Archives for 2013

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/ugly-children-and-cigarettes).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 88 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, we have a very big show today and we’re already getting a late start, so I thought we’d just dive right in. Is that okay?

**Craig:** Boom. Dive. Go.

**John:** Boom. Three things I want to do today. I want to talk about this New York Times article that everybody tweeted me this morning, because I think it was just designed to provoke outrage…

**Craig:** Umbrage.

**John:** …umbrage from screenwriters. We will answer some questions that have been stacking up in the mailbox. And we will look at three Three Page Challenge entries from our listeners.

**Craig:** Great. Oh my god, so much. Let’s go.

**John:** So much.

The only bit of housekeeping I need to do is that on May 15 of this year I will be hosting a panel for the Academy with some nice screenwriters and other film professionals including Damon Lindelof and Mark Boal. We’re going to be talking about the impact of technology on filmmaking. And it is a $5 panel, so come see us at the Academy Theater if you want to. That is on May 15.

And there will be a link in our show notes for how to come see that panel if you’d like to come see it. So, please come.

**Craig:** Nifty. Good group.

**John:** Yay. Let us start with this article that everybody tweeted me this morning. It’s an article by Brooks Barnes in the New York Times and it is about a man…

**Craig:** Vinny Bruzzese.

**John:** Vinny Bruzzese, who is, “‘The reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,’ in the words of one studio customer.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Yes. What Mr. Bruzzese does is he provides notes for filmmakers — really studios — on screenplays they are considering going into production. And he’s looking at them from the perspective of here is the data of a whole bunch of other movies and these are concerns about the script based on genre, based on specifics in the actual script and giving them suggestions on how to improve the screenplay based on the data that he has. So, for this knowledge he may charge $20,000 for this consultation which results in, I think, a meeting and also 20 or 30 pages of notes.

The article ran this morning and I think it’s interesting to talk about both from the perspective of what this guy is doing, but also to talk about from the perspective of entertainment journalism, because I think there are concerns I have about both areas.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, where should we start? Should we start with the article or start with what this guy is doing?

**Craig:** I mean, why don’t we start with the article because that will probably go faster and then we can did into Mr. Bruzzese.

**John:** Great. So, this article is written by Brooks Barnes, and I met Brooks when he first started working for the New York Times and he does a lot of these kinds of articles which is talking about the nature of the film industry.

And I was about halfway through the article when I scrolled back to the top thinking, “I bet Brooks Barnes wrote this,” and I was right.

Here’s what tipped me off that I thought it was a Brooks Barnes article, because he used the word “script doctors” in a way that’s actually not the way you use the word script doctors. He meant script doctors in the way talking about like a script consultant, which is what Vinny Bruzzese is.

But Vinny Bruzzese is not a script doctor. A script doctor is a screenwriter who comes in to fix a problem in a script. So, at times in my career I am a script doctor. That’s not what this guy actually is or what he’s doing.

The other concern I had sort of overall was that no one was on the record. Other than this guy, Vinny Bruzzese, and one screenwriter who was horrified, nobody was actually named by name in the article, which I think was really telling.

Now, at the end of the article Brooks Barnes talks about his theory on why people don’t want to go on the record, they don’t want to offend people. But I think it’s just really telling that nobody wants to actually talk about this by name because it doesn’t seem like a good useful thing that’s going to track well into the future. And nobody wants to be able to be Googled that they contributed to this practice or behavior in the industry.

**Craig:** Brooks Barnes…you know, I teed off on this guy years ago because he wrote an article — I think it was about residuals and he simply did not understand how they work.

Brooks Barnes tends to approach Hollywood the way that an anthropologist sometimes approaches some local tribe that they’re just encountering, describing it as if they’re alien life forms. This guy needs to just stop writing about Hollywood because he doesn’t really understand it. He doesn’t really get it. And the people he’s talking to, frankly, it’s like, you know, some of these people that he’s quoting, you know…Scott Steindorff? Okay.

I mean, is Scott Steindorff really representative of people that are actually holding Hollywood up with their hands? Not really.

**John:** I will actually amend my earlier statement, because Mark Gill is also mentioned by name, and Mark Gill is a person whose name you will see in actual trades and is actually making movies. Mark Gills is president of Millennium Films.

**Craig:** Yeah, but he’s president of Millennium which is just… — I’m sorry, I guess this will disqualify me from working for Millennium. They stink! That’s a bad company.

**John:** Millennium is a genre filmmaker that does a very specific kind of movie.

**Craig:** Well, they also do a very specific kind of thing where they treat writers poorly, I have to say, in my opinion. I think they treat writers poorly. We’ve seen this before from there where, you know, there was a whole thing recently where they had been asking writers to write stuff on spec for them in order to get a job, at least that’s how I recall it.

I just think that…I’m going to get sued now by Millennium films. Oh, whatever. What am I going to do? This is my opinion. My opinion is that they stink!

**John:** Yes. Now, let’s bridge a little bit into the actual work that Mr. Bruzzese is doing. So, basically they are providing this advice and in the article says, “But you can ignore the advice at your peril, according to one production executive. In analyzing the script for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer…Vampire Hunter…”

So, this is the example they’re actual citing. It’s the only movie that I think they’re actually talking about by name. “The company worked on behalf of the film and the production company supplied 20th Century Fox with notes. The movie flopped. Mr. Bruzzese declined to comment.”

So, the one movie you’re going to hold up as like, “Oh, this is the movie we worked on,” was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer? Hunter. God, I keep saying Slayer.

**Craig:** I know. I like it.

**John:** Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This is the movie that you’re going to hold up as like, “Oh, this is one we did notes for, and they didn’t take all our notes, and that’s why it flopped.” Really? Really? That’s why it flopped?

**Craig:** Well, now let’s get into this dude. So, can I just say first of all I kind of love some parts of him. So, first of all, I love that he’s Vinny Bruzzese because, you know, I’m from Staten Island and there’s a lot of Vinny Bruzzeses. And he seems like a cool guy actually in that regard.

I love that he drinks Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper and smokes Camels all at the same time. I mean, the guy is cool. And I will also say this much about this guy: I love how totally upfront he is about how he’s trying to make money. And I have to say one of the things that drives me nuts about the cottage industry of these awful so-called script consultants — or people that Brooks Barnes bizarrely calls script doctors incorrectly — is that they’re always couching what they do in some sort of altruistic, artistic form.

And this guy is the opposite. And I love that he’s literally like, “Yeah, you know, basically I got into this to make money. And I really like making money. And I also am providing the service to studio executives so that they can cover their ass in case of a failure.” He literally says that.

**John:** He does actually say that. I do totally respect that.

**Craig:** I think that’s so great.

**John:** And so I will also defend him to some degree in the sense of using data to look at which movies should get made, because there is some value to that. And if you step back, studios have been doing this for a long time because there is actual Data-data that you can look at. You can look at what movies you’ve made. You can look at what movies have grossed. You can look at what dates you release them. You can look at what actors were in those movies and what other actors were in those movies with them.

There is a whole big giant set of data that you could look at that can be invaluable for determining, like, do I green light this movie? Do I not green light this movie? That is valid. And that is especially valid when you’re looking at, like, how will you be able to market this movie?

The challenge is that’s actually objective data. When you’re looking at a screenplay there’s almost nothing objective you can say in there. And one of the examples they cite quite early on in the article which I found just the best, and worst, and most telling was he talks about movies about demons and horror movies.

So, it says, “‘Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,’ Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. ‘If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.'”

What is that? So, you’ve created a distinction between summoned demons and targeting demons, which I’ve never even considered. I don’t think any writer has really ever considered. You’re saying, “Well that’s the difference between why this movie does a certain amount of box office, and this one does a different kind of amount of box office.”

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous.

**John:** Yeah. So, with data, when you have enough data you can look for correlations and you don’t necessary need to say that that’s the cause of why this thing was what it was, but if you’re just making arbitrary distinctions you’re just cherry-picking little things in whatever movies were hits and whatever movies were not hits. And you’re using that to defend what really your decisions are. And that’s not actually using data. That’s just manipulating things.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s take the demon example, because it’s so bizarre. First of all, it’s pretty rare for marketing to specify whether someone has been targeted by a demon or has summoned a demon. So, right off the bat people don’t read the script for opening weekend. I’m not sure how anybody would know that for opening weekend.

But, let me give a counter example, and this is where this guy kind of, you know, look, you made your bed, let’s sleep in it. There’s a Ouija Board in The Exorcist. She uses a Ouija Board to talk to Captain Howdy. I’m pretty sure that’s in there. I’ll have to check and make sure, but either way there’s some kind of implication that she has summoned Captain Howdy. It’s just dumb.

Look, the thing about this guy is he’s not the villain here. What he’s really doing is basically hustling and giving notes on stuff. If his theory is that people like some things more than others…duh. Right? Okay?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If his theory is that, I don’t know, let’s go out on a limb here. I’m going to crunch some quick data here using my statistics program. In romantic comedies, people like it when the couple ends up together. Duh! Okay. We all know. We get it. We got it, okay? That’s called giving notes and that’s what studios always do. They’ve always done that. And we as writers have always tried to write towards an audience, but also sometimes challenge an audience, maybe turn things on their head a little bit.

The villain here are the people hiring this guy! Because it used to be — it used to be — that people in Hollywood who gave notes, while maybe not the smartest people all the time, had the courage of their convictions. That’s why they had a job. What the hell is their job if they’re hiring this guy to do exactly what they’re supposed to do? And the data doesn’t mean a damn thing. We all know that. The data…Fight Club.

Let me back up for a second. One thing that this kind of stuff will never account for are the Black Swans. You’re familiar with the whole Black Swan theory?

**John:** Absolutely. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I think, is his name.

**Craig:** I believe that’s correct.

**John:** And so his theory is that — a gross simplification of his theory — that there are going to be events or things that happen that are so outside of your expectation that you can consider them Black Swans. And those events you can’t fully prepare for but in a weird way you have to be ready for the fact that because you can’t prepare for them you have to prepare for them.

**Craig:** And also that when Black Swans occur they tend to have very large impacts, because the world is set up in such a way that we expect things. And when the unexpected happens it is either very, very good, or very, very bad.

In Hollywood, I think what we find is that there are a lot of Black Swans that in retrospect we look back as White Swans because so many White Swans follow them.

So, Star Wars is a Black Swan. Nobody thought Star Wars was going to work. Nobody. Fox literally let Lucas put his own money into it and gave him merchandising, because they didn’t — I mean, everybody thought the thing was going to be a disaster. And, frankly, based on the early screenplays and ideas it probably was going to be a disaster.

And, by the way, it may even be a Black Swan within the world of George Lucas. It may have been that Lucas just fluked himself into Star Wars and really Lucas is far more Howard the Duck than he is… — I don’t know. I mean, he did a good job on American Graffiti. But I guess the point is those are the things that make Hollywood Hollywood.

If you want to be in a business that follows various predictable patterns in order to grind out predictable income, what the hell are you doing in Hollywood anyway? The whole point is to chase things that are surprises. Isn’t that the point?

I mean, yeah, of course, you want to make Avengers, go for it, make Avengers. And when that works you can point to how it basically fit everybody’s expected pattern. Except take three steps back and then say, well then why didn’t the Hulk make all that money? And why didn’t the Bryan Singer Superman make all that money? And why didn’t, you know, they’re on their 12th iteration of Iron Man, it’s still working great, but when they hit the fourth Batman back in the ’90s it didn’t work great.

Nobody knows. And you can come up with all this nonsense, but the truth of the matter is what this guy is peddling is nothing special at all except comfort.

**John:** Yeah. He’s peddling comfort. I mean, he’s doing that retroactive pattern fitting to say, “This is the reason why these were successful, therefore we’re going to take this pattern and template and apply it to these future things. Oh, but never mind the things that don’t fit that template because those were flukes or we’re going to find somebody to explain why they do fit the pattern magically.”

What I will say is especially telling is that nowhere in this whole article does it talk about the quality of the actual product. And in a weird way I’d argue that the quality of the product is largely irrelevant to sort of how well it does. It’s not completely relevant, but it’s not the most important factor in how well it does. So, his notes and his opinion on what movies you make and how you make those movies is about the screenplay and it’s about sort of the actual movie you’re going to make.

But, the movie you made has very little impact on the actual opening weekend. The opening weekend is the biggest predictor of how much a movie is going to make. And nothing that they’re doing here is going to bump that needle for what that opening weekend is.

**Craig:** It’s right.

**John:** Your opening weekend is determined on somewhat the movie that you made, somewhat to a large degree the stars you have in it, to a huge degree the weekend that you’re choosing to open, the competition around that weekend.

So, all of these factors have nothing to do with this 20-page report that you pay $20,000 for. And it’s maddening to think that it’s going to all come down to these formulas.

**Craig:** I totally agree. And I have to say that his whole, that Brooks kind of skews this article and Bruzzese feeds into it, to suggest that the only people — the ONLY people that don’t like this are the writers. We’re the only ones.

I don’t care. Let me tell you something. If I’m working for somebody and they want to give this guy $20,000 to write up a bunch of notes, great. I’ll read them. If they’re good, I’ll do them. I have no problem with that. I mean, the fact that Mr. Bruzzese bills himself as a distant relative of Einstein, notwithstanding, if he writes good notes, terrific.

It’s just that what he’s trying to do is this game that I’ve been watching. He’s formalizing a game that I’ve been watching and experiencing for nearly twenty years now. And that is the game of, “My opinion is not an opinion; my opinion is a fact.” That’s the game people play.

When I’m sitting in a room with people and they’re like, “I think it should be like this.” Really? Because I think it should be like this. “No, no, no, it can’t be like this. It has to be like this because of this, this, and this. It’s a fact.”

No it’s not. Your opinion is not a fact. Nobody’s opinion about any screenplay is a fact. Ever. I can’t take it! That’s got to stop.

And all this guy is doing is dressing up opinion as fact so that these executives who don’t have either the courage of their convictions or convictions at all can present them to the writers as fact. But, look, if you can come up with all the pieces, do it! Go, spend another ten grand, maybe he can actually give you the demon movie that will do the best. But, until you can do that you have to acknowledge that there is an enormous ghost in the machine over which you have no control.

And, frankly, that’s what we do. So, I don’t mind that this guy is doing this. I applaud any hustler. I am so sad that people are lining up to play his three-card monte though. That is…oh god.

**John:** I wonder how many people are actually lining up to play his three-card monte, though. Because if you look at it, like no one else went on the record. No one else said that they were actually talking to him. So, my concern sort of from the journalistic perspective is it feels like a terrific press release for this guy. And in some ways selling the controversy is a way to sort of get more people talking about him and talking about this idea and this service that he’s providing when there may actually be nothing to it. There may not have even been sizzle before this article ran yesterday.

I don’t know. I mean, there’s a photo of them in a nice-looking office where he’s talking to some young woman who is a development executive there. Great, but I don’t know that there is anything to this at all.

**Craig:** We don’t even know that that’s his office.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** [laughs] I don’t know where he is. But I just think, I mean, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not plugged in enough, but for instance it says, “Major film financiers and advisers like Houlihan Lokey confirm…,” who?

**John:** Who is Houlihan Lokey?

**Craig:** Houlihan Lokey doesn’t even sound like a real name. Is that a person or…?

**John:** It’s an amazing name, though. I love it.

**Craig:** It is a pretty good name, like Houlihan Lokey. Houlihan Lokey is like the old drunk in the saloon who ends up killing everyone because he’s still really, really good with a six-shooter.

**John:** Yeah. He’s notorious.

**Craig:** “Who did this? Houlihan Lokey! Ugh.”

I don’t know how that would be analyzed by Mr. Bruzzese’s spreadsheets, but all I can say is my reaction is not… — In the end he tries to, I love it when people do this, they try and basically pre-but you, you know, so in a rebuttal but a prebuttal he says, “All screenwriters think their babies are beautiful. I’m here to tell it like it is. Some babies are ugly.”

No shit. I mean, like do you really think that we’re all so stupid and narcissistic that we think that all of our scripts are beautiful? No. No!

Go ahead, ask how many screenwriters after their first draft, okay, you have a choice: you can get notes and we can work on this, or we will turn around and shoot this exactly the way it is and put you name on it and we can’t change a word. How many screenwriters are going to go, “Um, uh…”

**John:** Yeah. You want that chance.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. Of course. So, no, we don’t think that all of our babies are beautiful. And, no, we don’t have a problem with notes and we don’t have a problem with anyone’s notes.

Compare this, by the way, to Lindsay Doran’s terrific talk about joy where she says, “Look, movies that end on joy really please audiences.” That’s a very dramatic statement. It is not specific. It doesn’t say, “You cannot summon demons.” You know why, because it is talking about an audience experience. It’s not talking about a story point.

She, unlike Mr. Bruzzese has made movies. She has actually sat and worked with writers. She understands how to talk to us. This guy understands how to talk to executives, who don’t make movies.

**John:** So, let’s talk about that specific example and Lindsay Doran’s perspective on it, and his perspective on it. He would come to saying like, “Well, the data says that moviegoers don’t like movies with summoned demons, they prefer the other kind of demon.” But he might have ten points of data. That’s not actually meaningful data.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So he’s only looking at correlation. Lindsay Doran can come to it with that same note, but she could say, “Here is why I think that’s not going to work, because in this situation it’s going to track through this way, and we as the audience feel this way about the characters at the end because of the nature of what happened with that demon situation.”

That is a meaningful note that you can actually think about and use and implement throughout your script. His saying like, “Don’t summon the demon, don’t use a Ouija Board,” that’s not…

**Craig:** Because it’s a fact. And by the way, all we’re doing now is just waiting for the movies that contradict those facts because that’s the business we’re in. We’re in the business of surprises and subversions of expectations. It’s constantly changing. There are movies that come out that don’t do any business in the theater at all and then in home video become phenomenon.

Look at Austin Powers. I think made $40 million in theaters and then was just enormous at home. Office Space. Nothing. Enormous at home.

Who knows? I have a movie coming out where we decapitate a giraffe, how does that work out on a spreadsheet?

And I’ve watch this with comedy testing all the time. Inevitably the highest testing joke is also the worst testing joke. But, you know, this is the same old snake oil as always, and shame on anyone who is so bad at their job — it’s your job. And you have to hire somebody else to do it for you? That’s embarrassing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Why don’t you just quit at that point. Why don’t the people who employ you just fire you and hire this guy instead? What do we need you for, to write a check to this guy? Oh my god. This guy is fine. I love this guy. Good for him. Way to go, Vinny.

**John:** Let’s answer some questions.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** So, Jill writes in to ask, “A friend of mine wrote a pilot for a web series and decided to get some of our smarter writer friends together to punch it up. That’s when I realized I have no idea how to run a punch-up session. Can you give us some tips and tricks?”

So, Jill is talking about an informal punch-up session. Sometimes on a big movie, you and I have both been in these situations where it’s a WGA movie, and so therefore there are kind of rules about how you do it. So, you are bringing in people for a day, you’re paying them for a day, and you’re sitting around a table. We all sign these contracts saying that we know what we’re doing. And eventually we have to sign another form saying we’re not going to try and get credit on it.

That’s not what we’re talking about here. She’s just doing a little web series. So, let’s give some suggestions on the smaller version of what she should do.

**Craig:** Well, I have done these before. And the basic rule of thumb is if you’re running the session you should try and participate very little. Your job really is to kind of move people through the script. So, you’re sort of saying, “Okay, let’s just start,” usually you’ll say, “Here are some general areas where we’d love to punch up. Here is our kind of thing we’re looking for, some specific questions, but really more than anything, let’s just go through the script page-by-page and pitch out some thoughts as you have them. So, let’s just start. Let’s just start with page one. Anybody have any thoughts on page one?”

So, you can do a little preliminary “let’s just talk about the big issues,” if anybody has any big story issues, if you want. But then just go, page one, and then people start pitching and you’re like, great, great. And just be encouraging and you’ll find that some people are really good at it. Some people are terrible at it.

As the person running the session you have to kind of rescue and be kind to the people who are floundering because you don’t want to be mean. You don’t want the room to turn on somebody because they may have one joke that works, and it may be the best joke ever. So, you just don’t want to kill them. And just keep things going and keep things light. And just keep moving through pages.

You will find, inevitably, that most of what people have to pitch are on the first 30 pages or so. The last 20 pages everybody gets really quiet because they either stopped reading or it’s action and climax and it’s not joke time.

**John:** Yeah. I would say if you have the opportunity to do a reading of it right beforehand, that’s helpful, so it’s fresh in everyone’s head. Just read through what’s actually on the page so everyone agrees that they read the same thing together, that’s really helpful before you start flipping pages. You won’t always have that chance, but it’s great if you can do that.

I’d say provide plenty of food, a lot of carbs, to keep people going.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Pizza is always good. Be genuinely thankful for everyone who is there.

Inevitably in any group situation someone will probably kind of dominate the conversation, and maybe that’s a really good smart person who is actually really funny and that’s great, but if it’s the wrong person then you have to sort of do some judo to sort of get the other people talking a little bit more.

If you can get Nick Kroll to come to your punch-up session, he’s really good.

**Craig:** Nick’s funny, yeah.

**John:** So, that’s a good, funny thing, too. But have fun with it. And always ask the questions, like the what-if questions, and try and never shut down an idea because like, “Oh, that’s going to be impossible based on what everything else is.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Don’t shut down now. Just sort of improve rules of like, “Yes, and?” And just keep rolling because even if it is not an idea that is implementable right then, right there, you may find a way the next day, like, “Oh, I know how to do that kind of thing,” or that sparks something that’s really good.

So, take notes for yourself about not even what they’re talking about right there but what it inspires for you.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you have a producing partner or somebody that’s there with you, don’t worry and think that they’re going to somehow think that you can do something you can’t do, and vice versa. For those of you who produce don’t think that this is the time to jump in and say that’s not possible.

The two of you, knowing the script and the situation better than anybody, will have the exact same reactions afterwards. “Okay, well, we can’t do that, we can’t do that, we can do this, we can do this. What about this? What about this?”

So, just keep it light. Keep it moving. Don’t freak out. And, also, just be aware that when there’s a ton of stuff that people are going to be like, “That is so funny,” and in your mind you’re like, “And will never be in this movie because it’s totally off-tone or it’s going to stop the movie dead.” That’s okay. Just keep that to yourself. That is, 95% of stuff that gets a room laugh in these things — unusable.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can think of one guy in particular who is awesome at these things and I never once have gotten anything usable from him. [laughs] But he’s fun to have. And he keeps the room laughing which in and of itself has great value.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** But, you will find some… — And you know, the fact is there will be all these little dramas that occur, usually little soap operas that happen at these things. People get jealous, they get weird, they get quiet, they get too talky. Sometimes they go after each other as part of like the comedy sport. Just, you know, you be mommy or daddy and just gently encourage everybody to stay on target.

**John:** Yeah. Next question. Matt in Orlando, Florida asks, “When you look at the pilot script for Modern Family you’ll notice the character introductions are done in list form directly under the title page before the actual script begins. It seems like a great way to save space, especially in a sitcom script where you have a lot of characters to introduce and a limited amount of time to do so. Is this common?”

The answer is, yes, it is common. That is a very standard sitcom format. And so I encourage all writers no matter what genres you’d like to work in to take a look at the different formats for how things are done. And in sitcoms, yes, it’s common to do that kind of character introduction, a page of these are the characters who are the regulars and these are characters who are unique to this show. And that’s a standard way of showing stuff in sitcom land.

Even a single camera comedy like Modern Family will often do this.

**Craig:** I take your word for it.

**John:** Yeah. But don’t do it in a screenplay.

**Craig:** No!

**John:** No one ever wants to see that in a screenplay. Don’t ever…don’t do that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So, it’s a sitcom thing. And that’s why it’s important that if you’re writing a spec episode of Modern Family, which is probably not the right one to do because that’s an older show, but if you’re writing a spec episode of whatever great new sitcom, find an episode that’s a common — actually just mimic their formatting exactly because that’s what people want to see, that you know what you’re doing.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, I just have to interrupt because I just remembered one thing also that makes me angry about Brooks Barnes. [laughs]

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** Can I say it? God, so, in the beginning of his article he makes this really weird analogy to what Vinny Bruzzese is doing to what Facebook and Netflix do by analyzing the way people use their websites. They’re so not analogous…

**John:** [laughs] Not even remotely.

**Craig:** …in any way, shape, or form. They have nothing to do with each other. It’s just a totally different business, purpose, and point. Brooks needs to stop writing about Hollywood. Okay, sorry. Back to the questions.

I get nuts. I get nuts!

**John:** I know. I mean, it could have been the whole episode but it came up very late and so I thought we’d…

**Craig:** I know. We have so much to today. It’s a very busy show.

**John:** Heather in Dahlonega, Georgia writes, “Can you tell me why so many movies starting big names are going straight to DVD? I recently watched one on Netflix streaming called Fire with Fire starring Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson, Josh Duhamel, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Julian McMahon, and Red Lights with Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver, and Robert De Niro.

“In the past a cast like this would garner a theatrical release, or if the movie just wasn’t good enough the actors wouldn’t have signed onto it in the first place. What’s going on with these movies?”

**Craig:** Ah-ha! Typically when a movie ends up going direct to video like that, and Netflix, however you want to describe direct-to-video these days, it is because the movie just didn’t turn out very well. Actors sign up for movies because they think the movie will be good. Sometimes, though, that just doesn’t happen. You know? Sometimes the movie doesn’t come out well.

And basically if it’s an independent movie — and these are almost always the case — if there is independent financing the idea is “let’s find a distributor.” And nobody wants to distribute it because distribution comes with great costs. There’s typically the cost of marketing, the number one, plus also making the prints, putting it in theaters and so forth.

And if they can’t find enough theaters interested and they can’t justify the marketing budget based on what they perceive to be the interest in the film based on test screenings and so forth, they have no choice. They have to cut their losses while they can.

**John:** Absolutely. So, back in the day when Variety was a print publication I would get, I always loved once or twice a year AFM would come up, and AFM — American Film Market — and, I guess, maybe it was twice a year. I always got confused about it. But, there would be this thing out in Santa Monica where these foreign distributors and foreign filmmakers would come in and they’d show the packages of movies that they were going to get made.

And so in Variety they would have these mockup one sheets of all these movies. And it was like you’d never heard of these movies. And sometimes they were movies that were going to go into production, sometimes they were movies that were already done. You’re like, “Really? This movie exists in some way?”

And that’s sort of what some of these things are. Like I suspect Fire with Fire was that situation where someone raised the money to make this movie, foreign financing/other financing, they were able to make this movie with the hopes of selling it to a major distributor because it was going to be so good and everyone was going to love it. And often that just didn’t happen.

I’ll also say that, you look at Nicholas Cage as sort of the classic example of this, like who’s in a lot of movies, and you can’t believe he’s in so many movies. Some of those actors, they’re meaningful overseas in ways that they’re not meaningful here. And so even if it doesn’t have a theatrical release in the US, it may have a theatrical release overseas.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Or home video may be enough overseas that it is worth it to make the movie with them.

**Craig:** I think that’s what — I remember the same thing at the same time, flipping through Variety as a twenty-something and going, “What is this AFM and what are these movies?” I remember the one that made me laugh the most was, it was shortly after RoboCop, somebody made a movie called Cyborg Cop. This is obviously just RoboCop. But it was like a flea market of movies, and that’s exactly what was going on.

Basically they were selling them to foreign distributors and then here in the US they would either get no distribution or direct-to-video. So, that’s what’s going on there.

**John:** That’s fine. And, you could say like, “Well, why would anybody be in these movies?” Well, they got paid to be in the movie. It may be the kind of role that they really wanted to try to do. And sometimes those movies are giant, great, big hits.

And so things like the Jason Statham movies, like The Transporter, that was probably that kind of movie and it actually took off well enough that it sort of established him as a bit of a star. So, sometimes those movies that seem like they come from a major distributor, they really were pickups and they were bought by some distributor here and it always seemed like they were a Columbia movie but they weren’t.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Let’s look at some Three Page Challenges. So, while we open these up I will give you sort of the backstory on these. If you are new to the podcast, every couple weeks we invite listeners to send in the first three pages of their screenplay and Craig and I will read it, and take a look at it, and share it on the podcast so people can listen to our critiques but also read the pages themselves and see if they agree with what we said.

If you have a screenplay that you want us to take a look at the first three pages, and only the first three pages, you can send it to us at the website. The link for it is johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and we will maybe take a look at it.

Stuart reads through all of them, all the ones who come in with the proper boilerplate language on it. And Craig and I get a small sampling of them. And Stuart sent us three today. Which of the three should we start with?

**Craig:** You know, I’m just ready to do any of them. And if you want me to summarize one, let me know. You know, I’m back to being your apprentice. Dad’s back.

**John:** [laughs] Let’s start with Sue Morris’s script. We don’t have a title for this. I can do the summary on this one if you want to do the next one.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** So, we start, we fade in on the nib of a quill pen, it’s moving in small, neat strokes on the paper. And there’s a super with text over it. We are in England, Christmas, 1126. So, we see a young woman giving birth. She has given birth to a baby girl. Next, we see at the Palace of Westminster we see two, we see Sir Thomas and Sir John, both knights, talking about the fact that she’s just given birth to a daughter and that daughters can still be useful.

Next scene we meet King Henry in his late 50s. He says that, “It has been six years since the death of our beloved son and heir, William, in that great tragedy which took the lives of so many sons and daughters.” He says that the next heir will be his daughter, Matilda, will be his successor.

Actually, no, “My daughter Matilda, widow of the Holy Roman Emperor, will be my successor, to rule over the lands on both sides of the sea.”

Some raised eyebrows but no one questions it. So, there’s obviously some sort of court intrigue happening there. More discussion, as we wrap up page three, more discussion about sort of what this means, and then we jump forward at the end of page three to a hunting lodge near Normandy and the king has died. And that’s where we’re at at the bottom of page three.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Craig Mazin, talk to me about these pages.

**Craig:** I feel like I’ve read this kind of thing many, many times. I’ve seen a lot of spec scripts that are medieval dramas. More than you would imagine, actually. There’s quite a few of them out there.

This scene where the child is born I feel literally like it just gets repeated over, and over, and over. There is always the woman on the straw mattress and there is always the screaming and the blood and there’s always the midwife. I guess that’s how children were born back then. And no one ever wants a daughter; everybody always wants a son.

I got a little confused by the fact that King Henry is the king, but there was a boy who was the Holy Roman Emperor. Maybe I just don’t know the difference between the two, but I thought that once Charlemagne became the Holy Roman Emperor he was the king? I don’t know. I guess it’s two different things.

I didn’t really love the fact that we cut away from this to show the drowning. It just seemed a little strange.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** To have a flashback there on page two of a character we’ve never met. It felt very TV. And maybe this is TV. I don’t know. It feels very TV to me.

And then there’s just like sort of generally generic court murmuring. “So the King’s nephew precedes the King’s bastard.”

“You should know our man by now. Always determined to be the first.” You know, like political intrigue and stuff. It’s all fine, I mean, it’s written fine. I have no problem with the writing. I just feel like hopefully something crazy happens after this because otherwise, you know, been there.

**John:** Yeah. I was lacking point of view on this. I didn’t see what was going to be special about this versus The Tudors or sort of every other kind of big medieval drama. And, so, let’s start from the very top.

We see this quill pen writing. Okay, that’s a little cliché, but fine; quill pens can write, that’s great. But then there is a super. It’s listed as a super, but I can’t believe anyone would read this much onscreen. Here’s the text of the super: ‘If on the death of a baron or other of my men a surviving daughter is the heir, I will give her [in marriage] with her land following the advice of my barons.’ Clause in the coronation charter of Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy, 1100 AD.

That’s a lot to throw at me to read. And it’s not especially clear writing. That’s a hard, hard sentence to pierce. So, that’s throwing up a bit of a wall to me at the start.

Then we get to the actual birth stuff, and while it’s a kind of cliché scene I thought it was actually nicely written. Those are nice short lines breaking the action down.

**Craig:** Yes. I agree.

**John:** Two paragraph little chunks. I get it. I love it.

When we get to the Palace of Westminster we meet Sir Thomas and Sir John. Sir Thomas I’m told is in his early 20s. Sir John I get no information about. And if you’re just going to call them Sir Thomas and Sir John I have no way of really keeping them apart or separate. So, why am I watching these two people and what’s really going on?

I also got confused because, here’s the description of Sir Thomas and sort of what he’s doing:

Bright, cold sunlight. Leather boots crunch on frosted grass as SIR THOMAS (early 20s) strides across to meet the newly arrived MESSENGER dismounting from his horse. They confer briefly, breath condensing in the chill air.

Sir Thomas spins on his heel and strides back, towards a fellow knight, SIR JOHN. Sir Thomas says, “Another daughter.”

What was weird to me is like I think we were supposed to be in a really wide shot so therefore we weren’t hearing what the messenger was saying, but if you’re going to have people confer and we don’t hear it, kind of say that we don’t hear it, because otherwise that dialogue we’re going to assume is somehow between the people who — I just confused where we were at in the scene and whether that messenger was still there.

**Craig:** Let me also mention: a knight doesn’t walk across the lawn to go talk to a messenger; the messenger walks across the lawn to him. Much more interesting. I mean, these things are all about power, and rank, and privilege, and all the rest of it, so much more interesting to follow some exhausted courier to walk over to a guy and whisper something in his ear.

**John:** Exactly. So, if you’re going to have a similar situation, if you keep Sir Thomas on his horse or whatever, the messenger comes over with him, and then they pull back to reveal that Sir John is watching this from a distance and not able to hear what’s going on. That may be more interesting. That, again, suggests some cinematography here that’s happening.

With King Henry on page two, “King Henry may not be the largest man there, but by God he owns this place, and the assembled BARONS, the great Anglo-Norman nobles, all feel it.” Wow. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of clauses to throw at me.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so, “He’s not the largest man there,” but he is the King. It was just a weird sentence to me. It didn’t help me understand the power dynamic of that moment as much as it probably could.

**Craig:** And it is, I mean, “But by God, he owns this place, and the assembled BARONS,” so he owns them too. “The great Anglo-Norman nobles all feel it.” Oh, I see what’s she’s saying. You know, that’s that kind of tortured writing, the tortured sentence structure.

Also, his first line, I don’t, “My lords, it is time.” Eh.

**John:** Eh. Yeah. It’s cliché.

So, here’s a problem with those clauses there. “But by God he owns this place, and the assembled BARONS, the great Anglo-Norman nobles all feel lit.” The “and the assembled barons,” does he own the barons? He owns this place and the barons? What? Huh?

So, it could read either way. It’s actually sort of interesting both ways. It’s actually probably more interesting if he believes he owns the barons.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then I agree with you, there’s a flashback on page two which is like, oh my god, I don’t know who anybody is and we’re already getting a flashback to somebody who dies and therefore is not going to be part of our show. So, that’s…

**Craig:** We just don’t care.

**John:** These are all issues. And then we jump again at the end of page three and at that point we may be ready to actually start the story and so that jump may feel great if we hadn’t jumped around in time on page two.

**Craig:** And if the idea here is that these two guys, Stephen, late 20s, the golden boy of Henry’s court, and Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a decade older than Stephen, are going to be competing with each other for the favor of this newly minted widowed queen, I’m suspecting as much.

Then, that’s the perspective we want to play here. That’s what we want to do. And it certainly can’t be manifested by a weird shoulder scuffle fight. “A few moments of shoulder-barging and scuffling between the two men. They glare at each other.” That just seems comedic. And I don’t think that this is supposed to be comedic. I mean, that’s just funny to me in a bad way.

**John:** Yeah. I would say I hadn’t guessed that Stephen and Robert would be the focus of things. If they are the focus of things I want to see them on page one or page two, rather than page three. And, honestly, we could get them there just by cutting out some stuff that I didn’t think we needed in page one or page two.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Agreed. Not bad, Sue. Not bad.

**John:** Not bad at all. And, you know, everything on there was nicely written. I didn’t have any sort of issues with sort of how you were describing things on the page. It felt professional. It just felt like something I had seen before too much.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Next let’s do Robin Peters. The Gaffer. Do you want to do the summary here?

**Craig:** Sure. Okay, so we begin at a fancy restaurant, and we’re in England, where Simon page, in his 20s, is proposing to his girlfriend, Trudy, and he’s given her a small diamond ring. And she doesn’t feel that it’s big enough and basically says I can’t, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a market trader.” So, she’s unhappy with his status in life.

Next, we’re in Simon’s office, sort of, and someone is congratulating him and they don’t even know his name.

Now we’re in a park and she’s very happy because I guess she’s heard that he’s gotten a promotion but he tells her the catch is it’s in Texas. So, he’s been promoted but he has to go to Texas. And she basically says, “I’m leaving you because that’s not good enough.” She hands him his ring back. He begs for her to come back. She does not. And he chucks the ring away, hitting a duck.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, my first concern here is specificity. And that’s a word we use too much on the podcast, but I think it’s actually really important for here.

We start, “EXT. NORTHERN ENGLISH CITY — NIGHT.” Uh, just tell us the city.

**Craig:** Right. Manchester takes fewer letters than Northern English City.

**John:** “Lights flicker against the night sky.” Yeah, but maybe you could think of something more specific. Maybe you could just paint our world a little bit more specifically because I have a hard time clicking in because I just don’t feel like you know what these things are. And I lack confidence because you don’t seem confident in your choices here so far.

We’re “INT. FANCY RESTAURANT.” Okay. I mean, if you don’t want to give the name of the restaurant, that’s great, but just paint our world a little bit in that first line here.

Simon and Trudy, okay, proposals are an interesting thing, or diamond rings are a thing we’ve seen a lot at the start of things, but it’s a natural way to start something, but that scene never really quite clicked. I wasn’t sure at the end of that first scene how I was supposed to feel about things.

Then we jump to the next “OPEN PLAN OFFICE,” again, really generic, before we start this next thing. Every place we go to is just the most basic description of what it could possibly be. And I just don’t feel — I never click in because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, this is a comedy. And I don’t know if Robin is English or not, but it certainly reads English. The problem is that it’s not very funny. And it’s not very funny, I think, in part because the characters are so broadly and thinly drawn.

You’re absolutely right about all the specificity. And there’s also a kind of TV-ish quality to it, for instance, starting with the first line of dialogue on an establishing shot that’s rather boring, and then coming inside and moving through diners. You might as well have a waiter carrying a tray through. It’s all very kind of cliché and generic.

Bu the biggest issue is, if I can summarize, Simon is basically a schmo and Trudy is a gold-digger, mean lady. I don’t know why these two are together at all. I don’t believe, frankly, that they are together. I don’t believe that anybody talks like Simon. When she finally breaks up with him, because she doesn’t want to go to Texas, he keeps begging after her and I hate him for it. And she’s acting in a way that’s just sort of broadly sociopathic in a mean girl way which I kind of just don’t believe.

I’ll give Robin credit for getting the plot out on page two. Englishman is going to be a fish out of water in Texas, I presume. That’s fine, but I don’t know anything about his job. I don’t really know why market trader is better or worse than “junior” — “They could use a junior in Texas.” I’m not sure what that means.

His office was very odd. Talk about generic: INT. OPEN PLAN OFFICE — DAY. Simon exits a room into a gleaming corporate open plan office, reeking of wealth. A SUIT comes up to him.

Well, let’s count the genericisms here: Open plan office. Room. Reeking of Wealth — gold? A suit. I don’t understand what’s happening. Frankly, this would be a much more interesting scene if it were one scene and it started with a guy proposing to a woman and she was super happy because he was giving her everything she wanted and he’s telling her that he knows that she was waiting for this promotion because she knows, I mean, explain it in terms that women — so women watching this don’t feel like you hate women. She really wanted to make sure that she was supported and secure in her life because of how she grew up, whatever it is. And he says, “But the only thing is we’re…” And as part of the surprise, because he knows this is the big pitch. It’s not the ring is the big pitch. The big pitch is, “Texas.”

And off of her face the next shot you see is him at the airport alone. And, you know, the airport lady is like, “And you are traveling alone?” “Yup.”

Just there’s so much… — Be more interesting about this. This is just not interesting to me.

**John:** Well, also what you described in that take of a scene is you were giving a moment where he could actually be funny.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Because none of these scenes that he’s actually funny now does he have the capability of really being funny, because he’s just reacting to other people.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And so in either his trying to sell this idea to her, what’s his motivation? What is he attempting to do? And you need to give him something to attempt to do. So, either he’s attempting to get her on board with this idea of moving to Texas, or, alternately, we can see that whatever that room he came out of, well what happened in that room? Was he like making a pitch for himself and trying to stand up for himself about why he should get a promotion, and then he gets Texas out of it, which is not what he wanted, but it’s something new — that’s a moment where you can see him actually driving something.

I would also back up one step, because when I talk about sort of Northern English City, you know, working on a musical for the last 10 weeks I’m very keenly aware of you kind of need the “This is our world” song before you get to the “I want” song. And I didn’t get either of those so far.

And it’s fine, if the first three pages were really just like a “This is our world” song, that’s great. And you can setup this is the nature of the universe that we’re in. That can be wonderful.

And then by letting us see that guy in his world, then we can see the decision of what is it he wants. What is it he’s trying to do? And I wasn’t — none of those gears were sort of clicking in on these first three pages for me.

**Craig:** Yeah. Agreed. If it is, in fact, going to turn into a fish out of water comedy, we do need to see the fish in water. And we need to know what that means. And it can’t just be simply one shot of him at a park, which we describe as “Park,” kicking a stone around like a football, and then mentioning a local fast food joint. It’s just not enough.

Yeah. I think that this needs a little bit more remedial work and study to make… — And you’ve got to be careful about these jokes like, she says, “I don’t mean to be heartless, but I can’t spend the rest of my life with a market trader, can I?”

“Yeah, of course. Sorry, which bit of that wasn’t heartless?”

Well, okay, if you know it’s heartless, why are you still there? She’s heartless. What is going on here? And the issue with this, yes, we know people in real life who are pathetic doormats, but we don’t root for them in movies. We need to see some spark of something with this guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s why so typically people will find if the movie starts with a breakup they find their mate in bed with someone else because we understand that they were deceived. But this guy — she is such an open book, I really hate this guy for not getting it.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right, our final Three Page Challenge of the day comes from Kevin Pinkerton.

**Craig:** Pinkerton.

**John:** It’s called The Morning Briefing. And I will attempt to give a summary here.

So, we start on the Pentagon Basement Corridor.

**Craig:** Wait, did you say Pentag-AN.

**John:** Pentag-ON.

**Craig:** Pentagon. You said Pentigan.

**John:** I did say Pentagan. That doesn’t make any sense at all. I rhymed it with Alyson Hannigan and Bennigan’s.

**Craig:** [laughs] Bennigan’s. Exactly. Or it’s like Houlihan O’Reilly, or that guy, one of the biggest financiers in Hollywood? What was his name? Houlihan Lokey or something?

**John:** Yeah, something like that.

**Craig:** That’s great. Pentagan!

**John:** So, we’re at the Pentagon Basement Corridor, and the president is walking next to a Special Forces Sergeant. They’re appearing and disappearing into pools of light. The president wipes his forehead with a red, white, and blue handkerchief.

They come to an unmarked door. The president says, “Let’s get this over with.”

Inside is a chamber. It’s sort of dark and ominous inside. And, in fact, on a low circular dais is a creature, a giant creature — looks like it’s made of rotted meat in over-muscled humanoid form. There are also children on bleachers who are chained there watching, and terrified.

The president expects this creature to be there, and the president says, “Begin.” The creature gives the president advice about what’s happening in the future. And so tells him to, “Deploy the ships to Bosporus. Acquiescence is certain.”

The president asks about press reaction. So, basically this monstrous creature is an advisor who has some ability to see into the future. And so at the end the president thanks him to some degree, but also says, the creature is hungry, and the president agrees, okay, well, you can eat the children. And then the president leaves and we hear in the background the sounds of the children being eaten by this monstrous creature.

**Craig:** I love this.

**John:** I loved it, too.

**Craig:** I loved it.

**John:** And let’s talk about reasons why we love this.

**Craig:** Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, just from a craft point of view, it’s really well written. At first I was nervous because on the first page it seems like, oh no, this is just a bad version of a Roland Emmerich movie, because they’re doing that thing where they walk down the hall, “lit overhead by a row of dim bulbs.” And I’m like, dim bulbs?

He’s got a red, white, and blue handkerchief which feels like…

**John:** Yeah. I flagged that, too. I was like, oh, no, no, no, that’s cheesy, but then I was like, no, it’s deliberately cheesy.

**Craig:** Deliberate, exactly. It’s deliberate, which is great, because it’s a choice, and it’s a smart choice given what we’re about to see. And then we go into this room, and again, I’ve seen this room in the basement of the White House before, so everything just feels like, oh god, I’ve seen it…and then there’s like an alien there. Oh no, but then there’s these kids. And I’m like, well, what the hell is that about?

A dozen children, and I love how unapologetic Kevin is here — he doesn’t pull a punch at all. “a DOZEN CHILDREN, ages five to seven,” [laughs], the cutest age, “wide-eyed and weeping in horror at the thing before them, as they sit gagged and chained to their seats.” Brilliant. I love how audacious this guy is.

And then the president snaps his finger at the creature and one word, “Begin.” So, you know, here’s just so you guys playing at home, the home game, what I love about this line, it’s the first line of dialogue, or rather the second line, and it is, “Begin.” And what that line tells us is this has happened before. In fact, this is so frequent that the president is actually annoyed. It’s like, “I don’t have time, let’s go, begin.”

That is such a great tonal shift, because we’ve been set up to believe that this is like so horrifying, like the way in Independence Day they visit that alien that they’ve captured and it’s like so super serious. This guy is like, “Begin, let’s go.”

And the creature delivers these predictions. And the funny thing about the predictions, even though it’s not done funny funny, is that they’re so mundane. “Press reaction?”

“Acceptable.” [laughs] It made me laugh. “On the crux of the Senate standoff, the weak vote…” The creature is like a Beltway insider at this point, which is so great. He even gives a weather prediction.

**John:** Yeah, so the creature says, “Thunderstorms in the D.C. Metro area. Hail.”

**Craig:** Hail!

**John:** “But I’ve scheduled a speech.”

“I have seen the storm. It is already cut on the lathe of time. What more? Enough.”

**Craig:** On the lathe of time! I know. The creature is like, “Get out, I’ve given you…stop questioning me.” And the president is trying to figure out exactly, like his concern isn’t about the world, or any of that stuff, his issue is he’s got a speech and it’s supposed to hail. [laughs] It’s like, “Are you telling me? I just want to be clear.” And then he’s like, “Back to the Russians.”

Creature: Tired.

“I just want to be clue, the carriers, the Russians won’t be –”

Creature: Hungry.

And the president is like, “Eh.”

**John:** So, let’s talk, I do have a little bit of some criticisms here. On page one, “THE PRESIDENT walks beside a SPECIAL FORCES SERGEANT.” Well, how are we going to know he’s the president? We’re not necessarily going to know he’s the president. So, you’re telling us he’s the president. I’m not sure we’re going to necessarily get that originally. And it’s very important that we know that he’s the president.

So, you may want to throw in a, “Mr. President,” like he comes out of the elevator, “Mr. President,” just let us know. Because it’s much funnier if we know from the first frame that he’s the president.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The overall more general concern: this was a tremendous little sketch, a little moment. There’s nothing there that leads me to believe that this is a good sustainable idea over the course of a full-length movie, but I kind of don’t care, because I’ve enjoyed reading these three pages so much that I want to read the next pages.

And that’s, there’s a lot to be said for that. Kevin had a perspective, and a voice, and it was enjoyable to read. And these are — it felt confident. And, god, just give me some confidence…

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** …and I will just keep reading.

**Craig:** Such a great point. I mean, he is totally in control of this. And he is unapologetic, and specific, and frankly, there’s just a lot of craft. I really like the way the dialogue flows. There’s a great rhythm to it. And we cannot teach that to anybody. There’s just a really smart rhythm to it. I can tell you that Kevin is a funny guy. He’s a very funny writer. I thought it was really good.

And I think, if I were to predict what this kind of movie is, it feels a little bit like those early — you ever see the early Peter Jackson.

**John:** Oh yeah, early Peter Jackson.

**Craig:** Just like over-the-top comedy/horror/grotesque/funny, obviously satirical. I think it’s really cool. And I think Kevin did a great job.

**John:** I think so, too. It reminds me of sort of mid-era Whedon or sort of like the Buffy and Angel sort of at their peak. This would be like the cold teaser opening to something and you’d meet, like the new villain of the season would be the president and he would have this monster. And that would be the villain for the season, or half the season.

It felt great and solid that way.

**Craig:** Yeah, very cool.

**John:** Nicely done, Kevin. And nicely done, Stuart, for picking that sample for us.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s so nice to leave on a high note.

**Craig:** On a high note. Left on a high note. Well, well done Kevin Pinkerton.

**John:** I have a Cool Thing this week. My Cool Thing is actually, this is going to sound really self-indulgent, but it’s a book that I’m featured in. It’s a book called The FilmCraft Book of Screenwriting. And, as we’ve talked about on the show, I don’t like most books on screenwriting. And what’s nice about this book is it’s just a bunch of interviews with a bunch of screenwriters. And so there’s me, there’s Billy Ray, there’s Whit Stillman, there’s Mark Baumbach, Guillermo Arriaga.

It’s a really nicely put together, really pretty, pretty book that this British publisher put together. It’s $20 and it’s actually kind of great. And so I have an interview in there where I’m talking about sort of different movies I’ve worked on and sort of process, but everyone else is really fascinating and great, too.

And so if you’re looking for a book on screenwriting, or want to give a gift of a book on screenwriting, I think it’s actually a really well put together book. So, edited and written together by Tim Grierson. And there will be a link to that in the show notes.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Oh, I also have to say, it also has the most misleading cover in the history of any book you’ve ever seen. So, the cover is Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in Bed from Benjamin Button. And it’s this incredibly sexy shot. And it says Screenwriting over the top of it. [laughs] It’s like there is nothing sexy at all about screenwriting.

And so this was waiting for me when I got back from Chicago. I opened the envelope and I’m like, what the hell is this? And I had no idea that I was featured in it. Then I found it inside and it was good.

**Craig:** Nice. I’m cool-less this week. But it’s such a big podcast.

**John:** It was a big podcast.

**Craig:** Maybe my Cool Thing this week is Vinny Bruzzese.

**John:** It’s a great name.

**Craig:** Vinny. I love…Vinny is like, “You know what? I’m busy. I’m smoking. I love Diet Dr. Pepper, but sometimes I also like Diet Coke.”

**John:** Yeah. Mix them together it’s good.

**Craig:** Boom. “Open, hey, genie, I want both. Give me both. Open them both! And Camels.”

I don’t know why I imagine Vinny yelling at genie.

**John:** Because he probably does.

**Craig:** He might.

**John:** He might.

**Craig:** But he may be a very soft-spoken guy. The point is, I love him. I love this guy.

**John:** I love him, too.

**Craig:** He’s cool.

**John:** All right. Craig, thank you for another fun podcast. If you have questions about anything we’ve talked about, including how to submit Three Page Challenge samples, or this book I just hyped, or any of the Three Page entries that we talked about today, you can find them all at johnaugust.com/podcast.

This was Episode 88, but there’s 87 episodes before this if you want to go back through and look at them.

If you are not subscribing to us in iTunes you probably should, because that way we know that you’re subscribing in iTunes and other people can find us. So, look us up on iTunes at Scriptnotes.

And we will be back next week. And next week I think we’re going to have exciting news about our 100th episode live show.

**Craig:** Very excited.

**John:** Which could be very exciting, because we got a great email today. So, I think that could work out nicely.

**Craig:** It could. Could!

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

**Craig:** Thank you, John. And welcome home.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Turning the Page: Storytelling in the Digital Age](http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2013/05/turning-page.html) at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater
* [Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/solving-equation-of-a-hit-film-script-with-data.html?hp&_r=0) by Brooks Barnes
* Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s [Black swan theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory) on Wikipedia
* Screenwriting.io on [multicamera script format](http://screenwriting.io/how-are-multicamera-tv-scripts-formatted/)
* Three Pages by [Sue Morris](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/SueMorris.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Robin Peters](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/RobinPeters.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Kevin Pinkerton](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/KevinPinkerton.pdf)
* [FilmCraft Screenwriting](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0240824865/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Tim Grierson on Amazon
* OUTRO: Thompson Twins’ [Doctor Doctor covered by Danny McEvoy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpHAgyUKn-0)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/moving-on-is-not-giving-up).

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

**Craig Mazin:** I’m Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 87, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** Hmm, interesting.

**John:** I put it in there this time.

So, Craig, this is my last episode broadcasting from Chicago. I am flying home on Friday night. I just cannot tell you how excited I am to be back home in my own bed. I have not really been back in Los Angeles since February, so it’s been a very long time.

**Craig:** These stretches are difficult. And I know feeling all too well. There is just something about your own bed, your own house. In fact, I play this little game with myself where I think to myself even though it’s in the future, I’m going to be walking to my front door, and when I walk to my front door I want to remember what it was like when I thought it was in the future. [laughs] It’s a very strange thing I do. But, somehow it’s comforting and it gets me to the point in time I want to be.

**John:** So, it’s been a remarkable time and stretch here in Chicago. And we’ll talk about a bunch of things today, so let me talk about the topics on our agenda:

I want to talk about moving on, which is both how you move on from a project that you’ve been writing for a long time and recognize that, well, maybe you should just not keep rewriting that project.

In a more general sense, how do you recognize that maybe screenwriting is not a career that you should be focusing on.

I want to talk about reviews, because I remember like when you had Stolen Identity, that movie that you wrote, you got all those reviews and you had a bad reaction to the reviews from that. And I had an interesting situation with the reviews here for Big Fish.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And, finally, we should talk about the Zach Braff Kickstarter thing because that’s a thing that happened this week.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not going to veto any of that.

**John:** Great. So, let’s go in reverse order. Let’s talk about the Zach Braff Kickstarter thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We had an episode a few weeks ago where we talked about Kickstarter in a general sense, and Veronica Mars in particular, and you were not high on the idea of Kickstarter-funding projects, like making movies based on funds raised on Kickstarter. Is that a fair assessment?

**Craig:** It was. It wasn’t so much an issue with the Veronica Mars people. I think in the end I probably had a larger issue with just the concept of Kickstarter and what it does. But, the specific circumstance of Veronica Mars made it hard to criticize them. They had somebody who owned their copyright saying, “Unless you come up with a whole bunch of money that you don’t personally have, we’re not going to let you make this.” So, okay, I got that.

**John:** This week Zach Braff announced that he had the ambition to make a follow up to Garden State and that he was using Kickstarter to raise the money, or some of the money, to make that movie possible. And it was funded — as we’re recording this it got up to about $2 million, and maybe higher than that right now. And it looks like there’s going to be enough money to make the movie.

There was a lot of criticism and blow back about Zach Braff doing this and sort of he’s here, you have like a rich actor, or perceived to be a rich actor coming off the TV show Scrubs, and sort of why should we be paying for him to make a movie.

**Craig:** Well, there was a bunch of criticism. One was, yeah, okay, here’s a guy who at one point was reported to be making a third of a million dollars per episode of television and he’s asking for $2 million from people without granting them, of course, any kind of stake in the profit. That seems a little odd.

The other criticism was that he wasn’t saying, “I can’t get this money elsewhere.” What he was saying was, “I could get this money elsewhere, but then I wouldn’t necessarily get my way.” And that’s a very different situation than the Veronica Mars thing. He can make this movie without Kickstarter. He just doesn’t want to.

So, there was some, certainly some push back there as well.

**John:** Now, I’ve met Zach Braff on a couple occasions, always like social things, so not on any particular projects, and he was actually always lovely. So, I don’t have anything against Zach Braff in general. I would say that some of the criticism I read about his scenario was that he didn’t come off well in how he was presenting himself and the project.

And I think it would be a good primer for anybody who’s considering using Kickstarter to raise money to be really careful about your messaging because I feel like that push back against him, in a way that was not favorable.

**Craig:** Well, he still got his money, so in that end, you know, from just a pure ends orientation he won. I think that, I don’t know. Look, I’m friendly with Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher, the producers on this. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. And I told Michael as much, you know.

Nothing against Zach Braff. I don’t understand this. He wants final cut on a movie, you know, I don’t know. Earn it? Or, you know, plenty of people go out there and get financing for small movies like this and do get final cut because it’s a small movie and they’re not getting paid that much.

Or, put your own money to it. You know, someone sent me a link just today. A year ago there was a big article in, I think the New York Times, about Zach Braff’s awesome loft in Manhattan and how he had just redecorated it. [laughs] I’m just reading this going, “Ugh, man, why do you need $2 million from people out there?” I don’t understand it.

At one point he referenced a guy who, you know, he said most people don’t know that Garden State happened because one guy funded most of it. Well, where’s that guy? Garden State made a good amount of money based as far as I can tell. It should have had a good return on investment. Where is that guy? I don’t understand this. I just don’t get it.

And here’s the thing: In the end, I can say, well, I find it tacky on some level, but I can’t blame Zach Braff because it worked. I can’t blame, again, you know, when we talked about Kickstarter last time, my whole point was every business if they could just get capital for which they had to offer no equity would do it and should do it. So, let’s just call it the Sucker Born Every Minute theory.

Who are these people giving him…I don’t understand it. There are so many other things to give money to in this world. Why this? I don’t get it.

**John:** Well, I think as we talked about in Veronica Mars, one of the reasons they want to do it is because they want a thing to exist. And Garden State, I liked that movie. And I think a lot of people liked that movie and they would love to see a follow up to that movie. If this is a way to make that happen and sort of bend the universe in that direction, that’s fantastic.

From the Zach Braff or the existence of the movie’s perspective, yes, I think he could have gotten the money someplace else because, yeah, you kind of want to make a sequel to Garden State. I can see the logic behind doing the Kickstarter model, though, because it generates publicity and interest in a movie that does not even exist yet. And it will be the movie that raises money on Kickstarter, so people will already know about it a year before it comes out. And that can be useful.

And I think that some of what people use Kickstarter for isn’t even so much to raise money as to raise awareness that something exists. And that’s potentially useful. It has a publicity scope.

**Craig:** It’s even worse now to me. I get your “let’s just cause it to be created” argument. And in the case of Veronica Mars, that’s true. It literally was the only way that it was going to happen because barring those people… — And I don’t believe that, for instance, it’s as easy for Kristen Bell who starred on a show that didn’t make it into like big syndication dollars and all the rest of it to just say, “Okay, we’ll here’s the $4 million we need to make this show, or this movie rather.”

But this could exist — he said as much. He said, “Yeah, I could make this movie. I wouldn’t be able to cast this guy.” And then he pulls the guy in from Big Bang Theory who I’m pretty sure he could cast. It’s a $2 million movie. Or, it’s a $3 million, whatever it is, why not? That guy is on the biggest sitcom in America.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just out to lunch here. But then your point is like, well, so now these people are not giving money to something for which they receive no profit in success, they’re also funding the publicity campaign for the thing for which they receive no profit in success. And I just don’t get it at all. And if people are asking me to apportion some kind of blame here, I’m going to say 98% of the blame goes to people giving money to this on Kickstarter. [laughs] I just don’t get.

I don’t get it at all. And, you know what? There are people out there who really don’t have access to what Zach Braff has access to who really need Kickstarter. They’re not just going to Kickstarter because they don’t want some — because they want final cut. They don’t have anything or any way of knowing anything, or any way of anyone giving them anything except Kickstarter. But, $2 million goes to this.

I don’t get it.

**John:** I wouldn’t apportion any blame to anybody. I think I share a general frustration about this situation in the sense of you have a person who you know to be wealthy who you know, however much money he has, you know that he has the ability to make this movie in some other way and has chosen to go this route to do it for reasons that you’re not entirely sure you agree with. And you don’t want all movies to happen… — I worry about a scenario in which all small movies feel like they have to go through Kickstarter. If they didn’t they’re not real.

That’s the only concern I have is that, you know, working with a lot of the Sundance movies, like they’re always scraping to get funds. But if the expectation is that not only do you have to sort of impress investor people but you have to do this Kickstarter thing, it just becomes this weird beast of figuring out your t-shirt campaign before you’re figuring out your movie.

**Craig:** Well, it doesn’t appear to be working for Melissa Joan Hart who tried the same thing. And, ironically, her movie is called Walk of Shame, which is the expression they use for Kickstarters that don’t reach their goals. It was made mostly that it was on purpose.

I just wonder if we haven’t seen the last of these. In other words, the Veronica Mars thing was met with just pure exhilaration. This one, not so much. Frankly, it took a bit. I mean, Veronica Mars had made more than this thing did in like 24 hours practically. This one kind of like dribbed and drabbed its way to $2 million.

I mean, granted, it took, whatever, four days. I mean, that’s fast. Don’t get me wrong. But there’s been a lot of criticism. And, you know the internet, John. You know it the way I know it. It just feels like, I wonder if the worm has turned here and the next person who tries this isn’t going to just get absolutely slammed in the face.

**John:** We’ll see.

All right, next topic. Let’s talk about reviews, because last week we talking about getting notes. And getting notes and getting reviews are kind of related topics, but also very different topics.

Usually when we’re talking with screenwriters, reviews come a long time after you’ve finished your work. So, you have written a script. Like, Frankenweenie is a good example. That was the first movie that I just did not read any reviews.

And it was actually very easy for me to not read any reviews for Frankenweenie because I had been done with that movie for like a year and a half before the movie came out. So, it wasn’t very close and personal to me. I loved the story, but I didn’t have a lot of emotional stake in it immediately. So, I knew that the reviews were basically good. I knew that my life wouldn’t be greatly improved by reading them, so I just didn’t read any of them. And it was actually lovely not to have read the reviews.

You chose to read the reviews for Stolen Identity.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was mistake. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It was a mistake. So, here with Big Fish, we just opened. And so last weekend was our opening and so the reviews came out. And Andrew Lippa, the composer and I, decided deliberately that we were not going to read any reviews. We were not going to read the good reviews, we were not going to read the bad reviews. We were going to read no reviews.

And it was actually the right choice I think because it was a weird thing with a musical because a movie, you’re done. A movie, you’re done and you’re finished. Whereas we’re in this preview process so we’re still making changes all the time and we’ll make more changes before we go to New York.

And even reading the good reviews in a weird way would have been toxic because it would have made us, you know, I don’t know, when you put words to something and you read something in print, it gives it a sense of authority that may not really be warranted. And so even if you read something, like a glowing review, saying this is the best song or the best scene in the whole show, in a weird way you’re nervous then to change it. You’re nervous to do the actual work you need to do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, what we chose to do is we said — the producers, obviously, we’re going to read all the reviews — and so we said, “Read the reviews. And just tell us the generalities of what things are common. What things everyone agrees we need to work on. Not everyone, but what is the consensus of the stuff we need to work on.” And, thankfully, there was consensus. And the consensus was exactly what all of our friends and colleagues who had seen the show said we needed to work on as well. So, that was good.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** And then there were also raves. And so like the Variety thing was a rave. And so they can say it was a rave. And I could know that there was a rave that I didn’t have to read which was a wonderful thing.

But, I want to talk about, you know, last week we talked about notes and sort of how you approach notes. And what’s different is when you’re getting notes from somebody you can actually engage them in a conversation. A review is like a monologue about what you did. And there’s not a way to ask questions about back about it. There’s no way to sort of engage with them. And if there were they’d be, I don’t know, more useful.

**Craig:** It’s funny that as we talk about reviews, the areas in which they can be useful keep getting pared down, and down, and down. So, they’re not useful to you early on. They’re not useful to you later. [laughs] They’re not useful to the artist at all. They’re not.

**John:** Well, in a weird way these reviews are sort of like on any cool news where they used to have like test screening reviews, and I’ve always criticized those because like someone is trying to review an in-progress product. It’s like, it’s not the final product.

With theater, you necessarily kind of have to have those reviews because we are selling tickets. I think it’s fair to review what we’re doing and sort of where we’re at in the process.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And the best, you know, a lot of the reviews said these are the things that worked and these are the things that need to be improved before it gets to New York. And like that’s a lovely way to phrase it. But it’s still sort of judging a thing as it stood that night when the next night it was different. It’s like trying to give a moral assessment of a seven-year-old kid. They’re still growing. They’re still changing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I would imagine that talking to audience members could give you a very similar snapshot. The truth is, it’s audience members that you want to attract. Famously, Les Misérables when it opened in London got terrible reviews. Same show. Same show that has been running forever, all over the world, and then the movie, and the multiple cast albums. Terrible reviews. The critics just didn’t matter. They weren’t right.

Or, let’s not say that. They weren’t applicable to what people on stage are going for which is to fill a theater with people. So, talking to people I would imagine would give you, like you said, all they did was say the same things that your friends and your other preview goers were saying.

**John:** Absolutely. One of the most fascinating things that happened this last week was we had groups sales meetings which is they fly in a bunch of the people who sell whole big blocks of tickets to tourists who are visiting New York City. And so it could be church groups, educational groups. It could be conventions, whatever.

And these people are fascinating because they see a zillion shows, because they see all the shows that are coming to Broadway. So, afterwards we did this Q&A and they could ask questions. And one woman was like really, really direct about the things she liked and the things she didn’t like, and who she was going to recommend the show for and who she wasn’t going to recommend the show for. And that was actually really useful because I could engage her in a conversation. And a lot of what she was saying was consistent with the other notes we were getting, and with like honestly apparently what’s in the reviews which is great, because that means that’s a thing you can address.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The process is like as if we’re editing a movie but the Avid, we’re putting a new cut off the Avid every day and have to show it to an audience. It’s like you’re having 35 test screenings back, to back, to back. And it’s wonderful to have that opportunity, but also exhausting to have that opportunity.

**Craig:** Yeah, I can see that.

Well, I think it’s very smart that you guys were not plugged into the reviews and in the end they simply — they are, I guess, just associated with the experience, but they are not causal to it in any way.

**John:** They’re a snapshot of sort of what the show was like at a certain time and what the reaction to the show was at that time.

**Craig:** Through one person’s camera.

**John:** Through one person’s camera. And, honestly, like what happened that night, because some nights are really, really good, and the audience is fantastic, and just everything kind of clicks. And some nights a line gets dropped or some cue doesn’t work quite right, and it is like the sustained magic trick. Even with a movie, you’ve seen scenes where like literally cutting one reaction shot changes the whole scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s the kind of situation we’re at now where like some stuff has to be polished exactly one way or it doesn’t really work right.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, and I totally believe you because you’ll see that with movies, and movies never change. But the audience changes, or a theater changes, or a venue, and it’s just weird sometimes. It’s just one thing that they respond to in one room, they don’t in another. So…

**John:** You and I have both been to experiences where they’ll have a premiere, but like there will be too many people for one screen. And so there will be theater A and theater B. And it’s the exact same movie playing in both places and people have different experiences which is so…

**Craig:** So weird.

**John:** It’s crazy.

Now, partly why I didn’t read the reviews was sort of a psychological self-defense. It’s like knowing what was going to send me off in little spirals and make me unproductive. But, psychological self-defense is really sort of our third and biggest topic today which is how do you recognize when it’s time to move on from either a project or from this thing of writing.

And let’s talk through that, because I have 12 produced movie credits, maybe. I think 10 or 12. And a lot other movies I sort of worked on along the way, but there’s a whole bunch of scripts I wrote that never shot. And I’ve had to sort of move on from them. And you have a big shelf of stuff, too, I assume?

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure.

**John:** So, let’s talk about when you decide to just be done with a project, or do you decide — does it just fall off or have you officially sort of said goodbye to any projects?

**Craig:** I have said goodbye. There’s one project that I was hired to do by a studio and I really loved it and my producer really loved it, but there were circumstances that made it sort of impossible to green light it. It just wasn’t a good fit for the studio and it was very expensive. And I think it has just been there. I don’t know if anyone has ever really worked on it again. I think it’s just dead.

And, you know, in a weird way, it doesn’t bother me. I guess that’s okay, you know. I’m okay to rest on those things. There’s a spec script that I wrote that has some really cool stuff in it, but then just stuff that’s not quite right, and I kind of realize, “Uh, I don’t really want to write this anymore.”

And, so I quit on it. And I have no problem with that at all. Do you feel great sadness when… — Do you feel like quitting on something is a bad thing, or ending like that is a bad thing?

**John:** I can offer two perspectives. I think every movie that I write is real to me in the sense that I’ve entered into that world and I’ve written everything from the inside, and so those characters are as real to me as the characters are in the movies that get made. And so there’s a certain sadness when like something doesn’t proceed because I know those characters are never going to see their full life. They’re only ideas of the final movie. And so they’re real to me, but they’re not real to anybody else. And so that’s a sad thing.

One of the themes in The Nines was that sense of these characters are sort of trapped forever in 12-point Courier. And what is the creator’s responsibility to their creations. Am I responsible for, having created these characters, am I responsible for making sure they exist in the world for real? At what point are you allowed to sort of walk away from the things you’ve made, be it a story, a script, a universe? At what point is a creator allowed to walk away from the things he’s made?

So, some of those things, it is different when it is my own original baby, when it was like a spec script I came up with. It was entirely mine. I own every little bit of it. That’s a tougher thing for me then sometimes there’s a bundle of rights that I was hired on to write this thing. It’s not my thing. I did everything I could. I took care of this thing as well as I could, but it’s not ultimately mine.

That’s a situation like Preacher. I would love the Preacher movie to exist. I just can’t actually get it to happen. And I don’t own those rights and so I can’t push it any further. And I can get people on the phone, but I can’t get the next thing to happen, and that’s the reality of it.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s not the end of the world. I mean, I guess, you have an experience writing something and I always feel like we learn every time we write. We push ourselves or challenge ourselves in some way. And there’s an upside, frankly, to the things that are unmade. And that is you get to enjoy them perfectly in your mind. And no one can mess with those.

**John:** So, I think there’s sometimes an opportunity cost to holding on to things. And that opportunity cost is like that is time when you’re not writing something new.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That is time where you’re not pursuing something new. And that’s an important thing to remember, because honestly the easiest thing to do is often to work on another draft of that project. And so sometimes you promised it to somebody, so you’re going to fire up the word processor, and like Final Draft, and go through and just do a new pass for somebody. And a lot of screenwriters in Los Angeles have written one and half scripts.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** They’ve written that first spec script. They started on another script. They didn’t really finish the second script. And they’d go back and they’d keep writing that first one, which might have had a pretty good idea on it, but all they sort of know how to do is how to rewrite that first script.

In most cases, people would be better off say acknowledging like that was a lovely script, I learned a lot from there, and move onto the next one.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The first thing I wrote which got me an agent will never get made. And it should never get made. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a perfectly valid piece of writing. It just wasn’t a movie that the universe wanted to exist.

**Craig:** I also think that for a lot of these writers they are belaboring under a misconception that their script must be as perfected as possible, or I guess the proper way to say that is their script must be perfected in order for someone to truly appreciate it. And it turns out this is not at all the case.

A, there is no “perfected.” There is only perfected for you. B, nobody ever reads a script and says, “It’s perfect. Shoot it!”

**John:** No one.

**Craig:** And, C, most importantly, and most encouragingly, the stuff in your screenplay that is basic, and intentional, and specific to your screenplay will shine through flaws every day of the week. Everybody, frankly, is looking for something, even if it’s one great scene, or just the basic idea. They’re going to get it or not. They never pick up these scripts — no one, forget the cartoon producers and studio executives that you might imagine are out there, anyone, no one is going to pick up a script and say, “It is flawed, therefore no good,” or “It is perfect therefore good.” That’s not how it works.

So, when we redo, and redo, and redo, and redo and just sit there sanding and polishing we are unfortunately misusing our natural obsessive compulsive disorder for bad. We let that get out of control. We need OCD to be able to fill 150 pages, and we need OCD to redo it and fix it in large, gross ways.

But, when you start to indulge the OCD, that is when you are entering the line of diminishing returns and it is time to consider maybe moving on.

**John:** Yeah. Here’s a sign: If you go through a draft and you’ve mostly change punctuation…

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** …that was not a productive draft. Because you start to recognize that all you’re doing is polishing the script but you’re not actually changing the movie. Like, the movie that you actually make from that script would be almost exactly the same script. You’re just kind of improving the words.

And it’s not to say that the words are unimportant. The words are incredibly important and you should — every word in your script should be deliberate. But that doesn’t mean you should have spent three years on those words and every word in that script, because that’s not good and productive use of your time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** In many ways I feel people who get a chance to work in television benefit from recognizing that perfection is a trap. And the time pressures that they’re under in TV is like, “How do I write what needs to be written in this scene so that…” You know, good enough is sort of a trap too… “but that it does its job, and that therefore the scene will work and I can move onto the next scene.” It’s how to write the best scene for what it needs to be the first time through.

**Craig:** Right. That’s exactly right. And just keeping checking into yourself. If you feel like you’re still eating meat, keep writing. If you start feeling bones crunching, stop. You’ve gone too far, you know? And you’ll know. I think we all know.

Because we care so much about these things, sometimes when we finish a script and we feel really good about it we just read it, and read it over, and read it over, and we’re just congratulating ourselves by reading what we’ve done. And that’s a perfectly fine way to indulge yourself if you’d like. But that’s also a pretty good sign that you should probably now start to ease off the pedal and send it out into the world.

**John:** Yup. A friend of mine who’s very smart and sort of much more psychologically self-aware than I think I will ever feel comfortable being…

**Craig:** Is it me? Is it me?

**John:** [laughs] No, certainly not you. When she’s moving on, she will write a letter to the script saying, “These are the reasons why I’m moving on.” And it’s a weird sort of closure exercise for her, but like, “This is why I’m done. You’re fantastic. But I’m not going to be continuing to pursue you anymore,” which I know sounds a little bit crazy, but the actual process of writing that saying gives her permission to stop thinking about it and obsessing about it.

**Craig:** That doesn’t sound a little crazy. That sounds a lot crazy. But, if it’s working…

**John:** If it’s working. Because what I do find is that sometimes there’s just the open loops that you just sort of keep thinking about. Like, oh, I need to go back and do that. Oh, I need to go back and do that. And it becomes a sort of stacking kind of guilt.

And if you give yourself permission to just be done with something, that can be useful. And if it takes writing a letter, or just a little note to that thing saying, “This is why I’m not going to worry about you anymore,” that could be useful.

**Craig:** Whatever it takes. You know, you just want to try and find the sweet spot between the ding-a-ling who starts 12 scripts but never finishes and the other ding-a-ling who’s on his 20th draft of something where he’s now fixing tiny things no one would have noticed in the first place anyway because he’s on the 12th level of revisions.

And, by the way, for the way, for those poor people, god help them when other people finally read it. They don’t recognize that you’ve already gone through this process and that you’re 12 levels in. They’re just like, “I got bored here.”

**John:** Yeah. A lot of times people keep writing that thing because they’re scared of, who am I if I’m not writing this thing. So, maybe you should set a limit. So, like I will not rewrite this script until I’ve written an entirely new script, because that way at least you’re moving forward. And probably in the process of writing that new script you will recognize, “Oh, you know what? I’m a writer. I’m not just one script.”

**Craig:** And there you go.

**John:** And you’ll keep moving on. But, let’s push a little bit further. What if you’re not a screenwriter? And how do you know whether you are a person who is just maybe not cut out for screenwriting?

**Craig:** Well, I was thinking about this the other day because someone on Done Deal Pro sort of did some back-of-the-envelope math about what the odds were of becoming a professional screenwriter. And while the back-of-the-envelope was pretty loosey-goosey in terms of all the assumptions and things, obviously it’s low, right? The odds are low. I don’t know what they actually came up with, but let’s just say the odds of — you know, when you look at all the people who want to be a screenwriter, all the people trying to be a screenwriter, let’s say that the odds are 0.05% of them become professional screenwriters in however we define that term.

And my argument back to all of them was, no. Those are the odds, maybe, let’s stipulate, but they’re not your odds. Your odd are 0% or 100%. That’s it. The general odds don’t apply to you. So, with that in mind, really what it comes down to is: Are you wasting your time?

And, this whole concept of “follow your dream” is so important and so vital for the people whose odds are 100%. And so destructive and limiting to the people whose odds are 0%. And I think it’s important for us to speak to all of those people out there who are doing this to say: Listen, there may come a day where you start to believe that perhaps it’s not supposed to happen. You’re not what is wanted in the world for a screenwriter. And you’re not loving it. And I think it’s okay to say, “I’m going to stop now.”

We shouldn’t associate shame with that. I know too many people who have wasted a lot of time and there’s other stuff to do. And, also, frankly, I mean, I’m sure you’re the same way — screenwriting is a huge part of my life. It’s my profession, it is my vocation. It has been so for nearly two decades now and hopefully for another decade still. It’s not the most important thing in my life by far. By far!

You know, my wife, my kids, it’s not the be all, end all.

**John:** Two points to sort of reiterate is that moving on is not failing. Moving on is recognizing what’s working and what’s not working and making a choice to pursue what is the best path for you to be pursuing next.

Second off is the difference between what you do and who you are. And your identity cannot, should not be in most cases your profession. Your identity should be the things you stand for, the things you love, the people who are in your life. It shouldn’t be what you do on a nine to five basis.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. If that is your identity something has gone terribly wrong.

And, frankly, if that’s what you’re chasing, too, there are kids who really want to make that baseball team. They really want to make the tournament team because they love baseball. Then there are kids who really want to make that tournament team because they really want that uniform that says, “I’m on a tournament team.”

A lot of people out there I think want the uniform.

**John:** Yeah they do.

**Craig:** [laughs] And, I got to tell you, it ain’t that great. When I was…I’m going to tell you a little story. Let me tell you a little story about little Craig Mazin.

Little Craig Mazin went to public school on Staten Island for kindergarten through fifth grade. And his public school was as New York City’s Board of Education love to do, because they were super creative, our school was, Public School 69, PS69. — No jokes please. — So, I went to PS69.

And in PS69 if you were in fifth grade you could become a safety monitor. And a safety monitor basically got to stand in the hall and do safety stuff, I guess. But really what it was was this: you got this white cloth band thing. It would sort of go around your waist like a belt. But then it had this other thing that went diagonally from the right side of the belt, up over your shoulder, and then back around. And then there was a badge on it.

**John:** So, it was a sash-belt-badge combo.

**Craig:** Sash-belt-badge combo. And you could do things like check for bathroom passes and stuff like that. You were essentially a little Gestapo. And did I mention badge?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh my god did I want this! I wanted it so bad. And I don’t know what the criteria were for selecting hall monitors. I was, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I was a star pupil. Star pupil. Now later in life it occurs to me that that’s probably not — the high performing students weren’t necessarily what they wanted for their goon squad. [laughs]

But oh my god I wanted that thing so bad. I had no interest whatsoever in what it actually meant. And I remember feeling so frustrated by the casual “who cares” attitude of the kids who were awarded the sash-belt-badge combo and who didn’t even seem to care about it. Or, god forbid, forgot their sash-badge combo at school. You know?

**John:** So, Craig, you were never given that sash-badge?

**Craig:** No, I was not. I never got the sash-belt-badge combo.

**John:** This is explains so much, Craig. It also explain why you fundamentally reject anybody who sort of wants that kind of thing because now — not having gotten it yourself — anybody who would want such a thing, or who’d want to…or who would want to kick-start a campaign to make sash-belt-badge combos is suspect in your world.

**Craig:** [laughs] I would love, by the way, if one of our listeners actually found an image of this somewhere on file. It has to be a sash-belt-badge combo thing from a New York City public education school from K-5, which is what we had, and it has to be circa ’70s. I’ll go as high as ’81.

Anyway, no, the truth is it was a very, very 10-year-old thing of me, but yet those 10-year-old things never go away. They’re always inside of us.

I’ll give you another one. When I was in college I really, really wanted to be in one of the a cappella singing groups. And I was good enough to get a call back, I just wasn’t good enough to actually make it. And I was — I felt, it’s not jealousy, it’s the frustration of denied aspiration. It’s really hard to deal with. But, you know, the thing is, you do have to look in your life at the things that you do get, and then remember everything that you get at some point becomes a job, becomes work, becomes a task.

And if all you see is what’s romantic about it, and there are some romantic things about screenwriters. You and I get to hang out with famous people and be on movie sets and go to premieres. That is romantic. And we get to talk to people, you know, and be interviewed. On this side of the line, of course, it’s like, blech, right?

So, for those of you who are fueled primarily by romantic aspirations, think about that means.

**John:** I would also say when you have this idea about what your life is going to be like when you’re having that job, when you’re in that position, you’re really doing the same kind of thing which I had some problems with the reviews, is that you’re putting your self-esteem in someone else’s hands. Your sense of self-worth is based on whether someone else thinks you are good enough in this situation or in this world.

And so, be it reviews, be it getting your hall monitor sash, you have decided that how good you are is based on how someone else judges you. And that’s not a productive, happy way to go through your life. Ideally your self esteem should be based on the things that you do and can control and things that you want that you can achieve that are meaningful to you, not meaningful to other people.

I definitely get that. My daughter has a similar situation to your hall monitor/hall pass thing. She’s seven years old and one of her good friends does ballet. And so she’s like, “Well, I want to do ballet.” It’s like, well, why do you want to do ballet? “Because she does ballet. They get to do the Nutcracker and stuff.” It’s like, well do you want to do that? “Oh, I really, really want to do that.”

But we actually really drilled down. She kind of just wants the trappings.

**Craig:** Right. She wants the shoes.

**John:** She wants the shoes. But she doesn’t want the work. She doesn’t want one more thing on her schedule which is already sort of over-packed. In a weird way she doesn’t want someone else to have something that she doesn’t have.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s a natural instinct, but you have to sort of push beyond that natural instinct.

And so I feel like a lot of people approach screenwriting because they really want to be in the movie business, but they recognize that they have no idea how to direct a movie. They feel like they don’t have the funds to make a movie. They don’t feel like they know people who can help them make movies. They know on some level that they’re not actors.

So, the only thing that seems like approachable in the world of making movies is writing a script, because anyone can write a script, so that is what they pursue. But, it’s not..I would say 80% of people who are aspiring screenwriters wouldn’t necessarily classify themselves as writers. It’s not like they wrote stuff before this. They just want to make movies, and so therefore they’re writing screenplays.

And that’s not likely to work out well for the 99.5% of them. Because they’re not getting into it for the right reasons.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Most of the people we know who are successful screenwriters, they were good writers before they ever approached screenwriting. And they were writing for other things and then they came to screenwriting. That’s a common trend amongst most screenwriters I’ve met. They were always good writers. Is that true for you, too?

**Craig:** Yeah. I’ve always been good with words and my — the vast majority of writing I did prior to screenwriting, frankly, was non-fiction writing. It was essay writing. It was persuasive writing. Investigative writing. I was a student journalist. But always trying to tell a story.

So, I was working with narrative inside of non-fictional topics. And you can see, you know, the non-fictional writers that we tend to appreciate the most in a sort of popular way are the ones who are able to place things within a narrative.

I’ve always been obsessed with narrative, and with mythology, and I’ve always loved movies. So, yeah, I was always a lexicographically-minded person.

**John:** I think there’s a reason why a lot of non-fiction writers tend to sort of drift over to screenwriting is, you know, writing for a magazine is very much creating a narrative but with very specific constraints in that you don’t have all the space and time that a novel has. You have a very specific kind of writing that you need to do. There’s certain restrictions placed upon you, the same way there are restrictions placed upon screenwriters. And screenwriters can only talk about things that you can see and hear. A journalist can only report facts. They’re limited to the truth.

You know, an investigative journalist only has the things that he or she can actually find and put into the story. So, there’s a reason why people who come from those field tend to come into screenwriters. Mark Boal is an example of that. Someone who comes from a journalism background. I was a journalism background as well.

So, I do feel that a lot of people come to screenwriting out of this desire to be part of the movie business. “I like movies a lot and so I want to write movies.” That’s not necessarily the best bridge between the two.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, just be on the lookout for that. As you go through this, at some point you my start to feel like it’s a slog. That you’re doing all this but not for “it.” You’re doing all this for other reasons.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Or, you’re doing it for the right reasons, it’s just not working. And all I can tell you is if you should come to that day where you just don’t like doing it, stop. Just stop. It’s okay.

**John:** It’s okay.

Last week on the podcast we talked about, someone wrote in the question saying like isn’t it really annoying when people do this kind of thing, and I proposed a hash tag called #CutItOut for stuff we needed to stop doing as screenwriters.

Se, a classic one is, you know, air ducts are just…we have to stop using air ducts because air ducts are cliché and they’re gross. But we proposed if anyone had other ideas for things that they need to — we need to stop seeing in movies and that screenwriters need to take responsibility for just not putting them in movies, to tweet them with a hash tag.

And some people wrote in with some good suggestions. So, here are a few.

Dan Slovin wrote, “This trope I’m bored of, ‘Oh god, he’s broadcasting on every TV on the planet.'”

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, like the guy who takes over the main switching station for all TV channels? [laughs].

**John:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** Yeah, what is that?

**John:** Yeah, what is that? Because it’s not really practical. I don’t even know sort of what they would be?

**Craig:** It doesn’t really work that way because there are different satellites. What are you — you’ve got control of every satellite and what you’re going to do with that is broadcast something?

**John:** Exactly. And when was the last time I watched broadcast TV? I haven’t watched broadcast in months. [laughs]

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, you know what? I never even considered that. It makes no sense. You’re right.

**John:** Aaron Bradley wrote in with three. One is, “Dropping one’s camera in the face of unspeakable horror.”

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, yeah.

**John:** Yeah, you see that a fair amount.

**Craig:** Yeah, with the slow backing away.

**John:** “There’s no such thing as…followed by whatever thing doesn’t exist.”

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s the Gilligan’s Island, “I’m not wearing that dress.”

**John:** “The girl telling the slacker man who’s the hero of the story if he can’t do it she’ll get someone else who can and then storming off.”

Yeah, I see it as a general idea. Like, “Well, if you can’t do it, I’ll get somebody who can.” Eh. That’s clammy.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s more clammy then…I mean, it’s a clammy line, yeah.

**John:** “How about a sociopathic antagonist with an Old Testament Name.”

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s pretty good.

**John:** Yeah, that’s pretty good. Eli, Josiah.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, Hachaliah. I always loved Hachaliah. I think that’s in Inherit the Wind when William Jennings Bryan is losing his mind and having a stroke. He starts yelling names of biblical books and Hachaliah was maybe one.

**John:** This is actually a pet peeve of mine. This is from Devin O’Neil. “A character receives shocking news, so shocking in fact that after much dry heaving they vomit.”

I’ve never received news that made me throw. I think it does actually happen. I just don’t want to ever see it in movies again.

**Craig:** Has that happened in movies? [laughs]

**John:** Oh, it’s happened in movies.

**Craig:** Really, where somebody throws up because of a message?

**John:** Yeah. They get so overwhelmed that they throw up.

**Craig:** Oh, the big throw up, I see. Yeah, okay, now that I think about it, yes. Got it.

Throwing up is gross anyway. Although it’s funny, I watched The Sixth Sense with my son last night who’s 11. He loved it. And I really appreciated it, probably more than I did when I watched it the first time when it came out. And there is that terrible moment where the ghost of Mischa Barton throws up. It’s really scary.

**John:** Yeah, Mischa Barton.

**Craig:** Mischa Barton.

**John:** She is scary.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “This ends now.” That’s a clam more than anything else. But, no, just stop that.

**Craig:** That is a message for itself.

**John:** Yes. David Bratton suggested that.

We’ve talked about this before, but like an opening scene where somebody hits an alarm clock, or hits an alarm clock and knocks it off the nightstand.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Stop that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Nobody does that.

**John:** Nobody does that in real life.

**Craig:** No one.

**John:** “Tight on an eye as it opens, pulling back to reveal the hero waking up in the desert not knowing how he got there.”

**Craig:** Um…

**John:** Uh, that’s awkward.

**Craig:** Does that happen?

**John:** It does happen. I mean, it’s not always the desert. But just that sense of like waking up someplace and having no idea how you go there.

**Craig:** Oh, okay. I guess. I mean, that’s not so bad.

**John:** Says the writer of The Hangover movies. [laughs]

**Craig:** Well, I didn’t invent that language in the first one. [laughs] So, I can’t take credit or blame for that. But, I don’t know, I mean, I guess. That’s like, what a close-up, a disorienting close-up? I think we have to keep that within our language.

**John:** Nick Rheinwald-Jones writes, “The criminal protagonist is bailed out of jail by a guy who wants him to do another crime.” Yeah, that needs to stop.

**Craig:** And, again, maybe my film vocabulary is weak, but is there a famous example of that?

**John:** Oh, I think it’s actually really common in heist movies where the guy gets out of jail and is immediately recruited in to do the same thing, or sometimes it’s the government who comes to get the guy. It’s like, “We need you to do this thing because you’re the only person who can do it because you did this crime before.”

**Craig:** Right. Okay, got it.

**John:** So, let’s stop that. August Benassi writes, “The character decides to quit drinking. Dramatically stares at bottle. Opens it, and pours it out.”

**Craig:** Yeah…

**John:** Yeah. I think that probably does actually happen in real life. I’ve just seen it a lot. And I saw it in John Gatins’ movie, Flight, and I thought was the last time I needed to see it.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, that doesn’t offend me. Some of these don’t bother me. [laughs] They really don’t. Maybe I’m just more cliché-oriented than most people, but I don’t…that doesn’t bother me. Yeah, I’ve seen it before, but it’s something that every single person — one of those people has to do it, so…don’t they?

**John:** Yeah, I just…yeah. Giving up drinking in movies overall is a sort of source of frustration for me. It just feels like, you know. I mean, it’s a thing that happens, just it annoys me for some reason.

**Craig:** You know what annoys me, come to think of it? It just annoys me because of what we do. Any time there’s an author in a movie, he has, or she has, writer’s block. And then something happens. And then they just start writing and they can’t stop.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the most ridiculous portrayal of how writing works. It’s not some crazy coke binge where it’s like one crazy night because I finally got over my problem.

**John:** Yeah, they get like graphia or whatever where they just can’t stop writing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And they’re so happy. And it’s just that shot of their face while they’re typing. And then a shot of pages that turn into a stack of pages. It’s crazy!

**John:** Yeah, it’s the corollary to ripping the paper out of the typewriter and crumpling it up.

**Craig:** Exactly!

**John:** Tossing it into the overflowing trash can.

**Craig:** Yeah, I know! And that scene is always there, too.

**John:** John Meehan writes, “On the desk or shelf or on the wall we see a faded old photo of a younger, happier main character alongside a woman and a child.”

**Craig:** Uh…

**John:** Yeah. That’s sort of an establishing shot of who the character was in a younger, happier time. That’s…

**Craig:** Yeah, that is cliché. I mean, we actually did a little spoof version of that when we did Superhero Movie because it is so cliché, and that was a pretty funny scene, I liked that. Just the happier times and in each picture the things around his poor, dead dad, the things that his dad was doing were increasingly dangerous. [laughs] It’s just kind of funny. I liked it.

**John:** [laughs] Jason Markarian writes two different ones. “Our disheveled lead long pours a beer into his cereal.” Yeah, beer and cereal, no. Stop that.

**Craig:** Yeah, maybe I’m just not seeing enough movies. That just sounds stupid anyway.

**John:** “Our disheveled lead, straight from bed, chasing far too many aspirin with a huge swig from a vodka bottle.”

**Craig:** Well, yeah, this whole like “I’m going to drink in the morning, look how crazy my life is,” I also don’t believe that that happens.

By the way, I don’t know about you, but my other thing that…this isn’t even a trope. This just makes me nuts is when people wake up in the morning and start kissing each other. Like, brush your teeth. It’s gross!

**John:** “The female lead has a boozy one night stand with a guy who the next day turns out to be her new boss or coworker.”

**Craig:** Yeah, okay.

**John:** Yeah, I’ve seen that a lot. Don’t do that.

**Craig:** That sounds pretty familiar, yeah.

**John:** Joey H. wrote that, thank you for that.

“Showing open boxes of takeout in a single person’s fridge to show that he is single.”

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Yeah, Wilson Kelley, good call there.

**Craig:** See, that’s a good example of something we should just cut out, because it’s not useful anymore. It’s actually dumb. It doesn’t even seem true.

**John:** Yeah. So, I would say, yeah, let’s not do that. Or, if you’re going to do it, again, make a joke out of it. There’s probably a good joke to be had there because it’s so expected that you can probably surprise us with something else that’s different there.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Oh, here’s a good one. Getting the bad guy…okay, “The bad guy gets captured because it’s part of his essential plan.”

**Craig:** Right. I’ve seen that a lot.

**John:** It’s happened a lot recently. So, that’s in Skyfall. It happens in Avengers. It doesn’t need to happen again.

**Craig:** It happens in, I mean, the Joker does it.

**John:** Oh, yeah, that’s right.

**Craig:** And I never understand it frankly. I honestly never understand that whole, “I want you to capture me thing.” It did, by the way, as much as I enjoyed all the movies we just mentioned, I didn’t understand why he had to do that in Avengers at all.

**John:** No. I don’t understand why he had to do it in Skyfall, either. If he had the capability of doing all of those things he was already doing, there was no reason why he needed to get captured in that, either.

**Craig:** Plus, it always backs the screenwriter into a weird place because they want it to be a twist. Well, if it’s a twist, that means the villain has to behave as if they don’t want to be captured. But, once we find out that they did want to captured, you have to reconcile their prior behavior which is really hard to do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Like why were you kind of behaving like you didn’t want to be captured so that you would be captured? None of it makes sense.

**John:** It does not make sense.

Joe Dinicola writes in, “When the boss baddie turns away, then turns his back and shoots one of his own guys.” Yeah, when you shoot one of your own guys to show that you’re a badass, yeah, I’ve seen that a lot. It’s not the best use of your time.

**Craig:** When you say to prove that you’re a bad guy, you shoot one of your own guys?

**John:** Yeah. I think that’s what he’s implying. So, it’s one of those things where like the villain shoots one of his own people sort of cavalierly.

**Craig:** Oh, I see. Oh, you know, I’m guilty of a lot of these.

**John:** Yeah, but you’re a successful screenwriter so…

**Craig:** I mean, I feel like when I do it it’s really entertaining! [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Maybe in your next script you’ll consider it.

**Craig:** Maybe I’m done with them now, now that I’ve gotten them out of my system.

**John:** Our final from Erica Horton, “The crazy/awkward priest or minister at the wedding.” Yeah, I think I’m done with that, too.

**Craig:** Example?

**John:** If you’re doing a wedding scene, like I don’t need the priest to be eccentric. I just…

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s normally…again, I’m drawing a blank. Where does that happen?

**John:** Oh, I think that happens a fair amount. So, I think Four Weddings and a Funeral, I think that’s a trope that’s in there. There is something where Robin Williams is a minister.

**Craig:** Well, that was License to Wed and that, while the movie doesn’t rise to the test of what you wanted that movie to be, but the whole point was that he was a nut. I mean, it wasn’t like there was a scene and in the scene the priest was goofy.

**John:** Yeah. I didn’t see that movie.

**Craig:** I did. I saw it. And, you know, it wasn’t for me.

**John:** You didn’t work on it?

**Craig:** No, no. Went to the theater. I’m not sure why.

**John:** I have not been to the movies in seven weeks. I’m so excited to see a movie, any movie. It will be great. I’m so excited to have a night where I’m not writing Big Fish. That will just be a delight.

**Craig:** It’s too much fish.

**John:** So, let’s get onto our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is actually very much related to this topic of moving on. So, my friend Gabe Olds, who was an actor on DC, his mom is a famous poet, Sharon Olds, who just last week or the week before won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And her book is called Stag’s Leap.

And the Pulitzer people say it’s fantastic, but I also think it’s just fantastic. I read it this last week. And it’s the first book of poetry I’ve probably read since college. It’s just free verse. Nothing rhymes.

What it chronicles is her divorce. And so it’s her divorce of her husband of 30 years. And it’s just breathtaking and amazing. And sad, but really just terrific. So, I highly recommend it. And especially if you haven’t read poetry in a while, it’s great to be able to read a bunch of poems that are about one thing. Because so often, like in The New Yorker you’ll read a poem, and like, oh, that’s a really good poem, but it’s one little appetizer of something.

And so this makes a meal out of this whole situation and there’s a whole arc to it which was terrific. And poetry, in a weird way, matches up to some degree to what we do in screenwriting because unlike normal prose which has full, complete sentences and has paragraphs and stuff, the stuff that we write is also kind of free verse-y. It’s just like it’s words scattered on the page to create an effect, and that’s what she does incredibly well in this book of poetry.

So, Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds is my recommendation.

**Craig:** It’s a very difficult thing to marry a poet because on the one hand they can be super depressing and then you want to leave them. But then if you leave them you know that they’re going to destroy you in poetry.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like dating Alanis Morissette.

**Craig:** God, it’s just like dating Alanis Morissette. It’s true. You know she’s going to get you like Dave Coulier got gotten.

**John:** Yeah. I guess. I have friends with personal experience in that front. So, yeah.

**Craig:** But, you know, that album was good.

**John:** It was good. Or Fiona Apple. I remember my friend Rawson Thurber at one point said like, “I do just want to date Fiona Apple for a couple months in the hopes that she’ll write an album about me.”

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. Just an angry, hallowed out album of anger sadness.

**John:** What I will say that also really impressed me about Sharon Olds’s book is that in it you can recognize that the fact that she was a poet who was writing about their situation did have an effect upon their marriage. He was the knowing subject of some of her work. And who wants to be in that kind of spotlight?

**Craig:** Apparently not him. [laughs]

**John:** It was not him.

**Craig:** Yeah, he punched out. Hard to blame him. Hard to blame him.

Look, I don’t want to take sides in this difficult divorce, but I am saying to this guy, you know, you might potentially have a friend in me here.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** I mean, I get it. That’s all I’m saying.

Well, I have a One Cool Thing this week. So, let’s talk about energy for a second. If I were to say to you, John, that the international space station is the largest scientific — international scientific collaboration on the planet. That would be true. But do you know what the next largest scientific collaboration o the planet is, measured by how many nations are participating through labor and money?

**John:** Is it the Super Accelerator?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Oh, what is it then?

**Craig:** It is a big huge fusion reactor.

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** So, there’s this project called ITER, that is the Latin pronunciation of I-T-E-R, which means the way, which sort of sounds culty, but it’s not. And it is a massive project. It’s actually housed in France. And they are essentially trying to solve this problem that they’ve been chasing for a long, long time for fusion energy.

And the cool thing that happened is that this week basically they got approval for — the final approval for the design of the most technically challenging part of this thing. And by getting that final approval they’re actually on the path to making this thing work within 10 years. That’s the theory.

And I think it’s going to work. And so basically regular nuclear power is fission power where we smash apart uranium atoms, I believe. And the fission of those atoms releases a lot of energy. It also releases a ton of radioactive waste and there’s always the chance that it could have a runaway chain reaction. Those are the problems that we all know about.

Not the case with fusion reaction in which they are actually smashing atoms together and by smashing atoms together releasing a ton of energy. In fact, that’s how the sun works. The sun is basically a big fusion reactor using hydrogen, and helium, I think, and something. Well, hydrogen. [laughs]

In any case, here are the benefits of fusion reaction. You can’t have a meltdown, you can’t have a chain reaction. It does not give off radioactive waste of any significant amount. And the fuel is basically kind of water. But, to make it work you have to kind of heat it all up with plasma to hotter than the center of the sun. It is incredibly — basically you have to get temperatures of over 100 million centigrade.

But, they’re close. They’re actually getting close. And, if they can figure this out, we’ve solved the energy problem permanently. It’s done. You can sell your oil and gas stocks. It’s over.

And I think, John, despite our advancing age, you and I will live on a planet with fusion energy.

**John:** That will be fantastic if we do. Now, I’ve seen different fusion things along the way. One of them was like a laser-based thing. So, it’s a bunch of lasers that have to fire at exactly the right moments and exactly the right spot to create this. Do you know what the engine is that creates the heat?

**Craig:** They’re basically using a version of what’s been around all the way back to Soviet Russia called a Tokamak which is a big, huge donut. And then they use these big, big magnets that old the fuel, because the fuel can’t be held in anything…

**John:** Because it would melt through it.

**Craig:** Yeah, melt through anything, right? So, they’re using magnets to basically hold this stuff in place and they’re using plasma and then firing helium and tritium and something at each other. So, it doesn’t look like it’s lasers. It just looks like it’s just gases and magnetic coils and stuff.

**John:** And smashy smashy.

**Craig:** And smashy smashy. And so the theory is that they will be, now that they’re kind of on board to finish the construction, the big part of this construction. And we’re talking, like this is how precise it is –there’s these 18 magnetic coils that weigh hundreds of tons. And they have to be positioned with a precision of less than two millimeters. That’s how careful they have to build this thing.

But they think they might even be able to inject the plasma into it in 10 years. And another five years after that they put the tritium in and, zoom, supposedly then you’re off and running.

**John:** Hooray.

**Craig:** Yeah, so just hang on, people. Just hang on.

**John:** Just make it another 15 years. We’ll have power.

**Craig:** We’ll have clean, super clean, super safe power and then, of course, the ice age will follow. Because we were supposed to warm the planet. You know it’s coming. You know that’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. It’s just…we can’t win.

**John:** Yeah, well, what we can do is thank our listeners for listening to us. And if you have questions about anything we talked about you can find notes and links at our show page, johnaugust.com/podcast. We are on iTunes. You’re probably listening to us through iTunes, but if you’re not go to iTunes and search for Scriptnotes and subscribe. Leave a note if you’d like to leave us a note, a comment; it helps people find us.

And, if you have a question for me or for Craig, small questions are great on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. If you have a longer question that we sometimes answer on the show, it is ask@johnaugust.com.

And thank you guys very much for listening. Craig, thank you for a fun podcast. I look forward to being back in Los Angeles so I can still not see you and still talk to you on Skype.

**Craig:** Very exciting.

**John:** But I’ll be closer.

**Craig:** You’ll be that much closer.

**John:** We’ll be in the same time zone at least.

**Craig:** That will make it easier. Welcome home. Congrats on a successful Chicago run. And I’ll see you next time.

**John:** Great. Thanks.

**Craig:** Bye.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* Zach Braff’s [Wish I Was Here](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869987317/wish-i-was-here-1) on Kickstarter
* ValleyWag’s [Braff-Kickstarter vitriol](http://valleywag.gawker.com/rich-person-zach-braff-wants-the-internet-to-pay-for-hi-479541247)
* Braff on [why Kickstarter is right for this project](http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/zach-braff-on-why-kickstarter-is-the-next-best-thing-to-actu), and Psychology Today on [why independent filmmakers should celebrate his presence](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-luck/201304/why-is-zach-braffs-kickstarter-campaign-causing-envy)
* Scriptnotes 49: [Losing sleep over critics](http://johnaugust.com/2012/losing-sleep-over-critic)
* Scriptnotes 77: [We’d Like to Make an Offer](http://johnaugust.com/2013/wed-like-to-make-an-offer), in which Craig discusses Identity Thief reviews
* Done Deal Pro users [try to calculate the odds of “making it”](http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/boards/showthread.php?t=72040)
* [Stag’s Leap](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375712259/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Sharon Olds on Amazon
* [ITER](http://www.iter.org/): The way to new energy
* OUTRO: [Last Day of Our Acquaintance](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG290pRgOQI) cover by AAAdriennne