. We should ask Aline that question.

**John:** I would also posit that the rise of the television romantic comedy has taken the need for that out of the market. So, you look at the New Girl, you look at Girls to some degree, you look at the Mindy Kaling show, we do our romantic comedies on television right now which makes it more difficult to find what is special and unique about the two-hour big screen romantic comedy that’s actually going to be worthwhile and make us want to go out and see that versus seeing an ongoing series of it every week on television.

**Craig:** I don’t know. I mean, what was Cheers if not a romantic comedy? And what was Friends if not a romantic comedy? And romantic comedies, there were more sitcoms and so many of them were “will they/won’t theys” and romances at their heart. I’m not sure that sitcoms really fulfill what people go to see romantic comedy for. It just feels like we’ve outgrown that particular specific romantic comedy formula.

They still happen, you know. I mean, they’re out there, but they seem… — You know, it’s funny, you look at what Bridesmaids did and you think, hmm, maybe that’s just a more interesting kind. Because isn’t that a romantic comedy?

**John:** Yeah, it is a romantic comedy.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** Underneath all the other layers it’s a romantic comedy.

**Craig:** Right. It’s just not a romantic fairytale comedy, which is what all of our other fairytale — that’s what you and I grew up on and that’s what Julia Roberts kind of hit her stride with was fairytale comedy.

**John:** Yeah. At some point he will recognize that she’s pretty and everything will end up happily ever after.

**Craig:** That’s right. She makes a wish and there’s a downtrodden, misunderstood woman who is ignored and overlooked even though she’s HOT, and because she wears glasses, and her hair is weird. And then there’s a man. And then they fall in love. It’s all Cinderella. It’s all fairytale stuff. And frankly it’s all sort of pre-feminist and maybe that’s why now everybody’s kind of grown past it. Who knows?

But, you know, we’ll try and blame the marketplace on that, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think you can definitely look at the marketplace and say, “Okay, we’re not making All the President’s Men,” those kinds of…

**John:** We’re making fewer of those.

**Craig:** Much fewer. Many fewer. Many fewer, I think.

**John:** Many fewer. Yeah, probably, either way.

**Craig:** But, you know, some of this stuff it’s like, okay, you know, Lynda Obst seems to be, you know, she talks to — there’s this moment here in the book where she has this long conversation with Peter Chernin who is a very powerful man. He used to run Fox. For awhile he was considered the heir apparent to Rupert Murdoch himself. And now he’s a very powerful producer at Fox.

Curiously she credits him with Identity Thief, [laughs], a movie he had nothing to do with at all.

**John:** Nothing. She’s confusing it with The Heat which is the next Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy movie.

**Craig:** Ah, yes. She is confusing it with The Heat. Well, good for her to do her homework there.

**John:** Fact checking!

**Craig:** Yeah, fact checking. I mean, she is in the business, right? She knows that…okay. Anyway, she seems sort of stunned by Peter Chernin’s great revelation that the DVD market has gone away, [laughs], when the rest of us have known that for awhile now. Yeah. The DVD market, that’s really what’s going on.

**John:** So, in the excerpt that we’re both citing, there’s an excerpt in salon.com that I’ll put a link up to. She sits down with Peter Chernin and she adjusts herself on the couch quite a few times and leans in as he talks. But, some of what Chernin said I think is actually a useful synopsis of some of the changes that have happened.

**Craig:** Chernin is spot on.

**John:** Chernin is a very smart man.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so they’re describing this as The Great Contraction, and essentially the studios were relying on DVD profits to really bankroll most of what they were doing. And as the DVD market suddenly went off a cliff they were — it was much harder to turn that money around. It was also much harder to predict how much a given movie would make. And so they describe studios kind of getting frozen because they didn’t know whether to green light that movie or not green light that movie because they didn’t know how much they could actually hope to bring in on something.

And I’ve definitely felt that. Over the last few years there have been so many more movies that have seemed like they’re approaching the starting line and then they can never actually cross over that point because they just don’t know what the math of that is.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s absolutely true. It’s not… — He… — And maybe she’s misrepresenting; he goes a little too far when he says the studios are frozen, they’re terrified to do anything because they don’t know what the numbers look like. They have models. They mock models up. They have models based on comps.

Those models are, I find, very restrictive when we’re talking about smaller movies. So, for instance, on Identity Thief, you know, I thought, okay, well this is pretty good. We’ve got the director of Horrible Bosses that just made $100 million, and we have Melissa McCarthy who was just in Bridesmaids, and we have Jason Bateman who was also just in Horrible Bosses. This should all add up to something good. And they came back and they were like, “Movie that’s not a sequel, that’ snot based on anything, that’s rated-R, that’s a comedy, that doesn’t have what we consider to be a huge level star with box office draw across the world. You get $32 million. That’s it.” [laughs]

And, you know, it was like, “But we need $34 million to make the movie.”

“Well, you’re getting $32 million.”

**John:** Now, at any point did you see a spreadsheet or this was just the number they came back to?

**Craig:** No! Are you kidding? No. I did not. And here’s the thing: There are people who see spreadsheets, so I would talk all the time with Scott Stuber and Scott is the producer. He’s seeing lots of spreadsheets, but he’s probably not seeing the real spreadsheet. There’s like spreadsheets and then there’s spreadsheets, and then somewhere I feel there’s a man in a small room on an island who has the true spreadsheet.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just one man.

**John:** Yeah, people think that numbers are real, and numbers are only real if they’re actually backed up by findings. Otherwise they could just be people putting numbers into a spreadsheet to justify the decision that they’ve already made.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s a reality of all industries. But, our industry in particular because you really just don’t know; you have no idea of what’s going to happen and you don’t know — you could have a movie that will do tremendous box office, but the weekend that you released it something else horrible happens in the world and then nobody goes to the theaters.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s the reality of our fragile business.

**Craig:** It’s always been that way. And so I think everybody’s always been scared, but the one thing that Peter really nails — Peter Chernin — is that when the DVD business, and let’s extend it back to the VHS business, because the VHS business was a huge boon for the studios as well. When that happened it transformed 1980. Basically you’re looking at — roughly I’m saying, roughly — 1980 to let’s say 2005. It was a 25 year run where volume would make you money. Where just having titles made you money.

**John:** That was like the Jeffrey Katzenberg era of Disney where he was like, “Let’s make 35 movies a year.”

**Craig:** Exactly, because in the end it will make us money. It doesn’t matter if one loses, one wins. And it wasn’t about franchises. It wasn’t about, “Let’s get six or seven of these.” It was about, “Just put stuff out because then it’s on DVD or on VHS and it will sell and it will sell and people will buy them and rent them.” And there was just an enormous business around it and there had not yet been an internet avenue to circumvent all of that. So, there was, you know, there was always FBI piracy warnings on VHS cassettes, but who is sitting around copying VHS cassettes? You know what I mean?

It was just lame. They just didn’t happen that much, because it was annoying to do.

So, he’s right that there was this amazing 25-year run. And not coincidentally when we look at guys like Spielberg and Lucas, their rise coincides perfectly with the rise of VHS. I mean, they started a little bit ahead of it, but when they finally hit their stride with their blockbusters, Star Wars, Empire, Return of the Jedi and with Spielberg, Raiders, and Close Encounters, and I mean, everything basically. ET.

**John:** Poltergeist.

**Craig:** ET. Poltergeist. All of these huge, huge movies. The tail that trailed behind these comets of movies was enormous. It was just a comet tail made of cash and that’s gone. In a weird way what’s happening is we’re kind of rolling the clock back to the way things were before Lucas and Spielberg, I think.

And studios, you know, used to bet, you talk about big bets now, studios used to bet their entire business on a movie.

**John:** Yeah. They bet their entire studio on The Godfather, or to some degree Jaws. I mean, if Jaws had failed Universal would have been in real trouble.

**Craig:** And Heaven’s Gate did fail. And a studio collapsed.

**John:** That was UA right?

**Craig:** I believe that’s correct. I believe that’s correct. It was United Artists. And also the studio that made Cleopatra.

**John:** It was some iteration of MGM maybe?

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t know. I should know it. All I know is that had it done worse than it did that studio goes away.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They used to bet an entire studio on a movie. Are you looking it up?

**John:** I’m looking it up right now. The 1963 film of Cleopatra was for Joseph Mankiewicz, released by — oh, it was Fox.

**Craig:** It was Fox? All right. So, Fox. And Heaven’s Gate was United Artists. Yeah. Killed them.

**John:** So, let’s talk about a few other things that were brought up by these four filmmakers. And part of the reason why I wanted to have this conversation is because a lot of times journalists will say, “Hollywood is dead. Hollywood is dying,” or you’ll have anonymous cranks will say, “This is all ruined for these reasons.”

So, when four prominent filmmakers say it I think it’s worth paying attention to. Authority doesn’t make it right and that’s why I think it’s important to dig into it.

One of the things I didn’t think was right was Lucas’ postulate that ticket prices will split and that we’ll get big prices for the big movies and small prices for smaller movies.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I don’t see that ever happening.

**Craig:** No. I mean, now I start to feel like this dude is out of touch, like he’s just got too much money and doesn’t understand why people go to the movies and what the movie going experience means for them.

Movies exist for families to go somewhere with air conditioning and have a good time. It exists for teenagers to be able to entice girls to kiss them, or boys. It exists for fathers and sons to go watch stuff getting blown up and for nerds to see nerdy stuff on film. [laughs]

It speaks to the childishness in all of us and the childlike awesomeness in all of us, but it is a popular thing. It is for masses of people to go and sit together in a room and appreciate something together. That means that it will always be affordable. Always.

We may complain about ticket prices, but look, ticket prices go up a little bit here and there, a little bit here and there. It’s the stupid popcorn and the soda where they’re killing you every year. The ticket prices haven’t gone, I mean, how much have they gone up since, I don’t know, ten years ago?

**John:** I doubt they’ve actually gone up that much more than inflation. Here’s why I think he’s fundamentally wrong on this, and everything you said in terms of like the reasons why people go to the movies, beyond just to see the film is to actually just be out of the house and be with other people in a way that’s meaningful. Compare it to like a Broadway show. Well, a Broadway show is a thing that’s happening live in front of you that if you do not see it at that moment it doesn’t count.

It’s the same with a sporting event. And there’s a reason why people can choose to watch the game at home on TV, but they choose to go to the stadium to watch it with other people because it’s a different experience and they can see something different. And that’s why they’re willing to pay $60 for a ticket for that where they could watch it for free on television.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** That’s a different experience. It’s a social experience. A different thing. I don’t think movies are ever going to hit that level.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Now, where there is variable pricing is what’s actually right now. You can choose to see it in IMAX in 3D and pay the extra money to do that. And that’s your choice to do that. But we still always give you the option to not do that. And I think we’re going to have to keep giving people the option to not do that because if we try to only say like, “This movie can only be seen in 3D and IMAX and we’re going to charge you $25 for it,” that movie will not succeed.

**Craig:** I totally agree. And I also want to point out that his analogy to Broadway is additionally bizarre because if I go see a play, and Hugh Jackman is playing Curly, I’m seeing Hugh Jackman, I’m seeing a famous person. You know, you watch people line up for red carpets at movie premieres to see the famous person. I’m not seeing famous people when I go to the movie. I’m seeing a movie of a famous person.

There’s a connection — there’s someone performing for me. It’s intimate. Broadway theaters are very small, actually. I mean, you know this. They’re small. It’s intimate. You’re in a room. There’s nothing like that.

I agree that the issue of variable pricing will be connected to formats, things like IMAX and 3D and all the rest versus regular formatting. But, what it comes down to is this: If you make a movie and you struggle to get people to show up, it is natural for you to say, “There’s something wrong with Hollywood.” And if you’re making a movie and people do show up, I think it’s natural for you to say, “There’s nothing wrong with Hollywood; there is just something right with me.”

Neither of those things are true. [laughs] Hollywood keeps humming along and doing what it’s doing and trying to figure out how to keep its head above water, and it will. You know, they’re still profitable. I think a lot of these guys are crying because they used to make 15% or 20% and now they’re making 5%. You can keep it in at Wells Fargo.

**John:** So, to wrap up this conversation I want to have one last thought experiment of what if sort of Lucas and Spielberg are right, or sort of all these people are right, and the system is fundamentally broken and fundamentally is unsustainable at this level. What would happen? Would we stop — like let’s say three out of four of the big studios lose the ability to make the giant movies, or lose the ability to make sort of movies in a meaningful way? What happens?

**Craig:** Oh my god. I wish that happens. Because if that happens, John, then you and I and our richest friends should get together, pool our cash, and make a studio that does nothing but make $20 million movies about interesting things. And we will make a gazillion dollars.

Because the fact is you can talk about the business models and the flow and the ancillary markets, here’s what ultimately doesn’t really change: the audience’s appetite for certain kinds of movies. You may have to change the nature of those movies, like we were talking about, romantic comedies, and make it like this or make it like that, but people don’t just want The Avengers. They want to see The Avengers once a year. That’s enough for them. They don’t need it every week.

What are they going to see in February? [laughs] By the way, that’s what I am. I’m a February screenwriter.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Oh my god, it fills in February. And I have to say, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful towards George Lucas or Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh. I’m not as good as they are, obviously. They’ve all three of them made classic films. They’re brilliant men. They’re geniuses. I’m just me, right, I’m just Craig Mazin, which is the saddest thing in the world.

I just don’t think that they’re right about this. I think it is natural to begin to lose your optimism about systems that you are no longer the preeminent center of. And those gentlemen were the preeminent center of their environments. Steven Soderbergh basically was the center of the kind of what we’d call mini-major boom. His movie gave birth to Miramax and the mini-major boom. And Lucas and Spielberg…

**John:** And you look at what Soderbergh did with Section Eight, which is when he moved over to — he and Clooney moved over to Warner Bros. and actually started making really interesting moving for Warner Bros.

**Craig:** That’s right. And then he made Solaris. And it’s like, “Oh okay. They don’t all work.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But Warner Bros. let him make Solaris. Think about it! What is he complaining about, you know? He made The Good German?

At some point they have to say, “Okay, we can’t keep making The Good German and Solaris.”

**John:** Yeah. Enough black and white Tobey Maguire films.

**Craig:** Right. “So, you have to give us, like remember the fun funny one, with the adventure and the heist, the Ocean’s Eleven one? Go get Ted Griffin to write a genius script and go make that.”

But, I don’t know. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to them. I just think that they’re being — that they’re confusing their personal frustrations, perhaps, with how the business is going with some sort of cancer of the business. It’s not cancerous. It’s just in a weird place. It’s a phase. Everything is a cycle.

**John:** I think it’s fair to diagnose it and say it’s changing. And if it’s changing into a form that is away from what you want it to be, then you can say, “Well, it’s falling apart.” But it may actually be falling together into its next form.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s a hard thing to recognize when you’re at the middle of a transformation. Is this a transformation that’s going to be productive or a transformation that’s going to be ultimately destructive? And the answer is probably both. There are going to be reasons why you wish things wouldn’t have changed and things that will be new that will be very exciting that will happen because it changed.

And the filmmakers who are coming of age into this business, this is the normal for them. And they will find ways to thrive in that new form of normal.

**Craig:** God help them.

**John:** Yeah. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** I do!

**John:** Oh, tell me.

**Craig:** You’re bummed out, aren’t you? [laughs]

**John:** No, no, I’m excited. I’m excited when you’re prepared.

**Craig:** It’s a blast from the past for me. Have you heard about the 17-year cicadas?

**John:** I am so excited about them.

**Craig:** Where I grew up on Staten Island we had them, not only did we have them, I mean, we HAD them. So, New Yorkers don’t really get these 17-year cicadas. The deal with these things are they are a particular kind of cicada called Brood II, I think. And they come out, they mate furiously — furiously — for like two weeks. They have babies. The babies sort of drop into the ground and burrow into the ground like little — I don’t know what you call them — little grubs.

And they stay in the ground eating stuff subterraneanly for 17 years, at which point they emerge, fully grown, and have sex and die. And so every 17 years for two weeks there’s this wave of these cicadas. They are incredibly loud. And they are legion.

So, Manhattanites and Brooklyn and Queens folks, they wouldn’t get these things because there’s no ground; it’s all asphalt and concrete, but Staten Island, oh my god. And they’re out right now. So, 34 years ago when I was 7, 8, sorry 8, they came out and I just remember being agog. I have a very, very clear memory of my backyard on Staten Island, 154 Kelly Boulevard, look it up. That was my house.

In the backyard my dog, Woofy, yup, that’s right, jumping in the air and biting them out of the air. It was like a floating buffet and just eating them out of the air by the mouthful. It was amazing.

**John:** [laughs] See, I grew up in Colorado and we didn’t have anything like this. So, we had grasshoppers but it’s a completely different thing. We never had the searches, and swarms, and waves like that.

I’m kind of sad to miss it. It sounds actually horrifying. I don’t like insets.

**Craig:** It’s cool. No, I mean, but they really, there were so many of them that at some point it was just a joke. You would literally walk out your front door with a broom and just start brooming them away like snow. Yeah. And this noise was so loud.

**John:** I’ve heard several theories about sort of why this 17-year cycle happens. And the fact that it’s not a prime number is actually meaningful because other things that happen in cycles are much less likely to hit it. And so like something to do with bird cycles, and like the reason why they all come out at once is because they can just be in such vast numbers that your dog can eat 100,000 of them and it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.

**Craig:** Just ate so many. Did you say it was not a prime number?

**John:** 17 is a prime number. Sorry.

**Craig:** It is a prime number. Yes.

**John:** So, the fact that it is a prime number, therefore it won’t fit into any other cycle.

**Craig:** That’s right. It will sort of be on its, well, no, I mean, once you double it then it gets…it’s not prime, well, I don’t know.

**John:** Exactly. But something would have to be on a 34-year cycle to be able access the cicada pace.

**Craig:** Exactly. And it was, and I remember, they were white on the inside. I remember you would eat them. Ugh, so gross.

Yeah, so anyway, 17-year cicadas. I think they’re going on right now back in my hometown, back in Staten Island. [New York accent] “Oh my god, you see all these cicadas out? Unbelievable.”

**John:** Right now everybody is Google street viewing your old place. They can see the mansion you grew up because as we’ve established you grew up very wealthy; the wealthy son of two teachers in Long Island.

**Craig:** Take a look. Tell me that does not look like the house De Niro was in when Ray Liotta shows up to give him the gun parts in the third act of Goodfellas.

**John:** Good stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah. [New York accent] “Oh my god, what’s your One Cool Thing? You got one?”

**John:** I do. It’s Feedbin. So, I’ve been using Google Reader for many, many years to look at RSS feeds. And for people who don’t’ use RSS at all, RSS is this really smart technology that you sort of which had taken off in a bigger, more important way. Although, you’re actually using it at this moment because every podcast you’ve ever listened is actually carried by RSS.

But RSS is a way of going to websites and it pulls all the new articles from websites and aggregates them into one place. And so Google Reader was the preeminent RSS reader. And like most things Google, they came in, they did a much better job than everyone else, and everyone was like, “Oh, we’ll just use Google Reader for everything.” And so all the other services died away.

Google Reader announced earlier this year, “You know what? We’re going to stop with Google Reader.” And everyone goes, “Ah! What are we going to do? What are we going to possibly do?” And so they’re shutting down Google Reader June 30 or July 30, but very, very soon.

So, I’ve been looking for an alternative and a very good alternative has emerged called Feedbin. And Feedbin is a replacement for Google Reader. You throw all your feeds at it, so all the blogs you read, the websites you want to check out. It will pool them all together so the next time you go to Feedbin you will have a list of all the articles from all those blogs and sites that are waiting for you.

It’s very useful. It feeds into the Reader App on the iPhone. But actually the web interface for it is quite good, too, on the iPad, or on the Mac, or any other PC. You can just go to the web interface. And so I would recommend it. It’s $2 a month, which for the service it provides is worth it for me.

**Craig:** $2 a month. You’ll never miss it.

**John:** Now, Craig, do you use RSS? Or do you just actually go to individual websites?

**Craig:** I go to individual websites. Even when RSS was a thing, I never really… — Briefly I had a screensaver that basically collected a bunch of RSS feeds and would give me headlines and things. But, nah, I just go to websites.

**John:** It’s interesting because as Twitter rose, RSS also fell down a little bit because you could follow the website on Twitter and so then you would see like, oh, they have a new article and it sounds interesting. You could click through the link. What’s useful about this is it actually is pulling in most cases the full text of things. And so there are certain sites where I haven’t actually been to the site in years because I just always looked at the feed form.

**Craig:** Yeah. What I’ll do is I tend to go towards, sometimes I’ll use Fark, because they’re a pretty decent aggregator. Lately I’ve been going to BBC for news.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can’t take American news anymore. I’m out. I’m done. I can’t take any of it. I can’t — you tell me the one good American news outlet. I can’t find it.

**John:** I don’t know that I have a consistent good answer.

**Craig:** It’s just horrifying. It’s gross. It’s one of our great American failures. Ugh.

**John:** Ugh.

**Craig:** Blah!

**John:** But at least we have the movies. And I think we’ve established today that we will probably still have the movies in some form…

**Craig:** We will.

**John:** …maybe 17 years from now when the cicadas come out again.

**Craig:** When the cicadas come back, there will still be movies.

**John:** All right, Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Take care.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* John’s blog post on [this summer’s two live shows](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-live-in-la)
* [Why Spielberg And Lucas Are Wrong About The Film Industry ‘Implosion’](http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/06/20/why-spielberg-and-lucas-are-wrong-about-the-film-industry-implosion/)
* [Independent Film in Hollywood and France](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/06/the-ingredients-for-a-healthy-cinema.html)
* Watch [Steven Soderbergh’s ‘State of Cinema’ address from the San Francisco Film Festival](http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch-full-video-recording-of-steven-soderberghs-impassioned-state-of-cinema-address-from-the-san-francisco-film-festival)
* [Lynda Obst: Hollywood’s completely broken](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/15/lynda_obst_hollywoods_completely_broken/)
* [Cicada Mania](http://www.cicadamania.com/) is dedicated to cicadas
* [Feedbin](https://feedbin.me/): A fast, simple RSS feed reader
* [RSS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) on Wikipedia

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/10-questions-10-answers).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 94 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, in full disclosure, this is our second attempt at doing episode 94, because we got four minutes into it and you realized that something was not right.

**Craig:** Yeah, I totally blew it. We use these external mics and I didn’t switch the input source to the external mic, so it was trying to record me though my closed laptop. So, I sounded like a ghost in a wind tunnel.

**John:** Yeah. That’s never good.

**Craig:** A boring ghost in a wind tunnel.

**John:** But, now we’re here and we can do the podcast that we really want to do which is that we have so many questions that have stacked up. And they just keep piling up and piling up. And if we don’t address them at some point they will just burst through and the email folder will come to tatters.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a real thing called Question Poisoning.

**John:** Yeah. It’s deadly.

**Craig:** Deadly.

**John:** And there’s not enough media attention on Question Poisoning. It just builds up and builds up. And, you know, everyone talks about the Explanation Point Poisoning, and sort of that’s the danger, but no, it’s the question marks that are really the dangerous part here.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, we’re going to try to churn through a lot of these questions that people have generously written in. If people have a question for us, I should start by saying you can always write at ask@johnaugust.com and we will attempt to answer your question. You can also, if it’s a short thing, just tweet Craig or I. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

But, Heather from Dahlonega, Georgia…see, the good thing about re-recording this podcast is I was actually able to say her city right.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s good. Well, because it’s called Roald Dahl’s name in it, so I figured you’d pick up on that.

**John:** Oh, yeah, Dahlonega. So, now I can’t not say it.

**Craig:** Dahlonega.

**John:** Heather writes with a really good question. “Why do so many TV shows now produce less than the average 22 episodes a season if they’re not midseason replacements? And how is this affecting the writers?”

That’s a good question, Heather.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, Heather brings up the point that most seasons of TV shows we think about as being 22 episodes, but that’s not actually really correct a lot of times. When shows are really successful, sometimes they’ll do a 23rd or a 24th episode. That happened to Chicago Fire this year. And I think Castle does it. And that’s a thing that happens because networks want more of the hit shows so they can keep their ratings up, which is understandable and great; exhausting for the writers, but great.

And TV shows used to be even longer. Series could be like 30 or 40 episodes in a season, which just seems madness now. And they were shorter schedules on things and it was all crazy. Now, we talk about 22 episodes as being a full season. And we talk about 13 episodes as being the initial order for a TV show. So, an American TV show, classically, if it’s going to be a fall pickup they will order 13 episodes, sometimes they’ll order less — eight episodes, or not quite to 13. But they’ll order 13 episodes and if the show is a hit then they’d hope to order the back nine episodes which bring you up to a full 22. And that has been sort of the classic model.

But that classic model is changing largely because of cable, because of other changes that happened in the TV industry. And, Craig, in the previously recorded podcast you’d actually talked about the TV season and why we have the TV season that we do.

**Craig:** Yeah. The notion of the fall, I mean, so summer was a break. It wasn’t a break because they felt like giving writers a break. It was a break because people didn’t watch TV, at least in the early days, in the summer very much. The viewership numbers went way, way down. And, remember, this is back in the day of three networks. So, they don’t have to wonder where people are going. When the ratings at ABC go down, and NBC and CBS, it means people have turned their TVs off. They’re outside; they’re picnicking; their swimming. This was back when people used to move around and not just eat in front of their TV.

So, the summer seemed like a good time to actually just put reruns on the air because the viewership numbers weren’t at a level where they could get great advertising numbers. But, then the question is well why does the season start in the fall as opposed to like, oh, I don’t know, late August, or when kids go back to school. And it’s the fall because that’s when the new car models were introduced to the public. And the new car models drove a huge amount of the advertising.

So, they very quickly landed on a fall to late spring season. But, you know, that’s kind of gone.

**John:** It’s gone to some degree. I think we still have a fall season because broadcast television, which means the big networks in the United States, so NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, they have a fall season because they still have an upfront season. And upfronts is where the networks display all of their new shows for the new season to big advertisers and the advertisers have a chance to buy a bunch of advertising time upfront and commit at a discount rate for the stuff that they want to — the commercials that they’re going to want to air over the next year.

And so it’s useful to broadcast TV to have a fall season. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be in the fall season, and I think we’re seeing more and more shows being introduced midseason.

But Heather writes like why some shows that aren’t even midseason don’t seem to go their full distance. And a thing that happens quite a bit is a show gets its initial order of eight, or its initial order of 13, and it may not get that back nine. It may not go to a full 22 episode season. And yet the network says like, “Well, it still did well enough that we want to give it another shot. We want to put it back on the network the next year.” And so therefore it might have a ten episode season the first year, and then ten episodes the next year.

That’s not awful. That’s just a thing that happens. It can be challenging for a writer who wonders whether, “Should I take a job on another show? Am I still under contract to this show so I can’t jump onto another show?” There’s challenging things with those short orders. But, that is a thing that really happens.

Now, in cable, weirdly a different thing happens a lot which is that you will get an order for ten episodes or 12 episodes and your season will go and you’ll go off and do something else and then you’ll come back and they’ll say, “Oh, no, no. This is still the first season. We’re going to just keep continuing on this same season.” And they do that because contractually that way they don’t have to give people their season bumps.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s lame.

**John:** It’s lame, but that’s the way that the contracts have sort of shaken out. And so it’s something that we should probably be addressing at some point in the WGA that you have to…

**Craig:** It should be by time, not by whim.

**John:** Yes. There should be some reason for why things kick into their next season of a show. But, for actors, and for writers, and for producers and everyone else who would get a bump in the second season, sometimes they will also get a title bump. So, like the first season you might be a staff writer and they’ll say, “We move you up to co-producer in your second season.” That wouldn’t happen because you didn’t actually have a second season; it was just a 40-episode first season that was spread out over four years.

So, that’s madness, but that is something that is happening right now.

**Craig:** It sounds like madness to me.

**John:** So that’s why Craig doesn’t do TV.

**Craig:** One of the many reasons I don’t do TV. I do actually kind of like the notion of the shorter seasons. It’s a very European way of approaching it. And certainly in cable there are shorter seasons, it seems like giving writers a little bit more time and directors in particular.

You know, people hear us talking about the writer-director issues in features. You know, directors in TV are constantly behind the eight ball. It’s actually one of the things that the DGA worries about when they go into negotiations and they try and protect their TV directors because they get these scripts at the very last minute. There’s no chance to prepare or really plan. And suddenly they’re thrown into this incredibly aggressive schedule to shoot the show. And so giving writers and directors a little bit more breathing room to create the shows would, you think, would maybe help quality.

But, you know, the business people have their quality and quantity graph. And that’s the way they approach it.

**John:** I will say in a general sense, I see more and more writers approaching shows as arcs of 13 episodes or arcs of seven episodes because they don’t know necessarily where their break is going to come. And I think a lot of feature writers would be more likely to approach television if they weren’t committed to that 22 episodes that’s just going to kill you.

**Craig:** It’s really scary to me.

**John:** With Chosen, which Josh Friedman and I set up at Fox, my hope — sort of my stated hope — was that we could get like a midseason order so that we could do ten or 13 episodes and have them be awesome rather than 22 episodes and have them be, you know, okay.

**Craig:** Alright.

Well, we have our next question from Anthony. Anthony! “Should one try writing a script before pursuing a career in screenwriting, or start pursuing a career in screenwriting, for instance an internship and assistant jobs, and learn how to do that first and then try writing?” I should say that I’ve added a lot of words into that question to make it read properly. [laughs]

So, Anthony…

**John:** Should I learn proper grammar before I start writing or should I do it afterwards?

You should write a script. But here’s the wonderful luxury of the screenwriter is no one can stop you from writing a script.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so you should write a script. And you should write your script now. And you should see whether you enjoy the actual process of putting scenes together and writing a screenplay before you commit to doing it. It’s like, should I become a football player? Well, you should probably play some football first.

**Craig:** Yeah. When you say should I try writing a script before I pursue a career, or should I first pursue a career…do both. Write one now. Write one while you’re doing something else. Write one after you do that thing. Nothing is stopping you as John said from doing it.

You will learn just from the process of doing it. You will learn something. There will be some value. And you can rewrite that one if you feel like you’ve learned and you want to.

**John:** So, in full disclosure, I did try writing a script before I moved out and went to film school. And I just didn’t get it. All the pieces didn’t sort of fit together right for me. But, I think I didn’t have as much exposure to what real scripts look like. And I feel like now with the internet, and with like a thousand scripts online, and the ability to sort of see what that is actually supposed to look like, I would have read a lot more scripts and probably would have tried writing a screenplay before I ever moved out to Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Makes total sense.

**John:** Roger asks, “The last few years I’ve worked as a location scout on several movies and TV shows. This year I’m going to make a big push in sending out my scripts in hopes of getting an agent or a manager. Do you think my credits on IMDb as a location scout hurts my chances at getting representation or work as a writer? I know in this town it’s very easy to get pigeonholed. Should I use a pen name, my initials, or am I over-thinking this?”

**Craig:** Well, I’m glad he included this last little bit so that I could say, ah, that one. You’re over-thinking this.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Don’t worry. If your script is good that will be the matrix within which all is contextualized. If you write a good script then they’ll say, “Check this out. This guy wrote this great script and believe it or not he’s a location scout.” If you write a bad script it will be like, “Oh my god, do you want to see what a screenplay by a location scout looks like?” [laughs] That’s the way it goes. Okay?

Everything will be led by the quality of the script. You don’t have to worry about hiding what you do.

**John:** I will say if you have just terrifically embarrassing credits that you want to get off IMDb, get them off IMDb and go through whatever weird process you have to go through IMDb to get those credits taken off. Sometimes I’ve found where people will give me a “special thanks” on IMDb. It’s like, why did you give me a special thanks? So, now you have your link to your movie on my page? That’s just crazy.

And so I’ve had to…

**Craig:** That’s weird.

**John:** I’ve had to throw some tantrums about that. Because, that’s just not cool. And generally they’ve mentioned it in a nice way like, “This guy was a real inspiration to me and so therefore I want to thank him.” But then it shows up as like I was involved in this project which I wasn’t.

**Craig:** Eh, that’s weird. Don’t do that.

**John:** But if there’s something that like, you know, Steve Callahan is a friend, he’s an actor. He is a genuine actor and shows up in a lot of indies, but one of his credits is for this move that’s like Man at Urinal. And that’s the credit that shows up in IMDb. And I’m like, that’s not good at all.

**Craig:** I love it. I’m totally into it. Now, I want to see that movie. I want to see Man at Urinal.

**John:** Man at Urinal.

**Craig:** Well, Urinetown is great.

**John:** Urinetown is fantastic.

**Craig:** If Urinetown can somehow avoid the jinx of urine-based titles?

**John:** Urinetown relies too much on the theatricality of it all and the staginess of it.

**Craig:** It’s a great musical.

**John:** I like Urinetown a lot though, too.

**Craig:** It’s a great show. It’s a privilege…

**John:** It’s a privilege to pee.

**Craig:** …to pee.

**John:** I got it out first!

**Craig:** You did. Ugh!

Laurence from New York, otherwise known as Urinetown, “Why are actors sooo,” and he did put three zeroes, I mean Os. We call them Os! [laughs] I called the Os zeroes! What’s wrong with me?

“Why are actors sooo grossly overpaid in comparison to writers, directors, and/or producers? Are they paid more than you guys?” Now, first of all, I love those two questions. So, the first question as a premise and then the second question questions the very premise of the first question. Yeah, of course, they’re paid more than us if they’re big movie stars.

“It seems that if an actor is making $20 million then a director and writer should be making at least $30 million.” Oh, what a great guy. “But obviously this is not the case.”

**John:** Again, he’s like stating a premise, and then denying the premise.

**Craig:** It’s pretty funny.

**John:** So, let’s tackle the premise altogether. Are actors overpaid? That’s sort of one premise. And then are actors overpaid relative to writers and directors?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, are actors overpaid? Definitely, I think, we’ve gone through cycles where actors have been just wildly overpaid and that’s annoying. And yet you look at sort of why you pay an actor a certain amount of money. You pay an actor a certain amount of money because you believe that having that actor in your movie will guarantee you a certain amount of box office. That’s the only reason why you pay somebody a lot of money.

And so the classic example that everyone will always bring up is like Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, who got $20 million for The Cable Guy. Well, maybe he was worth $20 million for him in that movie. I don’t know that the facts bore that out, but they felt that that was the right amount to spend on him.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s all about the marketplace. So, people ask this question a lot about professional athletes as well. There are actors who do get people to go see them in movie theaters. The trick of it is very few of them, really none of them, do it perfectly consistently. What happens, therefore, is the marketplace is reactive.

You are an actor, you have a movie, it’s a big hit, and people perceive that it is a hit because of you, as an actor. The next movie you’re going to get paid a whole lot of money. Does that one not do as well? Okay, then that’s when you’ll be paid less. Everything is this sort of marketplace analysis of what your value is.

But considering that most movie studios won’t make big budget movies without actors, big name actors, yeah, they clearly have a real value.

I have to tell you, I don’t look at my value as connected to their value. So, in terms of this question of should they be paid more than writers — there’s no “should.” You get what you get. For me, I don’t care what you pay Melissa McCarthy. Pay her as much as she can get. I hope Melissa McCarthy gets a billion dollars a movie.

None of that impacts what I think I’m worth. Right? My worth is based on my market value. And my market value is based on what you think this movie will make for you if I write it. And what other studios seem to be willing to pay me if I don’t work for you. And I have had situations where studios have said, “Look, we would love to pay you this. The only problem is we’ve agreed to pay this actor this and our budget is really getting squeezed.” And my response is, “Not my problem. That’s your problem.”

If you paid this actor this much money and you knew you wanted to pay a writer, you wanted me to do it, but you don’t have enough money for me, that’s poor management on your part. Either pay me what I’m worth, and somebody else gets jammed, or expand the budget. But, the option of getting me for a discount because you decide to pay somebody else more than you ought to have, per your own budget? Nope.

And almost every time it works out.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, the writer has two choices. The writer can say, yes, I will take this amount of money which is less than my quote, or you could say no. And, I’ve had to say no sometimes. And that’s just the situation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, back to this issue of actors getting paid. Classically Marvel, as they sort of set up this franchise for how their movies fit together, made very aggressive deals with the actors that they brought in so that they could have them for multiple movies, so that their salaries couldn’t go astronomically huge in success. And that has paid off very well for them.

So, they were able to make sequels to these movies with giant stars and actually be able to afford to make them. Now, I’m not clear sort of where Robert Downey Jr.’s deal is right now with Marvel, but if he doesn’t have any more movies under his contract he’s in a position where he could ask for a tremendous amount of money because he has driven some very, very big movies for them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** All the same, Marvel can say, “You know what? We get that. That’s not our business model.” And they could with somebody else for Iron Man. And people would go, “Oh, no, you can’t do that!” But you know what? It would be fine.

**Craig:** Yeah. And look, this is why, forget fairness and just deal with reality, okay. I believe, of course, that writers are an extraordinarily important part of this process. The most important part. I’ll just go ahead and say it. I’m a chauvinist. Writers are the most important part of the process.

However, when a big band breaks up, let’s say U2 broke up today, and Bono went and did a tour and the other guys did a tour… — Well, here’s the deal. I can get a bassist, a drummer, and a guitarist to sound exactly like those other three guys, Clayton, Mullen, and The Edge. But I can’t get anyone to sound like Bono. Bono is Bono. It’s just one of those human things.

Human performance is incredibly specific. And, yes, they can ultimately go and get other people to write and direct Iron Man movies. They’ve done it. Right? They’ve proven they can do that. And you may like one better than the other, but if you put somebody else in the suit and it’s not Downey, I don’t know, it’s just not as cool, it’s not as interesting for that movie.

Michael Keaton? Turns out he was replaceable as Batman. Is Christian Bale, was he replaceable as Batman? No. [laughs] It’s just different. It’s just one of those things.

**John:** You’ll have to do a different version. And that’s actually something kind of exciting about doing the next version of something. That is fine and good.

Jay Z asks…

**Craig:** Oh, my god, Jay-Z?

**John:** Wouldn’t it be amazing if Jay-Z were listening to our show? You know who does listen to our show is Rebel Wilson.

**Craig:** I saw that tweet. It was very, it was like, “Ooh, look at us!”

**John:** Ah, Rebel Wilson, we adore you. You’re very, very funny.

**Craig:** Hey Rebel.

**John:** So, I hope you’re enjoying your hike, because apparently you listen to us while you hike.

Jay Z. asks, “If you are a screenwriter over 60,” oh, so it’s probably not the real Jay-Z.

**Craig:** Oh, it might be because Jay-Z is interested in senior issues.

**John:** [laughs] He’s very interested in senior issues. Interested in Cuba. He’s interested in Beyoncé Knowles.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And writers over 60.

**Craig:** Ageism.

**John:** “If you are a screenwriter over 60 still looking to break in, which of the following are true? Number one, stop, you don’t have a chance in hell at this point. Number two, you have to write the greatest screenplay of the 21st century to break in; anything less won’t get developed once they see how old you are. Three, if you walk into a meeting with a 25-year-old writing partner you might have a shot. Four, make your own low budget movie; it’s your only avenue at this point. Five, write a play or a book and hope it gets noticed.”

**Craig:** He seems to be missing six.

**John:** Which is?

**Craig:** Write a good screenplay! I mean, god, darn.

**John:** Well, number two was that essentially.

**Craig:** No, he wrote, “You have to write the greatest screenplay of the 21st century to break in; anything less won’t get developed once they see how old you are.” Here’s the thing — write a good screenplay. Write a good screenplay.

I’m sorry. I think that there is this belief that somehow you’re toxic because you’re 60 years old. You are not. I know a lot of screenwriters out there who if they’re not already 60 are getting really close, and they earn way more money than I do year after year.

If you write a good screenplay, note that screenplays do not come with a photograph of you and your birth certificate. Again, just like we mentioned to Roger the location scout — the screenplay will set the circumstances. The guy who wrote The King’s Speech, older gentleman.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** If they read the screenplay and they really like it they’re going to buy it. You know why? Because they’re going to make money off of it. Don’t beat yourself down right off the start with a list, with an iteration of things you cannot control.

**John:** Yeah, don’t nick yourself.

Where I think he has some reasonable questions which is when I go into the room to do all the stuff, when I do the water bottle tour of Los Angeles and do all those first meetings, will it be different with me going in as a 60-year-old than me going in as a 25-year-old? Yes. It will be.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Because you will be older than some of the people that you’re sitting there and talking with. That’s just a fact of life. And so your question about like if you had a 25-year-old writing partner, would that be helpful? Yeah, it might be helpful, just the way perception works. And that’s if someone sees you as someone who is perceived as a peer rather than as their father, that could be useful.

But they’re ultimately going to respond to can this person write or can this person not write. Do I trust this person can write the movie that I want them to write and deliver? Then, you’re happy and you’re golden.

Now, going to say writing a book or a play and hope it gets noticed, well, you could absolutely do that, but I don’t think those are the best ways to get started as a screenwriter. If your goal is to be a screenwriter you should be focused as a screenwriter. If that doesn’t work out and you like to write plays or books, those are things which I think tend to favor people who are not so young, and therefore you could be successful at that at any age.

But don’t stop — don’t kill your dreams of being a screenwriter simply because of your age.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s remember that if you want to look at a group that gets more rejections a year age wise, it’s going to be 20 year olds, because they’re writing the most screenplays, I think. And they’re getting their butts kicked out there. Okay? It’s no picnic for 20-year-old screenwriters, believe me.

One thing to think about if you do end up in rooms with people is that your attitude will carry you a long way. If there is a positivity about you and an acknowledgement that this is a bit odd, “I know, I’m 60. Maybe this isn’t what normally happens but, you know what, I’m having fun. I’m enjoying it. I have the kind of energy and spirit of somebody that isn’t 60, or 20, or 30, but just a writer who wants to make a great movie.” You will be appreciated.

If you walk in there with the burden, the silent burden, of all these presuppositions — that you’re being judged, that you’re going to be discarded, that you’re going to be somehow the victim of inherent discrimination — it’s going to radiate off of you and get kicked back at you. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t tell you that ageism isn’t real, because it is. I can’t tell you that you won’t suffer from it, because you very well may, might, or almost certainly will at some point.

All I can tell you is worrying about it and factoring it into the way you behave isn’t going to change anything.

**John:** I would expand that to sort of all of the isms or “obias” that you’re going to generate for yourself. And so I’ve walked into these rooms. You know, I had a meeting with Tony Scott. I’m like the gay guy going in to pitch to Tony Scott. And he’s like smoking a cigar in the room. But, you know what? It was just fine. And like I could have been freaking out about sort of what that was going to be like. And it was absolutely just fine.

And, you know, if you’re a woman going into a room to pitch, like, you cold freak yourself out about how this is all going to work, or you could be the person who is like confident going in there and delivering the goods and you’re probably going to have a much better outcome there.

So, it’s not to say that none of these things are real and that there’s not a reason to talk about them or discuss them. I would say that there’s not a reason to let them stop you from trying to do what you’re trying to do.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Yes.

**John:** Next, Fiona. Do you want to ask her question? It’s a long one.

**Craig:** Boy, all right. “How does someone hire you?”

**John:** That’s Fiona’s entire question.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s so great.

**John:** And here’s why I picked this question, because I could read it two ways.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The one question is like how does someone hire a writer, which I think is an interesting thing we don’t kind of talk about.

**Craig:** But I really think Fiona wants to know how do you get work.

**John:** No, I read this as how does Fiona hire me. I thought she’s saying, “How do I hire John August to do…”

**Craig:** Okay, see, that never occurred to me.

**John:** I would say a few times a year just a random person will say like, “Hey, I have this idea for a movie. How much would it cost to hire you to write this movie?”

**Craig:** I get that.

**John:** And that’s a charming thought. And so I don’t want to sort of automatically dismiss that [crosstalk].

**Craig:** I always tell them $800, and that’s enough to back them off.

**John:** [laughs] So, let’s talk about how writers are hired overall. And so writers are generally hired by studios and by producers when there is an existing something to adapt or the writer has come in with a pitch for some project and then the studio or producer or production company will hire that writer to write that for them so then it becomes a work-for-hire, which is an important sort of copyright concept.

So, you, the writer was the original writer of something, but authorship and copyright rests with the people who paid you the money to write it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** They will pay you a certain amount of money to deliver a draft. And if it’s a WGA sort of situation, they will pay you a certain fixed amount to start writing and a certain fixed amount when you deliver. And there will be hopefully some guarantees about reading periods, and that they can’t sort of drag it out forever.

There are hopefully some guarantees in that contract, even if it’s not WGA, about sort of how this relationship is going to work.

It can be very little money. So, for like the non-WGA things, maybe it’s $5,000 to write a script, which is not a lot. If it’s a big tent-pole project, there are some scripts where people are paid $2 million, $3 million to write something. There’s a huge range of how that happens.

When was the last time where someone wanted to hire you individually as a person? Has that happened to you in your career? Someone who wasn’t representing a company but just wanted you to do something for them?

**Craig:** No, it’s been forever. I mean, I initially started when I was first out here and I was working, I was working in advertising. And so I was a copy writer for entertainment advertising, you know, trailers and TV spots and stuff like that. And so I would freelance and get hired by individuals at various, you know, people think that studios make trailers. The studio doesn’t make the trailer. They hire a trailer company to make the trailer. And the trailer company doesn’t really make the trailer. They hire people like me to go write the copy for the trailer.

It’s a whole thing. But, yeah, but it’s been 15 years or more.

**John:** Yeah. Going back to Fiona’s question about how do you hire a writer, generally if there’s a project, like, I have this book that I now control the rights to and I want this writer to do it. You would approach that writer’s agent. You would figure out what agency they’re at. You can call the Writers Guild to find out who represents a certain writer. You would call the agent, talk to the agent, convince the agent that you are not a crazy person. And then that agent would report to the writer saying like, “This person wants you to read this thing and I’ve read it and you should maybe consider doing it.”

You usually go through the representative, so either the agent or the manager to get access to that writer and get them to pay attention to you and see whether they would work on this thing for you.

**Craig:** If you want to hire me, if anybody out there wants to hire me it’s very, very simple. A briefcase of kidneys. I would write anything for 20 kidneys — healthy — packed properly in ice. Or five hearts.

**John:** Now, there was some writer and I feel like it is John Milius, but I may just be completely making this up. It’s probably an apocryphal story anyway. But like the price to hire him was a certain amount of money and like a rifle and some deer to shoot. There was some bizarre thing where like he wanted…

**Craig:** Oh, that’s bizarre? Should I have not asked for that? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It’s a standard rider. So, you have like no green M&Ms in you bowl and some deer to kill.

**Craig:** I would accept lungs. I used to not. But, you know, things are getting tight. [laughs]

**John:** You know what’s good about money? Money is fungible and you can buy things with money. I get so frustrated when people want sort of those other things. And it’s just like, no, no, get money.

**Craig:** You think money is fungible? You should try human organs.

**John:** Ha-ha.

**Craig:** No taxes. Very portable.

**John:** For this project I’m working on I’ve had to learn a lot about gold. And gold is one of those things that seems like, oh, it’s fungible, and it’s safe, and it’s bankable. Gold is really a pain in the ass. And I don’t fundamentally get why people still want to use gold because it’s just difficult in so many ways.

Even though it’s exciting that you can actually sort of melt it down into different things, you have to test it and it’s just not good.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a big pain and it’s super heavy. I mean, but it’s shiny and it’s beautiful.

**John:** It is shiny and beautiful.

**Craig:** It’s beautiful.

**John:** And like if you’re a Looper then I could understand why they would want to give you some gold blocks to pay you off, because that would make a lot of sense.

**Craig:** Yeah, oh, for sure. But, you definitely can’t use hearts or lungs.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Because just the time. Well, anyway. So, what’s our next question? [laughs] Oh, Ferdinand.

**John:** Ferdinand from East Prussia asks, “Say you’ve got a scene set on a sidewalk then partway through a character arrives via car. You want to show his approach from inside the car, but there isn’t necessarily any dialogue or more than one shot before the sidewalk scene continues. How do you handle short inter scenes. I’ve always assumed they get their own slug line, brief scene description. However, when breaking down a script for production it’s a little misleading to identify this shot as a scene, isn’t it?”

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** This is Ferdinand from East Prussia, or just a clever name. It’s probably not a real person from East Prussia, but wouldn’t that be awesome?

**Craig:** Well, East Prussia is either from the east of Prussia, or it’s East Prussia, Pennsylvania. I think there’s an East Prussia, Pennsylvania.

**John:** I thought that Ferdinand was like the deposed, like assassinated person of East Prussia?

**Craig:** Archduke Ferdinand was…

**John:** Wasn’t he Prussian?

**Craig:** No. I think he was a Serb.

**John:** Okay. Well, I’m going to type this in and see what…

**Craig:** Right now. Let’s do a live Google. Live Googling. Archduke Ferdinand I think was…Bosnian?

**John:** Ferdinand Krueger of East Prussia…maybe not?

**Craig:** Oh, he’s from East Prussia, Illinois?

**John:** Maybe.

**Craig:** I thought it was Pennsylvania. But the Archduke Ferdinand who was shot was definitely not from Illinois.

**John:** Yeah. I know almost nothing about actual history. [laughs] I’m sadly just awful at most of history. I now know that World War I came first.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who I propose was Serbian, was in fact, well, he was Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia. And his actual nationality was, oh, I’m sorry, his assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia.

**John:** Mm-hmm. If it didn’t happen on Game of Thrones I’m not going to really follow what happened.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s as much history as I can sort of take in.

**Craig:** WWI was the original Game of Thrones. It was Game of Thrones but with mustard gas.

**John:** Oh, yeah. But they have the equivalent of mustard gas. You get that…

**Craig:** Yeah, Wildfire.

**John:** The dragon wildfire; the dragon stuff that they shoot out there and that was cool. That was green.

**Craig:** In WWI every day was the Red Wedding. Every single day. So, when things like that happened everybody was like, “Eh, it’s just another day.”

**John:** Back to Ferdinand’s question. So, he’s asking about sort of what happens when a scene is going to continue but you have to show a new thing that’s going to interrupt that scene.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a good question.

**John:** I would probably do that as a slug line. How would you do that?

**Craig:** I generally don’t, because I find that it’s going to make the read too jangly, because I really don’t want… — I mean, I understand what he’s saying. We don’t really want to feel like we’re watching three scenes in one scene. It’s one smooth flowing scene; there just happens to be a shift of a POV into an interior of a thing.

The interior of a thing really doesn’t demand a slug line. So, what I would probably do in this case is just an all caps action line FROM INSIDE THE CAR or POV INSIDE THE CAR, describe the POV inside the car, and then BACK TO SCENE as the next action line.

I might bold POV INSIDE THE CAR. Here’s the thing — you as the screenwriter, you’re trying to, again, as we said before, paint the movie for the people reading it. And that will do that. When it gets time for production, the first AD is going to go through and what he may just simply do is assign a number to that shot, just so that they know they have to be inside the car for that shot.

**John:** Yeah. So, you and I are actually talking the same thing, but you say slug line for what I would call a scene header.

**Craig:** Oh, I see.

**John:** I would do that same thing where it’s an all caps line that’s on the left that is indicating that it’s a major thing to pay attention to, a shift, and therefore we’re doing that but it’s not actually a new scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I agree with you that when the AD is going through and breaking down the script, if that was scene 32, she might call that scene A32, acknowledging that that little moment is a separate little blip that they’re going to have to pick up the day of shooting.

A general conversation about when you’re inside cars I’ll often go to the INT/EXT header for what that is, because if you’re inside the car and you’re outside the car, like you’re inside a car but you are in an outdoor environment. And so sometimes it’s really about the neighborhood that you’re in is as important as being inside that car.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, INT/EXT can be your friend when you’re inside the car, a scene that’s happening in the car but then it’s also getting outside of the car.

**Craig:** Yup. That’s true. Depends really on balance. You know, if you just have one moment that’s inside, then just call that out. But if you’re back and forth, if it’s somebody inside a car talking to somebody outside of the car and it’s back and forth, yeah, then just INT/EXT.

Next we have Jeff who wonders, “If you have an agent but you feel he or she isn’t doing enough to get your work out there, what are appropriate ways of being proactive?” Well…

**John:** Well, you’ve come to the right person because Craig is an expert at dealing with agent type situations.

**Craig:** Fire them! Well, I do love firing. In general, screenwriters are far too afraid to treat their employees as employees. Yes, an agent is an employee. Are they an employee who deserves a lot of respect and consideration? Yes. Should they be an employee/partner? Yes.

However, in the end they work for you. And if you are not satisfied with the way that they are doing their job, it’s a very, very simple thing. You call them up and say, “I want to sit down with you and I want to have lunch.” There is this thing in all agent brains that hears that and goes, “Oh no.” There isn’t one agent on the planet who doesn’t hear that and think, “Oh, great. I love lunch,” or, “Nah, I’m too busy for lunch.”

They all hear it and they go, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” If they don’t hear “oh no” from that then they really are ridiculous and you should fire them. You sit down and you have lunch and you say, “Look, I’m not loving the way things are going.” And be as honest as possible. “I’m a little uncomfortable. I’m very disappointed. I’m mildly disappointed. I am infuriated.” Whatever it is, lay it out there. And just say, “I want this to work. And here’s how I think it should work. You tell me what I can do to help you, but here’s what I need you to do to help me.”

You have that lunch and you listen to everything they have to say and hopefully they listen to everything you have to say. That lunch is like a flare you just shot out there. If it doesn’t improve within a certain amount of reasonable time, call it three months…

**John:** I was going to say three months, too. Then you have to leave.

**Craig:** You have to leave. You have absolutely laid down the gauntlet and it’s time to go.

**John:** Now, Jeff is specifically saying you feel he or she isn’t doing enough to get your work out there. Now, the reality of the situation may be that no one thinks Jeff’s work is very good. And you’re going to have to listen carefully to the agent because the agent may be phrasing this in a way, saying it’s just not landing the way you would hope it would land; it’s not getting the response we really hoped for. And that may honestly be the case. Or, it may not be the case and you may have other ways of finding out sort of what’s really going on there.

A general thing is you can talk to other people about your agent. And so if you’re going out on some other meeting or you meet somebody at a party and you’re five minutes into the conversation, you can kind of talk about sort of like what agents are like, too. And maybe there really is a problem and maybe you’re just not at the right place.

So, it could be you. It could be them.

**Craig:** Right. And that conversation that you have with them sometimes could bring up… — I remember years and years ago I was grumpy because I was looking around and I saw some of my peers doing production rewrites, like little weeklies. And I thought, “Why aren’t I getting those offers? Where are those jobs for me? I feel like I could do a really good job on those sort of things.”

So, I sort of had a, “Hey, what’s the deal? Why don’t I get that?” And basically the response back was, “Because they don’t think you can do that and you’re going to have to prove that you can do that. And it’s a very small list of people that do that and you have to earn your way onto it. And if you want to earn your way onto it here’s what needs to happen.”

And I thought, oh, thank you for the honesty. And so it all happened. But I needed to know that it needed to happen. In other words, I needed to know that there was a process to go through in order to get there.

And, similarly, if you sit down with your agent and you lay all the stuff on the table and they say, “I’m having trouble because everybody hates what you wrote,” then you should say, “Well, thank you for that. That hurts, but thank you. It would have been better for me to know that from you sooner. And let’s see now if I can write something better.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But honesty, honesty, honesty.

**John:** Mark asks, “I was very lucky to get a spec of mine shot. I was involved in the process and on set, but obviously not making decisions after the script was handed in. The movie did not turn out well. I was hoping you can discuss the etiquette for what to do with that situation going forward. For example, when you’re in a meeting and people who read and liked your script asked how the finished product turned out, what do you say? I don’t want to say it’s great and then have them see it when it comes out and think I’m an idiot; but I also don’t want to complain or badmouth the people involved.

“My manager recommended to deflect the question by saying I’m too close to it to have perspective. Any other advice?”

**Craig:** That’s not a bad answer. I mean, the other answer — it sounds like what’s going on here is we’re in that gap between the movie being finished and the movie coming out. And it’s an important time for this screenwriter because when he says “I was very lucky to get a spec of mine shot,” it sounds like this is his first movie. So, he’s going out there now as a screenwriter that just has a movie coming out.

People like his script and now he’s a guy who’s been through the process of production. So, these meetings are about getting work. You don’t want to necessarily call an air strike in on your own position here. So, what you could say is, “I actually haven’t seen it. I’m hearing some good things, but honestly the director kind of ran with it and I haven’t really been a part of the process since. So, I’m looking forward to seeing the movie.”

Now, that may be a total flat-out lie. And if you’re not comfortable with that flat-out lie, you that you’re going to get caught in that flat-out lie, then I think something like, “You know, it’s different. It definitely reflects his vision. I’m still kind of wrapping my mind around it.” [laughs] That’s a good phrase.

By the way, everyone will know what you mean.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sorry to tell you, unless you literally lie and say I haven’t seen it yet, anything less than “I love it,” everybody will go, “Oh, it’s shit.”

**John:** Yeah. So, I think your suggestion is good. I think the manager’s suggestion is good about sort of the deflecting. I would also maybe deflect it into, “Yeah, I just don’t know how it’s going to turn out. It’s such a weird process going through that.” And you could talk about what your intentions were going on and just go onto the next thing over.

You could talk about sort of how hard it is to get a movie made. Or, the classic thing that Laura Ziskin would always say is like, “I think we should just give an award for getting a movie made,” which was always a sign that like, oh, that movie did not turn out well.

But, that’s the reality. And people will pick up on that code and they’ll also know to stop asking questions.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, you can thank them for loving your script. It’s like, “Well thank you; that really means a lot to me that you read it.” It’s such a strange thing to have something that was so close to you that now is this movie that’s the same but different.

**Craig:** The other thing you can do is kind of an invitation for bonding is to say, “You know, it’s in process. I’ve seen a lot of it. It is so-and-so’s vision of what I did. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. I would love to hear from you. When you see the movie I’d love to hear from you as a third party who read the script and thankfully liked it, and thank you very much for that, what you thought of it. Because I’m kind of curious about that myself.”

**John:** Now, here’s another thing that we should tell Mark is that we don’t know where it is in the process. So, he says it didn’t turn out well, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s done. Because when I saw the first cut of Go, my first instinct was to kill myself. And my second instinct was like do something so this movie never comes out, because it was awful.

It was soul-crushingly awful. And it just did not work at all. And so I remember I was just sort of shaking. I was downstairs in the screening room at Sony. It was not at all what I wanted to do. And I was in this situation sort of like Mark where people loved my script and then fortunately only ten people saw this cut. I’m like, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to proceed.”

And how I ended up proceeding was we just went back and we just kept editing, and editing, and editing and sort of getting it back to what it needed to be and doing the reshoots and it turned out really well. But, if I had gone out and sort of like badmouthed it at that point, that would have been a mistake, too.

**Craig:** Never do that. Never, ever, ever do that.

**John:** So, what Craig says about like it’s early in the process. It’s fair to say that it was so tough to see it because it’s just not the same thing that you went through. And you can bond on that level, too.

So, maybe things will get better.

**Craig:** Yeah. Doom — oh, I guess things aren’t getting better — Doom writes, “I have one bone to pick. John’s use of the phase of The Avid,” which is not a phrase but rather a term, “drives me crazy.” Not as crazy as your misuse of the word phrase.

Sorry. I can’t help but editorialize as I read these questions. You’re much better at it then I am. I’ll start again.

“I have one bone to pick. John’s use of the phrase The Avid drives me crazy. The reason is because he is so fair in pointing out alternatives to ubiquitous programs like Final Draft. In every other category you make room for the possibility that someone else is not using your technology. But when it comes to film editing there is just The Avid.”

Well, it’s not actually a question; that’s a bone which is being picked.

**John:** Yeah. So, I chose the question because I think on some level Doom is right in that I’m using the Avid as a generic description for any non-linear editor, partly because I feel like we don’t have a good term for what that is, because “non-linear editor” is just too long of a word.

And I’m using the term the way that people who edit movies really do sort of use the term. Because even if they’re not cut on the Avid, in a general sense people will say “the Avid” because what they mean is literally that machine that is sitting in that room that the editor is staring at.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, that’s kind of what the term is that we use and I’m sorry that I’m Kleenexing it, but that’s really sort of what we use.

I think it’s lucky to live in a time where there are many choices in editing software. And so the Avid is certainly some of the most common stuff you see, but people use Final Cut. People use all of the other systems that are especially designed for commercials and things.

**Craig:** I just know really there’s the Avid and there’s Final Cut. And, frankly, it seems like Final Cut had its moment and then blew it. And we’re back to the Avid again. I don’t see anything else out there actually.

**John:** There actually is other stuff. And people who cut stuff for commercials and cut things for other systems, other systems are used in other things.

Most of the TV and film work that I’ve been encountering recently has been on the Avid. Final Cut Pro, the older version, was making some serious inroads. People sort of chafed at what Apple did with the revisions.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They may be winning some of those people back but the Avid is just sort of the term that we use for these things. And it’s what people are sort of using as their workhorse in making features and TV shows.

**Craig:** I think that Doom, either you work for one of those companies, or you’re just a little fussbudgety. But, here’s the thing — is that really worth, I mean, as somebody that loves umbrage, you need to portion it out at the right moments I guess is my point.

**John:** It’s a good point because this took Doom easily ten minutes to write this email to me. And easily probably an hour to think about like, “Oh, that just drives me crazy!” He had to sort of sit with his anger long enough to decide to write the email about that.

So, it is sort of interesting that it actually crossed over a line to him for that. Because we got some two-page emails about the Bechdel Test and other things like that. And I can see where people were coming from, because they had a strong opinion about sort of how that stuff fit. Or, like, please don’t bring up Jesus again, because we had enough emails about that.

**Craig:** Oh, really?

**John:** Yeah. Oh, I’ll send you some of those. Nothing terrible. You shouldn’t be afraid for your life.

**Craig:** No. Should I be afraid for my eternal life? [laughs]

**John:** Basically saying your earlier Jesus analogy and your Moses analogies were pointing out reasons why they didn’t fit perfectly and really was kind of moot.

**Craig:** I’m sure that’s true, by the way.

**John:** Well, what’s interesting, going back to last week’s conversation about Nikki Finke and comments sections is that this is the kind of thing where it would be very easy to write in a comment section, but to actually — this person chose to email me his thought. I guess that’s why I’m responding to it because it took a lot more initiative to actually send the email to me and to have that personal relationship of like, “I am sending an email to you rather than just commenting on your blog.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, listen, I get it. It just seemed like a strange thing to be fussy about. Because, you know, if I were listening to a podcast between editors and they referred to Final Draft all the time. “Well, you know, when writers are on Final Draft,” I would think, yeah, I get it, because that’s what they know. I mean, that’s not…whoop-de-do. I’m not going to get that worked up about it.

Whereas they know about Lightworks and the little shark that comes along out of the door and eats your, or whatever that thing is.

Anyway, last question. Nick. Do you want to read this one?

**John:** No, you can do it.

**Craig:** “Is it a bad idea to copyright my screenplay? Some say that it’s a speed bump in the selling process because lawyers would have to get involved to get the copyright transferred to the production studio company. Thank you for any help.”

What do you think?

**John:** So, what Nick is referring to — obviously anything you write is copyright you. You don’t have to submit stuff. And he’s talking about the actual process where you’re submitting stuff to the copyright office and going through that process. And I’ve seen people come on both sides of that. And I’m honestly hoping that you’ll have a more definitive answer and I can just say I agree with Craig.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to copyright your screenplay at all. Yeah, it requires that somebody actually fill out the paperwork to transfer the copyright officially as opposed to just pretending from the start that you in fact wrote… — See, the fiction is this: You write a screenplay. It’s a spec screenplay. That’s you. Copyright you.

It’s not registered? Doesn’t matter. Your copyright. You then sell it to a studio. The studio wants to own that screenplay under a work-for-hire doctrine meaning I own this screenplay, all parts of it, I wrote it.

So, what they say is, “I’m going to buy this from you and part of the purchase agreement is that you agree that we commission this,” which they didn’t. And that is fiction. And the reason the Writers Guild allows this fiction is because it’s good, frankly, for the Writers Guild. Because what it means is that this is covered as employment and therefore the following things apply to it — minimums, and I believe health and pension apply to sale of literary material, I believe. I may be wrong about that. Credits, more importantly. And, of course, then the requirement that the person selling it get the first rewrite job on it, which is a big deal.

If you just go ahead and copyright it yourself, eh, so they transfer the copyright. And it may be, I’d have to check with the Guild to see if that would disrupt things like pension payments or health payments on the sale itself. But, you know what? I’ll follow up on that.

**John:** Okay. We’ll do follow up on that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ll follow up.

**John:** Because I remember being at a panel in which an entertainment lawyer was making a very strong case that you should absolutely register these copyrights and that it was a very important thing for writers to do. And I was surprised by it because I’ve honestly never done that on any of my specs.

**Craig:** I mean, the benefit of registering your screenplay with the copyright office is that in the case of infringement I believe registration with the copyright office does give you a certain avenue that you wouldn’t otherwise have. And I believe it’s to collect punitive damages as opposed to just damages of infringement.

But, let me check and see if there’s any downside over the Guild. And we’ll do a little follow up on that.

**John:** Cool. It’s time for One Cool Things. Do you have a One Cool Thing for this week?

**Craig:** Have I talked about the Fitbit before?

**John:** I think you may have. Is that the bracelet thing?

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, mine is like a little clip on in my pocket. If I have talked about it before then, oh well.

**John:** No, I don’t think you have on this podcast.

**Craig:** On this particular podcast I haven’t talked about it.

**John:** Yeah. I think maybe last week’s you did.

**Craig:** [laughs] So, I’ll just do it again. I’m like an old man now. “Have I told you about how I met your mother?” Yes!

**John:** Yes. [crosstalk]

**Craig:** It’s this little doohickey and you clip it to your pants pocket or your bra, if you’re so inclined, and it keeps track of all of your movement throughout the day. It keeps track of how many steps you take, how far you walked, distance. How many flights of stairs you go up and down.

And it’s super motivating because the theory is you should take 10,000 steps a day. You should walk five miles a day. This is just good, basic health. And because I’m wearing this thing and monitoring it with my iPhone and the computer, I’m just taking the stairs more and walking more. It’s so stupid, and yet it works.

I am a slave to a Fitbit now, and better off for it. And, oh, the other cool part of it is it monitors your sleeping. Again, this is something I got out of conversations with Bob Gordon of Galaxy Quest fame. So, you can wear it on a little wristband thing when you sleep — it’s very soft, so it doesn’t bother your sleeping — and it basically measures your restless moments and your awake moments and gives you just a general sense of how much did you actually sleep last night.

You know, yes, you lost consciousness at midnight and you regained consciousness permanently at 8am. But, did you sleep eight hours or did you sleep five hours and like three weird tossing, turning hours? So, it’s very cool. I like it. And it’s like $89 at Amazon.

**John:** Lovely. Cool.

my One Cool Thing is a website that is free and this is a suggest from a listener named Jason Ahlquist. So, Jason, thank you for sending me to this link.

It is called Mission Log. And the Mission Log Podcast has this archive of discovered documents from Star Trek, the original series, dating back to 1966. And there are a bunch of memos and photos and outlines from the original series from back in the day.

And so I’ve always loved seeing things like letters from Desilu Productions to Gene Roddenberry, and sort of talking about like, “I just read your script for The City on the Edge of Forever. Here are my notes.” And these are actually typed like on real typewriters. And they’re on letterhead. It’s just such a different way of how things used to be done.

And so it’s great to see notes about episodes of TV shows you’ve seen 30 times and sort of how they’ve changed over the time.

**Craig:** I’m going to check that out. that sounds awesome.

**John:** So, the Mission Log Podcast. And thank you, Jason Ahlquist, for sending that in.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** If our listeners have suggestions for things we should talk about on One Cool Things, or have questions about anything we’ve talked about on the show today, they should visit johnaugust.com/podcast. We’ll have those links.

We will also have information about the t-shirts. And I probably should have started the episode with this. The t-shirts, we have the amazing orange t-shirt and the amazing blue t-shirt.

**Craig:** So soft.

**John:** So soft. Stuart swears it’s the softest shirt he’s ever touched. This is the last week to order them. Actually, if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, Friday is the last day that you can order them. So, just stop whatever you’re doing, pull over the car, and just go to johnaugust.com/store and take a look at the t-shirts because they’re really good.

We’re only selling them in this window so that I just don’t have to deal with t-shirts for more than just this one little window. So, we are going to get the orders. We will make the t-shirts. We will put them in packaging and send them out to the world.

**Craig:** Are we profiting on these t-shirts?

**John:** We’re sort of barely on these t-shirts. We are covering out…

**Craig:** We do we make a shirt?

**John:** We’re going to cover our costs. So, we’ll cover our silk-screening cost.

**Craig:** No profit yet.

**John:** No profit yet.

**Craig:** I’m waiting for the profit part.

**John:** I think we make like five bucks on a shirt, maybe a little more.

**Craig:** Whoa! Woo!

**John:** So, that money will help pay for things like our transcripts, which I never talk about on the show, but it’s one of the rare things that a podcast does is we have transcripts for every single one of our — approaching — 100 episodes that are actually at johnaugust.com.

So, if you are listening to this podcast and wanted to go back and see what we actually said, if you go to the actual episode at johnaugust.com, at the bottom of every post when Stuart has the transcript he will put a link to it. And the transcripts are usually up three or four days after the episode. And you can go back and see exactly what we said.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, that’s what we will cover. And it may help us buy some alcohol at our 100th Episode.

**Craig:** Woo!

**John:** So, in fact, we have two live events this summer. We have Saturday, June 29, which is part of the Writers Guild Foundation’s big benefit a whole full day craft seminar. Tickets are available for that right now. You can go to the Writers Guild Foundation. Just Google that and find tickets for that.

I think there are still tickets as we’re talking right now. And our 100th Anniversary Extravaganza…

**Craig:** The big show!

**John:** …which is Thursday, July 25. Tickets for that should go on sale July 1.

**Craig:** That’s going to be fun.

**John:** I’m really looking forward to that.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s going to be a great night. Are you going to wear something special?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You’re just going to do regular…?

**John:** I’m dressing in normal clothes. Are you going to dress up?

**Craig:** Well, I’m either going to wear my regular clothes or I’m going to go like a full Liberace fur — I might do like a fur and sequins.

**John:** There’s nothing better on a nice summer night than fur and sequins. So, applaud that.

**Craig:** Furs. Rings.

**John:** And maybe you can just crank the AC so it’s all comfortable for you.

**Craig:** Rings. And those big boots that Gene Simmons would wear in Kiss. You know, just something for the ladies.

**John:** Yeah. Or, maybe you could bring Michael Douglas in to wear that for you and you could wear normal clothes.

**Craig:** Hmm. I’d have to get a hold of Michael Douglas somehow.

**John:** Oh, we’re going to have a bigger guest than Michael Douglas at our 100th Episode.

**Craig:** Oh? Well, now I’m showing up.

**John:** All right. Cool.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And we’ll talk to you again next week.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Email us](http://johnaugust.com/ask-a-question) or tweet [John](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) or [Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin) your questions for future episodes
* [Fitbit](http://www.fitbit.com/) helps you manage your health and wellness goals
* [Mission Log Podcast](http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/discovereddocuments/)’s archive of discovered Star Trek documents is fantastic
* [Order your Scriptnotes shirts](http://store.johnaugust.com/) before June 21st!
* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* John’s blog post on [this summer’s two live shows](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-live-in-la)