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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 279 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast, we will be looking at how characters tell us what they’re after, either with or without a song. We’ll also be answering listener questions about how much despair to feel when a movie similar to your spec is announced. How to get started off an improv group. And whether Craig and I are wrong about gurus.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a huge question there. [laughs]

**John:** There’s a giant question mark at the end of that, because it’s possible that we’re wrong about everything.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Absolutely.

**John:** One of our listeners wrote in with a question saying like, “These other guys, they think you’re wrong.”

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** And we’ll give you the answer at the end of the episode.

**Craig:** Oh my god, good. I was hungry.

**John:** Yeah. [laughs] First off, though, we have a correction. In last week’s episode I misspoke. I said stop trying to make ___ happen was from Clueless. I was completely wrong. That’s from Mean Girls.

**Craig:** Oh. Well, you know, but Mean Girls is from Clueless. They are on a line. They’re on a continuum. So, I think you are all right.

**John:** They are on a continuum. I think you would not have Mean Girls without Clueless, but it is its own movie, and it’s wonderful in its own right. So, people wrote in with that correction and I don’t want to put false things out into this world.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because, you know, everybody else is putting out real things. All other websites and podcasts promulgate accurate information.

**John:** Yeah. We’re trying to be an accurate podcast. So, I want to make that correction. We also had a follow up from a listener. Andy [Keir] in Brooklyn who wrote in, “Thank you, John, for recommending The Good Place as your One Cool Thing. It is beyond cool. Binged it in a couple of days and I love it. It was slightly awkward to notice that on that show, which is brilliantly written, it contained two of the clams which you prescribed earlier in the same episode, which are ‘Wait, what?’ and ‘Good talk.’ I’m not saying you are wrong in any way – I would never – it was just a fun bit of cognitive dissonance. Neither of the clams took me out of the show, it’s just too good, which goes to show you if you’re really good you can get away with it. The rest of us should listen to you guys.”

So. I got to say, The Good Place, got clams in there.

**Craig:** Everybody has a clam. Everybody has a clam somewhere. They’re not something that you have to completely prescribe. I mean, there are a few that I think signify a total lack of effort or care creativity. If you’re saying, “She’s like the blankety blank from hell,” you’re advertising that you suck. But some of them are, you know, in what we’ll call early clam stage. You know, I mean, there’s grown clams, the big gnarly ones with the barnacles on them. And then there’s these baby clams. So, ‘wait what?’ and ‘good talk’ are probably still in the baby clam area. And they’re not toxic to anything.

You know, this is what happens. Sometimes you and I, we do these things, and we forget that people take us very, very seriously. And then they start thinking, oh my god, I have to take this out of script. You know, take it as advice. It’s just advice.

**John:** Yes. So, right before we went to record, I got an email from a showrunner who copied in a long thread of exchanges that happened within his writing staff. Basically he had listened to the episode and passed along to his writing staff like, hey, let’s take a look at this. And there was a considerable discussion.

So, I have not cleared with him whether we are allowed to discuss his discussion. But I thought it was fascinating that a genuine bona fide show that is on the air right now had a discussion about this clam list based on our episode. So, it’s a thing that’s out there. And we weren’t the people who came up with this list. We were just passing it along. So, I would go back to this idea that it’s not – the two clams that he mentions here in The Good Place, those are relatively fresh clams. They haven’t been lying on the beach for a long time. They don’t smell. They’re not brand new, but they’re not horrible things in there.

What you were suggesting about sort of the ‘blankety blank from hell,’ that was such a horrible one that it was not even on the list that we read aloud.

**Craig:** Cause that’s not even a clam anymore. It’s decomposed into some sort of goo.

**John:** Yeah. They grind it up and they use the shells to repave Martha Stewart’s driveway.

**Craig:** That’s right. And then whatever protein was left goes into some sort of slurry for pet food.

**John:** Yeah. It’s really good. Or, the seagulls have just picked it apart, and you don’t want that. If the seagulls are all involved with your joke, it’s a bad joke.

**Craig:** So, the writers that were discussing the clam list, without going into their specifics, where there a few of them that they were defending as maybe not so clammy or–?

**John:** There were a few that I think were being defended, but it was more the idea of whether the list was a good idea or not a good idea. Whether it was calling out a list of things not to do was a helpful or an unhelpful practice.

**Craig:** That’s interesting. I mean, look, a lot of times when we talk about things, we are doing a little bit of what Penn & Teller used to do back in the day. So, Penn & Teller, like all magicians, subscribe to a magician’s code, which is to not give away the secrets to tricks. But then there are some tricks that are so clammy they’re like, screw it, we’re going to give it away.

I remember I went to go see Penn & Teller when I was a kid and they did a trick with cups and balls and moving them around. And it was impressive. And then they said, okay, but the thing is the magic part is – obviously it’s a gimmick, right? But the skill is actually in the manipulation. You are not as impressed as you should be, so we’re now going to redo this trick with clear cups, so you can see what we’re doing. And you will be more impressed. And I was. Because there’s a remarkable amount of dexterity. But they’re whole thing there was, you know what, this trick is a clam. We’re going to give it away.

And I’m okay with that. I don’t think we should ever feel like, just philosophically speaking, you and I, as we sometimes pull the curtain aside and reveal some of the tricks of the trade. You know, it’s okay. If they are clammy, you know, what are we really – I mean, I’m not sure what the argument is for not exposing these things as goofy.

**John:** Yeah. And the other thing which came up in this thread, which I think is a good thing worth pointing out, and sort of highlighting for our readers is there are some things that become kind of a meta clam, where they’re not funny anymore, but by repeating them they kind of become funny again. Or they inform a character who thinks that that is funny. So, a great example is on the American version of The Office, “That’s what she said.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s not actually funny, but Michael Scott thinks it’s so funny is part of the joke behind it. And so, you know, there can be reasons why you’re deliberating using one of these things so you know it’s not in itself funny because in a broader context the characters who think it’s funny makes it hilarious.

**Craig:** That’s absolutely true. I would think the audience understands the difference. Even if they intellectually aren’t quite parsing it out so specifically the way a writer would, they clearly do get it. Everybody knows what’s going on when people on The Office say, “That’s what she said.” Everybody knows that.

I mean, look, think about – when Homer started going, “D’oh,” that was him making fun of goofy sitcoms, where people go, “D’oh.” They were making fun of it. And now it’s his own thing. It’s part of his character and nobody really connects it back to a kind of, well frankly, demeaning swipe at very clunky, poorly drawn characters that had come before him.

**John:** It’s interesting. D’oh I think is a great example because it’s great when Homer says it, but if you have any other character saying it in a Homer Simpson way, it doesn’t really work. But I’ve seen it used increasingly as like a parenthetical, or as a way to express the feeling of D’oh without actually having the character say, “D’oh.” It’s that sudden realization that you’ve made a fool of yourself is well expressed by D’oh, even if you’re not having a character say it.

So, I’ve seen it in scene descriptions, even though I don’t see characters saying it who aren’t Homer Simpson.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think the official – I wish that our friend Matt was here. The official term that they use in their screenplays is something like “disappointed grunt.” They don’t actually write D’oh in Simpsons’ episodes.

**John:** Yeah. And a good lesson if you’re writing animation in general is there’s a tendency to write parentheticals for all those things that are said aloud. Basically because you’re recording lines, any sort of sound that a character makes you have to write a parenthetical for them to do that, so you actually get the sound recorded. And so you will see in animation scripts sometimes a bunch of characters talking who don’t actually have dialogue. They just have parentheticals for the sounds that they’re making.

**Craig:** That’s kind of cool. Yeah, efforts, right? I guess it all falls under efforts. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I like that.

**John:** Our final bit of follow up is Weekend Read, which is the app my company makes for reading screenplays on your iPhone. Every year about this time we start putting up the For Your Consideration scripts. So, there are a bunch of them that are out there right now for big studio features and little independent features, all vying for Best Screenplay awards.

So, we have a new category inside the app for all those scripts. So, if you’re curious to read those scripts and would like to read them on your phone, just download Weekend Read. It’s in the app store. It’s a free download. And you can start reading the screenplays that are going to be up for awards this season.

**Craig:** That’s spectacular. First, I mean, I have to watch the movies, too, don’t I?

**John:** It’s probably a good idea to watch the movies. I think your best bet is to watch the movies and the movies that you think are really good, read those screenplays. If you don’t think the movie is good, I say don’t read the screenplay.

**Craig:** Great point. Great point. I don’t know what to do.

**John:** You don’t read screenplays.

**Craig:** You know what? I’m being honest with you. I get the screeners and there’s one person in my house who is thrilled, every year, and it’s the wife. And some of these movies I’ve never even heard of. Oh god, I’m out of it. I’m out of it, man.

**John:** So, Mike keeps a spreadsheet, because we’re a spreadsheet family, of all the screeners that come in. And because they’re coming to Los Angeles, Godwin is logging them as they come in. And then every couple weeks he sends a package of all the screeners. So, we have a bunch of screeners here now. I have not watched one of them. I’m trying to watch as many movies in the theater as I possibly can because it’s the best place to see them, and it’s also fun to see them with French subtitles. So, like I’m seeing Arrival this weekend, which is finally coming out in Paris. So I’m excited.

**Craig:** What is the French word for Arrival?

**John:** It is Premier Contact.

**Craig:** Oh, First Contact. Wait a second, they’ve already made that movie.

**John:** I know. It’s crazy. So, there was a Star Trek movie, but that wasn’t called that here I guess.

**Craig:** And then there was Contact. There were two movies.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And Contact is very, very similar – oh, French. You know that the French title for Hangover is A Very Bad Trip?

**John:** I do know that. And Another Very Bad Trip is the sequel.

**Craig:** Another Very Bad Trip. And that’s not translated from the French. They kept the title in English. They just made it A Very Bad Trip. [laughs] Well, I understand on some level the word hangover is idiomatic to English. There must be a French word for Hangover? Why didn’t they use that word? Maybe another movie had used it?

**John:** A lot of times it’s just because there’s a better term for the French market. This is actually a great segue into what we’re talking about today, because this last week I went and saw Vaiana and you’re like well what the hell is Vaiana? Well, Vaiana is Moana in places that are not the US and some other markets.

**Craig:** Do you know why?

**John:** I do know why. So, a couple of different reasons. So, first off, in Italy Moana is a famous porn star. So they couldn’t call the movie Moana there.

**Craig:** So cool.

**John:** In other parts of the world, Disney couldn’t clear trademark on Moana, so they had to use Vaiana. So, I saw this on posters and clearly it was the same movie. And so I assumed that when I watched the movie, because I watched the movie in English with French subtitles, I assumed that they would actually say Moana but then they would say Vaiana in the subtitles. But, no, they actually recorded the entire movie, every line of dialogue, every lyric, where they say Moana they say Vaiana in the version I saw.

And so in France and other markets where it’s released in English, but not in America or certain other markets, it’s Vaiana. And they sing it. 100% Vaiana when you see it in France or other markets.

**Craig:** I could see that. I mean, Disney, they’re kind of completionists. You know, they’re not going to let you sit in an Italian movie theater, and even though the movie is called Vaiana hear songs referring to their famous porn star.

**John:** Yeah. But I really liked the movie. And so this is where I have to do a full disclosure here. I have a consulting agreement with Disney animation, but I did not work on this movie at all. So this movie was a complete, you know, I had not seen a single frame of this movie. So I sat down and watched it and was surprised and delighted by how much I really enjoyed it.

And particularly I really liked how the I Want song works in this. So I thought this could be a topic for us to discuss is how characters tell us what they want. And there’s a way to do it in Disney movies, especially animation movies, that’s so literal but we also have to be able to figure out how to express what characters want in movies where they don’t have their own big number to express it.

**Craig:** It’s such a big topic because whether you’re writing a script or you’ve written a script and you’re now dealing with other people, producers, or anyone, what your character wants is the easiest, quickest, slam-dunk note you’re going to get if it’s not clear. That’s the one that they’ll just – that’s their right hook.

So, even though you and I try to not be prescriptive about things and rule-based, this is about as ruley as it gets. Your character must want something and we must know what it is.

**John:** Yeah. And so let’s talk about what that want is, and distinguish it from other wants. Because characters are going to have wants in every scene. They’re going to have motivations for what they’re trying to do next, what they’re trying to get out of this sequence, what their sort of goals are, their objectives. But what we’re talking about with want is sort of this big kind of metaphysical want. It’s like what they woke up with in the morning saying like, “This is the vision I have for my life. What is the positive outcome I sort of see for my life?”

And sometimes they won’t have full introspection. They won’t quite know what it was. They couldn’t articulate it to another character. But deep down inside there it’s there and we should be able to see it as an audience. That if the movie succeeds, they will be changed and they will get this thing that they were after. And that’s also kind of a crucial distinction between how movies work and how TV series work. Is that in a movie our expectation of an audience is we’re going to see that character get what they’re after at the end, or fail to get what they’re after.

In a TV series, that arc, that journey, is not meant to be completed. Not in the course of one episode. Or even the course of the whole series necessarily. They’re constantly on that journey towards that thing, but they’re not going to get there.

**Craig:** That’s right. Think about the opening narration to Star Trek. That’s sort of saying we have a general want, to seek out new life and go to new civilizations and boldly go where no man has gone before. Okay. I mean, I screwed that up, so sorry Trekkers, but the point is we want to explore. We want to explore the unknown. That’s what we want. But that’s vague and general. And vague and general is good, because every episode they need to discover some new challenge and overcome it. And have it end. And then a new one begins.

That’s not at all how movies work. That’s not how self-contained narratives work. There is a specific want to a specific character. And when you have the opportunity to express that through song, as musicals do, whether they’re stage musicals or film – and film musicals almost always now means animated – the character is able to sing what’s in their mind. They don’t need to have somebody else there. And in a way where a character onscreen would be a lunatic if they just started monologue-ing to nobody about what they wanted for three minutes, in a musical a character can sing it. And because they’re singing their internal voice, they can be – they don’t have to worry about subtext either. They can be on the nose.

And so you have these great songs like Part of Your World, when we did our Little Mermaid exploration. It’s harder to find a better and more specific I Want song than that.

**John:** Yeah. And you’ll notice these I Want songs, they almost always have the words I Want in them, or I Wish, or I Dream, or If Only I Could. And Part of Your World kind of does all of those things. It’s her vision of I wish I could be part of your world, up there where you can do all those things. She’s imagining her life in this other place, this better place, if only.

And so almost always this is the second song in the musical, we should say. The first song in one of these musicals tends to be this is the nature of the world, this is how the world currently functions. The second song is almost always the protagonist singing the I Want song. This is my vision for what’s going to happen next.

**Craig:** Yeah. A couple other examples from Broadway that are really clear. Wouldn’t it be Loverly, from My Fair Lady. All I want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air. And then Corner of the Sky from Pippin. I want to be where my spirit can run free.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Got to find my corner of the sky. So, people will just say I want stuff. Now, sometimes the songs that people sing are about things they think they want, but they’re not really what they do want. And that’s part of what the show is instructing. Like, Fiddler on the Roof, the second song right there is Tevye sings If I Were a Rich Man, and it’s all about wanting to be rich. But that’s not really what he wants.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** But that’s part of the point of that show.

**John:** So, let’s take a listen to the song from Moana. It’s just her I Want song. It’s called How Far I’ll Go. It’s written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who did Hamilton, and Mark Mancina. So, let’s take a listen to three verses here and track sort of what she’s saying about where she sees herself and where she’s going. So let’s take a listen.

[Song plays]

I’ve been staring at the edge of the water
‘Long as I can remember, never really knowing why
I wish I could be the perfect daughter
But I come back to the water, no matter how hard I try

Every turn I take, every trail I track
Every path I make, every road leads back
To the place I know, where I cannot go
Where I long to be

See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me
And no one knows, how far it goes
If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me
One day I’ll know, if I go there’s just no telling how far I’ll go

**John:** So Craig. You have not seen the movie, but you’ve only listened to this song, and you were able to just sing it back to me just now. So, it stuck–

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** In your head to some degree.

**Craig:** Yeah. Lin-Manuel Miranda has some meager skill with this sort of thing. [laughs] So, the melody matches the vibe of the words beautifully. These things pair up when everything is working right and they complement each other. And so the melody kind of takes off as she takes off on what is very common in an I Want song, a flight of fancy.

So, you might think if you said to a child, “Talk about something you don’t have that you want,” it could come out whiney. I want this. I want it. And I don’t have it, and I want it. But, typically with these things, people begin to imagine having the thing they want. And you see them light up.

And inside of that is a promise for the movie. Therefore, we understand if they get it, they will be happier. Not just satisfied or not just making something go away. It’s not that whiney, greedy want. It’s this deeper spiritual aching. And we get to see the positive side, the as if.

And so you start typically with a contrast. This is what I don’t have. Dear God, you’ve made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, there’s no shame in being poor, but there’s no great honor either. And you start with the bummer. I’ve been standing on the edge of the water, long as I can remember, never really knowing why. I wish I could be the perfect daughter, but I come back to the water no matter how hard I try. Ugh, sucks.

Then, ooh, but if I were to have it. If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me, one day I’ll know. If I go, there’s just no telling how far I’ll go. That’s just the promise of this brave new day.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And it’s played in contrast to what she has now.

**John:** Yeah. So when you see the movie, or when you watch the screener with your wife, you will see that the song actually repeats twice. And so there’s a recall, a reprise of the song is very classically sort of a – the character has been on the journey. They’ve crossed their first trial and they sing a new version of the song. It’s really good.

This song actually reprises twice. And the last reprise, I thought, was actually fantastic in that it really plays on this idea of call. So, classically in a heroic story you have the call to adventure. In Moana, this is the water, you know, the sort of magical seashell she finds at the water, sort of coming to her when she was a baby. They do a great job sort of paying off the call at the end and her realization that the call wasn’t from out there, that the call was inside her. And it’s a really, really well done emotional amount, both how it’s animated and how it’s structured as a song.

So, this was I think just a slam dunk of an I Want song.

But we should talk about all those other movies that aren’t musicals that don’t get to have an I Want song, and how you can have the same effect, or at least some of the same thoughts behind an I Want song, even if the characters can’t sing their most innermost thoughts.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, now we get to the tricky part, right? You and I when we’re writing things that aren’t musical aren’t allowed to have our characters sing. We still, however, need to communicate this to the audience. So, there are some, well, I guess in keeping with our theme of revealing tricks and clear cups with the little balls in them, these are tricks. They’re tricks, but they work. For starters, the simplest one is to show someone longing visually. If you want to be, let’s say you want to be a great bicyclist, and I see you and you’re on a bike and you’re struggling. I don’t know anything about you yet. Just that you’re struggling on your bike and you’re going up this hill. And you’re sweating. And it’s hard. And you can barely make it. And, finally, you have to get off and walk the rest of the way. But when you get to the top of the hill, I see that you’re watching the Tour de France, and you’re seeing these great, great bicyclists go by. And in your eyes there’s just this longing. I know what you want now.

I know it as much as I would have from any song. I know why you don’t have it, and I know what you want.

**John:** Yeah. Those visuals where like the character doesn’t have to say something, but you sort of see them doing the action is fantastic. It’s weird, before you brought up the bicycle example, I was thinking of the kid who is leaning across the handlebars of his bike, watching the thing go by. That’s a very classic kind of image that we’ve seen. We saw it in the Star Trek movie, we’ve seen it in Star Wars as well.

You also see kids imitating the thing that they want to be, even though they don’t have the tools. And so they see the great violinist and they’re trying to play violin with two sticks. That’s that sense of this is a vision they see for themselves. And you’re establishing really early on who they think they could be, if only.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So that’s certainly a goal.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes in comedies you’ll see characters, when you meet a character you meet them as the person they want to be. And then you realize that they’re pretending. Very common, frankly somewhat clammy way of meeting a character in a comedy.

Now, there is a helpful thing that we have that typically I Want musicals don’t have. Because the I Want musical is about the internal voice, it’s very rare for someone to sing it with someone else. Or even in the presence of somebody else. It’s almost always, you know, Ariel drifts off to her little cave of stuff and sings by herself. And Tevye is singing alone with his broken down horse. And Moana is singing alone on the beach.

Well, we have other people. And sometimes the best way to find out what our main character wants is for another character to figure it out for us. Or, for them to already know and say it. A very stark example of this is The Matrix. So, we meet Keanu Reeves, Mr. Anderson, and he’s somewhat troubled, but we’re not sure why, nor do we know what he wants. But then he is contacted by this mysterious woman, Morpheus, and then also Trinity. And she literally says, “I know what you want. You want the answer to the question, what is the Matrix.” And he says, “What is the matrix?” And I’m sitting there going, what? What is the matrix? I don’t know what the matrix is. Why do you want to know what the matrix is? Who is that? What’s happening?

These are good mysteries that will be solved, going back to our mystery versus confusion. But here’s one thing that for sure I now know that is not a mystery: that guy wants to know what the matrix is. And I know it, because somebody else said it.

**John:** Yeah. There’s another version of this which is the time traveling version of that character comes back and sort of tells him what it is you want. Basically a character who clearly can identify with this kid’s situation says like, listen, this is what you need to do next. Really it’s conflating sort of the call to adventure with the wish, basically saying the person who shows up to say to get the story started is the person who says like this is what you want, even though you don’t even know you want it yet.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. And we get all this extra yummy juice out of that because we get to see our characters react. Sometimes they react like Mr. Anderson does where he just says, “Yep, you got me. That’s what I want.” Sometimes they deny it. In fact, sometimes that’s the most interesting way to reveal what a character wants is to see them say no. Somebody makes them an offer of some kind. And this is – I guess the Campbellians will call this Refusal of the Call. Refusal of the call is little different. Refusal of the call typically is will you do the following things required to maybe get what you want. And they say, no.

This is, do you want this? No. No. But we see that they do. So, that’s an interesting way, and a very, I think, real way to start to see a little bit of an insight into somebody by playing them opposite.

**John:** The other form of kind of negation to make it clear what your characters actually want is when they are offered something that any normal character should want. And so an example, the pilot for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, she’s offered a partnership at the firm. This is what she should want. She is a lawyer. She should want this. And she doesn’t want it. And she’s wrestling with herself of why don’t I want this. And that’s the moment where we break out into, again, it’s a musical, so she gets to sing her I Wish song. But even if there hadn’t been a musical, her turning this down is a way of framing what she wants. It’s a scenario in which she has a chance to explain what she actually wants. So, you’re creating a place in which it’s okay to speak things you would not otherwise say.

**Craig:** Right. So here we find out what somebody wants by hearing what they don’t want. And that’s closely related to something I call wanting by subtraction, where instead of showing what somebody wants, we show what they lack. So, there is a – if there’s a Broadway version called I Want, there’s a movie version called I Used to Have, or I’m Missing, or I Don’t Have. And it’s a slightly different vibe. But characters will reveal what they miss.

So, let’s go to our clam-o-vision here. We meet a guy and he seems bummed out and he goes home. And he looks at a picture of his dead wife and starts drinking. Lethal Weapon. It was awesome in Lethal Weapon actually. It was amazing back before it clammed up. But we see it’s not so much that they want something specifically. It’s that they – something has been taken from them. And that is a version of a want. It’s a wanting to go back, essentially.

Which is a psychologically involved one. I like that one.

**John:** Absolutely. So, in any of these wants, it’s important to remember that you are establishing a contract with the audience. So, when you make it clear that the character wants this thing, your function is to get them that thing, but to make it very difficult for them to get that thing.

And so a lot of times we get those studio notes saying like, “I don’t know what the character wants.” It’s that they thought they understood what the character wanted, and then they kept looking for the character trying to do that thing or get that thing, and they weren’t doing that thing, and then the studio got confused. And so being really clear about what your character wants is step one. But step two is actually making sure that the movie tracks towards them trying to get that thing that they want.

It doesn’t mean that every scene has to be on point for how are they moving forward to the next thing, but the overall flow of things has to be directed towards that overall want that you’ve established at the start of the story.

**Craig:** It is, I think, a very good philosophical, fundamental approach to say that when you are writing a movie, the most important thing is the character. And it’s hard for a lot of people, because the plot is the candy coating. And we get that medicine very subtly sometimes as we watch movies. And so when we sit down to write them for the first time, we’re writing candy coating. But, if you do that, then what you describe is going to happen. Your character will announce something they want and then shut up about it until the end when they go, “Wait, I want a thing. I have it now.” That’s not – you have to keep the character’s want prime in your mind. That, as you said, doesn’t mean it’s constantly being addressed, but essentially the plot that you’re building around your character is aware of that.

**John:** It’s as if the want is its own character, and you have to keep that character alive throughout the course of the story.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We talk about keeping characters alive in that if a character hasn’t shown up for a long time, you sort of forget they exist. And you have to figure out scenes where that character can be in that scene, or else that character just doesn’t exist in your world anymore. It’s the same thing with the want. You have to find a way to bring it up again, to make it clear that it’s still in play. And so it can be directly addressing it, like, you know, the horrible clammy version is like, “Hey, didn’t you always want to do this?” Or, like, you know, “Oh, you’ll never do this thing.”

If it’s really clearly tied into the plot, where like the kid wants to be the karate champion, well that’s obviously going to be there. Except that you have to make sure that you’re not mistaking plot for this inner motivation, this inner drive. How the character sees themselves.

Because, you know, I try to distinguish between a goal, which is like I want to get this karate championship to the real wish which is like I want to prove that I am worthy of my father’s love or attention. That’s the thing you’re going to want to make sure you’re constantly tracking throughout the story, and finding those scenes which you can check in and sort of show these are the milestones we passed along that journey.

**Craig:** Exactly. See, goal versus want is a really important concept for people. A goal is a thing you can do. A want is something inside of you. It is a desire. One is action and one is psychological. In fact, I think the best wants are the ones that are disconnected from plot, meaning it’s not that they’re not related to the plot. They’re very related. The plot is there to ultimately get you to a place where you finally get what you want. But the nature of the want is not the same as the nature of the plot.

What Danny wants in The Karate Kid, ultimately, is to be worthy of respect. To grow up. To be a young man and stand on his own. His goal is kick a bunch of guys, right? Those are two different things. They’re disconnected. And I think the best – what is Luke Skywalker’s goal? Well, in the end of the movie his goal is shoot thing down hole. What is his want? His want is, well, sounds familiar, grow up. Stand on his own two feet. Be his own man.

So, that disconnection I think is vital to helping bridge the gap between the extraordinary actions that we see onscreen that are probably quite foreign to our own experience, and then our empathy for the people involved.

**John:** Yeah, it’s their wants that make them relatable. Because everybody watching the movie won’t be blowing up the Death Star, but everybody watching the movie has wanted to prove themselves worthy. Let’s take a look at what are some good wants then. So, what are characteristics of good wants for your protagonist to have?

**Craig:** Well, for starters, I think they need to be simple. And I think they need to be honest. There is no need to be tricky or clever about wants. I think plots often do well when they’re tricky and clever and twisty and surprising and intellectual. But wants are basic. It’s best if they aren’t so basic as to feel kind of elementary and easily solvable, but then again, you know, “stand on your feet/grow up” is incredibly basic and can be teased out in so many different ways.

So, for starters, I think, honest and simple.

**John:** Great. I would also say look for wants that can be looked at from multiple perspectives. Because whatever your protagonist wants, you’re going to have other characters in the movie and they’re going to want things, too. And it would be fantastic if the other characters in your movie have wants that can reflect aspects of that want. So, look at who the love interest is. Look at who the villain is. Look at ways in which the other characters in your story can reflect the broken, the damaged, the alternate versions of those wants, so that, you know, not only so that thematically everything can sort of tie into like one bigger question, but also so that you have a good reason to bring up those wants along the way, that you can see emotionally that characters are having similar journeys. And there’s ways to sort of explore how they’re impacting each other.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, when you look at the case of Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson lives alone in a trailer by the sea, mourning his dead wife, suicidal. And his new partner lives in suburbia with his wife of many, many years, and his two children. And so the Murtaughs’ existence is kind of designed to reflect this deeper aching loss/want for Riggs. It makes their relationship interesting.

So, this is an area where you say, okay, if my character wants this, let’s provide him with somebody that has relevance to what they want.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So if I’m this farmer who dreams of flying, you know, in space and being on my own, then pair me with a guy that basically knows everything and is telling me, “Nah, calm down. Slow down, kid.” In this sense, part of what I look for in a want is something that’s psychologically challenging for the hero to achieve. It has to be achievable, but it needs to be difficult to actually get.

If we feel like they could just get what they want fairly easily, we’re going to be wondering why the movie is struggling so hard to make it hard.

**John:** Yeah. There’s three words which are sort of the bane of every one of these kind of situations. “Comes to realize.” You’ll hear this in a pitch where two-thirds of the way through the movie, or near the end of the movie the hero comes to realize that he actually had it all this time. Or basically like, you know, the change that happens in the hero is basically like the character going like, “Oh, yeah, uh-huh. Great. I guess I don’t need that thing. Or I guess having a family is really important.” Something that is so obvious that the character could have just like stopped to think about it for a while early in the story and like, oh, it would have been done.

It has to be a real journey to get there. And they could not have done it at the start. The plot that you’re creating for them to go through has to be able to service this journey that gets them to where they need to end up.

**Craig:** Service is a great word. And I would also use the word instruct. Right, because if you end up in that horrific place of comes to realize, then you think, “Oh, okay, you wanted something. You weren’t sure how to get it.” Then a story happened. You finished the story. And then you went, “Okay, now back to – oh…”

No. The point of the story is to get them to that place. The point of the story is to demonstrate to them through the people that they meet and the situations that they’re in that what they want is achievable like this. Or, as is often the case, what they wanted was wrong. And what they really need to want is this. And you’ll see that in – a lot of Pixar movies work that way. Finding Nemo, for instance.

**John:** Absolutely. When it’s done right, it’s never simplified down to “comes to realize.” It’s that process of recognizing that what they wanted is not what they should have really been going for. That doesn’t just happen – they don’t just pivot on a dime there. It’s the ongoing journey that did it. It wasn’t like they got to one place and it was a sudden plot reveal, a twist, like, “Oh, I don’t really want that thing anymore.” That’s when the audience goes crazy on you, deservedly, because it wasn’t earned.

**Craig:** It wasn’t earned. Exactly. I guess the other huge mistake you can make is to give your character a want that is so specific that it really won’t be relevant to everyone. And you might think, well, it’s hard to be relevant to everyone. Not really. Not really. Most things that people want, most unfulfilled desires, if they are the kinds that we respect, are things we all want. Some of us have them, but we wanted them. We all want love. We all want to belong. We all want to believe in ourselves. We all want to be brave. All of these things – and grow up – we all – they’re universal.

And this is why sometimes the best way to think about what your character wants is to imagine them as a child, because most of what we want we’ve always wanted, from the start. And thinking about it from a childlike point of view keeps you out of the tricky clever zone and gets you into the honest, true, and simple zone.

**John:** I agree. Great. So, if all else fails, I would say add some songs. Because songs will do the work for you.

**Craig:** [laughs] They will.

**John:** Get Lin-Manuel Miranda in there to write you a song. It’s all done. It’s all set.

**Craig:** Throw a little Lin at it.

**John:** Let’s answer some listener questions. So, Patrick writes in. he says, “I’m a 27-year-old retail worker who has written four screenplays over the last nine years. One of the screenplays I’ve written has a specific untapped subject matter. Earlier today, it was announced that a rather prolific comedic actor is attached to star in a movie about that exact subject. This isn’t an email about what I can do from a legal standpoint or professional standpoint. I just want to ask you how I should feel personally. Have either of you spent years working on a project, only to find out that a similar idea was happening elsewhere in the industry? Should I be upset? Is heartbreak reasonable? Should I feel hopeful that a movie about a subject I’m passionate about could possibly get made?”

Craig, how should Patrick feel?

**Craig:** This is the air we breathe, sir. There is no such thing as something that doesn’t have a competing version. Everything that you’re working on, everything – if you are writing the story of your own mom, I guarantee you someone else out there is writing a your mom movie. It’s just the way it goes.

So, of course, you should feel upset. Why wouldn’t you? And, yes, heartbreak is a reasonable feeling. Any feeling is reasonable, meaning no feelings are reasonable. That’s why they’re called feelings. It’s just a feeling. So you have the feeling. Okay. But, yes, you should be hopeful, not because someone is making a movie about a subject you’re passionate about. That doesn’t necessarily validate you as a writer, you know, or anything really. I mean, lots of people look at things and go, “We’re all interested in that.”

You should be hopeful because more than one movie comes out about things. I don’t know of any one thing that has gotten one movie and then everyone else said, “Nope.” In fact, quite the opposite. Usually when movies are successful, people start hunting around for versions of it.

So, I would not be depressed about this, Patrick. And I also would say, as we’ve said many times on the show, that your screenplay as a 27-year-old guy, your screenplay is most valuable to you as an advertisement of your ability. It is less valuable as a specific piece of material to be exploited into a film. And that, no one can take away.

**John:** The other thing I would focus on is that remember that an idea is just an idea. And it’s the unique expression of an idea that gives something its value. And so, yes, this comedic actor is making a movie about whatever, but your script about that same topic may be fantastic, because it’s going to have your unique voice.

And so there are many movies about dancing and dancing competitions, but they’re each unique and they’re each specific to their own story. And that’s what’s going to be special about your movie. So, I would certainly not give up hope. Your script probably has a little bit more value today than it did yesterday, because it’s out there in the world. Like, someone is making a movie about this kind of topic, so people might read it because it seems like a topic for a movie. So, I would not despair too much.

It’s okay to feel a little hit. And I was hit personally. I’ve definitely been through situations where like clearly, well, if that movie is going to be made, then my movie is not getting made. And I had all this psychological energy pent up in my one movie that’s no longer going to exist. There’s a reason for that grief. That’s fine. It’s acceptable.

But I think you’re jumping the gun here on assuming that this other movie is going to preclude your movie from getting made.

**Craig:** Or even get made. That’s the other thing. This other movie, you’re saying that a prolific comedic actor is attached to star in a movie. Uh…

**John:** What percentage of attachments do you think result in a movie? Maybe 10 percent?

**Craig:** Maybe. I mean, attached doesn’t mean a damn thing, just so you know.

**John:** So, just this last week there’s an actor who I genuinely like. He’s a really good actor, he’s just never become a big star. But on Deadline it was announced, oh, he’s attached to this movie. I’m like, really? That’s a Deadline-worthy story? Because he’s in four movies last year that no one ever heard of.

And so it’s so weird when an actor being attached is actually news. And in some cases like writers get attached to things. I’m like, really? I know for a fact that they’re never going to write that, but it comes out as being news.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Patrick happened to notice this one thing happened and it caught his eye, but if he hadn’t noticed that story would he have felt any different about his script? No.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just so you know, for those of you who don’t know, the word “attached” in our business means that an actor said, “I’m interested in playing that part. So you agree and I agree that if this movie is going ahead, I’m playing the part.” Now, what happens is they take that actor’s attachment and use it as leverage to try and get financing or a green light from a studio. And they might. And maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But even if they do, then they have to make a deal with the actor. And the actor has to be available. That is – half the time that’s what ends up unattaching that attachment. And then the whole thing falls apart.

So, don’t fret, Patrick. Prevail.

Jonathan from Los Angeles writes, “You have touched on getting staffed as a sitcom writer. It seems like studying performing at one of the local improv theaters, UCB, IO, Second City, is the most common method right now. On the other hand, you always hear about writers who started as writers’ assistants. And as you mentioned, everyone blazes their own path up the mountain, so there are countless other ways to get read and staffed. Which do you think is most fruitful?”

**John:** Yeah, so I’ve actually heard of this staffing out of improv groups happening a lot more now. I think it’s probably because of the kinds of shows that are getting made. It’s also because some of the shows are being created by folks who grew up through that business.

You know, I think any situation in which you can throw yourself in, where you’re writing and performing things with clever people, you’re more likely to get noticed, and that’s a great thing. I wouldn’t say that it’s the right path for somebody who is looking to do non-comedic stuff, for example.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree. And it’s also not the right path for somebody who is a very funny writer, but not a particularly good performer. That said, if you can perform, I would absolutely go the improv route because you are essentially joining an alumni network.

Very famously the Simpsons drew from Harvard, from the Harvard Lampoon. This was very frustrating to me when I moved out here. I’m like, does Princeton count? No. I would see some of these people writing for the Simpsons, and I’m like, well, they’re not funny. I guess they went to Harvard. That’s worth something. Obviously most of the people writing for the Simpsons are brilliant.

But this is a similar situation where you have these feeder organizations where their alumni have gone onto create their shows, star in their own shows, develop their own shows, and they naturally will start, even if they don’t come and look back at specific shows themselves, they talk to the higher ups at those places. They employ the higher ups at those places to be on their shows, even if it’s for guest spots or something like that.

So, they’re going to hear. And I think that makes total sense. If you can be a writer-performer, yes. I would recommend it.

**John:** Here’s my other theory, is I think it may not be that they’re looking at this pool because it’s just convenient. I think they may be looking at this pool because this pool was actually genuinely good and talented and has actually proven that they can work really hard. So, think about being in one of these groups. If you’re starting out, you’re having to write and perform a bunch of stuff all the time, you are having to really make something new every week or every couple of weeks and really show your craft. It’s really clear sort of what you can do.

Plus, a lot of these groups have kind of hierarchies. You move from one company up to the next company, to the next company. You’ve put in the time, you’ve done the work. So if you are a writer who has graduated up through that system, they’re looking at you and saying like, okay, well this person has done a certain amount of stuff and they’re going to have a good collection of samples to look at. I think they’re just going to – they’re probably going to be pretty good writers.

So I think there’s a reason why they’re looking at this group, not just because they are from this background, but because being in this background, they’ve actually done a lot more work.

**Craig:** Yeah, precisely. There’s also a certain comic philosophy that emerges from these individual organizations. The Groundlings very much jibes with the comic philosophy of Saturday Night Live and not surprisingly they’ve fed a lot of their talent to Saturday Night Live. UCB jibes more with the kind of Amy Poehler world of comedy. So, you learn a philosophy as well, kind of a school of comedy, and that also makes you more suitable for those employers.

But, you know, let’s keep it all in perspective. There are not a lot of employers, there are not a lot of jobs. You have to be really, really good. Ultimately what we’re talking about is something that gets you successful six months earlier, maybe. But if you’re really, really good, you’re really, really good.

**John:** I agree. Last question is about people who are really, really good. Eric writes, “I wanted to ask your thoughts on the fact that your peers in the industry, who you both have mentioned with admiration on your podcast, have offered advice directly in opposition to your advice. While you two have approached screenwriting books and seminars with great skepticism, mega-writer Billy Ray has said, ‘I don’t think I’d be a writer if I hadn’t taken the Robert McKee class. My debt to him is huge.’ In a long form interview with Billy, he also repeatedly extolled McKee’s book’s story and its lessons.

“And while Craig has repeatedly addressed listener questions of what topics to write about with some form of ‘write what’s in your heart,’ Terry Rossio says in his Wordplay blog that it’s a waste of time to write scripts that don’t have ‘strange attractors in the premise if you want to get executives interested in you quickly and make a sale.’ Similar to Save the Cats’ advice on aiming for high concept.

“Since these two writers are on equal footing with you two as screenwriters, I just wondered what you thought of their advice to aspiring screenwriters that runs counter to yours. Perhaps they can appear on your podcast in the future to discuss and debate with you. I think that would be super useful.”

**Craig:** Well, let me start with Billy. So Billy says he, “I don’t think I’d be a writer if I hadn’t taken the Robert McKee class.” That is absolute bullshit. Billy is my friend. I know him well. First of all, Billy’s father was a legendary agent in the movie business, so it wasn’t like Billy was growing up in Omaha, pushing grocery store carts around, dreaming of the Hollywood nights.

Listen, all of these books – it’s not like you and I didn’t read them. I mean, I didn’t read Robert McKee. But I read Campbell and Vogler and Syd Field. You know, when you’re starting out there’s a correlation, but it’s not causation. Of course you’re going to start to read some books, because you want to be a screenwriter, and people are saying read screenwriting books. And you go, okay, I’ll read some screenwriting books.

By the way, there’s probably now a correlation of people starting to be screenwriters who listen to our podcast. That’s not causation. Robert McKee did not cause Billy Ray to be the writer that he is. That’s outrageous. If that were true, then Robert McKee would be writing Billy Ray movies right now. But he’s not. Billy Ray is because Billy is really good.

In fact, I’m seeing Billy Ray in a week. I’m going to say to his face that’s a bunch of bullshit. There is absolutely no – no way.

**John:** So, on Episode 255 of Scriptnotes, Billy Ray was the guest. Craig wasn’t there. And we talked about this. And so Billy Ray started quite young in the industry and he worked his butt off. And we all read books that were incredibly important to us, and were helpful in getting us thinking about how we were going to do this job of screenwriting. So, I don’t fault him for saying that Robert McKee was a huge influence to him, but like he would be a screenwriter regardless of Robert McKee.

**Craig:** Of course. Now, the Terry Rossio advice is slightly different. Because Terry’s column was written quite a few years ago. I suspect, just knowing, because I’ve known those guys, Ted and Terry, for a long time. I’m fairly certain that that article, I don’t know if there’s a date on it, the strange attractor thing, but I think it was written in the ‘90s. In fact, it was, 1997.

My friend, that’s 20-year-old advice. Right? Now, it seems, well, yeah, but is it still? No. It’s not relevant anymore. And we know this, because we see writers selling screenplays all the time that are not what we call high concept, big hooky things. That article was written in the era of the big spec sale. And, of course, Terry and Ted wrote a certain kind of movie as well and they had a lot of success with that. And at times I think it’s a tempting thing to want to generalize your success to everybody else and say, “Here’s what I did to be successful. You should do it, too.” Doesn’t quite work that way.

I don’t think the 1997 article here would explain something like the success that Kelly Marcel had with Saving Mr. Banks, which is not a strange attractor/high concept/big gimmick plot twist. Unless, look, you can also play the game of shoving everything into that box in which case, yeah, they all are. And then what you quickly get down to is don’t write a bad script. Write a good one. But I think it’s important to keep in mind that that article is 20 years old.

**John:** Yeah, so Terry started doing his Wordplay blog even before I was doing johnaugust.com. And he and I were both sort of people who were offering advice to aspiring screenwriters online. And I totally admire what he’s done and I think Terry has a certain philosophy, and he’s sort of staked out a lot of ground that was really helpful and I love it when he talks at Austin and other places. So, his opinion is not wrong, I just don’t share his opinion that a person should aim for high concept because that’s where the sales are. I don’t think aiming for a high concept sale is the best first goal for a screenwriter right now.

I think the best first goal for a screenwriter is to write something that’s so good that people want to hire you to do things. And the thing that is so good that people want to hire you to do things is going to be something that is uniquely yours, that expresses your unique voice.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, in 1997 the business was highly oriented around the veracious consumption of original stuff to put onscreen, not necessarily creative original, but meaning new titles and new IP. And because of video and all the rest, they were releasing an enormous amount of movies. And you had to kind of stand out from the crowd by being something that people wanted to produce. Like, great, this is a great idea. That’s how I got started. You know, my writing partner and I came up with a big hooky/strange attractor concept. We had an actor and off we went. And made the movie.

But 20 years later, the studios are equally obsessed, but in the opposite direction, with generating movies based on not-fresh IP, existing IP. And so what they’re looking for are writers that they can assign to the material they want made. And that means – and Peter Dodd said as much. They’re not necessarily looking at specs as make this, they’re looking at specs as writing samples for their things. For their big things. So, I think that Terry was probably dead spot on when he wrote that, but I would be surprised if he didn’t at least acknowledge that now 20 years gone by the situation is a bit different.

**John:** I agree. So let’s do our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article in The Atlantic where John McWhorter, he’s the linguist we talked about on a previous episode, he traces the evolution of the word Like. And so the word Like is really fascinating. So, it starts from an old word that was related to the word body. It then got its sense of meaning similar. I didn’t know this, but you may have known this Craig, that the LY, the adverbial LY is actually Like. It’s just a shortened form of like.

**Craig:** I did not know that. But that makes so much sense.

**John:** Yeah, so like saintly, is saint-like. All those words, it’s just an adverbial form of the adjective, and that’s how it got there. Or, noun, so, that LY is a just a Like.

So, the way that we sort of use like now and we sort of hate the way use like now sometimes is really fascinating. So, there’s the way we use it to quote speech, and so she was like, and I was like, and so it’s quoting speech but not directly quoting speech. It’s useful for that. And I kind of can’t fault it for how we use it for that.

But McWhorter singles out two other ways we do it. There’s the way we use it to hesitate, we’re sort of using as a pause word. There’s also a way where we’re using it to mean like I know this doesn’t sound true, but it really is true. I opened the box and there were like 20 scorpions inside. And so that like is meant to sort of emphasize that I’m not saying as if there were 20 scorpions, there really were scorpions inside. I know it seems unbelievable, but that like is there to make clear that it really did happen.

So, anyway, it’s a fascinating article. McWhorter is always great at identifying sort of new trends and old words. So, I point you to this article.

**Craig:** Well, that’s fascinating. I did not know the LY thing. I like things like that. I like trotting things like that out at parties, mostly to bore people, but also because somebody somewhere is going to go, you know, I’ve heard this so many times. Someone will say, “You say stuff like you know it, but you’re just making it up.” Because it does sound like something you could just make up and say, but I believe it. I believe it.

Well, my One Cool Thing is fairly mundane. Let me ask you a question, John. Do you and Mike wake up at the same time each day or not?

**John:** We wake up at the same time almost every day, but that’s partly because our daughter has to go to school. So it’s when the alarm happens.

**Craig:** Got it. So, I take the late shift in the house and Melissa takes the early shift. So, she does the drive to school, I do the “Oh, you’re vomiting at midnight, or you have a fever, whatever.” And she goes to bed before our son does, so I also handle him at night.

So, we have two different alarms. And so it was really frustrating for a long time because what I would do is I would just leave a note like set the alarm for 8:30, you know, because she’s going to get up at 6:30. But I found this clock and it’s Brookstone. You know, Brookstone, they got a bad rep, you know, because it’s a lot of plastic, junky baloney gimmicky stuff in a mall. And massage chairs and baloney. Bu this clock, it’s the only one I’ve found that does this. So, I don’t know, maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough. But it’s a Bluetooth alarm clock with two alarm settings and you can control it with an app, as long as you’re within Bluetooth range.

So, when I get into bed, I open up my iPad, the screen on dim, and she’s got alarm one set to 6:30, and I go to alarm two and make it whatever I want. And it does it. And it’s great. You’d think other people would have that. No, anyway.

**John:** Craig, right now it’s my function to be the voice of everyone listening in their cars right now, Craig, alarm clocks have done that for forever. Like, literally our 20-year-old alarm clock–

**Craig:** No, no, no, I know they have two alarms. I’m saying, it’s dark. I walk into the room. She’s asleep, right, because I’m coming in at midnight. The room is dark. The alarm is by her bed. I got to turn a light on by the clock, hit a thing. Because I change my time all the time. I change my wake up time all the time.

**John:** We have little glowing buttons. We just push the little buttons.

**Craig:** No, I don’t want to get near her face and start doing that. I want to be able to control it with my phone.

**John:** Oh, so I see. This is the crucial geography I was not understanding in the scene you were describing. So, in your scene geography, the clock is by your wife, and therefore you don’t want to be anywhere near your wife because she’s asleep and she’s like a bomb that could go off.

**Craig:** She’s like a bomb that can go off. Exactly.

**John:** So therefore you can use this device, it’s a remote control for the bomb by your wife.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so you could change the timer so it counts down differently, so that she will blow up earlier, and you could blow up at a later time.

**Craig:** I think you finally understand. First of all, you understand the danger I’m in.

**John:** Oh, I know your wife. I know you don’t want to cross her.

**Craig:** I’m not going to wake her up. I don’t want to wake her up. And this way it’s great. And also the actual process of changing an alarm on most alarm clocks is horrendous. You’re tapping buttons and you’ve got to figure out who to enter this one, this one. The app is lovely. You just go and you scroll like any other time alarm app and hit save. And so I love it personally. And it’s cheap. It’s like $60.

**John:** Craig, my question for you is you’ve already established that the iPad is in the room, so why don’t you just set the alarm on the iPad and have the iPad wake you up?

**Craig:** Okay. Great point. I will tell you why. Because sometimes my iPad isn’t plugged in and the battery is low and I’m a little paranoid that it’s going to run out, but also the iPad just does not generate a loud enough alarm for me because I have ear plugs in. And why do I have ear plugs in?

**John:** Because your wife wakes up early.

**Craig:** Well, and, you know, there’s–

**John:** She snores.

**Craig:** Meh. I don’t know what you’re talking about and I didn’t say anything.

**John:** [laughs] All right. I’m a big believer in ear plugs as well. I think ear plugs are a good invention. I remember the first time I used them on planes saying like, oh, this is so weird and uncomfortable, and then – they’re great. So, I do believe in ear plugs. I believe in eye shades. I believe in anything that helps you sleep. So, I’m fine with it.

**Craig:** Boom.

**John:** Boom. That’s our show for this week. Our show is produced by Godwin Jabangwe. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today. For shorter questions on Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes podcast. But don’t leave any fake news here, because we don’t want any fake news on our Facebook.

You can find us on iTunes at Scriptnotes. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there, leave us a comment because that helps people find the show.

You’ll find show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. We try to get them up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. You can also find a USB drive in the show notes here for all the first 250 episodes of the show.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah. That’s a lot of episodes of the show.

**Craig:** So many episodes.

**John:** So we have to decide if we’re going to make the 300-episode USB drives. And if we’re going to make them that have the new USBCs. We just don’t know what we’re going to do.

**Craig:** Well, I know what we won’t do. We won’t funnel any of that sweet, sweet profit to me.

**John:** Uh-uh. Not a bit of it. It all stays in Godwin’s little coffers.

**Craig:** Oh, Godwin’s coffers. Godwin’s coffers sounds like some sort of Shakespearean outcry. Godwin’s coffers!

**John:** I think it’s pretty fantastic. Craig, thank you for a fun episode. I hope it was everything you wanted.

**Craig:** D’oh.

**John:** See you next week.

**Craig:** See you next time.

Links:

* Download [Weekend Read](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/)
* Auli’i Cravalho – How Far I’ll Go from [Moana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UpGDU9kFho)
* Terry Rossio’s [Wordplay](http://wordplayer.com/)
* [The Evolution of ‘Like’](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/)
* [Brookstone App-Controlled Bluetooth Alarm Clock](https://www.amazon.com/TimeSmart-App-Controlled-Bluetooth-Alarm-Clock/dp/B014I7N5ES/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1481561313&sr=8-2&keywords=brookstone+alarm+clock&refinements=p_89%3ABrookstone)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Get your 250 episode USB](http://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/250-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_279.mp3).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 278 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast, we are looking at phrases that have been banned from comedy writing rooms.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** And more generally why making a list of what you will never do could help you figure out what you actually should do. We’ll also be answering listener questions about character names, life rights, and sticking to a genre.

But first up, some follow up. Craig, did you get your Scriptnotes t-shirts?

**Craig:** I did. Apparently I made a mistake.

**John:** Uh-oh.

**Craig:** I ordered my – so Melissa wears medium.

**John:** Does she wear a woman’s medium?

**Craig:** There, you see, you’re already a better husband.

**John:** [laughs] I’m already a better husband.

**Craig:** She does not like the women’s cut. She likes the man’s cut. So, she put on the women’s – she’s like, oh my god, this is so small. So I’m like, “Put it on.” She put it on. It was so hot. John, it was hot. And she’s like, “I’m never—“

**John:** So it wasn’t a mistake. It was a win.

**Craig:** For me it was. But she’s like, “I’m never leaving the house with this.” I’m like, come one. “No.” So, yeah, those are useless to me. I don’t know if there’s any – there’s no more, right? I can’t get the medium regular?

**John:** So there is a possibility of more. So, the Scriptnotes t-shirts were so successful that Cotton Bureau says that if they get enough requests for t-shirts, they may start printing another batch. So, if you are interested in more Scriptnotes t-shirts, you can go to the same page where you order them. There’s a place where you can put your email address. If they print another batch, they will email you to see if you actually want one. So, Craig wants one for his wife.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** If other listeners out there want them, they should put in their email addresses on that little form and tell Cotton Bureau that they want them. So there will be a link in the show notes for that.

But more crucially, if you got your Scriptnotes t-shirt and want to show us in your Scriptnotes t-shirt, please tweet us a photo, or send it to us on Instagram. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. We would love to see you wearing your Scriptnotes t-shirts.

**Craig:** Yeah. Especially those, and I’m not going to even say it. [laughs]

**John:** Just stop.

**Craig:** Just stop. Why should I care? Especially the male XXL. That’s what I meant to say. I like men in burly shirts. That’s all I like.

**John:** Absolutely. Because we create large sizes because we have a diverse range of body types who listen to our podcast.

**Craig:** Yeah. But I assume that all the guys that listen to our podcast, if they’re wearing XXL it’s because they work out. They have just massive pecs.

**John:** Oh yeah. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Huge, huge shoulders.

**John:** Because normal t-shirts, like their arms wouldn’t even fit through the holes.

**Craig:** No way.

**John:** No way.

**Craig:** No way.

**John:** So, long time listeners will know that Craig often mocks me for stealing all his money for all the millions of dollars we make–

**Craig:** It’s not mockery. It’s accurate.

**John:** It’s not really mockery. It’s basically – what is the proper verb for what you are doing about the money we make?

**Craig:** Exposing you. I’m exposing you.

**John:** Exposing, yeah. Really, accusing, because exposing would mean that you actually had some facts.

**Craig:** I do. I have facts. You’re selling t-shirts. What other facts do I need?

**John:** So, I thought we’d have a little transparency on the podcast right now and we’ll talk about how much money we made off the t-shirts.

**Craig:** We…

**John:** Well, the podcast made. Because there’s you, and there’s me, and there’s also the guys who actually do the hard work of putting the show up on the Internet.

**Craig:** That’s true.

**John:** That’s true. So this was the profits that occurred. We did two t-shirts. The first one was the midnight blue t-shirt. We sold 511 of them.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** We made $6 per shirt, and so that totaled $3,066.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So that’s great. That’s money in the bank. They literally PayPal’d that to us.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** The other t-shirt, the gold standard, we sold 282 t-shirts. That was $1,692. So, that money also got PayPal’d to us. So altogether off t-shirts, because of you guys being awesome, we made $4,758.

**Craig:** I’m already spending my $2,380-something dollars.

**John:** That’s good. You absolutely should. Except that we also have to pay for the people we have to pay for. So–

**Craig:** Oh…

**John:** Yeah, see? So, we have to pay for our editor, Matthew Chilelli. We have to pay for John Morgan, who does the transcripts. We have to pay for hosting, which isn’t a huge expense, but it’s some expense now. And we have to pay for Godwin Jabangwe, the producer of Scriptnotes, who puts all the stuff online and answers email questions, and does all that–

**Craig:** Wait, we’re paying Godwin. I thought he was just going to be a permanent intern.

**John:** Yeah, a permanent unpaid intern. That’s the way Hollywood works. Wouldn’t that be great?

**Craig:** It would be amazing.

**John:** It would be amazing. So the t-shirts are great. And so we mostly make the t-shirts because we love seeing people in the t-shirts. We make some money off that. Between that and the people who are the premium subscribers, the people who are paying $1.99 a month, we get $1 of that. Libsyn who hosts our podcast gets the other dollar of that. But we have 2,569 premium subscribers, and so those are really paying for the bulk of Matthew and Godwin and John Morgan, who does our transcripts. So, thank you everybody who is a premium subscriber. If you are interested in becoming one of those, it’s at Scriptnotes.net, and you get all the back episodes, plus the bonus episodes, the dirty episodes, all the special episodes we did along the way.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you know what, here’s the thing. If you’re listening to this and you’re not a premium subscriber for $2 a month, all right, just rest assured, and I don’t know how this couldn’t be clear to you now, I don’t get any of it. Okay? That’s the important thing. You’re not giving me money. I have not seen a dime. John does receive this money and then immediately disperses it to the people that help make this program. And we have no advertising. None. Give us an example of one other podcast that is at our level of popularity that doesn’t have you, or me, or people like us breaking into the middle of the content to talk about how delicious an iced tea is, or how wonderful Mail Chimp is?

We don’t do that. Right? So, just give us two bucks. Oh my god. I want my $2. I want my $2. Just do it. It’s $24 a year. What? I mean, compare that to – what does film school cost? Like $28 a year? We’re cheaper, right? What does it cost? I don’t even know.

**John:** Yeah, probably. On a minute per minute basis, I think we’re significantly cheaper than film school.

**Craig:** We’re significantly cheaper than film school. Come on, people. Come on. Come on. I promise you, this money will never end up in my pocket. Ever.

**John:** [laughs] Not a chance.

Last week’s episode we talked about Scorpion, which we were both – you were bewildered it was a TV show, and I had discovered it was a TV show because I saw it on a plane. Not only is Scorpion a TV show on CBS, there is a Twitter feed for the Scorpion writers’ room. And so we have listeners to our podcast who were surprised to hear we didn’t know about their show. So, this is a shout-out to Scorpion writers’ room. We’re really proud of you guys.

**Craig:** They were amazing, by the way. Because it was like, “We are honored, humbled and honored, to have been mentioned on Scriptnotes.” It was the most side-eye – I mean, it was actually the perfect tweet. Like, I read that and I was like, “Oh dear.” Look, it’s honestly not my fault. There are a lot of shows that I don’t know exist. I mean, theoretically, if somebody says Cheers to me, I might go, “Was that a show?” I’m the worst with that. But you have no excuse. You watch everything. So, shame on you. Shame on you, John.

**John:** I watch very few procedurals. Actually, I think I watch no procedurals. So that’s my excuse.

**Craig:** Is Scorpion a procedural?

**John:** It’s a procedural. It’s an investigative procedural. They are cyber sleuths. I’m going to get this so wrong and Scorpion writers’ room is going to be so upset with me.

**Craig:** I can’t wait.

**John:** My perception is, having watched an episode without the headphones in on a plane–

**Craig:** To which they totally roasted you on.

**John:** Which is great. My perception is that it is a team of specialists who do some computer stuff, does other technology stuff, some sort of game theory stuff, who get called in for very extreme situations where lives are on the line. That is my perception of what Scorpion is. And I get that because the actual title treatment for Scorpion is sort of like closed/slash Scorpion, like as if it’s the end comment on something.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** So it feels cyber-ish.

**Craig:** Very cyber-ish. Well, happily for the writers of Scorpion, A, apparently their show has massive ratings. B, your awareness of it, and certainly my awareness of it, completely irrelevant to the quality and success of a television show. We have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. So, thank you for – I mean, I’m sure that the Scorpion writers don’t listen to the show, but somebody was like, “Uh, you guys should listen to this.” Hey, well, you’re listening now I bet. I’m sorry. I mean, I didn’t know.

**John:** If Scriptnotes were the key to success of a television show, then Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would be the biggest show on television.

**Craig:** Oh, for sure. For sure. What do we know?

**John:** People watch what they want to watch. I want you to talk about how you were wrong about yams on last week’s episode.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, according to this guy I’m wrong about yams. I don’t know, is he writing from the Yam Board?

**John:** I was pretty sure last week you were wrong, but I didn’t want to call it out on the air, because we were going long as it was.

**Craig:** Oh, sure.

**John:** So, Craig, why don’t you tell us what Christopher wrote in to say.

**Craig:** Okay, well, Christopher writes, “Craig’s potato primer,” by the way, that’s how you pronounce that word, did you know that?

**John:** I say primer, as if you’re priming a car.

**Craig:** It’s primer. By the way, somebody next week will write in about how I’m wrong about that. “Craig’s potato primer was consistent with how most grocery stores label their products and therefore wrong. It’s extremely unlikely that most Americans will ever encounter a true yam, originating in Africa, unless they actively seek one out generally at a specialty store. True yams have a very thick, almost bark-like skin, and very firm white purple flesh. Both the orange and yellow tubers commonly encountered are varieties of sweet potato, originating in the Americas, although in America the term yam does colloquially refer to orange sweet potatoes. If you want to be pedantic, like me, you can call orange sweet potatoes ‘soft sweet potatoes,’ and yellow, ‘firm.’”

Christopher, I can’t make fun of you for this. I want to. But, this is the sort of thing I’m constantly saying to other people, so I can’t make—

So, here’s the situation. The mistake I made was I thought that the orange sweet potato was a yam and what we’d call the white or yellow sweet potato was the sweet potato. But apparently they’re both sweet potatoes and nobody has yams, ever.

**John:** Yup. No one has yams. So, I knew that yams were from Africa. I would say that I can understand the sense of just call them yams because everybody calls them yams, the way that words drift in meaning because culturally words drift in meaning. But I will say that the whole topic came up because I’ve always despised sweet potatoes, and for some reason now twice there’s two things I love potatoes now. I love sweet potato fries, and I loved the sweet potatoes I had at Thanksgiving this last time. So, I don’t think I have changed. I think the sweet potato has changed for the better. Somehow, whatever work the chefs of the world have done to the sweet potato to make it a delicious food, I salute you.

**Craig:** Well, thank you, Christopher, for writing in from the Yam Institute. Surely he has nothing else that he could add to our discussion – oh wait, he does. [laughs]

**John:** He does. So in that same email he went on to talk about CPR. So, let’s talk about CPR, because Christopher has a lot of information.

**Craig:** So, Christopher writes, again, “Anyway, my real motive, and consistent with my prior motive, was to write about clarifying about CPR. When Craig talks about success rate of CPR, I hope we can be clear that he’s addressing the overall survival rate of patients who receive CPR among other treatments. The purpose of CPR is not to get a person back up and walking after their heart stops. It’s to serve as a life support system until professional medical help can arrive. You are literally acting as the victim’s heart and lungs, pushing oxygen to their brain and other tissues to keep the body alive. Brain damage is not a consequence of CPR. It’s a consequence of oxygen deprivation to the brain, which proper CPR prevents. So, success is just doing proper CPR until a medical professional can take over.

“That said, it’s totally accurate that the victim will almost never wake up during CPR as they do in TV and movies. Even if you get their heart beating, there’s a good chance they’ll stay unconscious. It’s also important to note that modern CPR should only be administered until someone can retrieve an AED. And AEDs have been show to – that’s defibrillators – have been shown to increase survival rates as high as 40 to 70%.”

**John:** We should stop here to clarify that the AEDs, I think he’s also referring to a lot of places, a lot of restaurants now will have that sort of red box behind the counter which they can pull out to do stuff. That’s one of the kinds of AEDs he’s referring to.

**Craig:** Yes. “The American Heart Association found that when AED is applied within one minute, survival approaches 90%. This is why CPR trainers teach you that step one is to make sure someone calls 911. Step two is to send a bystander to go find an AED and bring it back.”

Yes. When I was talking about the overall success rate, I was saying do the people survive. That’s what that means. And generally speaking they don’t. That’s just the deal.

**John:** Yeah. So I think what Chris was trying to clarify was that all the different times where CPR is used, some of those situations are not the bystander who fell on the side of the road. And so my two friends who are both trainers, their experience of having saved a person who collapsed and then they gave them CPR, that actually can happen. But if you want to take all the different instances where CPR was administered, including in a hospital setting, the success rate is going to go down because some of those people were never going to make it.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. I mean, some of the CPR statistics are impacted by the fact that they’re dead. They’re just dead-dead. And you’re doing CPR on a dead body. Obviously that’s factored in. I mean, that’s really part of the discussion. The point is that when you’re doing CPR, there’s a chance that nothing is going to change what’s going to happen. It’s just – that’s the myth. I hope no one was thinking I was saying, “CPR is stupid. Don’t study it and don’t do it.” I’m just saying that the success rate in movies and television is absurd.

**John:** Yes. I agree.

**Craig:** What else does Christopher have to complain about?

**John:** [laughs] I think we’re done with Christopher. But we had a lot of people write in this last episode because we were talking about the difference between fantasy and reality and what we see on screen versus what happens in reality. And Tim wrote in to say, “An example of how doing the research can improve a scene was shown to me recently when I was writing a moment where a wife has to identify her dead husband in the morgue. The body, however, has been switched,” in his story. “Having watched the moment in countless Hollywood films and TV shows, the coroner lifts the sheet, the grieving wife nods, et cetera. I thought it would actually be better off to visit a morgue. Here in Britain, at least, a family member is never allowed into the morgue. You briefly glimpse the body through a small window. And there are other touches as well. [Unintelligible] curtains in a crematorium whisked back. An ominous box of tissues on the table. All of which made her misidentifying her husband much more plausible.”

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know if that’s consistently true here in the United States, but it was certainly true in the morgue where I was an intern at the age of 16. Because, you know, I was going to be a doctor. So, I spent a summer assisting the Mammoth County Medical Examiner doing autopsies, which is how every 16-year-old boy should spend a summer.

But there was one time, and I had to wheel the body. So, there’s a big freezer room, and you wheel the body up to that little window. And they come to the little window. You definitely don’t want to walk through a morgue, because you’re going to see dozens of dead bodies stacked up in what looks like basically a large supermarket freezer. And then also other bodies in various state of disassembly on tables. So, you wheel them up to the window and then you pull the sheet back. That actually was the worst thing that happened to me that summer.

It wasn’t doing the autopsies, and I saw some gross stuff. It was watching a grown man cry looking at his brother.

**John:** Oof.

**Craig:** Yeah. Through the little stupid window. It’s exactly right. And you can – by the way, yes, I remember little curtains. I don’t know if they were pink, but I remember little curtains. And I remember a box of tissues. And I remember also thinking that medical pathologists are not who you want doing your interior design. It’s just really bad. The curtains already were like, yeah, abandon all hope.

**John:** Yeah. Sorry. You’re already down in a morgue, so you’re probably not having a lot of hope.

**Craig:** They’re so – the people who work in a morgue are the least sentimental people in the world. Surprise. Whatever sentiment they had was beaten out of them after, I don’t know, their 1,000th dead body. So, now it’s just like, okay, here you go. And the tears come. Here’s your tissue. You walk that way. I close the curtain. Back to work.

**John:** Yup. All right, our next listener writes in because he’s on the other side of this. He’s talking about how screenwriters have made his job difficult. Do you want to try this, or should I try this?

**Craig:** I might as well. I’m on a role. So Kent writes, “Hollywood script writers have made my job very difficult. I develop robots for the US military. Unfortunately, Terminator and 100 other movies have made the specter of killing robots a powerful meme, obscuring the real issues. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching Terminator, but I know it’s fiction. The level of artificial intelligence in those robots is complete fantasy, something that’s not just decades away, but almost certainly centuries away.” I don’t know, Kent.

“The boring truth is that people in my field have struggled for years to get a robot to recognize the difference between a bush and a rock with only limited success. The widespread fear that we are secretly building Terminator-like autonomous killing machines is laughable. At least this idea should be laughable, except that screenwriters have successfully convinced the public that killer robots are indeed possible. Robot insurance. There is now a complete disconnect between what is really going on and what the general public knows about military robots. This disconnect makes it nearly impossible to have a meaningful conversation about the role of unmanned systems in combat.

“There are indeed serious issues that need to be faced with how robotic systems are used by the military. Unfortunately, these real issues bear little resemblance to the sensationalized fears that originated in a screenwriter’s keyboard.” Nothing originates in the keyboard, by the way, Kent.

Anyway, “Any policy level discussion about unmanned combat systems are warped by these misperceptions which make it very difficult to get to the real issues.”

John, does Kent have a point do you think? Or is it foofaraw?

**John:** I think Kent has a very, very good point. Is that by putting this one idea in our heads, it’s obscuring all of the other possible realities, and the true real world realities, because we’re only focused on this fiction.

**Craig:** Yeah. I – kind of. I’m going to challenge Kent a little bit here. I think that the American people, and frankly people everywhere all over the world, don’t really need our help to suspect the worst of government military organizations. That’s sort of baked into their minds. If Disney started making robots, nobody would think ill of it. And, in fact, Disney has. Right? They have their little animatronics and everybody thinks they’re adorable. And no one is suspecting that they’re actually, you know, going to go on a rampage. The problem is military. The problem is military. The problem is people assume that if you’re building something in the military, it’s to hurt other people. Now, that is a misconception. But that’s not a Hollywood misconception. That’s just a human misconception.

Military applications are enormous and there’s a sector of them that are obviously about inflicting injury and quite a few of them are not. They’re about gathering intelligence or helping save lives. So, I’ll take a little bit of blame, but I really don’t think anyone is walking around thinking, “Oh yeah, the government is going to be releasing a wave of Terminators on us.” I’ve never heard anybody think that.

Have you seen the videos, John, of the robot competitions where the whole point is just to get a robot to kick a soccer ball into a net?

**John:** Yeah. I love those. I also love robots trying to open a door and like failing miserably.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. And inevitably while you’re watching and laughing you think, oh, this won’t be so funny 20 years from now when the robot is my primary care physician. But, and you know, Kent sees it as a century away. Let’s split the difference. It’s not decades away. I don’t know if it’s centuries away. But in a hundred years, right? I don’t know. Thinking about what the world was like in 1916 is hardly recognizable to what it is now. So, I’m going to go halfway with Kent on that one.

**John:** So this afternoon I was at Shakespeare and Company which is a famous English language bookstore here in Paris. And I was eavesdropping on these two women who were having a conversation. And they were talking about this news report they watched. And the sensational lead is like, you know, Man Killed by Robot. And basically do we need to start worrying about Terminators and robots in our future? And it kicked back to the anchors, so I’m hearing this recap of these two women talking about it. And the anchors were like, “Well no. Actually there was a man operating the robot. The robot was controlled.” So like a person did it.

And so basically it was an accident that happened with a remote control robot. And so there was this pressure to sort of make it seem like the question being are robots going to kill us. No, it’s an industrial machine, and an accident happened, and it was remote controlled. And like the robot was not sentient in any meaningful way.

And so it was that pressure to build the narrative around like a robot killed a man, but it really wasn’t that at all. It was just a robotic arm and the guy got hit by the robotic arm and died. So, that’s said, but it’s not a robot uprising. It’s not Westworld.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, don’t blame screenwriters for the exogenous stupidity out there. I mean, it just is. There is stupidity out there. It’s not our fault. Dumb people will say things like, “A robot killed a guy.” Well, no, somebody pushed the wrong button and a dumb lever moved an arm that you think of as a robot because it’s an arm. But it’s really not. It’s just a bunch of metal. You know, I don’t know. Kent, I’m not going to take the blame here. In fact, I want more robot movies now. More.

**John:** Quickly going through the rest of the follow up, Colin wrote in with a link to a Wired article that looks at the impossible physics of tightropes in an episode of Gotham. And so–

**Craig:** Gotham is a show? That’s a show?

**John:** Gotham is a show. Craig, what is Gotham about? I’ll wait here while you tell me what Gotham is about.

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to just wing it here. Gotham is a show from the DC universe.

**John:** Correct.

**Craig:** It is a show about the city of Gotham and the various superheroes and super villains that populate it. And sometimes–

**John:** Yes, what is the special thing about Gotham? What is the unique point of view of Gotham?

**Craig:** Gritty.

**John:** Well, it’s gritty.

**Craig:** Was I right?

**John:** Who was the biggest star in the first season of Gotham?

**Craig:** Well, the biggest name in Gotham City is Batman, of course.

**John:** Well, yes. So Bruce Wayne is a character in it, but Bruce Wayne is a child in this. And so it’s Commissioner Gordon’s point of view. So, what actress who is married to an even more famous actor was the primary villain in the first season? Or a primary villain in the first season?

**Craig:** Angelina Jolie. Oh no, they’re not married anymore. Oh, boy, that’s a tough one. Let’s see. Who’s married to William Macy again?

**John:** No, no. Felicity Huffman is great, but no.

**Craig:** It’s not Felicity Huffman? That’s it. I’m out.

**John:** Jada Pinkett Smith was the villain.

**Craig:** Oh, Jada Pinkett Smith.

**John:** She played Mad-Eye Mooney or something. And I have not seen the show either, but at least I know what the show is.

Our final bit of follow up comes from Jay Allan Zimmerman who writes, “I admit it, I’m a Scriptnotes addict. To be clear, I am deaf. So, technically I’m a Scriptnotes transcript addict. Meaning the Sexy Craig voice in my head could be too dirty old man-ish. And the Colorado John accent could be too Montana.”

I don’t know if I could hear a difference between a Colorado accent and a Montana accent. I’m sure there is one. But I couldn’t pick it.

“Anyway, it has been nearly a month since I had my drug and I’m having serious withdrawal issues. Especially since all meaning in the world suddenly ceased and a cloud of despair descended upon us here in New York City. And there has been a collective weeping and great gnashing of teeth. And yet every day I’m teased by the title This Feeling Will End.”

So, Jay is pointing out that our Scriptnotes transcripts got a month behind, but Godwin has done a hero’s work to get them all back up. So as you are listening to this episode we should be caught up. So, John Morgan has been doing the transcripts and Godwin has them all up now. So, sorry for people who are waiting for transcripts, but they are there.

And if you have not read the transcripts, basically if you’re looking at the episode on the blog, when there is a transcript at the very bottom of the post there will be an update that says here is a link to the transcript. So, if you’re a person who wants to read those transcripts, they will always be there for you.

**Craig:** Hey, I have a question for you.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Is it possible to have people subscribe in some way to an alert so when the transcript goes up they receive an alert?

**John:** That is theoretically possible. We will investigate this week a system for doing that. And if there is an answer, on next week’s episode I will let you know what that system will be.

**Craig:** Because I definitely sympathize with Jay’s predicament here. Because I’m not deaf, but I like reading the transcripts better than listening to the show. I love that we have transcripts.

**John:** Yeah. Transcripts are good.

**Craig:** Every podcast should have a transcript as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** Increasingly, more and more podcasts are having them. So, I definitely applaud the trend towards transcripts. We’ve had them since the very beginning.

Last little bit about Jay Allan Zimmerman. “If by chance you and/or Craig happen to be in New York City over the holidays, my concert is at Lincoln Center this year. And I would be very happy and honored to save seats for you.” So, Jay is a songwriter in addition to being a listener. And he’s a songwriter who is now deaf.

**Craig:** Perking up. Hold on. What’s this about?

**John:** So click through the link and you will see. So, there will be a link to his show in the transcripts, but also in the show notes for this week’s episode.

**Craig:** This is so cool. All right. Great.

**John:** Yeah, so that intersection of Scriptnotes and Broadway.

**Craig:** You kind of got me right there. Scriptnotes and Broadway. Makes me happy.

**John:** So our main topic this week is clams. So, back in Episode 52 we looked at clams, which are jokes and phrases that have been overused so much that they’re not only not funny, but they’re sort of anti-funny at this point. They’re painful to hear. But you still do hear them because writing is hard and sometimes writers are lazy. And those clams are sort of joke-oids that serve as placeholders for actual comedy that is meant to be written at some point.

So, this past week John Quaintance on Twitter published photos from two whiteboards in the Workaholics writers’ room. And so these were a list of phrases that were basically banned from their scripts. Like we are not allowed to use these in our scripts. And so those photos got widely circulated, but I asked Godwin to type up the list. And I thought we would take a read through this because it has been 220 episodes since we’ve done this list last time.

We will read these things aloud, and as we read them aloud one by one you will say like, “Oh you know what, you’re right. We should never put those in our scripts anymore.”

**Craig:** I agree. Let’s do it.

**John:** Let’s do it. So I’ll start.

___? More like ___.

**Craig:** Can You Not?

**John:** I Can Explain!

**Craig:** Let’s Not and Say We Did.

**John:** I Didn’t Not ___.

**Craig:** Va-Jay-Jay.

**John:** Wait For It…

**Craig:** Just Threw Up In My Mouth.

**John:** Really?

**Craig:** Good Talk.

**John:** And By ___ I Mean ___.

**Craig:** Check Please!

**John:** Awkward!

**Craig:** Shut The Front Door!

**John:** So, pause here. Do we all know where Shut the Front Door came from? So, it’s Shut the F Up. And so it was a common way of looping over Shut the F Up. So the looping was so funny that people started just using that as a line. But it’s not funny anymore.

**Craig:** No, it’s not funny.

**John:** Lady Boner.

**Craig:** Rut-Roh!

**John:** I Think That Came Out Wrong.

**Craig:** Uh…Define ___.

**John:** No? Just Me.

**Craig:** Why Are We Whispering?

**John:** That Went Well…

**Craig:** Stay Classy.

**John:** I’m A Hot Mess!

**Craig:** That’s Not a Thing.

**John:** It’s Science.

**Craig:** Bacon Anything.

**John:** Cray-Cray.

**Craig:** Real Talk.

**John:** Nailed It.

**Craig:** Random!

**John:** Awesome Sauce.

**Craig:** Thanks…I Guess.

**John:** Little Help?

**Craig:** Laughy McLaugherson.

**John:** ___ Dot Com.

**Craig:** Oh Helllll Naw!

**John:** Epic Fail

**Craig:** Did I Just Say That Out Loud?

**John:** Food Baby.

**Craig:** Douche (Nozzle). Douche anything.

**John:** Soooo, That Just Happened.

**Craig:** Squad Goals.

**John:** I Just Peed A Little.

**Craig:** Too Soon?

**John:** Spoiler Alert.

**Craig:** Um…In English Please.

**John:** Note to Self.

**Craig:** Life Hack.

**John:** Best. ___. Ever. Or Worst. ___. Ever.

**Craig:** It’s Giving Me All the Feels.

**John:** Garbage People.

**Craig:** Garbage people?

**John:** Yeah, like referring to people as like they’re garbage people.

**Craig:** Oh.

That Happened One Time!

**John:** Well Played.

**Craig:** I’m Right Here!

**John:** Hard Pass.

**Craig:** Are You Having A Stroke?

**John:** Go Sports!

**Craig:** Zero Fucks Given.

**John:** We Have Fun.

**Craig:** Who Hurt You?

**John:** I Absorbed My Twin In The Womb.

**Craig:** I’ll take ___ for $500, Alex.

**John:** Thanks Obama.

**Craig:** That’s Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.

**John:** I Think We’re Done Here.

**Craig:** Wait, What?

**John:** Shots Fired.

**Craig:** Sharkweek.

**John:** You Assclown.

**Craig:** Ridonkulous.

**John:** Bag of Dicks.

**Craig:** Hey, Don’t Help.

**John:** Debbie Downer.

**Craig:** I Can’t Unsee That.

**John:** That Just Happened.

**Craig:** I Could Tell You but I’d Have to Kill You.

**John:** See What I Did There?

**Craig:** I’ll Show Myself Out.

**John:** Here’s The Line, Here’s You.

**Craig:** ___ on Steroids/Crack.

**John:** Swipe Right.

**Craig:** White People Problems.

**John:** Oh man. That’s a god list of terrible things.

**Craig:** Seriously. A long, terrible list of terrible. Yeah.

**John:** And none of those things were bad the first time they were done. They were actually probably pretty clever the first time they were done. But now you just don’t want to hear those. And so why I wanted to talk through those is like not just those specific phrases, but in general why it’s a good idea sometimes to make that list of let’s not do these things. Because that general category of bad things, it’s not just necessarily dialogue, but it could also be ideas, or sort of script scenes, or script moments that are just so cliché and overdone. It hurts you because it takes a moment that could be specific to you as a writer or specific to your project and just makes it generic. It robs it of a specialty, of a moment that could be unique to you and makes it common to everything.

**Craig:** It’s so true. The price of the clam isn’t so much that people think, “Oh, the writer is lazy, or the writer is not funny.” Because people aren’t really thinking about that when they’re watching things. There’s a much quicker subconscious injury that occurs when we see or hear these things. And that is a sense that we’re now watching a thing. It has that classic, clichéd, bad move of taking you out of something. Because suddenly I realize, oh, that’s right, this isn’t real. I mean, I know it’s not real, but my little paper thin veneer of verisimilitude has been punctured because I’ve heard that so many damn times.

The use of these clams is – I always think of it as music. I think that people are, well, you know what we need here is we need something to kind of give us a little ramp in. Well, if you’re writing music, here’s what you wouldn’t do. Oh, I know, let’s start the song like this. [hums] But that’s what a clam is. It’s the comedy version of [hums]. It’s just so overdone as to be, oh my god, really? That – see, I just did it. Really?

**John:** Yeah. So, the reason why I think it’s good that they made this list for this writers’ room, and why I think writers can do this for themselves or for the group of the room that’s working on a project is it sort of forces you to step up your game. Say like these are obvious things that we could do that we’ve decided we’re not going to do. And that could be choices you’re making about what dialogue you’re using or not using, but also things your characters are allowed to do or not do.

Or, like you are not allowed to start a scene with like, “To recap…” You’re going to avoid those hacky things that make life easier for you because they are robbing you of moments you could have.

It also is a signal to your staff that you’re watching, that these things are important. And that your show, your movie, whatever you’re writing is not going to be like everybody else’s thing. So I really applaud them for keeping this list and also letting us see their list, because that was really, really helpful.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, if you are hanging out with somebody and they start saying things like, “I can’t unsee that.” In fact, you’re not hanging out with this person. You’re at a coffee shop and you’re listening to two people having a conversation. You don’t know them. And they’re like, “Well played. Really? Are you having a stroke? Note to self…” you think, oh my god, these are the two worst people in the world. They’re so fake. Nobody talks like that. Well, why would you do that to your characters? Why would you turn them into the worst people in the world?

There’s a long tradition in television comedy for characters to have catchphrases, which sometimes are words, and sometimes they aren’t even words. Lucille Ball famously would do this. When she would get I trouble she would go, “Ewwww.” Right? Now, maybe that became a clam by other people copying her, but that’s real. Like I believed her when she would go, “Ewwww.” It was unique to her. Do that.

**John:** Do that. Let’s talk about how you kill these clams. So you detect one of these in a script and you feel yourself about to write one. What are the ways to get out of it?

So, some ideas I have for you is to really examine what is the purpose of this clam. So, let’s say you find one in the script. I would say really examine what that clam is trying to do in that moment. So, is it there so you can get a breath? Is it there to close a thought? Is it there to keep the character alive in the scene? Basically someone who hasn’t spoken, or doesn’t have a purpose to be there, and so they need to say something funny so they stay alive in the scene. Is it to keep the ball in the air? I just read A Woman of No Importance, the Oscar Wilde, and after that I went back and read The Importance of Being Earnest, and a lot of times characters in there are just keeping the ball up in the air. It’s like they’re playing badminton and they have to keep saying a funny line so the ball stays up in the air.

Sometimes that clam might be there to do that. And oftentimes I notice the clam is there really to pivot between two parts of a scene. Basically there’s the business of the first half of the scene, and there’s the business at the second half of the scene, and that clam is to work as a sort of closer and a transition point to flip you to the second part of the scene, so you can be done with the first bit of business and then on to the second bit of business.

So recognize what the function of that clam is. That’s why it’s there. And then find a better thing to put there so you don’t have to use that hack phrase.

**Craig:** Right. So, sometimes – and John knows – I’m having a sneezing fit, so if I start to sound really weird, or vaguely like I’m on the edge of an organism or something, it’s not Sexy Craig. It’s just Sneezy Craig.

**John:** But sneezes and orgasms are neurologically related, are they not?

**Craig:** I guess they’re involuntary spasms of your body. I much prefer the other kind than this, but–

**John:** [laughs] To each his own.

**Craig:** Yeah. Nose-gasming. I have multiple nose-gasms.

Sometimes in comedy, what the clam is really doing is serving as the landing point for a joke. We think sometimes that the clam is the joke. It’s not. The joke is whatever has happened before the clam and people tend to laugh on reactions to things. So a character does something funny, and in movies we do this all the time. Movies are less inclined towards clamminess because they are – it’s not to say that they’re immune. They’re not. But they’re less inclined because there’s no laugh track and there’s no sense of that laugh rhythm being required.

So, in a movie, somebody will do something funny and the editor will cut to another character just starting. And that cut is where you get the laugh from the audience. This is very, very – this is just a true thing. You don’t even realize when you watch movies. Watch what happens when people do funny things. You will immediately cut to somebody going, “Whoa.” So, the look of Whoa is kind of the – that’s the landing spot.

In television comedy, I feel like a lot of times what ends up happening is they can’t just keep cutting to people and reacting because there’s so many jokes and they’re so rapid that they need these little clammy lines to serve as landing places for the audience.

So when you look at clams like for instance, “I’m right here,” or, “Wait, what?” Or, “I can’t unsee that.” I can’t unsee that is obviously referring to a joke, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Something funny happened and that’s their attempt to land. You have to find other ways to land.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk through what you could do to replace that I Can’t Unsee that. So, if that showed up in your script and like you have to make this line better, I would say really look at what is it that you’re trying to say there and see if there’s a way you can say that idea without saying those words. Or at least use what was there to form a better joke, or better moment.

So, I Can’t Unsee That, does that mean I want to damage my eyes? Is that a way to sort of get at that moment? Is it I want to erase that memory? Is it saying like I am emotionally traumatized? Or are you saying I want to reverse time to a moment before that happened. So none of those are the actual line you would say, but they could do down any of those paths to sort of get you to, okay, there’s a good idea for a line down there.

And that’s really hard work. You have to do all the work of trying all those things and say what would actually work in this place. But, I really strongly suspect you will find a better line than, “I can’t unsee that.” And it will be original to your script and will fit the situation. And that’s the crucial thing. You want it to be specific to your script and this moment and those characters.

**Craig:** Yeah. Also, that’s the thing, it’s the characters. Right? It lets the characters be unique. Every time a character says a clam, you are reminded that they’re just fake. That there’s nothing really that special about that character, because they’re saying the same damn thing 4,000 other characters have said.

And I think that there’s a temptation to go towards clams because you’re worried that if they say something unique to them, it won’t be funny. But, again, remember, that’s not the part that’s funny anyway. It’s just where it’s landing. If I’m writing a sitcom script and I get to a place where something crazy happens and you could have a character say, “I can’t unsee that.” You could just as easily write in, “I hate that I was alive to see that happen.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Anything. Now, that’s not great. I’m not saying that’s great. I’m saying just start writing other things that mean the same thing and add a little bit of a zjoosh to it and you’re going to get the same thing as, “I can’t unsee that.” There’s nothing wrong with the concept of it. It’s just the damn words.

**John:** It’s just the damn words.

**Craig:** It’s just the damn words.

**John:** Let’s take a look at “that’s not a thing.” So the sense of that could be, “You’re stupid.” Or you could be saying that mean like, “Stop trying to invent popular culture,” which is basically stop trying to make ____ happen, which was Cher’s line from Clueless. Which was great when Cher said it, but you can’t say that again.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or it could be like, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Like basically I’m confused by this approach. Any of those could be good avenues for what the actual real line should be. But those lines are going to be better than, “That’s not a thing.”

**Craig:** Yeah, like “that’s not a thing,” somebody is saying something as if we all have a common experience with it when we don’t. So, somebody could say, “You’re deeply invested in something that does not exist.” You can come up with all sorts of ways of getting to the heart of what that is without saying, “That’s not a thing.” You know? And the shorter the better, of course.

**John:** Yeah. And finally, “Debbie Downer.” So Debbie Downer was a character on Saturday Night Live. And so it was played wonderfully by Rachel Dratch, but don’t just quote a character from a decade ago on Saturday Night Live. That’s not a great choice. So, what are you saying when you’re saying Debbie Downer? Are you saying you’re not fun to be around? You’re saying don’t kill my idea. You’re saying you’re making me feel shallow and superficial. Those are all valid approaches to this, but look at it from the character’s perspective of like what is it that the character could say in that moment that is unique to that specific character and that specific moment.

**Craig:** Yeah. I really hate this one because now you’re just saying you are a downer, but that’s not even helping the joke land. It would be much better if in any case like that the character could express how what this person has said makes them feel. Right? So you say you’re making me feel – you know, somebody says something and then you just get up and start walking away. “Where are you going?” “I have to get a prescription for every antidepressant.”

Do something that makes me understand what the joke land recipient is feeling rather than, “I have a name for you that we all have heard.” And by the way, Debbie Downer is the most ironic clam because Debbie Downer itself was a great example of Saturday Night Live catching lightning in a bottle and then stupidly trying to do it over and over. One sketch amazing. Second time you saw it, it was like oh no. Like, they’re smart, they’re never going to do David S. Pumpkins again. If they try, I’ll go down there and I will start cracking skulls.

**John:** That’s going to be a good idea. So, anyway, those are our new suggestions on clams. We went through this whole bit without even talking about the origin of clams. I don’t know where the first term came about. I first heard about it through Jane Espenson, who was a previous guest, who is so smart about writing about writing. But she has a big crusade against certain clams. And is very good about sort of spotting clams as they are about to be formed. She was a writer on Buffy, which again, doesn’t have a normal comedy structure in their scenes, but relied on a lot of comedy writing in order to get through a lot of difficult exposition stuff. So, you know, you got to be vigilant about this even if you’re not writing strictly comedy like Workaholics. You have to be mindful of those things that are going to have the feeling of a joke but are not going to be funny anymore.

**Craig:** Is there a word for a baby clam?

**John:** There should be a word for a baby clam.

**Craig:** Like a young clam.

**John:** A clam that’s going to come. A clam in development. Like how do clams even form? I don’t even know. I know nothing about clam biology.

**Craig:** I’m looking right now. I just learned that clams have an anus.

**John:** Well, yes. You got to poop somewhere. Everybody poops.

**Craig:** Well, I guess that’s true. I don’t know, I thought maybe clams just sort of, you know, just all sort of leaked out from everywhere.

It’s not like a calf, like a cow has a calf, and a sheep has a lamb. Clams have small clams.

**John:** Yeah. All right, next topic. We have a question from Kota Hoshino who asks, “I have a question about naming characters. How do you decide on a name that is good, unique, and not clichéd?”

Craig, what thoughts can you offer for Kota about naming your characters?

**Craig:** Well, this is an endless bane of screenwriters. We have to come up with names all the time. And you’re kind of stuck, because you don’t want to – I mean, look, here’s crime number one. Jim Patterson. Right? No one should ever be named Jim Patterson. Crime number two, and unfortunately this is committed frequently by movies that are successful, so hey, what do I know, but I cringe every time I hear any action hero named Cutter McGonagall, or Razor Edge. You know, and you hear it and you’re just, “What?”

**John:** You still hear it.

**Craig:** And then there’s these really purple prose names like, you know, Ecclesiastes Phosphorus. So, I don’t like names to smack me in the face with their pomposity, or their manliness, but I certainly don’t want these generic names. So, the first thing I do is I ask questions about my character. Where are they from? How old are they? Where were their parents from? Because remember, parents name children.

Every character to me, this is an opportunity to imply something about ethnicity. Apply something about class. Race. Geography. So, then what I do is I research. And I try and find interesting examples that land in that happy little space that is to the east of boring and done, and to the west of “oh beat it.” Right?

Now, sometimes you’re writing stories that are in fantasy world, so then your names have to feel like they’re part of a common language that you’ve invented. Even if that language is English, for instance, JK Rowling has a kind of language for the world of wizards, even though they live in our world, whether they are English wizards or French wizards, there’s a certain aesthetic to the name.

So, that’s – I kind of just start asking a lot of questions about the character. And then I think how can I be purposeful with the name I choose.

**John:** Absolutely. And character decisions for me are really fundamental. I generally will not start writing a character or write scenes unless I really do know the characters’ names, because it’s just so hard for me to think about that person without their name. And the situations where I’ve had to go through and rename a character after the fact, it always kills me because like, no, no, I wrote that character to be this person and if I change the name they’re no longer this person.

So, I really do need to know the characters’ names before I get started there. Other sort of good general suggestions – as much as you can avoid, don’t name two characters with the same first letter of their name, because people are going to be seeing that name and hearing that name and you just want them to have as much differentiation. So, if you have Adam, don’t also have an Aaron in your script, because that will just get confusing.

Now, sometimes it will just happen. Like Aladdin has both Jasmine and Jafar. But everyone knows who they are so it’s fine. That’s not going to be confusing. But if were to add another character, I wouldn’t give him a J, because that would just be a mess. And you’d subconsciously get them confused with the two characters.

Also look at sort of whether you’re using the full version of the name or the short version of the name. We talked about race and class, but there’s also sort of the intersection of education and status. And so in Big Fish we have Edward Bloom, and he’s always Edward. He’s never Ed. He’s never Eddie, except for Jenny Hill can call him Eddie. And it’s Will Bloom. It’s not William Bloom. If you have an Edward and a William, you will get them confused because they feel like the same kind of fanciness of names. But Edward and Will you won’t get confused. So, look at that. So varying the length of names can also help distinguish them on the page.

**Craig:** That’s a really good point about the name changing and how traumatic that can be. When you get to a place where you’re about to go into production on your screenplay, someone at the studio has the unenviable task of clearing the names. And there’s a whole science to clearing names, but basically the idea is they don’t want to get sued. They don’t want to get sued. They don’t want to have somebody out there say, “You named that character after me.” So, either there has to be no one named that, or a whole lot of people named. You get in trouble if like one or two people are named that. So occasionally what happens is they’ll clear a whole bunch of names but come back to you and say you can’t name this person this. You have to change their name. And it is traumatic.

Even, before that on the sheep movie, I was adapting a novel and one of the important characters in the novel, a sheep, was named Othello. And Lindsay and I, from the start, we were like we don’t want to do – we don’t want any kind of black sheep/white sheep racial metaphors in this. We want our sheep to be all different colors. We don’t think sheep have race problems, and we don’t want to imply that they do. They have other – they have like a whole other weird set of biases that are so specific to sheep that when we hear them we go, “That’s the strangest thing. Why would that be a problem for you?”

But, not color. And Othello is so, you know, literally is identified by race. So, we wrestled, and wrestled, and wrestled, and finally – dozens of names, and eventually landed on one that we were okay with. But it took months to stop calling him Othello. It was hard.

**John:** I totally get that. And I would also say from Big Fish, some of the characters I pulled from Daniel Wallace’s novel are actually completely different characters, but I loved the names so much. Like, Amos Calloway does not own a circus in Daniel Wallace’s novel. There’s no circus there. But Amos Calloway was exactly the perfect Big Fish name. And so there had to be an Amos Calloway in the movie, and so it became the Danny DeVito Amos Calloway circus owner.

So, those names have to fit within the world, and that fit very well within the world of fantastical south.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** All right, we have two more quick questions. The first one is about life rights. Let’s take a listen.

Questioner: I’m currently working on a documentary in which the idea has been tossed around to turn the story into a feature length film. A couple of the characters, however, are quite a bit older and the question has been asked what happens to their life rights if they pass away before we can attain them. Also, how do you attain someone’s life rights if they’ve already passed away?

**John:** So, Drew is asking about life rights. And life rights is complicated. Again, we always have to remind you we are not lawyers. What I would say in general about life rights is that you are getting a person’s life rights when you want to tell their story, and you’re telling a part of their story that is not part of the public record. Very specifically, you are Charles Sully Sullenberg and you are telling the story of Charles Sully Sullenberg. Or, you are important person in that story and you have sort of the right to publicity, you have the right to tell your own story. And so therefore I’m coming to as a person trying to tell your story on film, or in a TV series, and therefore I’m asking for your rights to tell this part of the story. So, basically, they’re giving up the opportunity to tell their story in another movie to let you tell their story in this movie.

In terms of the legalities of a person who has already died, well, my understanding is that like life rights in this sense do not carry over after your death. But, Craig, tell me that I’m wrong.

**Craig:** I can’t. I think that that’s true. But, you know, Drew, the thing is none of this is – there’s the law, and then there’s the practice. And in practice what ends up happening is if you want to tell the story of somebody who is dead, and recently so, a lot of times you’re going to want the cooperation of the estate. Even if the estate is as simple and small as a surviving spouse. Because that person will be able to help you. And they will have letters, and information, and all sorts of little bits of stuff that you can use. And, of course, even further down the line playing the larger game here, you don’t want to make a fictional movie about somebody and then have that person’s real life husband or wife start yapping in advance of your movie saying it’s a bunch of crap.

So, a lot of times what happens is people don’t get so stuck on the technicalities of the law and try and work with, well, what will make our lives easier creatively and financially. So, a lot of times people will just work out deals.

**John:** The other thing we should stress is that a lot of times while you’re getting some life rights is that there’s always the possibility of libel. So, a real life living person, if you say something that is provably, demonstrably untrue about that person, under American law and under international laws they can sue you for libel. And in the process of getting life rights, you may have contractual language in there that sort of protects you from libel lawsuits from that person, which can be useful, and helpful.

Dead people don’t have libel. Dead people cannot sue you for libel. And that is a useful thing that will hopefully continue under future administrations.

**Craig:** So then there’s a P.S. to the question. “What is the difference between posthumous and postmortem? I wasn’t sure which made the most sense in this context. And the all-knowing Internet was of no help.”

Well, I would think posthumous here would make sense. Postmortem is really specific to the moments immediately after death. So, a postmortem is what happened in the days or hours after somebody died, or describes any kind of examination or investigation related to a dead body, or dead thing. Posthumous is really more about events in the world that occur after the life of a person has ended as opposed to while they were alive.

**John:** Absolutely. So like a posthumous honor was bestowed upon this person. And so think about posthumous with a person. Postmortem is with a body, I think, is sort of a useful way of thinking about it.

And so after a certain point, postmortem doesn’t really make sense to be using as a term.

Our final question comes from the wonderfully named Telly Archer. Let’s listen to what she had to say.

Telly Archer: My question is about picking a genre. Do I need to? I’ve heard a lot of people say that you’re supposed to pick one genre and stick to it when you’re trying to break into the industry so that you can become somewhat of an expert or go-to person in that area. And then once you have a good reputation, then you break out into other genres. However, what makes more sense to me is the people who say just write wild. Let your voice be heard. Write the script that only you could write and not care about how similar it is to the next one you do. I made a list of the most me ideas that I have. There’s two comedies. One light. And one very dark. And then a horror, a thriller, and a rom-com.

So, I’m hoping you’ll say write wild and not pick a genre. Because I don’t know how I’d do that. But I do want to know the actual answer. So, any advice you can give would, of course, be appreciated. And thank you for all you do. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye…I love that. I also liked, sooooo. I do that myself.

Here’s my answer, Telly. I think you’ll be happy. Write wild. What is writing wild really mean? It means writing the way you’re insides are directing you to write.

Now, you can say, “Do I have to stick to one genre?” Well, first of all, what is your genre? You don’t know. You have genres that you want to write in, so let’s call those part of writing wild. You want to write a romance. You want to write fantasy. You want to write a thriller. You write it. Okay. That’s now a genre you’re interested in.

The business, if they discover a script of yours and love it, they may say, “Oh good, now give us another one of these.” And you can say, “Well, how about this? Do you also like this? If you had seen this first, maybe you would think you would want another one of these, right?” They may say to you, “Actually we just like the thriller that you write. Not so big on the romances. Love the thrillers.”

Okay, well, write one or don’t. And you can choose that when you get there. But, I believe you should write what you want to write as long as you’re not hopping around from subject to subject to distract yourself from the fact that you’re maybe lacking some discipline. If you feel disciplined and interested in a genre, write it.

**John:** Yeah. So, when we had our agent on the podcast, Peter Dodd, we talked a little bit about this. The sense of like do you want to have a writer who writes just one kind of thing, or writes a whole bunch of different kind of things. And my recollection was he was upfront about the fact that it’s easier to market you in the town as the person who does X, Y, or Z rather than sort of does everything. But, I guess don’t worry about being pigeonholed until somebody is actually interested in reading you. So, write the things that you think you can write best. And that means experimenting with some different things and seeing what it is that you love. But, obviously, write the script you’ll finish. Write the script that you’ll kick ass on. The one that gets you sitting down at the computer every day, because that’s the most crucial factor here.

Once you know you can do it and you know what it is you like to write, there may be situations where you kind of get pushed to writing one kind of thing. And if that’s paying you and you’re going to be paid to write, congratulations. You’re now a successful screenwriter. Down the road you could bend a little bit.

Previously on the podcast I’ve talked about how the first jobs I got were adapting kids’ books. And so I did How to Eat Fried Worms, A Wrinkle in Time, and I got pegged as being the guy who adapted kids’ books. So I got sent books about gnomes, elves, dwarves, and Christmas.

And I wrote Go largely to break out of that cycle. And so that was a lovely opportunity I could break out of that cycle and I had something new I could show people. But, I got to break out rather than sort of just trying to break in. So, write what you love. Let people respond to the things that are so uniquely you, the thing that you are clearly passionate about writing. And don’t worry about picking a genre right now.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s a problem for later on down the line. If you have that problem, “Geez, I feel like I’m being pigeonholed by Hollywood. The keep sending me blah-blah-blah jobs.” Not such a bad situation. But we are the only creative job in Hollywood that can write ourselves out or into trouble. Actors have to wait for roles to come to them. Directors have to wait for scripts to come to them. Same with producers. Same with studios.

We can reinvent ourselves every single day if we choose. The key is to do so in a way that is impressive. Simple as that.

So, I wouldn’t worry about this one at all.

**John:** Yep. My One Cool Thing this week is The Good Place on NBC is which is, wow, talk about a show that is not worried about genre. It is writing itself into a very specific, unique thing. So, this is the show that stars Kristen Bell and Ted Danson and a lot of other talented actors. Created by Michael Schur. The pilot was directed by Drew Goddard, who is fantastic, and a fantastic writer in his own right. Had episodes written by Alan Yang, Megan Amram, and a bunch of other Scriptnotes-adjacent people.

It is just phenomenal. And I would not have found out about it if it were not for Malcolm Spellman, one of our favorite Scriptnotes folks, who was talking about, “Hey, this show is really good.” And he’s right. It’s really good.

So for people who don’t know, it’s a half-hour serialized really strangely structured, brilliant written, just fantastic. So, we’re watching the season here on iTunes. I strongly recommend people check out The Good Place on NBC.

I’m delighted that it’s actually doing well in the ratings, because usually if we recommend a show, it doesn’t help it. But this one is doing great.

**Craig:** Usually a show is helped by the fat that we’ve never heard of it. [laughs]

**John:** That’s absolutely true. The thing is that I had not heard of this show until this last week, and now I heard about it, and I love it. So, I’m a late adopter, perhaps, on The Good Place. But if you are not watching it, or if you are one of our international listeners who would otherwise not know about the show, check it out, because man, it’s just really, really smartly done and very, very funny.

**Craig:** Megan Amram is the best. We got to get her on the show one day. She’s the greatest.

**John:** We absolutely do. I feel like she’s been a guest, but I don’t even know her. I just talk about her as if I know her.

**Craig:** No, she’s the greatest.

**John:** I have one other thing to plug. My very smart husband, Mike, was a guest on a podcast called Join Us in France this last week, where he talked about what it was like to do all the visa applications and apartment hunting and all of that stuff for this year that we are spending in Paris. And it was a really good podcast if you’re at all curious about the process of us moving to France. He sort of describes it all and really talks you through the kind of stuff you need to do if you’re planning to do what we did and come to Paris for a year.

**Craig:** And that’s in English?

**John:** That’s in English. It’s an English podcast, hosted by a French woman with great English. So, if you want to hear what my husband sounds like, he’s on that podcast. So, there will be a link in the show notes for that.

**Craig:** He sounds dreamy.

**John:** Oh, he’s dreamy.

**Craig:** Dreamy Craig is a whole other – we’ll get to him sooner or later. My One Cool Thing is the videogame Watch Dogs 2. But specifically the writing of the videogame Watch Dogs 2. I don’t know if you played Watch Dogs Uno.

**John:** I have not.

**Craig:** You know, it was good. It was a fine game. Really, the game – Watch Dogs was entertaining and fun to play because of the mechanic. Very simply you’re a hacker and your phone can essentially control everything around you and you’re breaking into things. It’s fun.

But the character and the story were quite heavy and somber. And Watch Dogs 2 has taken all the same mechanics, you know, jazzed them up a little bit the way they do for sequels, but the characters are so much more interesting because they’re young, and they’re vibrant, and they’re funny.

But here’s the part that’s kind of amazing to me. Now, Watch Dogs 2 is written – it says written by Lucien Soulban. The game was made at Ubisoft Montreal. I can only imagine that there are many writers, not just Lucien, because there’s so much in the show. Sorry, in the game.

But here’s what kind of amazed me. You meet these characters and there are some things that jumped out right off the bat. One, there’s a character named Josh. And, you know, I’ve played my way probably through half of the game. And about 20% of the way through I thought am I looking at the first legitimately autism spectrum disorder character I’ve ever seen in a videogame without it being like, “Look at me, I’m an autism spectrum…”

It’s like this guy, they’ve nailed it. They’ve nailed exactly what Asperger’s is. And around the middle of the game he just casually refers to himself as an Aspie. And I was like, oh my god, that’s incredible. So, that was awesome. The lead is a character named Marcus who is black and there’s another member of their little hacking crew who is black. And the two of them have discussions about race. And it’s fascinating because it’s a great example of code switching. One of them is working at the videogame’s version of Google. And the two of them have a whole conversation about what it’s like to work at that company, which is incredibly white, and he has to represent – he says at one point, “Every meeting, I have to represent all of Blackdom.”

And they have this fascinating conversation and then code switch when other people come by. And then they go back to being themselves. And there’s also a trans character that shows up. And none of it is like, look at me, I’m a trans character. Look at me, I’m black guy. Look at me, I’m Asperger’s. It’s all done kind of just in the most brilliantly casual way.

It’s kind of the ultimate wokeness. So, I’m loving that. I’m just loving the way that they’ve made the world – and it takes place in San Francisco, which kind of helps it a little bit, but they’ve made the world so realistic to actual people that are in the world that you don’t often see in videogames. And then not sort of sledgehammer you in the face with it. They’re just casual. It’s great.

**John:** Great. That sounds great.

**Craig:** Watch Dogs 2.

**John:** Watch Dogs 2. That is our show for this week. So, as always, our show is produced by Godwin Jabangwe. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. We’re actually kind of running low on outros, so come on, send in your outros.

That’s also the place where you can send in your questions like the ones we answered today. Short questions are great on Twitter. So, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

We are Facebook. I actually update the Facebook and put some stuff there, so please come talk to us on Facebook. You can search for Scriptnotes podcast there.

You can search for Scriptnotes on iTunes and leave us a review, a comment. That always helps people find our show. That’s also where you can download the Scriptnotes App that lets you get to all of those back episodes. You subscribe to those back episodes through Scriptnotes.net. And so as we talked about at the head of the show, it’s $2 a month. It gets you all the back episodes and the bonus episodes. It’s so good. So useful.

We also have a few of the USB drives left which have all of the back episodes, up to Episode 250. And the transcripts there, too. We try to get transcripts up on the site four days after the episodes aired. They fell behind, but I think we’ll be able to catch them back up.

That is our show. So, I should say, links to all the things we talked about on today’s episode you can find at johnaugust.com. They’re also probably below this episode if you scroll in your player of choice. And we’ll try to have links to many of the things we talked about including John Quaintance’s original tweet that started this whole clam discussion this week.

**Craig:** Clam.

**John:** Clam.

**Craig:** Clam.

**John:** Craig, you got over your sneezes. Congratulations. Have a great week.

**Craig:** You too. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes Midnight Blue T-shirt](https://cottonbureau.com/products/scriptnotes-midnight-blue)
* [Scriptnotes Gold Standard T-shirt](https://cottonbureau.com/products/scriptnotes-gold-standard)
* [No, Gotham, That’s Not How Tightropes Work](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/no-bruce-wayne-thats-not-tightropes-work/)
* [Jay Allan Zimmerman’s Broadway Concert](http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Jay-Alan-Zimmerman-BringsThe-Holiday-Songs-of-Broadways-Beethoven-to-Lincoln-Center-as-Part-of-Broadways-Future-Songbook-Series-20161201)
* [John Quaintance’s Tweet](https://twitter.com/John_Quaintance/status/799751549610168320)
* [The List of Clams](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-workaholics-list-of-banned-phrases)
* [The Good Place on NBC](http://www.nbc.com/the-good-place/episodes)
* Mike on [Join Us in France](http://joinusinfrance.com/moving-to-france/)
* [Watch Dogs 2 Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh9x4NqW0Dw)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Get your 250 episode USB](http://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/250-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Eric Pearson ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_278.mp3).