John and Craig discuss open writing assignments, and how to best pitch to producers and studios looking to hire a writer for a specific property. Most of the work happens before you set foot in the room, so proper planning is essential.
Then we take a look at the controversy over white actors playing roles that could have gone to Asian actors, and how screenwriters can (and can’t) improve the situation.
Links:
* [Scriptnotes, 247: The One with Lawrence Kasdan](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-lawrence-kasdan)
* [Scriptnotes Bonus: Jungle Book Q+A, with screenwriter Justin Marks](http://scriptnotes.net/bonus-jungle-book-qa)
* [The Making of The Jungle Book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkNArCG80Bg) on YouTube
* [Being An Asian Actor Is Hard Even Without Scarlett Johansson Taking Your Roles](http://www.vice.com/read/being-an-asian-actor-is-hard-even-without-scarlett-johansson-taking-your-roles)
* [Students Invented Gloves That Can Translate Sign Language Into Speech And Text](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/navid-azodi-and-thomas-pryor-signaloud-gloves-translate-american-sign-language-into-speech-text_us_571fb38ae4b0f309baeee06d)
* [Hands In Wheat](https://twitter.com/HandsInWheat) on Twitter, and [Women laughing alone with salad](http://womenlaughingalonewithsalad.tumblr.com/), [Women struggling to drink water](http://imgur.com/a/79OsM), and [Baby CMO](https://twitter.com/babycmo)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jonathan Mann ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_248.mp3).
**UPDATE 5-6-16:** The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/scriptnotes-ep-248-pitching-an-open-writing-assignment-transcript).