Archives for 2016

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/flaws-are-features).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 257 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we’ll be looking at unforgettable villains, screenwriter billions, and something else that rhymes with illians/illions. Maybe we’ll find a good rhyme for illions.

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the Nathan Fillions. All the Fillions.

**John:** All the Nathan Fillions. Done.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Craig Mazin for the rescue. We’re also going to be answering a bunch of listener questions, so it’s going to be a packed episode, but sort of a hodgepodge. There’s no central unifying theme.

**Craig:** Good. Because as we know, that’s a terrible thing for drama.

**John:** It’s absolutely the worst. I think you should have a bunch of disparate elements that don’t really add up to anything. That’s the sign of a quality piece of entertainment that’s working at its very best.

**Craig:** Wouldn’t it be great if that were in fact the opening salvo of Aaron Sorkin’s thing online? Where he just suddenly goes for everything. His master plan is to ruin all screenwriting forever. [laughs] Because everybody will listen.

**John:** That would be fantastic. You have to throw in as many things as possible and don’t pay anything off.

**Craig:** Ever.

**John:** Ever. That’s the kind of advice I was giving this last week up at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. I was up on a mountain in Utah, talking with a bunch of writers, directors, and writer-directors about their projects. And it was really good. This was the 12th, or 13th, or 14th time I’ve done this. But there were really good projects this year, and a bunch of movies I’m excited to see get made.

So, the process for people who’ve never heard about the Sundance Labs, is a bunch of people apply to be part of it, or they’ve been sort of recruited by Sundance to come up there. And we spend a good week looking at their projects. We have individual meetings. Andrea Berloff from Scriptnotes fame was there with me.

And so you’re sitting down with them, talking about their projects, and sort of what they are trying to do and trying to help them get their scripts into the best possible shape. And it was so great because the kinds of projects that go through Sundance Labs are not big Hollywood studio features. They’re generally very specific, unique things that you couldn’t imagine existing anywhere else. So, it was a very good, fun time.

**Craig:** That sounds great. One of these days. One of these — I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I was supposed to go one year, but I ended up having to cancel because we were shooting. One of the Hangover movies. And then nobody ever called me again. [laughs]

It was like you don’t cancel on Sundance, Buck-O.

**John:** Yeah. So I actually spoke to Michele Satter, who runs the program, about you and about that. And so I think I’ve gotten you back on the list.

**Craig:** Was she like, “Yeah that’s right. He canceled on us. And you don’t cancel on — ”

**John:** Dead to me.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. And I did before I was invited to go up, I did have lunch with her. She’s delightful.

**John:** She’s the best. So I think part of the pact of getting you back into the Sundance fold is that I did maybe promise that at some point we would do a live show benefit for the Sundance Institute. And so at some point in the years to come we will be held to do some sort of live show for them. Which could be great, because I feel like we don’t talk a lot about indie film. We’ve had some indie filmmakers on here, but I think a live show focusing on that could be fantastic.

**Craig:** Let’s do it tomorrow.

**John:** Done.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Everyone just write in, or just show up. Just show up wherever you want to show up. Just show up at Sundance and we’ll be there.

**Craig:** Exactly. We could do a very good show, even if we limited our guests to graduates of that program. Like Mari Heller came out of that program.

**John:** Oh my god, of course. Yeah. There are really fantastic writers, directors. Quentin Tarantino, to name somebody.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Lena Dunham was up there with a project. That’s where I first got to really know her.

**Craig:** We should get Lena Dunham on the show.

**John:** She’s fantastic.

**Craig:** I say that like we never even thought about it. Obviously she would do it if we — like, hey, come on.

**John:** Come on. So, Lena Dunham will every once and a while email me back when I email her, but she’s kind of busy running a TV show, and writing a book, and a blog, and a newsletter. So, there’s a lot that he’s doing.

**Craig:** In my mind, that turned into you emailing her every day.

**John:** I do. [laughs] Lena, Lena, please email me back.

**Craig:** No, you don’t even acknowledge. Just every day you’re like, “Hi Lena, so here’s what’s going on. Here’s something funny that happened.” And then like, I don’t know, twice a year she writes back and she’s like, “Ha-ha.”

**John:** Yep. Totally delightful.

**Craig:** Or, “Funny!”

**John:** The reason why I know that is so specifically true for your experience, is because there’s going to be people in your life who are just that same way. And you can be frustrated by that, but you can also just acknowledge that like, hey, that’s an incredibly busy famous person. And that’s fine.

**Craig:** I’m trying to not email famous people.

**John:** I text famous people more than I email them.

**Craig:** You know, by the way, if you ever do want to get in touch with Melissa McCarthy, text her. I have tried calling. I have tried emailing. She will not — I mean, forget it.

**John:** She won’t email me back. But Ben Falcone will. And so like I will tweet to Ben Falcone, or email, or I’ll CC Ben on an email, and he’ll answer back sometimes.

**Craig:** Ben sometimes just is at my house when I wake up.

**John:** That’s really — that’s the best thing about him. Because it’s sort of like a jarring presence, when you first open your eyes.

**Craig:** Very.

**John:** But then, no, it’s fine. Because he has that improv background, so he can sense what you’re feeling, and he’ll just go with it.

**Craig:** He’s perched on me like that famous gothic painting, of the little demon. And when I wake up, and Ben Falcone is perched on me, and looking down at me with his mustache.

**John:** Well, Falcone/Falcon. It all makes sense. It all adds up. It’s an Edgar Allan Poe-y kind of thing. Let’s get to our follow-up.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Aaron Sorkin’s masterclass, you brought it up, but John from Quebec wrote in to say, “This is the best bang for your buck around, at least for writing — forget tennis and singing. I did the James Patterson masterclass and I can tell you it’s really polished and professional. And includes the A-Z of writing a novel in video segments, a course book, an outline of Patterson’s novels, a class forum, permanent access to the masterclass, and various feedback classes from the author where you can submit log lines, etc. And is all ongoing. Really complete and interactive.”

So, that’s John’s experience with James Patterson’s class. Or, is it James Patterson writing in to tell you how good his class is?

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s possible that James Patterson uses a sock puppet, John from Quebec. But I tend to think that this is true. How could it not be the best bang for your buck considering that they’re charging $90, and everything else anyone charges money for stinks?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, talked about damned by faint praise. But I do think that this is going to be a valuable — it seems like it’s going to work. It’s Aaron Sorkin, for god’s sakes.

**John:** So, John is the only person who wrote in about his experience with this program overall. And I guess not with Sorkin’s thing in specifics. If you are a listener who bites the bullet and tries the $90 once it’s available, let us know what you thought. Because, Craig is never going to do it.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Craig doesn’t do anything.

**Craig:** No. [laughs]

**John:** Also on last week’s show, we talked about Anagnorisis. And Gabe in Southampton, England wrote in. Craig, what did he say?

**Craig:** He said, “Listening to your talk on Anagnorisis in Episode 256, I was quietly amazed that you hadn’t heard of it. My tutor,” hmm, “made a big deal of it. And used a great example in Greg Kinnear’s father character in Little Miss Sunshine when he dances alongside his daughter. Every film teacher I’ve had has made a bit of a deal about how American’s are great at story, and Brits are great at character. Which they also attributed to why US films sell across the world, whilst British films are more intricate.”

I am so getting so angry here.

“Do you think this is why you hadn’t really heard of Anagnorisis before? Is scriptwriting taught differently around the world?”

John, please, tell me your honest reaction to Gabe’s inquiry?

**John:** All right, I was a little bit offended at the end, but mostly I want to reassure him and our other listeners that no one is talking about Anagnorisis on a general basis. So, I was up at Sundance this last week and after a screening of — I think Tiger Williams showed a clip from Se7en. And at the end of Se7en as we all know there is a head in the box. And when Brad Pitt realizes what must be in the box, that is a moment of Anagnorisis. We realize that Kevin Spacey’s character has done this thing and that everything is different than you thought.

And so I said that like, oh, we actually just talked about that on the podcast and it’s called Anagnorisis. And no one there knew what that word meant. So, it’s great that Gabe’s tutor —

**Craig:** Tutor.

**John:** Uses that term.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** But I would say that you should not feel that your screenwriting career was uninformed or that every screenwriter talks about Anagnorisis or that all the British screenwriters talk about Anagnorisis. I just think it’s a think that this one person brought up that other people don’t bring up.

**Craig:** Yeah. Maybe this is what happens when you have a tutor?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I don’t know. Or maybe this is being lost in translation. In America, a tutor is a privately hired one-on-one instructor that provides supplemental education on top of your normal education, typically because you’re falling behind in something. Gabe, I don’t know. I imagine now Gabe as being a Lord, and he has a tutor who obviously — here’s the thing to understand, Gabe. We all talk about Anagnorisis here, we just don’t call it Anagnorisis. We call it other things. We call it “that moment,” “that revelation.” Sometimes we’ll say, you know, the “eureka moment.”

But it’s the word that is unknown, not the concept of it. As far as the discussion about all of the film teachers you’ve had, and I can only presume now it’s quite a number, their theory is Americans are great at story and Brits are great at character. Those film teachers apparently haven’t been watching many movies.

I can tell you some wonderful films written by British screenwriters that are very much about a terrific story and the characters aren’t particularly what you would say intricate. And likewise, I could point to many films written by American screenwriters that are absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I don’t know, Paul Thomas Anderson, does he strike you as somebody that’s really great at story, but not so good at character?

It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. So, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that every film teacher you’ve had is a dope. And that, in fact, what of the things I love about British screenwriters is that they are really good at telling stories. They do like to entertain. Tess Morris.

**John:** Tess Morris. We love Tess Morris.

**Craig:** What a great storyteller.

**John:** Kelly Marcel I’m a fan of as well.

**Craig:** Great storyteller.

**John:** Great storyteller. I would argue that it’s very hard to differentiate story from character, at least in successful films. Is that I can think of very few things as like, oh, that’s a terrific story. Too bad about the characters. That’s not really a successful film, in my estimation.

**Craig:** Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, there are films where you look at — you’ll say, oh, it’s a character study. But inside that character study there is a story that’s occurring. It’s just that your film teachers, Gabe, weren’t smart enough to realize that both things were going on at the same time. And I’m trying not to be an offended proud American. Really what I’m saying is this is just dumb. Americans and British are really good at making movies, I think.

**John:** Yeah. And so are Iranians and so are Chinese.

**Craig:** Oh my god, by the way, I’m glad you actually singled out Iranians. Iranians are fantastic filmmakers.

**John:** There’s a tradition of just phenomenal filmmaking that combines really amazing character work with just fantastic storytelling.

**Craig:** Storytelling. Koreans, oh my god. Dude, Snowpiercer? Wow.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** So many across the world. I don’t think any one particular — I don’t know if writing or story are taught differently across the world. I do know this: that across the world, people are looking at big, famous, important movies, and they’re not always the same. But big, and important, and famous as touch stones for what they want to do. And that is the movies themselves that are the most important and powerful instructors of up and coming filmmakers, not film teachers.

**John:** Gabe may have had a moment of Anagnorisis right there with that education we provided him.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Aaron in Shanghai wrote in to say, “You briefly touched on the magical dad transformation story and said that there’s not a direct female equivalent. You’re right, but there is a close equivalent if you look at romantic comedies, which include a lot of magical ingénue transformations. In this trope, you see successful hardworking but romantically inept female lead discover that she’s worthy or capable of romantic love.”

And that’s absolutely true. So it’s the magical thing that is the problem. Is that by some supernatural means, the person is changed. In the romantically challenged equivalent, or the ingénue who doesn’t sort of see what’s important, it’s very rarely magic. It’s usually like a handsome man teaches her a lesson.

**Craig:** Or she just finally takes off her glasses.

**John:** Yeah. I love that trope. That’s a good one.

**Craig:** That’s amazing. I mean, clearly you have a magical story in Cinderella that is very much about someone waving a wand and turning her from this dirty whore wretch into this beautiful princess. Yeah, usually it seems like movies where females are transforming in clunky, silly, tropey ways, there isn’t magic involved.

I wonder if the implication is that, again, we instinctively understand that female characters have the psychological capability to change if they are confronted by certain things. Whereas men literally require supernatural intervention.

**John:** I think the other thing she’s bringing up is that someone intervenes and is like, “Oh no, you’re better than you think you are.” And in these magical dad transformation things, someone intervenes to say like, “No, no, you’re being terrible. You need to learn how to be better.” It’s basically like it’s like in the ingénue ones, it’s like they’re stripping off a coat a paint and revealing the beauty inside. Versus the dad ones are like, “No, no, no, you’re terrible. Let me fix your soul.”

**Craig:** Absolutely, yeah. And I understand that. I mean, there is something believable about the notion that for many women that there is an issue of self-image, or lack of confidence for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the patriarchy. And so, so yes, the idea is hey sister, you’re stronger than you think, and go get ’em.

And we inherently kind of buy into that narrative, as tropey as it is. And again, for men, we presume that they’re just dumb. They’re literally stupid. And, in fact, they’re so stupid, they need to be punished by god. Like in Liar Liar, he is so ridiculously dumb and impervious to good behavior that he needs to be punished by god until he finally breaks down and realizes what he must become.

**John:** So several listeners tweeted in to say like, oh, you were talking about Nine Lives. And that really was the genesis point for this. You’ve seen the trailer for this, Craig, right? This is Kevin Spacey is a dad who is transformed into a cat.

**Craig:** I’ve seen it and I — I mean, I never say bad things about movies. What’s going on there?

**John:** It looks like a parody of a movie that it is. And I think for that reason alone, it might just be fantastic.

**Craig:** I could be. I was just —

**John:** It may be leaning in so far to what it is that it’s just like brilliant.

**Craig:** And I believe in this movie he’s a dad who works too much, and so he must be punished by god and turned into a cat?

**John:** Yes, that is correct.

**Craig:** Huh.

**John:** And so he still has Kevin Spacey’s voice, so that makes it fantastic.

**Craig:** By the way, that actually kind of does make it fantastic. [laughs]

**John:** Zander in Portland wrote in to point out that the closest comparison for women is probably enforced motherhood, with the examples being Baby Boom and Overboard. And a few other people brought up those two movies. He says, “In both the enforced motherhood and the magical dad transformation comedies, the protagonists realize that she or he has been missing things in life, and thus becoming a better parent, a happier person, and a more moral creature.

“The key difference is the female had never been exposed to parenthood before, while the male was already a father. The male thus requires a magical awakening to see the true unrealized riches in his life. In this way, the male archetype is arguably more stunted than his female counterpart, because he requires supernatural intervention.

“On the other hand, mothers often take on a greater child-rearing burden than fathers do. One could argue that the male can call in his role more easily, so intervention is required.”

**Craig:** Yeah. This is great. I love this. Enforced motherhood. That’s exactly right. Baby Boom is a perfect example. Yeah, and Overboard, too. Actually, they’re both great examples. And actually, yes, there is something that speaks to this belief that all women are really supposed to be mothers, and they’ve just been avoiding being a mom because they’re afraid.

Now, that’s not true as it turns out. That a lot of women are not mothers because they don’t want to be. I know, it’s crazy, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it’s seductive, because plots that circle around people overcoming a basic fear are catnip for screenwriters, because a lot of the work is suddenly done.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And so for a while there, you could do those movies because I think, still, there was this underlying presumption that, you know, if you just hit your head and woke up on a boat with a bunch of kids and you were told that these are your kids, you would by behaving like a mom suddenly realize, oh my god, this is what I wanted my whole life. That’s baloney.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s baloney. And that movie is basically about wrongful imprisonment. And —

**John:** It’s really troubling when you sort of add up all the things that happen in it. And it’s not troubling in the way it’s like a dark comedy about it. It’s actually a pretty light and bright comedy that just trades on some very dark themes.

**Craig:** Yeah. I know. There’s — someone should do one of those recuts. You know, when they take a movie and they recut the trailer to be different genre?

**John:** Absolutely. Where The Shining is a father comedy?

**Craig:** Right. Or Mary Poppins as a horror. And somebody should do this as like one of these serial killer/thriller movies.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like Saw with children.

**Craig:** Right. It would be so cool. Somebody do it.

**John:** We’ll do it. I won’t do it, but one of our listeners will do it, and it will be fantastic. That idea is out there in the world, so please someone do that.

**Craig:** Love it.

**John:** The other thing that happened last week was Brexit. So, Tim from England wrote in. Craig, take it.

**Craig:** Tim from England writes, “Rather than some backward look at an old England past, the leave campaign made clear this was a vote for the future. Unshackling the UK from a Soviet style European Union and freeing us to make bilateral trade deals with America, India, China, etc.

“What leavers did want to get back to was a pure European free trade agreement, which is what we were originally sold back in the ’70s, not propping up a bloated EU super state. To use a Star Wars analogy, you should be applauding the rebels and not the Empire.”

Oh, boy, he doesn’t know me at all, does he?

**John:** I included this because I knew it would anger you, but also I think it is really important that last line, which is like Star Wars and these kind of things are one of the situations where both sides can kind of claim the meme high ground. And I just thought it was a fascinating way to frame it. As like any terrorist group can say like, “Oh no, we’re the rebels of Star Wars.”

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. Prisoners starting a riot. “We’re the Rebels.” I always root for the Empire. I believe that only through the Dark Side can you bring order to the Galaxy. And from order shall follow peace.

Look, a lot of what Tim writes is dismissible simply as opinion. And there’s a lot of opinion to counter it. I mean, we could go into a long discussion of how his belief that this is going to lead to better trade deals for the United Kingdom is insane.

But, I’m going to pick on one thing that actually bothers me. And it’s when he says, “Soviet style European Union.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I don’t care how bad the European Union is. I’ve been spending, because of this project I’ve been working, I’ve been spending a lot of time living with Soviet research and watching Soviet television recordings. And going through books and books and books that are centering around Soviet decisions. The European Union isn’t in the same universe as the Soviet Union. It is not Soviet Style. Soviet Style was a terror that literally led to the deaths of nearly 100 million people either through starvation, bad policies, or bungled military moves. And those are the people who died.

Forget about the people that were imprisoned or just lived in misery. So, let’s not say Soviet Style European Union.

**John:** So I think Soviet Style is one of those things which you have to be so careful when you bring it up, because it’s almost like a Godwin’s Law thing where like you mention Hitler and then you’re just done. Or saying like a Holocaust, or something. Like, when you bring that up, you’re actually dismissing the huge realities of what that thing is. And making it just impossible to have a discussion. So, you can say like the bureaucracy, all these things.

And we talked about last week, like kind of no one likes the European Union. It’s really messed up in a lot of ways. But it’s not the Soviet Union. And it’s not that situation whatsoever.

**Craig:** Every now and then somebody in the United States will compare something to slavery, and you can just hear — you can hear their credibility crashing to the floor.

The problem is we all know why people do these things. They compare stuff to the Soviet Union or the Holocaust, or Hitler, or slavery because they’re really trying to make their point. Eh, you know what, if you need that crutch to make your point, your point may not be so hot.

**John:** Yep. This email came in early in the week, and so I do feel like over the course of the week his arguments may have changed even from there, because it’s clear that they will not be able to make these amazingly better trade deals. Because they can’t. Because a smaller thing can rarely make better deals than a bigger thing.

**Craig:** They might not even leave the European Union. I mean, that’s the beauty of the whole thing is that there’s no one to actually do it. So, remarkable.

**John:** Well, one union we will never leave is the Writers Guild. See, that was the segue I was waiting for.

**Craig:** Because they won’t let us. [laughs]

**John:** They will never let us. Actually, the Writers Guild will let you leave kind of. You can always go FiCore, which means you are no longer a voting member and are not bound to certain things, but you’re still contributing your dues to the WGA.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** And just today as we were recording, the WGA sent out their financial report. So, this is a place where I can remind you that in the podcast we provide chapters. So, if WGA financials bores you silly, you can skip through to the next chapter where we talk about villains.

**Craig:** No one will skip this.

**John:** No one will skip this, because it will be fascinating. So, we will try to provide a link to this. When we got this this afternoon, it was only on paper, but there should be a link for this pretty soon. So, this one looks through basically what happened in 2015 and gives you the breakdown by people writing for screens, or writing for the movies, and people writing for TV. The bulk of the income for the WGA comes from TV. But I thought overall the picture was not so bad.

Craig, what was your first instinct on this?

**Craig:** Yeah. Basically seems like more of the same. You look at number of writers reporting earnings total, it’s essentially hovering in the same zone it’s been hovering in since 2013, which is around 5,000 or so. A little bit down from last year. A little bit up from ’13.

Total earnings, kind of down a touch, but not much.

**John:** Here’s the important thing to say. Whenever they report earnings for the previous year, they’re always a little bit depressed because they don’t have all the numbers coming in yet. So, they actually warn you in the stats that these numbers always creep up.

And so when you look at it year-to-year, the numbers are basically flat. So there’s about 5,200 writers, so feature and TV writers. Altogether, they’re earning about $1.2 billion, which is a lot of money.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** That’s a serious amount. Except that if you think about the AMPTP, the people we’re working for, they made about $49 billion in profits over that same year. So, there’s a lot of money out there in the system.

**Craig:** Well, and that’s profit. So that already discounts —

**John:** Profit-profit, yes.

**Craig:** Yeah, the money they pay us.

**John:** So our money already came out of there. So like even after they paid us, they had $49 billion left over.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re good. They’re going to be just fine. In terms of television employment, it does seem like actually even with the creep up it’s going to be down a bit from last year, but that was inevitable because last year you saw perhaps what was kind of a peak given the explosion of Netflix and Amazon. So, it was only inevitable it would come down a little bit, but it’s still up quite a bit. I mean, it’s up massively from five years ago. How about that?

I mean, you look at total earnings in 2010 for television writers – $570 million. Last year, and this was the non-creep up number, $800 million. With a nearly 900 more writers working in television.

So, television continues to be fairly healthy. In screen, some good news.

**John:** Yeah, some goodish news.

**Craig:** Ish.

**John:** So these numbers will still creep up a little bit more, but we had more writers employed last year in 2015 than the year before, so we are up 3.6%. Earnings were up to $362 million, versus $355 million. So, still an increase. And I would say that on the ground, it feels that the feature world is shrinking, and shrank last year. But in terms of actual dollars, it didn’t appear to.

**Craig:** Well, kind of.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Part of the problem is that every year from 2011, almost every year, from 2011 to 2015 you’ve had more screenwriters reporting earnings. So, for instance, in 2011 it was 1684. Last year, almost 1,800. However, we’re making about $13 million less overall as a group than we were in 2011.

So, we’re making less, and there’s more of us making it. So, the amount per —

**John:** The per-writer, per-capita.

**Craig:** It’s the amount individual screenwriters get on a — yes, on an average basis has gone down. And it gets really frightening when you look, going back to 2010, where our total earnings were $408 million. So, we are way — we’re still way, way — we’ve come up from the low point in 2013, but we’re still way off where we were in 2010. So, again, to compare to TV, TV is up essentially $230 million and we are down about $45 million. No Bueno.

So, that’s still — it’s good news only in that it didn’t get worse I guess is how I’d put it.

**John:** So, the how writers earn their money we talked about on the show many times. And so TV and film writers, they’re paid money for writing their screenplays, or for writing their scripts. That is the bulk of what a writer earns in a year. The other important caveat we should put on this is that TV writers, they do make money as writers, but they also make money as producers. And sometimes that producer money is vastly bigger than the writer money. That producer money does not show up in these figures at all. So, that is not covered by the WGA. That is a whole separate thing that they are paid.

So, it can be a little bit confusing because a TV writer might be bringing home a lot more, but they’re not being paid as writers for that extra income.

**Craig:** Correct. We also then have some numbers on residuals. And residuals overall continue to go up for television. And they are driven — that increase is driven essentially by the explosion of new media.

**John:** Yeah. So, again, sort of the quickest recap is whenever a TV show or a film is reused in different mediums, or not how it was originally broadcast or put on the big screen, writers get a tiny little fraction of that money that comes in. And the rates are different based on DVD, or VHS, or new media which includes things like streaming. It includes iTunes purchases. And there are different rates. And most of our WGA negotiations are about those rates, it turns out.

And the new media rates, which were a contentious thing a while back, are now a very significant portion of the residuals that both TV and feature writers receive.

**Craig:** Yeah. No question. There’s also a fairly large increase, a dramatic increase actually, in foreign free TV and basic cable residuals. So, our programs are now airing over across the world much more frequently than they used to. In 2010, we were looking at $29 million in residuals for that. And last year, $56 million.

**John:** Yeah. That mirrors sort of our experience in both first run in TV overseas as well. We talk about how increasingly TV shows are profitable from the moment they first air because they’ve made all those foreign deals. That also holds true for the explosion of foreign free TV for residuals. And so there are more places around the world showing our programs, and we get a little bit of money every time they do that.

**Craig:** Sadly, the theme of poor screenwriters continues. Not technically poor, but theatrical residuals down. And they will probably continue to tread water for a while. What’s nice to see, of course, is new media reuse which, let’s say from 2015 over 2010 it’s an increase of 1,043%. But, of course, in 2010, only $1.2 million came in from new media, which is amazing. But then you have to remember the iPhone didn’t even exist until 2007. 2015, closer to $14 million, which still seems low to me considering that I feel like everyone is — but maybe it’s the Netflix thing.

Paid TV, still the biggest driver: $54 million of our $138 million. Overall residuals, down. Forget about from last. Down from 2010. We are — we have not recovered. And I don’t think we’re going to recover from the double whammy of the loss of the DVD market and the strike. I think what happened in the days following 2008 —

**John:** The DVD money was never coming back. So, DVDs were the perfect way to watch movies for a while. And that was a huge source of income both for studios, and therefore for screenwriters in residuals. That sort of went away.

If there’s a positive trend here I can see is that you look at the new media reuse residuals, they are going up by $3 or $4 million most years. There’s a very steady increase. And so, that is going to surpass DVDs. And it’s going to surpass other things down the road. And that — luckily we actually have a better rate on those than we ever did on those other things.

**Craig:** Yeah, kind of. We do for rentals. For sales, we have a slightly better deal on sales than we do on DVDs, but that covers all the stuff that’s been produced and put in theaters since the strike. Everything before the strike, this is one of the big disputed items, and this is one of the areas where the Writers Guild dropped the ball in a way that, frankly, everyone should have fired, but that’s just me. The Writers Guild thought that they had also gotten that slightly better rate to extend to the library, which we consider back to ’71 or something like that.

And the companies said no you didn’t. And it turned out the companies were right. We didn’t.

Now, the companies’ positions, oh that, DVD rate, no matter if you buy anything from before 2008, DVD rate, whether you buy it on iTunes or not. We, I think, ultimately have to accept that.

**John:** Yeah. And there’s other factors, because like the purchase through iTunes tends to be a lower price point than a DVD. But maybe at that lower price point more people are buying that stuff. Streaming seems to be dominating everything anyway. And so certainly in music streaming has become so incredibly important. I have to believe it’s going to continue to be incredibly important for videos. So, we’ll see.

I’m a little optimistic that some of this down slope in feature residuals will perk back up.

**Craig:** Yeah, me too. I mean, one nice thing about new media is that the margin is so much better. They don’t have to print a thing on a disk, stick in a box, stick it in box, ship it in a box. You know, but then Apple takes a pretty decent cut, I’m sure.

**John:** Yeah. They do.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So, I think the summary for the numbers is that if you have to say bullet points for a friend who kind of cares is that the numbers were not terrible. And so these numbers are for writer earnings for 2015. It doesn’t get into our pension health. It doesn’t get into some of the other really crucial things that screenwriters and the WGA is looking at.

But it’s talking about sort of like how overall writers are doing this past year. It wasn’t terrible. And so there was no steep drop offs or declines or anything that would set off huge alarm bells for me.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Cool. Let’s get to a craft topic. So, way back, we’ll find the number of the episode, but we did an episode about villains. And it was actually one of my very favorite episodes we’ve done on the podcast. And so I wanted to write up a longer piece for it. And so I got this guy, Chris Csont, who is a screenwriter himself, to write up a long piece about villains and focusing on what I came up, sort of seven fundamental tips for unforgettable villains.

So, a lot of times in features, you’ll see — and TV as well — you’ll see sort of functional villains, like, well, that villain got the job done. Basically served as a good obstacle for your hero. Kept the plot moving. But a week later, I couldn’t tell you anything about who that villain was.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I wanted to look at sort of in the movies that I love and the movies that had villains that I loved, what were some of those characteristics of those villains that I loved. And so I boiled it down to seven things and then Chris wrote up a nice long blog post that sort of talked through in more detail and gave more examples of what those kind of villains were and how they functioned.

So I thought we’d take a few minutes to look at this list of unforgettable villains and sort of how you can implement them.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Cool. So, my first tip for unforgettable villains is something I’ve said a lot on the show, is that the best villains think that they’re the hero. They are the protagonist in their own stories. They have their own inner life. They have hopes, they have joys. They might seek revenge or power, but they believe they have a reason why they deserve. They can reframe all of the events of the story where they are the good guy in the story.

**Craig:** Yeah. Nobody does bad things just cause. Even when we have nihilistic villains, they’re trying to make a point. Like the Joker is trying to make a point, you know. There’s always a purpose. And so, yes, of course, they think they’re the hero. They have — you know that thing where you look at somebody on TV, maybe in the middle of a political season, and you think how is that guy so happy about all of these terrible things he’s saying?

Well, because he believes in part that he’s the right one, and that his purity is in fact why he’s the hero. Just as a character says I won’t kill is being pure. You know, Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi is being pure. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to kill you because I’m a good guy.” Right? That’s my purity.

Well, on the other side, the villains are heroes with the same purity towards their goal. And other people are these wish-washy, mush-mouthy heroes in name only. They’re HINOs.

**John:** Yeah. So I think it’s absolutely crucial is that they are seeing all of the events of the story from their own point of view and they can defend the actions that they’re taking because they are heroes. Our favorite show, Game of Thrones, does that so well, where you see characters who are one hand despicable, but on the other hand are heroic because you see why they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So, Daenerys can completely be the villain of that story. It’s very easy to frame her as the villain in that story, and yet we don’t because of how we’ve been introduced to her.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then look back to the very first episode. It’s maybe the last line of the first episode, I think. Jamie Lannister pushes Bran out the window, sends him theoretically to his death, although it turns out to just paralyze him. And then he turns back to his sister and he says, “The things we do for love.” And he’s doing it because he’s protecting her because they’re in love. Now I go, okay, I don’t like you, and I don’t like what you did, but I recognize a human motivation in you.

Now, some movies are really bad at shoving this in. You ever get to the end of a movie where you’re like, “Why the hell was this guy doing all this bananas stuff?” And then as he’s being arrested he goes, “Don’t you understand? Blah, blah, blah.”

**John:** Yeah. It’s like it’s already done. It’s already over. Or, that bit of explanation comes right before they’re about to, you know, “Before I kill you, let me tell you why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

**Craig:** And it’s like a weird position paper. It’s not felt. Whereas at the end of — speaking of Sorkin — A Few Good Men, when Jack Nicholson says, “You’ve weakened a country,” I believe he believes that.

**John:** A hundred percent.

**Craig:** I believe that he instructed people to hurt other people because he’s doing the right thing. He’s pure, and they’re not.

**John:** So, let me get to my next point which is unforgettable villains, they take things way too far. So, whereas hopefully all villains see themselves as the hero, the ones who stick with you are the ones who just go just too far. Simple villains who have sort of simple aims, like I’m going to rob this bank, well you’re not going to remember that one. The one who is like, “I’m going to blow up the city block in order to get into this bank,” that’s the villain you remember.

And so you have to look for ways in which you can take your villain and push them just too far so that they cross, they transgress something that no one is ever supposed to transgress. And the ones that really stick, you know, the Hannibal Lecters, the Buffalo Bills, the Alan Rickman in Die Hard, they are just willing to go just as far as they need to go in order to get the job down. And actually too far to get the job done.

**Craig:** Correct. And in their demonstration of their willingness to go to any length to achieve their goal, you realize that if they get away with it, this will not be the last time they do it. This person actually needs to die, because they are a virus that has been released into the world. And if we don’t stop them, they’re going to keep doing it forever, until the world is consumed in their insanity.

And then you have this desire in the audience for your hero to stop the villain. We rarely root for a hero to stop the villain because we want the hero to feel good. We root for it because that person has to go, you know.

**John:** Absolutely. We don’t root for the hero as much if it’s like a mild villain. It has to be the villain who is absolutely hell bent on destruction. And doesn’t have to be destroying the world, but like destruction of what is important to us as the audience.

**Craig:** Yeah. It could be somebody who just wants to take your kid from you.

**John:** Yep. That’s a good one.

**Craig:** And then you’re like, argh, and you just realize — you won’t stop — you’ll ruin the rest of my kid’s life. And you might do this to somebody else’s kid. You just feel like you should be stopped in order to return the world to its proper state of being a just world, which as we know, realistically it’s not.

**John:** Never going to happen.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Third point about unforgettable villains is that they live at the edges of society. So sometimes they are literally out in the forest, or the creepy old monster in the cave. But sometimes they’re at the edges of sort of moral society. So they place themselves outside the normal rules of law, or the normal rules of acceptable behavior.

And so even if they are the insiders, even if they are the mayor of the town, they don’t function within the prescribed boundaries of like what the mayor of the town can do.

So, you always have to look at them — they perceive themselves as outsiders, even if they are already in positions of power.

**Craig:** They certainly perceive themselves to be special.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** There were a lot of people, speaking of the Soviet Union, in the ’30s and ’40s, a lot of people who were Soviet officials who did terrible things. But, frequently they were tools, or sometimes Stalin would go so far as to call them “useful idiots.” Stalin was special. He considered himself special. And special people are different than people who do bad things.

So, when you’re thinking about your villain, you know, it may not be one of those movies where the villain actually has henchmen, per se. But, special people do have their own versions of henchmen. People who believe them at all costs. You know, the poor — the albino guy in The Da Vinci Code. You know, he’s a villain, kind of, but he’s not the villain. He’s a tool.

**John:** Yeah. So even if the villain has prophets or a society around him, he perceives himself as being outside that society as well.

**Craig:** He can go ahead and bend the rules, because he knows, once again, he knows what’s better. He is different and above everybody else. That’s we’re fascinated by a good one.

**John:** Also because they hold up a mirror to the reader. That’s my fourth point. Is that a good hero sort of represents what the audience aspires to be, what we hope we could be. The unforgettable villain is the one who you sort of fear you might be. It’s like sort of all your darkest impulses. It’s like what if I actually did that terrible thing. That’s that villain. It’s that person you worry deep down you really are.

**Craig:** Which goes to motivations. Universally recognizable motivations. And this is something that comes up constantly when you’re talking about villains. The first thing people will ask is, “What do they want?” Right? Just like a hero, because they are the hero of their story, what do they want? What are they motivated by? What’s driving them to do these crazy, crazy things?

And it’s never, oh, it’s just random, because again, that’s not — so for instance, you can look at Buffalo Bill, the character in Silence of the Lambs, as really more of like an animal. We can talk about his motivations, and they do, but those motivations are foreign to all of us. It’s a rare, rare person who is sociopathic and also violent and also attempting to convince himself that he will be better if he’s transgender, which he’s really not. That’s not any of us.

But, Hannibal Lecter is. Hannibal Lecter has these things in him that we recognize in ourselves. And in fact, it’s very easy to fantasize that you are Hannibal Lecter. It’s kind of sexy. It’s fascinating. A good villain is somebody that you kind of guiltily imagine being.

Who hasn’t imagined being Darth Vader? He’s the coolest.

**John:** Yeah. Imagine having that kind of power. The power to manipulate. The power to literally control things with your mind. That’s a seductive thing. And I think the best villains can tap into that part of the reader or the audience.

Also, I would say that the great villains, they let us know what they want. And we sort of hit on that earlier. Sometimes you’ll get to the end of the story and then the villain will reveal what the plan was all along. That’s never satisfying.

The really great villains that stick with you, you’re clear on what they’re going after from the start. And even if it’s Jaws. I mean, you understand what is driving them. And you understand at every moment what their next aim is. And they’re not just there to be an obstacle to the hero. They have their own agenda.

**Craig:** Yeah. A good movie villain will sometimes hide what they’re after, and you have to kind of figure it out, or tease it out. For instance, you mentioned Se7en. You don’t quite get what Kevin Spacey is up to. In fact, it seems just random. Like so a bad villain. Random acts of senseless violence. You know, kind of connected together by this interesting motif. Until the end when you realize, oh, there’s some sort of larger purpose here.

They often tell us what they want because they have clarity. Good heroes don’t have clarity. The protagonist shouldn’t have too much clarity, otherwise they’re boring as hell, right? They should be conflicted inside about what’s right and what’s wrong. They make choices.

Villains are not conflicted at all. So, of course, they’re going to be able to say, “What do I want?” I want this because of this. That’s it. I figured it out already. I don’t have any of your handwringing or sweating. I know what I’m going to do, and I know why, and I believe it’s correct. That’s it.

**John:** And they tell us what that is. And so they may not tell the hero what that is. Often they will. But we as the audience know what they’re actually going for, and that’s really crucial.

And ultimately whatever the villain is after, the hero is a crucial part of that plan. The great villains make it personal. And so we talked about Se7en. Like you can’t get much more personal than sort of what Kevin Spacey does to poor Brad Pitt’s wife in Se7en. It starts as a story that could be about some random killings, but it dials down to something very, very personal. And that’s why we are so drawn into how things end.

**Craig:** Well, what’s interesting is that in the real world, this is another area where narrative drifts so far apart from the real world. In the real world, most villains are defined by people that do bad things. And they’re repugnant. We like our movie villains to be charismatic. We love it. We like our movie villains to be seductive, and interesting, and charming. And part of that is watching them have a relationship with the hero.

We want the villain to have a relationship with the hero. It can be a brutal relationship, but a fascinating relationship. And the only way you can have a relationship is if the villain is interested in the hero. And inevitably they are.

Sometimes it’s the villain’s interest in the hero that becomes their undoing. Again, you go to the archetype of Darth Vader and Luke.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He wants to know his son. And so ultimately that’s what undoes him.

**John:** Yeah, you look at the Joker and Batman in Christopher Nolan’s version of it is that the Joker could not exist without Batman, fundamentally. They are both looking at the same city, the same situation, and without each other they both wouldn’t function really.

It’s like the Joker could create his chaos, he could sort of try to bring about these acts of chaos to make everyone look at sort of how they are and how the city functions. But, without Batman — if he can’t corrupt Batman, it’s not worth it for him.

**Craig:** Right. Batman is the thing he pushes against. And The Killing Joke, which is maybe the greatest graphic novel of all time, is entirely about that relationship. And there is something at the heart of the Joker/Batman dynamic that’s probably at the heart of most hero/ villain dynamics in movies, and that is that there is a lot of shared quality. There’s a similarity. It’s why you hear this terrible, terrible line so many times, “You and I, we are not different.”

Because it’s true.

**John:** Because it’s true. It doesn’t mean you should say it.

**Craig:** That’s right. Don’t say it.

**John:** But it is true. You can maybe find a way to visualize that or sort of let your story say that for you, but just don’t say that.

**Craig:** Just don’t say it. Or have them make fun of it.

**John:** Yeah. My final point was that flaws are features. And that in general the villains that you remember, there is something very, very distinctive about them. Either physically, or a vocal trait. There’s something that you can sort of hang them on so you can remember what they’re like because of that one specific tick, or look, or thing that they do.

And so, obviously, Craig is a big fan of hair and makeup and costuming. And I think all of those things are crucial. But you have to look at sort of what is it about your villain that a person is going to remember a month from now, a year from now, that they can remember — that they can picture them. They can hear their voice.

Hannibal Lecter is so effective because you can hear his voice. Buffalo Bill, we know what he looks like when he’s putting on that suit. Find those ways that you can distinguish your villain so that we can remember him a year from now.

**Craig:** It would be nice, I think, for screenwriters to always think about how their villain will first be perceived by the audience. Because you’re exactly right.

This is part of what goes to the notion that the villain is the hero of their story. That the villain is a special person. What you’re signifying to the audience is this is a person who is more important than everybody else in the movie, except our hero. Right? And just as I made a big deal about the hero, I have to make a big deal about this person, because they are special.

And if you look at the first time you see Hannibal Lecter, his hair — let’s first start with the hair — is perfect. It’s not great hair. He’s a balding man. But it’s perfectly combed back. And he’s wearing his, I guess, his asylum outfit, crisp, clean. And he’s standing with the most incredible posture. And his hands, the way his hands and his arms are, it’s as if he’s assembled himself into this perfected mannequin of a person. And he does not blink.

And that’s great. Just from the start. You know, we all get that little hair-raising feeling when somebody creepy comes by. Sometimes it’s the littlest thing like that.

**John:** And sometimes it’s a very big thing. So like Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter movies is one of my favorite arrivals of a villain in a story, because she’s wearing this pink dress that she’s in for the whole movie. And from the moment you see her, you know in a general sense what she is. But you just don’t know how far she’s going to push it. So she seems like this busybody, but then you realize she’s actually a monster. She’s a monster in a pink housecoat. And she is phenomenal.

And that’s a very distinctive choice of sort of the schoolmarm taken way too far. And you see it from the very start. And so I can’t — I could never see that kind of costuming again without thinking of her. That’s a sign of a really good design.

**Craig:** That’s a great reference. And it goes right back to J.K. Rowling’s book. That’s an example of taking something that’s amusingly innocuous and not villainous, like oh, a sweet old lady who loves cats and collects plates. And loves pink, and green, and pastel colors. And saying, that lady, now she’s a sadist. Ooh, blech. Great, you know, just great.

And then you get it. You walk into her office and you can smell that bad rose perfume, you know. Terrific.

**John:** Terrific. So, I have these seven tips, but also a very long, very detailed article by Chris Csont you can find, so that’s at writeremergency.com/villains. There will be a link in the show notes, too.

But, Chris, thank you for writing up a great post. And we’re going to try to do a few more of these things, we’re we can sort of do a deep dive. I don’t have time to write these big long things, but Chris does. And he does a great job at them. So we’re going to try to have a few more of these up over the course of the year.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Cool. Let’s answer a question or two. Tom wrote in with a very simple question. “What are your thoughts on opening a script with a quote?”

**Craig:** Oh, I don’t mind it so much. I mean, it’s a little cliché. I always feel like when you open your script with a quote you’re basically borrowing somebody else’s genius and importance to create a mood that you have not earned yourself. So, I say if you can avoid it, probably try it without it.

**John:** Stuart got really frustrated by this question. We were talking about it at lunch. And he said, I think a very good point, is like, “The script is supposed to represent what the movie is going to feel like. And if the movie is going to feel like it’s going to open with a quote, use it. If it’s not, then don’t.” And I think that’s actually very good advice is that always remember the screenplay is meant to duplicate the experience of seeing the movie. And if that’s important for your movie, it’s important to set the expectation of what your movie is, use it. Otherwise, don’t. And I agree with that.

So, I think the only one of my scripts that started with — not even a quote but sort of a dedication page — was Big Fish. It was very important for Big Fish, because it had to set the tall tales expectation. So, I wanted you to stop on that page and understand what kind of movie you were about to get into.

One of the great scripts at Sundance this year had a similar kind of thing where it was very much setting up the tone, and I loved that. But I think it’s only the scripts that need it should use it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just don’t throw it on there, you know. I mean, let’s put it this way, if you could conceive of your movie actually opening with this quote on the screen, then sure. You know, it’s got to feel like something that’s appropriate.

I’m not a purist about this. But I would say if you cannot, don’t. Right? Because it’ll just be, I don’t know, you’ll just impress people with your writing immediately, you know? As opposed to something wry from George Bernard Shaw.

**John:** Yeah. And I would say don’t use a quote that we’ve heard before.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, don’t.

**John:** That doesn’t help. It’s just like, oh, this is a cliché.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you’re not an original person. You just went on Bartleby.com.

**John:** Craig, do you want to do this last question? It’s Jay in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Sure. Jay in Los Angeles writes, “I’m a screenwriter who is finishing the deal to sell my spec script to a known production company. The deal should be announced in the next week or two.” Congrats.

“I have an agent from a top-four agency, as well as a lawyer handling the deal. A well-known actor is attached to the project. I was able to attract interest from a producer on my own and then hustled to find my reps after the fact.

“The agent on the deal, and I, never had a conversation on my becoming a client.” Is this my son writing this? Because he does that thing where “on my becoming,” and I’m like you got to stop writing that. Anyway.

“The agent on the deal, and I, had never had a conversation about me becoming a client. He never even asked to read the script. Am I already a de facto client? I want to be able to while the iron is hot, get a manager, and try to get in as many rooms as possible. I also have a pitch prepped for a new project. The question is: how does one approach that conversation with the agent? What can I do to prepare for the news of the deal to get out, aside from prepping a new pitched script?”

**John:** This is actually not an uncommon situation where you sort of got stuff started, you got stuff to a producer. This agent helps you make this deal. And then it’s sort of this vague situation like “am I client of this agency or not?”

The way to find out is to ask the person who you should ask. And ask, especially if you like this person. If you don’t like this person, you haven’t really signed with this agency, and maybe you can take some other meetings. This producer may help you meet some other folks. But you are right to be thinking about what your next steps are and to capitalize on the news of this getting out.

**Craig:** Yeah. I completely agree. It’s as simple as asking him the question, or asking her the question. I wouldn’t worry so much about the agent — oh, it’s a he — the fact that the agent didn’t ask to read the script. I don’t need my agents to read my scripts. I just need them to get me as much money as they can.

So, I’m not freaking out by that. Yeah. Ask them. Also ask yourself: what do you think about this person? I mean, so far so good, I guess, right?

**John:** I guess. I would say, you know, be honest with yourself about what you want to write next, what things you’re interested in doing. What else you have ready to kind of have pitched. And then have the conversation about sort of like what is the deal with this agency. Do you guys want to represent me on an ongoing basis? Is this a one-off thing?

They will say like, “Oh, no, we want to represent you on an ongoing basis,” but then they should probably bring you in for a meeting where they meet with you and with other agents there and they talk about the things you want to do. Before you have that meeting, you should actually be able to answer that question about the things you want to do.

So, I think you’re in a good place, but you’re also right to be asking these questions.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can try and prepare things like a new pitch or script, but don’t rush anything in there. Don’t feel like you need to have this shoebox full of stuff. Frankly, your concentration should be on writing the next draft of your spec script.

**John:** For sure.

**Craig:** That’s where you are now. But unless you haven’t sold it under a WGA deal, and I can’t imagine that’s the case, you are guaranteed the right to be the first rewriter of your script. So, you need to start now transitioning from being a spec guy to a professional writer.

**John:** A hundred percent agree. Cool. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing, Craig, did you already click on this link? Because it’s really good. You’re going to like it a lot.

**Craig:** I did. And I thought it was spectacular.

**John:** So, this is called The Mill Blackbird, so the Mill is a place that shoots a lot of film type stuff and special effects things. The Blackbird is this very cool car they’ve built. Essentially if you’re shooting a car commercial or anything on film that involves a car, it is a hassle because the client wants the car to look beautiful, you are trying to do things under different conditions. And sometimes cars change, or you want to change the color of the car afterwards. So what this thing does is basically it’s this skeleton of a car. The wheel base is adjustable. You can change out the actual wheels on it.

But essentially you are driving this thing around and then you are putting the car skin on top of it in post. And it sounds like, well, why would you do that? That’s ridiculous. But you would totally do this in a lot of situations because it lets you switch things out in really remarkable ways. The car itself, this Blackbird, also has cameras on it that are capturing everything around it, and so you can use that for VR applications, but also to get all of the data that you need so that you can have proper reflections on the car when you are putting the skin of the car on in CG.

It seems like just a very smart idea. I can imagine it’s going to be used a lot. Chris Morgan, doing the Fast & Furious movies, probably already has three of them on order.

**Craig:** Seriously.

**John:** It seemed very, very cool.

**Craig:** It is cool. You know, cars are something that they’re so good at making digitally. Like the car racing games are always the best looking games. Those are the ones that are the most close to, wait, is this real? There’s something about just the metal and the paint and the whole thing. It works so great.

And I had no idea, by the way. I’ve been fooled this whole time. I thought those were cars out there. Ah, what do I know?

**John:** What do you know? I would say like a lot of times you’ve seen so many fake cars in movies, and when people complain about like, oh, bad CG, people don’t realize that half the cars you’ve seen in movies are not actually there. So, when you see car racing and stuff in films, a lot of times that’s all done digitally.

**Craig:** Yeah. People complain about CG because they’re like, “I saw a thing.” Yeah, you didn’t see a thousand other things, did you? So, maybe you shouldn’t complain.

**John:** Maybe not.

**Craig:** Yeah. Maybe you should shut it. I’ll tell you what is my One Cool Thing. Strangely enough, helium. Did you know that we were running a little short on helium? [laughs]

**John:** I remember this being a thing from before. But they found more of it.

**Craig:** They found a whole lot more. So, helium is not only used for the party balloons, although if you had asked me, I would have said, “Balloons, right?” It’s kind of important. We actually, for instance, use it in every MRI scanner. There are over a million MRIs in the world, and we need helium for each one of them. We need helium for energy production. We need helium for all sorts of things.

And we were kind of starting to run low, because the deal is helium is an element. You don’t make it. Right? It’s just what we have is what we’ve got.

**John:** I presume once we get fusion really going, you can make helium. Is that correct? People will tell me if that’s not correct. I assume that we can actually make helium off of fusing hydrogen atoms, but I could be wrong.

**Craig:** I’m not going to say yes or no to that.

**John:** All right. We’ll let Wikipedia determine.

**Craig:** Smells a little wrong, but I don’t know. Sometimes the most right things smell a little wrong. But, and we, by the way, this is another thing I didn’t know. We have something called the Federal Helium Reserve. It’s in Texas. And it’s this massive thing. It’s got 242 billion cubic feet of helium, which is about 30% of all the helium in the world. Until they just found this whole big thing in Tanzania.

A massive helium gas field. Apparently, we’re going to be fine. And some Tanzanians hopefully will get rich off of the helium. How do you mine helium?

**John:** Carefully? I don’t know. I just worry it would all leak out.

**Craig:** Balloons. Just endless balloons.

**John:** Endless balloons. Poppers. It’s going to be good.

**Craig:** Poppers.

**John:** Swelling up so high. A lot of squeaky voice. I bet that’s how they found it. I bet like, “There’s something wrong here,” and —

**Craig:** Somebody goes into a mine looking for something, comes out like —

**John:** “Something’s really weird.”

**Craig:** “I didn’t find anything”

**John:** Craig, your helium voice was much better than mine.

**Craig:** All you have to do is like really shrink your voice.

**John:** Well done. I got to say. I would prefer that to almost any of your other characters. [laughs]

**Craig:** Helium Craig is official now. Helium Craig.

**John:** It really is. I looked it up as you were talking, and so yes, you can make helium off of a hydrogen fusion process. It’s probably a terrible, dangerous version of helium. It probably would kill everyone. But I bet it could make some balloons float up.

**Craig:** I don’t care. Listen, man, you were right about it. I think they should do it.

**John:** They should absolutely do it. Scriptnotes, as always, is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is a class Matthew Chilelli outro. But if you have a new one for us, you can always write in to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send questions like the ones we answered on the program today.

You will find links to most of the things we talked about on the show notes, which are attached to this podcast, or you can find them at johnaugust.com.

If you want to read that whole villains piece, that’s writeremergency.com/villains.

If you would like to tweet to Craig, he is @clmazin on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. If you are on iTunes for any reason, please leave us a review. We love those. We haven’t read those reviews aloud for a while. Maybe we’ll do that next week.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And that’s all I got. Craig, thank you so much for a fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thanks John.

**John:** See ya.

Links:

* [Sundance Feature Film Programs](http://www.sundance.org/programs/feature-film)
* The [James Patterson MasterClass](https://www.masterclass.com/classes/james-patterson-teaches-writing)
* [Nine Lives trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jHA97HzhxE) on YouTube
* Scriptnotes, 75: [Villains](http://johnaugust.com/2013/villains)
* [7 Tips for Creating Unforgettable Villains](http://writeremergency.com/villains)
* [The Blackbird, from The Mill](http://www.themill.com/portfolio/3002/the-blackbird%C2%AE)
* Newser on [Tanzania’s game changing giant helium field](http://www.newser.com/story/227284/game-changer-giant-helium-field-found-in-tanzania.html)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/aaron-sorkin-vs-aristotle).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 256 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast, Aaron Sorkin wants your money, Aristotle has a few thoughts about character development, and we’ll talk about what makes a movie original.

But most importantly, Craig is back. Welcome back, Craig.

**Craig:** I’m back. I’m back. You thought that you could Craig-xit from me.

**John:** We could never Craig-xit you.

**Craig:** You can’t Craig-xit.

**John:** So, last week you had an ear infection. Is that correct?

**Craig:** Yeah. So I was intending to show up at your place and interview Billy Ray with you, who is a buddy, and my ear was hurting for a day, and then you know when it suddenly crosses the line — it crossed the line from annoying to ow, ow, my ear.

**John:** To like Chekhov in Wrath of Khan?

**Craig:** Yeah. Like the bug coming out of the ear thing. I didn’t have a bug in my ear, but I did have an infection. And for those people at home who are wondering what my relationship with you is really like, I sent you a picture of the diagnosis like a doctor’s note so that you would believe me.

**John:** [laughs] I did get that while we were recording, and I noted it that, okay, it’s for real. I’m not sure Billy Ray believes that you had it, but it’s fine. We had a fun time talking with Billy Ray, who is very smart, who talks even more quickly than I did. It was the first time in my history of listening to this podcast where I actually had to bump the speed down to like a normal person speed, just so I could understand what he was saying.

**Craig:** Yeah. He’s a very fast talker. Fast thinker. Fast talker. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for it, mostly because I would have given him a lot of crap. Because that’s what I do.

**John:** I especially love when guests come on the show and clearly have never listened to the show once in their life. I find that extra charming. I was trying to do my best Craig for when he got — he sort of like laid into us about the WGA stuff and about our basically convincing people not to vote for one of the proposals.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I was trying to stick up for your point of view there, which is largely my point of view, but you just felt it more strongly. So, I tried to feel it strongly for you.

**Craig:** You know what? That’s the saddest thing of all. Because I don’t like missing time with friends. I don’t like missing interviews. I get a little FOMO from that. But I really don’t like missing a good fight. That bothers me. And you know I would have taken it right to — because you know, when I argue with Billy, it’s fantastic. It’s so much fun.

**John:** One of the things Billy Ray would never had heard before on the podcast is the How Would This be a Movie. And one of our favorite episodes of How Would This be a Movie we talked about the Hatton Garden job, which is basically the robbery, all the old British people robbing this vault, and it was terrific.

And we predicted that there would be several movies going into development and they are going into development. In fact, one has started shooting.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** So, director Ronnie Thompson, who co-wrote the script with Dean Lines and Ray Bogdanovich, it’s already in production. Matthew Goode is starring. Julie Richardson is in it. I presume those are not playing the actual robbers, because those are older people. Unless it’s Matthew Goode with a lot of prosthetics makeup, which sounds terrible.

But there are two other versions in development. One of them is based on a Vanity Fair article. One is based on a New York Times article.

**Craig:** Amazing.

**John:** So, we’re going to have a bunch of old people robbing banks.

**Craig:** No we’re not. We’re going to have one. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, we’ll probably have one.

**Craig:** We’re going to have one. It’s funny how sometimes you read these things and you’re like — it’s not rocket science to see which ones… — The only thing that surprises me I guess a little bit is that enough people were not only able to see that it was deserving of being a movie, but also felt that they could make money with a movie like this. Because increasingly, you know, getting those kinds of movies made is a tricky proposition. It’s essentially a small movie about a small thing. It’s going to ultimately be a character piece.

It’s not like these guys were involved in a hostage crisis or anything like that. They were robbing a bank. So it’s like a very small Ocean’s 11.

**John:** What’s also interesting is we talk about the situations where there are two movies in parallel development and they both happened and it was a nightmare because they were sort of butting heads against each other. But more often what happens is one of them gets out of the gate first and that becomes the movie. And the other movie just doesn’t exist. And so it’s interesting that we even know that these other two things are in development and it’s entirely possible that down the road those other things will get made.

It’s entirely possible this first one could be great, but it could be terrible. It could be one of those things like you’ve never even heard of, where it gets sold off at AFM and never really got released. So, we’ll see.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s normal, I think, for large competing movies to coexist, because there’s just so much momentum behind them and people think, well, you have your movie about a meteor with your movie star, and I have my movie about a meteor with my movie star. So, let’s go ahead. Let’s slug it out. Same thing with our volcano movies. Same thing with our animated ants movies.

But for a little thing like this, I think getting to the marketplace first is crucial, which by the way I think you’re seeing — think about this, right — we did our episode on that, what, a few months ago?

**John:** It was back in Episode 234 we talked about that, The Script Graveyard.

**Craig:** Okay, so, we talked about this back in Episode 234.

**John:** So January 26.

**Craig:** Right. That’s essentially a half a year ago. Six months ago we talk about this. That’s when everybody else is reading it at the same time. They go and they buy the rights to this thing. That takes a few weeks. And then they say, okay, we have to be first to the market. For them to be shooting six months from that day — I’m saying they went and got the rights that day. Prep takes, you know, two months minimum. Three would be good, right?

**John:** You also have to write a script —

**Craig:** Ah-ha. So this is what concerns me sometimes when people are racing to market. And I’ve been involved in these situations. The screenplay process becomes terribly compressed, very, very stressed. So the normal things that happen to screenplays that are stressful, like the creation of it, the revision of it, and then the collision that occurs when a director and a cast collides with the screenplay and there needs to be some kind of reconciliation between all these new elements, those things now get compressed really tightly and it’s very difficult to do well, nearly impossible.

So, I always get nervous when I see this race to the market. I root for all movies, so hopefully it works out with this one.

**John:** I root for them as well. I would say that the logistics of this movie are probably not especially difficult. We sort of like know what the basic sets are we’re going to need, so it doesn’t require that much sort of prep work in that sense. You feel like if this were a pilot you could just go off and prep it and shoot it.

There’s a bonus episode in the premium feed where I talk to Simon Kinberg about the most recent X-Men movie. And he talks about how they had the four writers who were working on story that came up with a treatment. And they actually had to prep off of that treatment. It was before Simon had written the script. Because they knew they were going to be such giant set pieces that they had to start the pre-vis and everything else on those basically just off of the treatment.

And that’s the way it works on some of these big movies. And in some cases it’s working on these tiny movies I bet, too. I bet they had some document that said this is what we’re going to try to do, but then they had to start getting cast and everything else probably before they had a finished script.

**Craig:** Well, right. And on a big movie, the nice thing is you know you have a little bit of a cushion because while you have the long tail of post-production because of all the visual effects, you will theoretically have the ability to go and pick up a scene where if you need a few people talking in a room, or maybe even something slightly larger. There may be a week or two to do. The money will be there because there’s an enormous investment worth protecting.

On a little movie, sometimes you don’t have any of those things at all. And especially if the whole point is to race to the marketplace, everything — even post-production — gets compressed down. So, tricky, tricky, tricky business to be in.

Let’s see how it goes with them.

**John:** Let’s see how it goes. Your last bit there reminded me of we never talked about reshoots and sort of the Star Wars — we were never sort of on the air when all that news came up that they were doing some reshoots for the Star Wars movie. I find it so maddening when the film press starts talking about reshoots as if it’s a sign of trouble. Reshoots are incredibly natural in the film industry. They are usually a sign that you have something that you are very excited about, but you see opportunities and you want to improve those opportunities. It just makes me crazy when reshoots are perceived as being a sign that everything has gone wrong.

**Craig:** I couldn’t agree more. Generally speaking, whenever I see the film press writing anything, I get frustrated because their ignorance is vast and seemingly without a bottom.

**John:** And you’re also Craig Mazin. You were born to be angry at the film press.

**Craig:** Correct. I was born to be angry anyway, and particularly them anyway. I’m their natural enemy. I am their — what’s the — Honey Badger? I’m their Honey Badger.

But it’s a bit like saying, “I saw somebody walk into CVS. Clearly they’re fatally ill.”

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** What? Maybe they just had a little bit of a scratch that they needed a Band-Aid for and they’re going to be so much better now.

**John:** Maybe they wanted a Vitamin Water.

**Craig:** Maybe they wanted a Vitamin Water. A useless, overpriced Vitamin Water. It’s just stupid. Reshoots happen for any number of reasons. By the way, to be fair, sometimes it’s because the movie is a mess, right??

**John:** Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Here’s the incredible thing: so what? So the movie is a mess, and then they did reshoots, which many times fix the mess. You and I both know of movies, which we’re not going to say —

**John:** You and I both know of a certain TV series, the biggest TV series in the world —

**Craig:** Okay, there’s one.

**John:** Which was a mess.

**Craig:** A total mess, right? And those guys, Dan and Dave, have been really forthcoming about it. Their pilot for Game of Thrones was a disaster. And then they reshot not some, but almost all of it. The point of it is reshoots don’t mean that something is all wrong.

The problem is they’re always looking for this — they’re looking for gossip. And really what’s underneath all of the “ooh, reshoots” is a general sense of Schadenfreude. Oh good, people are failing. He-he-he.

Ugh. Gross. Gross.

**John:** Well, you can hear more about our discussion on reshoots and Game of Thrones and everything else on the brand new black USB drives we have now. So, we have the 250-episode Scriptnotes USB drives. They are in stock. I mentioned it last week, but they are now actually up in the store, so you can get them. And Craig and I recorded a special little introduction that’s only on the USB drives. And so if you are a person who is a completist, then this is a completist thing you could get.

**Craig:** And do the USB drives cost $90 each?

**John:** They cost $25 each.

**Craig:** Huh? That’s interesting, because I thought $90 was — all right. $25 seems incredibly reasonable.

**John:** I think it’s incredibly reasonable. So it’s $0.10 an episode. Not even $0.10 when you think about it because of all those bonus episodes on there, plus all the transcripts.

**Craig:** I mean, good lord.

**John:** Good lord. So they’re there. So, you could find them in the links to the show notes to the podcast you’re listening to, or just go to johnaugust.com, or store.johnaugust.com. There’s places to find them.

All right, let’s get to today’s business, and it is business because just like I was trying to sell you on a USB drive, Aaron Sorkin is trying to sell you on a series of screenwriting lectures. It’s a masterclass. Actually the site is called Masterclass. And this service, which I’d never heard about before, they have sort of like the biggest names in different fields teaching these classes. So, Christina Aguilera will teach you singing. Kevin Spacey will teach you acting. Usher will teach you the art of performance.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Annie Leibovitz will teach you photography. So, they are —

**Craig:** You’re missing one here. Serena Williams teaches you how to play tennis. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. She’s probably really good at it.

**Craig:** Well, I’ve noticed that she’s very good at playing tennis.

**John:** I’ve watched her play, and I’ve got to admit it, she’s pretty good. Aaron Sorkin will teach you screenwriting. And so everyone on Twitter sent me the link to this and said, “What do you think?”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I’ll ask you, Craig, what you think.

**Craig:** Well, first of all, I think it’s nice that he’s only charging $25 like the price of our USB drives.

**John:** No, no, no, it’s $90, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh what? Oh my goodness.

**John:** So let me tell you exactly what you’re getting. Over the course of 25 video lessons, spanning five hours, Sorkin shares his rules of storytelling, dialogue, and character development. He critiques student submissions. He works with real world examples from the decades he spent writing movies and TV, and TV shows, and plays. So, that was from the press release.

**Craig:** Well, I happen to be a big fan of Aaron Sorkin’s. I think that he is a terrific screenwriter. And I suspect that if you are somebody who is talented and on your way to becoming a screenwriter, and you’re serious about your craft, that this $90 may actually be money well worth spent.

Of course, on the other side you do have to be aware that one of the things that makes Aaron Sorkin a terrific screenwriter is how specific he is. He is one of the few screenwriters I know whose style is self-defined.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** You know, Tarantino and Sorkin are very, you know, oh, that’s Sorkin dialogue. We know it when we hear it.

**John:** Absolutely. So, it makes it very strange when anyone else tries to do it. It feels like you’re ripping him off.

I sort of come out where you come out, too, where it’s just like I got little heebie-jeebies at the start, and then I watched it and it’s like, oh, they look really well-produced. I mean, I’ve hosted panels with him. He’s very, very smart. And generous. And odd. So, if you’re looking to spend $90 on learning more about screenwriting, it seems like kind of a reasonable way to go.

I’ll really be curious, because I bet a bunch of our listeners will end up signing up for it and will sit through it. And they can tell us whether they thought it was worth it or not.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, of all the things that we talk about all the time, you know my whole thing — don’t pay for screenwriting. And this is actually I think worth a shot because, first of all, it’s capped at $90. There’s no come on to keep spending. And I also think there’s a nice side effect. And that is that all of these jackanapes and charlatans who are peddling their so-called guru genius for $500 or $1,000, or $100 an hour are all now going to have to face this question: why should I pay you that when Aaron Sorkin charged $90 for 25 lessons spanning — how many hours?

**John:** Five hours.

**Craig:** Five hours. $18 an hour for Aaron Sorkin. Why am I paying you a $100 an hour, because you wrote an episode of Cagney & Lacey once? Yeah. So I like that part of it.

I’m puzzled by this whole thing.

**John:** I’m puzzled by it, too. So, clearly they think that there’s a good business model here, because they have giant names doing it. So, I don’t know what his cut is. I kind of don’t know why he said yes, but I’m not telling people to say no, because I think it’s actually — I’m kind of curious.

**Craig:** Well, it’s one of the things where of all the things they’ve listed where I think, oh, people actually might get something out of this. He’s going to have some, I think, I’m just predicting, he’s going to have some really useful universal insights.

You know, you and I are trying to do that all the time on this show. I would imagine that he’ll have some of those for sure. It’s not simply going to be five hours of him describing how he wrote A Few Good Men.

Now, some of these other people — Christina Aguilera can’t teach you how to sing. That’s ridiculous. [laughs] And neither can Serena Williams teach you how to play tennis well.

They can teach you how somebody at their incredibly high level does things, but I actually think screenwriting is a little more teachable than some of those other things.

**John:** Well, let’s see how he does it. So, let’s listen to a clip. Here’s a little short clip from the promo video for it.

**Aaron Sorkin:** Dialogue is pretty much where the art comes in. Taking some words that someone has just said, holding them in your hand, and then punching them in the face with it. I left The West Wing after season four. I have not seen an episode from seasons five, six, and seven. Together we are going to break the teaser and first act of Episode 501 of The West Wing.

You don’t have an idea until you can use the words “but, except, and then.” I just want to hear your bad ideas. Very bad. Love it. Very bad. By the way, it wasn’t that bad.

**Female Voice:** It’s a White House conspiracy.

**John:** So, you see at the end there he’s sitting around a table with these students who are all made up and everyone looks just as good and glamorous in it. So, it’s not quite reality. They’re going to break a new season of The West Wing, so some fan service there.

I guess.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, I guess is right. And so, look, the thing is you and I — we have an interesting perspective on this, because we do this every week for an hour. We’ve done now 256 hours, plus some, and we’ve charged — well, technically we do charge $2 a month, right?

**John:** Yeah, for the premium feed.

**Craig:** For the premium feed, which isn’t — and so, you know, it’s not quite as expensive. But, you know, of course, he’s Aaron Sorkin. And so that’s really impressive and great. I hope that he gives money to the — if he’s getting money from this personally, I hope he donates it to the Writers Guild Foundation. Wouldn’t that be nice?

**John:** That would be nice if he did that.

**Craig:** We do that.

**John:** We do that.

**Craig:** Aaron Sorkin, I call upon you to donate your proceeds to the Writers Guild Foundation.

**John:** But I think it’s also fine if you don’t. So, Aaron Sorkin has been generous and he does participate in WGF events. He was there at the last giant panel I did with all of the nominees. So, I like him for that. I don’t begrudge him any money he’s making off of this.

I just kind of wonder whether there could be enough money to be made off of this to make it worth his while. If it’s worth Serena Williams’ while, then I’m guessing there must be money there.

**Craig:** I feel like — this is a big Silicon Valley thing, right? Like maybe these are people’s friends. Like highfalutin Silicon Valley people who are like, hey come on, you know. I’m a billionaire. You’re cool. Let’s do something together.

**John:** Or maybe their seed money, so part of the VC money was to pay these people a lot of money up front with a percentage. Maybe that’s what it is?

**Craig:** Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, listen, I don’t begrudge anyone making a buck. Well, I do, obviously, all the time. I don’t begrudge Aaron Sorkin making a dollar. And I do think you could do way worse. $90 seems very reasonable. I hope that people do find value from it. If I were to bet on anybody, I’d bet on him.

**John:** Yeah. I’d bet on him, too. You know who else was a very smart thinker about drama was this guy Aristotle. So he’s super old. I mean, kind of old school, but actually very clever. And one of the funny things is you can kind of rediscover these clever people in random places. And so this last week I was reading this blog post about coyotes and cliffs, and this word was used, and I didn’t really know the word. So, I had to look up how to even say it, and then you actually looked up the YouTube video on how to pronounce it so we wouldn’t be like idiots as we try to pronounce it.

So, it’s this Aristotelian term called Anagnorisis. It comes from Aristotle’s Poetics. And it’s that moment when a hero realizes the true nature of things. It’s that moment where like the blinders come off and the hero sees that the world that he or see perceived is not actually the world as it truly is.

And, we think about — he was describing it mostly in terms of tragedies, but I think in movie usage it’s more often used in thrillers. So you think about The Sixth Sense, the twist in The Sixth Sense. Or Gone Girl, which has the mid-act, sort of midway reversal. But it’s also a thing that becomes incredibly useful in comedies. So, I said the coyote going over the cliff, it’s that moment where the coyote has run off the cliff, and he’s floating in mid-air, and he turns to the camera and realizes, “Oh, I’m going to fall.”

It’s that moment. And it’s such a weirdly wonderful moment. So I thought we’d spend a few minutes talking about how that exists both internally, but how it exists in fiction, and sort of how we can use it.

**Craig:** Well, you’re right, that it comes in big moments, and it comes in little moments. The obvious ones are the ones where there’s an on-rush of information about the world, specific facts about the world around them.

So every whodunit has a moment of Anagnorisis where the detective hero has all of these facts, none of them seem to add up, and then somebody does some little dinkety thing and they go, “Ah…,” the big gasp, “Oh my god, I know who did it now.” And we all have to wait, right? We’ve watched them.

So, that’s a clear example. But then there are these little moments like at the end of The Graduate, when you have these two people sitting on this bus and they believe they have culminated this wonderful romance. And then you can see, suddenly they realize, ooh, wait. That’s a very small kind, but it is crucial for the audience to see in characters.

It’s crucial that we see them suddenly realizing these big truths that they did not have before. In reality, where a narrative does not rule, here’s how a typical — for instance, let’s go back to the whodunit. Here’s how a typical whodunit goes: a detective arrives at a scene, here are some facts, here are some suspects. They start to put together a reasonable presumption about who did it, but there are a couple of other possibilities. And then they begin to slowly grind their way towards what is growing increasingly obvious to be the right answer. They just have to support it. And so they do, like a mathematical proof, and then that’s that.

That cannot be how it goes in drama.

**John:** No, it can’t. So, what you’re describing is a lot of times TV procedurals will essentially do that, where like they’re stacking the blocks together. There’s some revelation or something, but it’s not a character revelation. It’s nothing that’s personal to the character. And I think that’s what we’re trying to go for here, is a fundamental sort of gasp in the character. Oh no, the thing I presumed.

So, this thing I just turned into the studio this afternoon has Anagnorisis in it, where the hero at about the second act break has trusted this one other character throughout, and then realizes, oh crap, you’re the villain. And what the villain does in sort of like the moment of the villain unveiling himself for who he truly is has to really land. It has to land not just on a plot level, like oh, all these make so much more sense now. But you have to see the betrayal. You have to see what it feels like to be in the shoes of the hero as this revelation is coming to pass.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So often when I hear pitches form new screenwriters, they’ll go, “Blah, blah, blah,” they pitch the first act, second act, and then they’re like, “And then the hero comes to realize that something, something, something.” And whenever I hear “come to realize” I’m like, oh no, no, no, that’s not good.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** It’s amazing and wonderful if a character has a realization, but that realization can’t just be like I’ve been living my life for the wrong things. Realizations have to be like this is a thing that fundamentally changes how I’m going to relate to this world that I’m in. Fundamentally changes how I relate to the other characters that have been set up in this story.

It can’t just be like, “I need to be a better dad.” No, that’s not real.

**Craig:** I completely agree. And this is one of the keys to writing layered work, right, work that doesn’t feel like it’s all operating on one level. So, Anagnorisis occurs after a character does something. It shouldn’t really occur before they do something, because if they’re just sitting alone in their room and they go, “Ooh,” and then they do something it’s like, “I’m doing it because of that thing I figured out.” This all now feels like it’s inevitable. Like I’m just following along. And what anybody would do having realized what I realized.

But there’s something wonderful about a character doing something. Very typically, for instance, we’ll see a character finally achieving this goal. Vengeance is a classic one, right? I have finally achieved my revenge. And then Anagnorisis. Oh no. Right?

Or perhaps I did not understand what I was doing or this other person was doing until now when it is too late.

**John:** Yep. You see that — classically the tragedy aspect of like I spent my entire life seeking revenge on this person, and it turns out this person was my only true friend. Or it turns out the person I’ve been seeking for revenge is myself. There’s that sense of like I have wasted all this time, or I’ve killed the only one true thing that I love. Or that in my pursuit of vengeance, I have destroyed my life around me.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ll also see this when characters are witnessing other characters performing an act of sacrifice. So much more, well, let’s talk about the bad version. Here is the version that is ana- Anagnorisis. Or Norisis. I don’t know what would work right. But not Anagnorisis.

Someone says, “You’re never going to make it unless I stand here and sacrifice my life so you can escape.”

“What? I don’t want you to do that?”

“Well, I’m going to.”

“All right. Well, thank you.”

Ugh. Right? But when someone says, “Okay, yes, I’m going to go with you. It’s going to be okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

And you run and you jump and then you realize the other person hasn’t jumped, they’re staying back to fight for you and die for you. And then you have Anagnorisis not only about what that person is doing for you, but in a deeper way, how they feel about you, how you feel about them, the depth of their connection, why they’re doing this. All that stuff comes wooshing over this character. And that’s when we have these human connections.

Ultimately, these are the things that make us want to keep watching anything, or keep reading a book for that matter. It’s not the details of the richly textured world. It’s, in fact, these universal things that we experience all the time in our own lives.

**John:** Yeah, it’s not the plot. It’s the reaction to the plot. It’s what we see in the characters. Let’s talk about the audience’s relationship to that moment of realization of the character’s relationship to it. Because one of the things you find is that sometimes you want the audience to be a little bit ahead of your character so that they can anticipate it. It’s sort of the classically when you show the audience there’s a bomb under the table and the two characters are sitting at the table that it’s incredibly suspenseful, because you know there’s a bomb and the character’s don’t know there’s a bomb. So, sometimes you want to let the audience be just a little bit ahead of your characters.

But if the audience is too far ahead of your characters, if the audience has already like made this journey, they start to kind of hate your heroes. They kind of start to think your heroes are idiots because like how can you not see that that’s the bad guy? How can you not see what’s going on here?

So, as a writer, your challenge is to hopefully land both the audience and your hero at this moment of realization at the right time, which is often simultaneously, or at least closely coupled.

**Craig:** It’s about putting in and taking out bits of information, like a little test. Because you’re right, there’s this balance. The audience needs to have enough clues so that after the fact, like any good detective, they could say, “I could have figured that out.” Or, maybe sometimes it’s not so much of a strain. It’s simply there are enough clues where clearly I knew what was going to happen, but it wasn’t rubbed in my face, and it certainly wasn’t rubbed in the character’s face who is about to experience that Anagnorisis. So, that’s okay.

For instance, we all know, here is a Game of Thrones example.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** We all know that Tyrion is going to be using wildfire to destroy this fleet of ships coming in from Stannis Baratheon. And then Stannis Baratheon’s fleet shows up and Sir Davos is there on board the ship and he’s coming around. And they realize that there’s only ship waiting for them. Well, that’s strange. And we’re all thinking — yeah, it’s got to be full of wildfire. And it is.

We don’t know quite how. That’s the interesting part. We’re like, well, they’ve got all this wildfire. I don’t see any wildfire on the top of the ship, so where is it? And then as he comes around they reveal that the stuff is pouring out of holes in the bottom of the ship and actually spreading out on the water, floating on the water. And then Sir Davos has that moment that we live for when we’re watching these things, which is Anagnorisis, the oh my god, get back! And then, boom.

Right? So, it’s about taking pieces in and out. And if you put one extra piece in, it’s suddenly boring. And if you take too many out, it’s suddenly confusing. And you don’t have the richness of that moment of “oh no.”

**John:** Yeah. I find the moments where this lands most is there’s kind of a melting dread that happens where like you can sort of see like it’s as if you’re kind of poisoned and you realize, like oh god, how I’m going to — and you can see the wheels turning in the characters’ heads like, “How do we even react to this?” They’re trying to basically recognize the situation that they’re in and plan accordingly.

It’s very fun to sort of put characters back on their heels and not be able to take the natural actions that they should be taking.

**Craig:** Correct. And this is something where I think sometimes some directors underestimate the value of this. Because it is often — not always — but often concentrated on a face. There is not much of a spectacle to Anagnorisis. It’s very small. And usually it doesn’t have much in the way of speech-making. It’s someone’s face. And it’s pure acting. And it’s pure reaction. And it requires a little bit of time. Some directors I think really appreciate it and understand what it means to sit and dwell with it. And too also when directing scene, direct toward it.

But some do not. And when your movie short changes those moments of Anagnorisis, the strange thing is even if the circumstances are the same, just as shocking, just as surprising, just as twisty, we won’t feel it. Because we only experience it through the eyes of the hero on screen. We wouldn’t care so much that Bruce Willis’s character has been dead the whole time in The Sixth Sense if you didn’t have that long drawn out moment of Anagnorisis.

Same thing with watching Chazz Palminteri realize, oh my god, that Verbal Kint is Keyser Soze. Long, drawn-out face. Eyes. Gasping. Over and over. We need it.

**John:** Yeah. You absolutely need it. And it’s so easy to lose it. But I would also say, even before you have a director on board, one of the things I’ve noticed over a bunch of different scripts is when you’re in a protected development on something, people are reading that same draft again, and again, and again. And they sort of forget, the same way they forget like why jokes are funny. They forget like what those moments feel like when they land.

And so I find they keep asking you add back information earlier on to like set that thing up.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** And so you have to just be so hard about like parceling that information carefully so that some things can actually be a surprise, just so, you know, there’s this desire to have everything make so much sense the minute it hits. And like, no, I need the character to be doing the work to be putting it together at that time. And the audience should be doing that work, too. So like if I set that up so clearly, then it wouldn’t be a surprise whatsoever.

**Craig:** Yeah. I find, for whatever reason, that a lot of studio executives prize clarity over drama and revelation. And they have no problem actually un-dramatizing something. Sucking the drama out of it so that ten people at a screening won’t go, “I was confused.” That seems to petrify them more than anything else. Maybe because people can articulate, “I was confused.” But it’s very hard to articulate, “I identify with somebody as they experience Anagnorisis.” Right?

So, it is an ongoing battle. And it is one of those things at times that makes screenwriters feel very lonely. It is a lonely feeling when you know something because it is part and parcel of who you are and what you do, and everybody around you is saying, “Well who cares about that?” Everybody in the theater. Don’t you know why we’re there?

But it’s a struggle. By the way, I wanted to mention there’s this other kind of Anagnorisis that’s fairly rare. But when it happens I love it. And it’s the Anagnorisis of the audience. So this is where the characters in the movie know everything. We don’t. They’re not surprised by information. We are.

**John:** Absolutely. No Way Out.

**Craig:** Yeah. No Way Out. Exactly. No Way Out, we’re shocked because — but they’re not shocked. They know. They know who is Yuri is, right? And I always remember this moment in The Ring where we realize — we in the audience realize — wait, that’s that kid’s dad. The kid knew that that was his dad. The dad knew that was his kid. The mom knows that that was her ex. Everybody knows everything. We just didn’t know. And I love that.

**John:** Good stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Before we get off this completely, I’m going to try to find a link to Mike Pesca talks about sort of magical dad transformation comedies. And it’s such a weirdly specific sub-genre that I’d never considered.

**Craig:** The Santa Claus.

**John:** The Santa Claus. Liar Liar. A Thousand Words. Like a bunch of Eddie Murphy movies. Which is basically like I’m a terrible father who works too much, but because of a magical thing that happens, now I’m going to learn the true value of family. I’m going to try to find — if I can’t find another link to it, I’ll link to the actual podcast. But he talks about how it’s such a weirdly specific genre of movies that is designed probably so that dads can take their kids to go see that movie and then feel better about themselves. It’s a bizarre thing that we’ve made. And I don’t know we keep making them. I guess they make money.

**Craig:** Well, it’s a way to feature — let’s say you have funny men, who are in their 30s or 40s. It’s a way for them to be funny, but then maybe also appeal to like a kid audience. And then the question is, well, what do we do with that character? And as poorly as we treat female characters, we treat dads, I think, perhaps the worst of all because they’re so stupid. They’re the dumbest people in the world.

This is the dad character. This is it. I work too hard. I’m ignoring my wife and my family. Period. The end. And actually, no, there’s one other thing about this dad. I just needed somebody to point it out to me. And now I’m going to change my life forever. Oh, please. I always like to say all those movies about overworked, working too hard dads are made by dads that are working too hard, not seeing their children. It’s such a — god, I hate those. I hate them. Hate ’em.

**John:** And so the other thing I’ll bring up, and I’m sure our listeners can find a counter example. So, write in with a counter example of the female equivalent of that. Because I can’t think of one where the woman works too hard and through magical means she gets to learn the value of family. It’s just presumed that of course a woman knows the value of family.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. That’s a thing. Nobody — you just couldn’t get away with it, like putting a woman on screen being that profoundly stupid and emotionally stunted. Nobody would believe it. For good reason by the way. [laughs] Because I get it. Men are dumber and more emotionally stunted than women. We know this. But, god, to be that profoundly dopey.

And, of course, this is why — so then the question is how do you — you can see how these things happen, right? All right, so hey, screenwriter, here’s a problem for you: we need to illustrate in a simple way that this father is neglectful of his kid. How would you do that? I just need one scene that proves that he’s putting work ahead of family. What should we do?

**John:** So maybe he could like not show up at his son’s violin rehearsal?

**Craig:** Sold! Sold! So it’s a school play, it’s a rehearsal. It’s a this, it’s a that. And here’s the thing — this is why I was — argh, umbrage now. Here’s why it’s so lame: because it would be cool — I would actually like a movie where a dad is like, “Oh, I got to get home to see my kid’s play.” And then someone is like, “Okay. But if you want to stay and keep working on this, you might get a raise.”

“Huh, all right. I’m going to stay.”

That’s never how it is. Because I’d be like that guy is awesome. What a bastard. No, it’s always like this: “I have to get to my — I love my kid so much. I have to get there. Oh no, there’s a crisis. I’m stuck. I can’t do anything about it. I forgot.”

Ugh, god. Blech.

**John:** Blech. Here’s the thing is like they have to be terrible by their own choices for them to be able to learn something at the end. Because otherwise, if it’s just like their mean boss is making them work, then it’s just Scrooge, and it’s not his story at all.

**Craig:** Well, that’s what it is. They’re basically cowards who can’t stand up to a mean boss. And inevitably they finally do.

By the way, let’s also be realistic. If you don’t show up to your kid’s play in fourth grade, that’s not what’s going to end up putting them in therapy. You know, it’s recoverable. Don’t beat them. How about that?

**John:** Yeah. And so then we set these incredibly unrealistic expectations about what fathers are supposed to be able to do and the kids talk smack about their parents. Oh, it just drives me crazy. Maybe it’s because I have a tween now who has started talking like the characters on Disney Channel shows. And so she talks this way that she kind of thinks that kids are supposed to talk, but she’s really talking the way a 45-year-old man wrote for these tweens to talk on a Disney Channel show. And it’s just so maddening. And so, ah.

**Craig:** Well, you know, it’s going to get worse and worse.

**John:** Oh, of course.

**Craig:** I don’t know what to tell you about that.

**John:** Yeah. It’s going to be good. Let’s go on to our final topic which is originality and the sense of why some movies feel original and some movies don’t. Craig, take us there.

**Craig:** Well, this is something that I was talking about with Lindsay Doran and we were talking about a moment in the script that we’re working on together. And she was very happy with it. And she said, “You know what I like about this? Only our movie could do this.” And I thought what a great test. Because we talk about being original all of the time, but what does that really mean exactly? Because while we talk about being original, we also say things like, “Well, there’s only seven stories. And every story has been told. And it’s just versions.” And that’s all kind of true.

And everyone who is learning how to be a screenwriter, what do they learn? There are certain archetypes. There are this many kinds of heroes. And the heroes journey. And it’s all based on mythology. All kind of true.

So then the question is what do we mean when we say something is original. And in a strange way I think she’s kind of hit on it. It’s not that it has to be original compared to everything else around there. It’s that it has to original within itself. That the movie is providing a combination of character and circumstance that allows that movie to do something no other movie could do. Not for lack of trying, but because it wouldn’t make sense in that movie. It only makes sense in this one. I thought that was a good idea.

**John:** I think it’s a very good idea. And it’s going to invoke one of our other favorite words which is specificity. It’s like it’s ideas that are so specific to this movie that they could not be plugged into any other movie. And so it’s the joke that only could exist with these characters in this situation and couldn’t be dialed into another movie.

It’s the characters and situations that can only happen here. One of these we have marked here is people being unplugged in The Matrix and then falling down dead. Exactly. That’s a very specifically kind of Matrix-y idea. And while other science fiction films could do things that are kind of like it, the specific way that feels is only The Matrix. And that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah. Precisely. And sometimes it’s as simple as a line that only your characters can do. You know, so the movie that I’m working on with her is about sheep. And these sheep are detectives trying to solve a crime. And they repeatedly do things that only our movie could do, because we’re the only movie that has sheep detectives.

It’s not like we’ve — detective stories are not original. Talking animal movies aren’t original. There have been movies with sheep. But this combination is original. And therefore you have to ask yourself, “What can only we do?” If we can only do that, we should do that. That’s a good light guiding us to where we’re going to go.

You and I see when we get Three Page Challenges, sometimes we’ll say things like, “I’ve seen this a million times before.” And I think underneath that really is — any movie could do this. So, why do I need this one, right? I’ve seen many movies where people are caught on vaguely haunted spaceships. But what can only your movie do?

And it’s a good way to think about your work. For those of you playing the home game, as you go through and ask yourself, there must be a combination of things that is unique to your screenplay. I believe that, otherwise why would you have bothered to write it. If that combination is not unique, you’re already in a lot of trouble. But if it is unique, ask yourself have I exploited that which is unique to this? Because if I have not, I should.

**John:** Yep. And when we’re saying like you have to find this moment that is unique and original, it should ideally be the kind of moment that you would actually hopefully would put in the trailer. It doesn’t have to go in the trailer, but it has to be the kind of moment that so shows the DNA of your movie and why this movie, which will obviously fall into some genre, can both reflect the genre but also stand apart from the genre. That it’s doing its own thing.

And, you know, you say like no other movie could do it. Well, no other movie would even sort of try to do this specific weird thing that you are trying to do. And when you see bad trailers, it’s often because you can feel like well that’s just another retread of the same idea again and again.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we know that we’ve seen pirate movies. And we’ve seen zombie movies. And we’ve seen movies with ghosts, right? And I remember when I saw the trailer for the first Pirates of the Caribbean, how impressed I was when these pirates moved into moonlight and suddenly were revealed to be skeletons. And that’s something only that movie could do, because that was their interesting rule which they made sense of, and then exploited the hell out of.

And talk about Anagnorisis, when Barbossa says, “You don’t believe in ghost stories, you better start. You’re in one,” and he steps into the moonlight, into a beam of moonlight and his face is revealed. And her shock at seeing what the world is. That’s — see only that movie could do that.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Wonderful, right? And they’re sometimes the littlest things. The strangest. Look, one of our little lambs in our movie is just obsessed with tomatoes. It’s a sheep. This lamb loves tomatoes. And she’s been sent to kind of listen in to a conversation between two people. And first of all, here’s something only our movie could do. Only our movie can have somebody sneakily eavesdropping on a conversation, except the other two people couldn’t care less that they were there because they’re a lamb, right?

So the people don’t understand that lambs are eavesdropping. So that’s pointless eavesdropping, but they’re eavesdropping anyway. And she’s watching them and they’re eating lunch. And one of them is eating tomato salad. And our lamb just focuses in on the tomatoes, and everything else is gone. And it’s just tomatoes. Only our movie could do that. What other movie could do that? None.

And that’s why we’re here is to do stuff — and then people go, “Well how did you think of that?” Because that’s why we’re doing the story is to do things that only this intersection of elements could create.

**John:** Yep. The success of Zootopia is largely based on those kind of moments where it’s just like, oh, it’s because you have these specific characters in this situation and these crazy rules for your world that these kinds of situations can happen. And that’s delightful.

**Craig:** Yeah. Animated movies in particular, this is their stock and trade. They are obsessed with the idea of what can only our movie do. What can you do if everybody in the movie is a talking car? What can you do if everybody in the movie is a fish? What can you do if everybody in the movie is a video game character? And then they ask themselves — you can see them saying, “Well…”

**John:** Starting with this premise, what are the best outcomes from it? And if the outcomes aren’t great outcomes, then maybe ditch that idea and start a different idea.

**Craig:** Because it can be applied to any other movie. So, how is it great that we’re applying it to ours? The Lego Movie, so first of all, what’s the worst thing that can happen to Lego people? Being stuck in place and not being able to be interchangeable because that’s the nature of Legos. Okay, great. So then what should the ultimate nuclear bomb in the Lego world be? Crazy Glue.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Great. Right? Only the Lego Movie could have Crazy Glue as the ultimate weapon of doom. Ergo, it’s a good idea.

**John:** It’s a very good idea. God, I love the Lego Movie. I need to see it again. I haven’t seen it since it came out.

**Craig:** Well, it’s just chock full of things that only that movie could do.

**John:** Cool. Let’s answer one question. Stuart from York, England writes — oh Stuart, I’m so sorry for you.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s just take a moment here.

**John:** We’re recording this on Friday. So it’s just all come down. And I’ve been kind of really depressed all day.

**Craig:** Well, for good reason. Will everyone survive? Yes. Will the world be okay? Yes. However, what’s disturbing about Brexit is that it is irrational. It’s profoundly irrational. And by the way, I think it’s not like the EU doesn’t deserve a ton of criticism. They do. It’s not a great organization actually. In fact, one could argue that it’s terribly flawed from its inception.

But, the problem is the alternative is worse. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation, which is I think what the EU was. But leaving it is profoundly irrational and it was kind of surprising to see that much irrationality. And in a weird way, John, in November, the United States will suddenly have to be the grown-ups and like the good ones. What a weird role reversal, right?

**John:** It is a very strange role reversal. You know, this morning I retweeted a couple of I thought smart observations about it. And then I got some weird Twitter blowback about. You’re no stranger to weird Twitter blowback, Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** It’s all I get.

**John:** It’s all you get. And so I’ve been judiciously using my mute function. So, I have a perception of who really wanted Brexit to happen. And there’s the extreme types, but I think there’s also the people who genuinely perceive that England was better off when it was a separate country, or Great Britain was better off as a separate country. And that they were longing for a golden time. They were longing for a time where things were better.

And when I see movements like this happen, there always tends to be sort of this myth of like a golden age when everything was better, and if we could just get back to that place. The realization that — the Anagnorisis that you have — is that you never get to that better place. You can never get back to that old better place. You can only try to get to a new better place. And every attempt to go backwards is fraught with peril.

And so as I retweeted a few of these things, including this one young woman interviewing saying like, “Yeah, I voted to leave, but now that I wake up this morning, I really regret that.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah. I saw her.

**John:** I’m like, oh, that’s Anagnorisis there.

**Craig:** By the way, that’s so British, because an American would never say that. Ever.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Americans will never, ever admit — not only did she admit that regretted it, but she admitted it so freely. Like, “Oh, you know, if I could do it again, I think I would vote to remain.” Just so casual. So like, la-da-da, oh well.

**John:** La-di-da. You know, people also describe it as being like I wish I could revert to a save. It’s like go back to that last draft. That made a lot more sense.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** Or like save progress in a game. Like, I’m going to try to something really foolish, so I’m going to save first and then see — go back to a state there.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. Oh my god, that’s so the video game analogy of like, “Oh, I’ll just do a save point here. It’s my fallback. Yeah, because I’m about to go Russian somewhere that I probably shouldn’t. But maybe it’ll work.”

You know, you’re right. This dream of what once was, part of the problem also is it wasn’t that. You know, in the United States people sometimes — a lot of people — fetishize the 1950s.

**John:** Yeah. Exactly. Oh, let’s go back to that. Because they were awesome, Craig. Everything was perfect in the ’50s. If you were a white person, who was straight, and a male, it was fantastic.

**Craig:** Well, here’s the crazy part. Even if you were a white, straight male, it still wasn’t that great, because there’s like — here’s a list of things that kind of sucked about being anyone in the 1950s.

**John:** Polio.

**Craig:** Yeah, thank you. Much less being black, or gay, or a woman, or any of the things. We just imagine these times because we look at Norman Rockwell paintings and it’s just easy to imagine that that was the way it was. It was not at all that way. And, of course, there were a lot of men who were dying in Korea in the 1950s and early ’60s, I believe.

A lot of things going wrong. But John Oliver, I think, had the best — he had the best and most well-rounded and understandable view on it as a British man.

**John:** Yeah. And of course it didn’t air in the UK because Sky pulled it for political content.

**Craig:** Amazing. So, it basically came down to him saying we have to stay. I hate the EU. All British people hate the EU. We hate all the other countries in the EU. We should hate them. They’re ridiculous. We have to stay. And that is a very difficult selling point.

**John:** It is. I think the lesson I’m trying to take with me going forward, just because obviously we’re going to hit our own situation in the very near future, is to always be mindful that there is going to be a sizable portion of any society that wants to return, that wants to get back to a place. And you have to be able to tell them the story that makes them feel good about the place we’re headed to, and not just tells them that they’re stupid for wanting to get back to that place.

**Craig:** Yeah. And again, you know, we have — our situation is a little better. We have the Electoral College.

**John:** Thank god.

**Craig:** Which definitely is a buffer against large waves of people located in one area. And also, of course, our situation is not permanent. Theirs unfortunately is irreversible.

**John:** We’re recording this on Friday. What is interesting is the damage that’s been done can’t be undone. There’s no reverting to a previous state. But, how they actually implement it and sort of what happens next is still very fluid.

And so I would hope that in its fluidity it gets to a place that is less terrible for everyone.

**Craig:** Well, on the darker side of things, I suspect it’s going to be a brutal, vicious slog over the next two years. Political careers are going to be dashed to pieces. And Scotland will probably vote to leave the United Kingdom.

**John:** I also hope that more politicians aren’t going down in the streets.

**Craig:** And my god, I mean, good lord, right? So, a real mess over there, but Stuart — Stuart is from York, and he deserves an answer, whether he voted to leave or remain. Shall I read his question?

**John:** Read his question.

**Craig:** Stuart asks, “Would putting the main character’s names in bold be something that would help the reader focus on the central characters or the characters that the writers deem important enough to bold, or is it something that could risk marginalizing the other characters?” Interesting.

**John:** I have a simple answer to this which is don’t boldface your character’s names. So, I would say there’s nothing horribly wrong with boldfacing your character’s names, except that part of the reason why we uppercase character’s names is so that people can find them, and so that people sort of know the first time they appear. I just don’t think you’re going to find a lot of utility in boldfacing those names.

**Craig:** I agree, particularly considering that their names are going to be repeated constantly, every time they say a word their name will be there in the middle of the page. This is not a problem worth solving.

**John:** I agree. What I will say is at the point you go to table reads and stuff like that, people will highlight their dialogue. That’s awesome, but that’s really a very different thing. So for that first read, it’s going to be too much. Imagine if you were reading through a book and Harry Potter’s name was boldfaced every time it showed up. That would get old really fast. And that’s kind of what you’re doing in a screenplay.

**Craig:** Yeah. Particularly because we’re trained, or at least, Stuart, the people that are reading your scripts are trained one way or another to view bold as emphasis, not a general textual emphasis, but dramatic emphasis.

**John:** What I would also say about character names is you are right to be focusing on like who are the most important characters in your story. And what you’ll find is as you’re writing sentences, you will craft sentences so that they are highlighted in the sentence. And so if multiple characters need to be in that sentence, you will put your hero first in that sentence. You will find ways to make sure that we are keeping it very clear who they need to follow, who they don’t need to follow. You are probably refraining from giving character names to unimportant people so that they are not elevated importance beyond their natural stature.

So, don’t say that the security guard’s name is Anderson if he’s really just a security guard.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** All right, it’s time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a post by Steve Yedlin that Rian Johnson had put a link to this last week. It is on color science for filmmakers. And so what Yedlin does, he is a cinematographer. And he is talking about sort of a lot of our assumptions on image capture formats on film versus video, on Arri versus other ways of ingesting light and forming an image.

And the whole thing is worth reading. It gets really into the weeds on some stuff, but through that you can find his sort of key points which is that so much of our assumptions about like what’s the best thing for shooting movies on, what’s the best camera to use for shooting movies on, is so often based on what the default settings of things are versus what is this thing capable of doing.

And the choices about what formats you’re going to use, what cameras, what equipment, what looks you’re going for, those things should be figured out before you start shooting your first frame. You need to do your work to figure out what you want your film to look like, and then pick the appropriate technology. And also pick the appropriate colorist. And actually set some of those looks ahead of time so you know what you’re aiming for.

It’s the movies that are trying to do it all on the set, or do everything in post, that are less ideal than they should be.

**Craig:** It must be very, very frustrating, I think, just as we were talking about how it’s frustrating for writers to be the only person in the room who is defending Anagnorisis. It must be very frustrating to be somebody like Steve Yedlin, who is an incredibly talented cinematographer, and also just a clearly well-educated person, to have discussions with people saying things that are just flat out stupid and wrong.

**John:** Yeah. Camera X is too something, or like this thing, the blues are too bright in this. It’s like that’s probably not true and you’re really ignoring the purpose of what a colorist does.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes when musicians get into these little twerpy fights over, “Well, you know, if your drums are made of maple, they’re going to sound warmer than birch. Birch is too…” And somebody inevitably will come in and just destroy the whole argument by saying, “I’m pretty sure that if you put a great drummer down, if you put John Bonham on that kit it would be just fine.”

You know, he would know what to do. It’s like people get so twerpy about stuff, and I like that underneath all of Steve’s facts and science is this general argument understand your tools and then use the tool for your purpose. You’ll be fine.

**John:** Exactly. He’s really arguing do the work. Like do the work of actually figuring out what it is you want rather than just like looking at a bunch of checklists, or reading a bunch of articles about things and saying, “Oh, well this is going to be the ideal camera for us.” Do the work.

**Craig:** Precisely. And you mentioned that he’s shooting Rian’s Star Wars movie, right?

**John:** So I think he has some good credits to his name.

**Craig:** Yeah. So my One Cool Thing is a game that I played the other night with a group that Megan Amram has now coined the term Illuminerdy, or we are the Illuminerdy, among others, myself and Megan, and David Kwong the magician, and Chris Miller of aforementioned Lego Movie, and Aline Brosh McKenna, and Shannon Woodward, and blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t matter who is in the Illuminerdy. In fact, I shouldn’t tell you all the people in the Illuminerdy, because we got to keep some secrets here.

**John:** Yeah, but if we see throwing little signals and signs in your Instagram photos, that’s how we can tell.

**Craig:** Then you’ll know, and we are controlling the world. So, anyway, David Kwong brings a card game, sort of a logic word card game. Similar to the kinds that you’ve been kind of fiddling with over there at Quote-Unquote. And it’s called Codenames. And we’ll throw a link up in the show notes to a description of it. Wonderful little game. Incredibly simple. So simple I could describe it to you right now.

There is a bunch of words that are laid out in a five by five grid. So, five words by five words, all spread out. And there are two people giving clues to their teams. And the two people that are giving clues are looking at a little tiny map on their side that shows that some of those words are the words I want my team to guess. They’re the red words. Or the person to the right of me who is giving the clues to their team, they’re trying to do the blue words.

There is one word that is an instant loser word. And your job is to get your team to guess the words on the grid before the other team guesses those words. And the way you do it is you give them a word that’s a prompt and you tell them how many words you think that word should lead to. So, for instance, in this game that I played on my grid I saw that I had the word bank and I saw I had the word dwarf.

And so I said Gringotts.

**John:** Perfect.

**Craig:** Two words. Now, granted, they’re goblins, not dwarves. But, still, that’s the idea. Now, the trick of it is whatever word you come up with, it can’t lead them to one of the other team’s words, because if it does then obviously that helps them. So, the idea is to try and come up with these linking words, a single linking word that might hit even three things at once.

Very fun. Very easy to play. It takes four seconds to learn. Good for families, too, I would imagine. Good game.

**John:** Good game. So I nearly played that game about two weeks ago. I was over at Elan Lee’s house. Elan Lee created Exploding Kittens, along with The Oatmeal. And so he occasionally gets people together to play games. We nearly played that, but instead we played a Fake Artist Goes to New York, which Will Smith had brought. And not that Will Smith, the other Will Smith. And it was also terrific. So, I’m going to link to A Fake Artist Goes to New York as well which is a great, fun party game that we should play next time.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** You will find links in the show notes to these things, and a lot of the other articles we talked about today at johnaugust.com. Just search for this episode of the podcast. Our premium feed is at Scriptnotes.net. You can also get the Scriptnotes app which is on iTunes or the Android store. You can find it at multiple places.

If you are on iTunes for any reason, please leave us a review. That helps other people find Scriptnotes, which is great.

As always, we are produced by Stuart Friedel. We are edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** And our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro for us you can write into ask@johnaugust.com and send us a link. If you have questions, that’s also the address to use.

On Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. And we will see you next week.

**Craig:** See ya.

Links:

* Scriptnotes, 255: [New and Old Hollywood](http://johnaugust.com/2016/new-and-old-hollywood), with guest Billy Ray
* [‘Hatton Garden Job’ Beats Other Pics About Famed UK Heist To Production](http://deadline.com/2016/06/hatton-garden-job-matthew-goode-ronnie-thompson-voltage-pictures-1201777392/) on Deadline, and our discussion in [episode 234](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-script-graveyard)
* [Our bonus episode with Simon Kinberg](http://scriptnotes.net/writers-on-writing-simon-kinberg)
* Scriptnotes, 235: [The one with Jason Bateman and the Game of Thrones guys](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-jason-bateman-and-the-game-of-thrones-guys)
* 250-episode Scriptnotes USB drives are [now available for purchase from the John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* The Verge on [Aaron Sorkin’s screenwriting MasterClass](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/22/12007748/aaron-sorkin-screenwriting-masterclass-online-course)
* [Our bonus episode featuring Aaron Sorkin](http://scriptnotes.net/bonus-beyond-words-2016)
* [Anagnorisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagnorisis), and [how to pronounce it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFRnB-rVhUY)
* [John Oliver on Brexit, before the vote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAgKHSNqxa8)
* Steve Yedlin [On Color Science](http://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/)
* [Codenames](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/178900/codenames) on Board Game Geek, and [A Fake Artist Goes to New York](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/135779/fake-artist-goes-new-york)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))