Archives for 2019

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/getting-staffed).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 390 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we welcome back former Scriptnotes producer Megan McDonnell. Welcome back, Megan.

**Megan McDonnell:** Thank you.

**Craig:** As you can see, she was such a valuable employee for her strong voice.

**John:** Well today you’re not producing because you are in fact our guest. We want to talk to you all about how you got staffed on your very first show. Then it’s a new round of the Three Page Challenge where we take a look at the pages sent in by our listeners and discuss what’s working and what could use some work.

But first off, Megan, how does it feel to be back here doing – you did so many Three Page Challenges. You probably read – how many Three Page Challenges do you think you’ve read over the years?

**Megan:** Hundreds.

**John:** Hundreds. Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Megan:** Not a thousand.

**John:** Not a thousand. But hundreds.

**Megan:** Hundreds. Certainly.

**John:** So you were the culling mechanism to find the very best of them. Now Megana Rao has that job, so she got to go through a whole bunch of them yesterday to try to find the three that we’re going to do today.

**Megan:** Yeah, I mean, it was so fun to read through all the Three Page Challenges. It’s the making the decision of like, OK, which ones are John and Craig going to like and that was the hard part.

**John:** I used to be a reader at TriStar and at another company before that and in some cases reading things that don’t work is really helpful because it gives you a sense of like, OK, I’m never going to do that because I just see that never works. Do you think reading all the Three Page Challenges helped you as a writer or hurt you as a writer?

**Megan:** It definitely didn’t hurt me as a writer, I hope. I think it’s extremely helpful to see what people are doing, not only to see like what works so well and what’s so good, but also just what the trends are out there and like what I see a lot. OK, that’s a thing that’s probably being seen a lot, so avoid that thing.

**John:** Avoid that thing. Megan is going to be back after we do some quick follow up.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Last week we had Chris Keyser on the show to talk about agency negotiations and the problems of conflict of interest, all that stuff is still happening. But on Wednesday we got word of a major payout in another conflict of interest situation. Craig, do you want to talk us through this.

**Craig:** Oh boy, what a mess this thing is. And this is not something that hasn’t happened before. This is kind of a pretty dramatic outcome though in terms of how it unfolded. So this is about the show Bones. This is a show that was airing on Fox. And it aired more than 10 years. And basically what it came down to was the people that were the profit participants in the show Bones essentially said that Fox had kind of self-dealt. I guess what do you say like–

**John:** Undervalued?

**Craig:** Underestimated? Undervalued. Perfect word. They had undervalued the value of Bones when it was kind of self-dealing the reruns to itself and the programming to itself. So, what happens is you’re making a show. Very typical way this would work is in the old days a studio, let’s say Paramount, would make a television show like Star Trek. So they produced that show. They then sell that show, meaning they license it, to a network. I think Star Trek was on – oh boy, I’m not going to say it because they’ll get angry at me, the Star Trek people. They license it to a network. The network pays them a fee. And then over time if the show does well then it goes into syndication and all that rerun money kicks back to Paramount, the studio that made the show. But they weren’t airing it.

What happens if you have Fox Television creating a show and then licensing it to Fox Network? Ah-ha. Now you have all sorts of opportunity for skullduggery because Fox doesn’t necessarily want to have to pay out profit participation to the people that are participating in the profits. And so the lower they say – the worse the show is doing, the better it is for them, because they’re actually keeping all the money. They’re just reporting on paper it’s just not doing that well.

But it is. So, the people that felt cheated by this took Fox to arbitration and they didn’t just lose this arbitration, they lost in the most spectacular manner. The arbiter essentially awarded them $180 million, most of which was him saying Fox is a bunch of liars. They have a culture of lying. This is egregious. So, first you’re getting essentially what you were asking for as kind of the money that they had ripped you off essentially. They were saying look they ripped us off about $52 million. He said great. Here’s your $52 million and here’s another $128 million in punitive damages because of the egregious manner in which they approached their accounting.

This is not a new story. This is Hollywood everywhere all the time. And I wonder if something like this will actually change the business or if this is just going to be another one of those, well, every now and then we have to pay $170 million but we’ll make more if we keep lying.

**John:** Yeah. So, it’s important to note that this is going to go up for appeal so we don’t know what the final decision is going to be. But what I found so interesting about this story is that we’ve had this situation before where for reruns they were undervaluing the thing, so X-Files the reruns were about that situation, syndication, that situation. But here it was the initial broadcast of the show. So the show aired – it was made by Fox. It showed up on Fox Broadcasting. Also Hulu and Fox’s foreign affiliates. And they were pricing it below market value is the argument that they should have been charging more for the show in all those situations. And they’d actually gone to the executive producers and the stars insisting that they not challenge the license fee issues over this time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s really fascinating because you don’t – it’s one thing to say like, oh, it’s creative accounting. But it felt like there was actual deliberate manipulation and talk about we’re not going to pick up the show for the next two seasons because the show is not successful and it really was quite successful.

**Craig:** Exactly. They’re saying, look, you have to go along with this and take these reduced things because otherwise we’re not going to bring the show back. Meanwhile they had already made a deal with the showrunner to continue making the show. They were lying flat out. You can’t threaten to cancel a show when you’ve just made a deal with somebody else to keep making the show.

And then there’s the Peter Liguori thing. Did you read about this?

**John:** You know, I got a little bit lost in all the weeds of it, because I read – we’ll put a link to the actual decision, but there’s so many different articles. Tell me about the Peter Liguori of it all.

**Craig:** So Peter Liguori was the president of entertainment at Fox Broadcasting Company which is the network. And he was the president until 2009. So, 2009 he leaves Fox and he happened to be around when a lot of these initial things were happening. He was apparently meant to testify in these proceedings. And seven months before he is brought in to testify Fox makes a new deal with him, an outstandingly good deal with him to produce shows at FX.

And this did not pass muster with the arbiter. It says, “Liguori’s deal came with fixed episodic fees and contingent compensation far exceeding that of top executive producers in Hollywood despite the fact that the executive Peter Liguori had ‘virtually no experience whatsoever as a producer.’” That feels like a buyout, right? That’s essentially what the arbiter is implying here is that Fox basically paid off Peter Liguori to not testify against them.

Now, that’s obviously what this guy is saying. I’m just reading along with it. But the arbitrator, Peter Lichtman, apparently is a very well-respected arbitrator. They’re going to try and I guess appeal this in court. Good luck, I think? I don’t think that’s going to work.

So this is a fascinating one. I’m interested to see if it sticks. If I had to bet I would bet it would stick.

**John:** Yeah. I think some version of this will stick. But I think it’s also worth looking at it in the larger context of conflicts of interest. And so this is Fox for Fox, but as we talked about last week we have these agencies that are also becoming producers and that’s going to be really awkward. You can imagine a ton of these lawsuits over like, oh, did you really find the best deal for this project or did you just take the best deal that you could make internally?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So it’s a real challenge.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** And follow up is over. Megan McDonnell, you’ve been the Scriptnotes producer for a year and a half, 14 months?

**Megan:** A year and some change.

**John:** Year and some change. You were also the producer of Launch, the podcast we did about the book. But you’re only a name at the end of the show, so people don’t really know you. I guess they could have seen you at the live show, or in Austin. But talk us through your background. Did you always want to be a screenwriter? How did you come to this?

**Megan:** I’ve always loved to write and it kind of never occurred to me that I could be a screenwriter until I went to grad school. So I went into grad school thinking oh I’ll be a producer, I’ll be a network executive, and then once I was there and doing internships and taking writing classes I was like, oh gosh, I’ve really got to give this a try. And I’m so glad I did because now I’m writing.

**John:** So where did you grow up?

**Megan:** I grew up in Long Beach, California, so a Southern California person.

**John:** All right. And school here? School in Boston, right?

**Megan:** I did undergrad at Harvard, studying English and Chinese.

**Craig:** As one does.

**John:** As one does. And then did you know you were going to move to Los Angeles directly afterwards?

**Megan:** Yeah. Because I knew I wanted to be in the industry.

**John:** Great. So you end up going to the Stark program at USC.

**Megan:** Yeah.

**John:** But did you have a job or an internship before Stark?

**Megan:** So I went straight from college, but while I was in college I had some internships over the summers.

**John:** So talk us through the Peter Stark program. For people who don’t know it’s a two-year graduate producing program. Why pick that rather than a screenwriting program?

**Megan:** Because at that point also I was like oh I’ll be a producer. This is my track. But also, I mean, all the programs at USC are wonderful, but also I think that for what I want to be doing ultimately anyway I’m very thankful that I went with the Stark program because it does teach you skills that you’ll need as a showrunner in addition to just being able to write and all of that.

**John:** So Craig is usually down on film programs overall, film school overall.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sell Craig on film school. What were the things you took out of film school that you think you wouldn’t have gotten if you hadn’t gone through them?

**Megan:** A huge part of it, of course, is the friends you make there. Being able to make a short film, like using your friends as crew, and actually making stuff I think it’s helpful to go to film school. And I do think it’s like a big decision that isn’t for everyone.

But I feel very grateful that I went. One for all the people I met. Two for all the internships I had and the friends I was able to make through that. But also you just learn a lot. And it’s certainly stuff that you can pick up while you’re working, while you’re at an agency or any of that, but just like learning how things fit together in a very straightforward way I think is extremely helpful. And it’s stuff that comes up while you’re an assistant even where you just have answers to things. And it helps add value to what you’re doing.

**John:** Yeah. I will say a good film program, and Stark I think is a very structured film program, it gives you a sense of the entire process. And so a screenwriting program can teach you this is how screenplays work, let’s write our screenplays, but doesn’t give you a sense of how movies are made and sort of from the idea to release date to home video. That sense of it is useful and you can learn that in an academic setting.

**Craig:** I mean, listen, no question that there’s advantages certainly to a program like this. So we’ve spoken about how if you are going to film school in a graduate program, or an undergraduate program at NYU or at USC, I get it. I do. I can see just the value of the people you meet alone probably – I mean, I have to weigh it against what it costs. Like for instance, my friends, you know, I got my friends to work on my movie. I’m like you could have also paid a crew of people and that would have been half the year’s tuition maybe for one year of film school.

But I get that part. I do. I wish that there were fewer programs. I don’t know how else to put it. I honestly wish there was some kind of cap on how many programs there can be because sometimes we’ll get emails from people saying, “Listen, my professor of screenwriting at East Tuscaloosa Bible College says that,” and we’re like do they need a screenwriting program there? I don’t know if they warrant one. Do you know what I mean? Just fewer. I’m all for fewer programs.

**John:** Now, Megan, an interesting thing which is different than any previous assistant is that in addition to school you also were participating in writer’s groups. And so you had regular writing sessions with other folks. So talk us through that. How did you find those people and what did you actually do in your writer’s groups?

**Megan:** I think the biggest thing for me getting stuff written has been writer’s groups. It’s such a game changer. And I was lucky, the first writer group I really participated in was organized through my alumni program for undergrad. And so they put us with a group and it was a semester-long thing where at the beginning you have an idea, at the end you have a script. And just the value of deadlines is huge. But in addition to that just being around people that have smart ideas about your script and bring different things to the table and can help you out.

And just like you learn things from people when you get to meet with them every week and talk about writing.

**John:** So that continued after school. I know that you would have every week, every two weeks – how often were you meeting up with these writer’s groups?

**Megan:** I’m in two writer’s groups. One is weekly, the other is every other week.

**John:** And what are the expectations of what you’re going to do in a weekly group?

**Megan:** For the weekly one, we would just create assignments that we would have to turn by the next week with room to read them. But it would be like, OK, figure out your log line and then your structure, or have a beat sheet by the next week, or write ten pages. And then by the end, stacked in such a way that by the end you had a canvas script that you’re proud of. And then for the other one it’s just like whatever anyone is working on bring it in and we’ll see.

**Craig:** How many people were in these writing groups?

**Megan:** Six or seven.

**Craig:** OK, that’s not too big. Sometimes I think if it gets – if there’s a group rather large it always seems to turn into some weird political mess, you know, because writers not always great in groups.

**John:** So you said the advantages are deadlines. I guess there’s a sense of like social pressure. If you don’t do this thing everyone is going to notice that you didn’t do this thing. And you won’t just feel bad personally, you’ll feel like you’re letting them down. Is that it?

**Megan:** Social pressure, yes, definitely that. But also just the energy of being around people that are excited about it, about what you’re writing but also about what they’re writing. I think that energy especially when you’re an assistant during the day and you are kind of creatively burned out by the evening then to be around people that are very excited to be doing this, I think is a helpful thing.

**John:** Well let’s talk about your day jobs. So, during Stark, it’s a two-year program, but the second year all your classes are at night so you could in theory have a normal job. When did you have internships? When did you start working full-time for a place?

**Megan:** So, during Stark I think I always had full-time internships. Not full-time internships, but I’d stack internships in such a way that I was using all my time, which actually I’m really grateful for that system just because working all day and then heading straight to class and getting home at 11, now that’s just what I have as a baseline. OK, the workday is that many hours long and I think it’s helpful as far as then being trained to do the assistant job and then at night do the writing part of it.

**John:** So when you say stacked internships, so you might have two, or three, or four internships over the course of a week? So on Mondays you’re this, Tuesdays you’re that?

**Megan:** Yeah. Usually two at a time.

**John:** Two at a time. Great. And talk about internships. Classically it was making copies, but no one makes copies anymore. So what does an intern do these days?

**Megan:** It’s a lot of script reading, which of course is very helpful for a writer. And also just understanding like mandates, what people are looking for, what belongs on kind of what network. But for me it was always development internships or programming internships.

**John:** Great. So you’re reading scripts. Are you writing up coverage? What do they have you do?

**Megan:** Yeah. Writing up coverage.

**John:** Were you paid for these internships or were they credit?

**Megan:** 50/50 I think.

**John:** All right. And were you paid enough that they were actually survivable, or was it just sort of token pay?

**Megan:** Whenever I did get a paid internship it felt like holy moly, like this is so exciting.

**John:** One of the classic knocks against internships is you have to be able to afford to take an internship.

**Megan:** I think it’s a huge problem. Yeah.

**Craig:** The whole system stinks. We were talking about this on Twitter, I think Aline McKenna mentioned that the standard – and I was talking to Bo Shim who is my new assistant, and she came out of CAA. And she said early on they just say, “OK, are you OK with the industry standard of,” and I think it was $13.50 an hour or something like that. That’s just unconscionable. I really – in the middle of our argument with the agencies about package fees and all the rest of it, you know, I’d also like to start arguing with them about what they pay assistants. That’s stupid. And it’s mean. It’s cruel. It’s a bit like that old system – which is still in place – where medical students fresh off getting their MD are sent to hospitals to work 19-hour shifts. It’s dumb. It’s hazing.

**John:** It’s dumb and it’s dangerous.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s literally down to hazing. Except in this case it’s hazing plus cheapness. It’s really gross.

**John:** But also it creates a system where the only people who can afford to work for that little money are the people who can sort of afford to not have a job. And so people who actually really need to pay rent, good luck.

**Craig:** Yeah. And not only have these things not kept up with inflation, but housing costs have far outstripped that. So, it’s a mess. And I’m angry thinking about–It’s upsetting to me. And so you know let’s put that on our list of things to yell at the agencies about.

**John:** [laughs] All right. We’ve got a long list here.

**Megan:** Yeah. It’s also across the board, too, right? Agency assistants certainly don’t get paid a lot, but also assistants on shows and PAs and stuff also don’t get paid a lot.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** When was your first real job-job that wasn’t an internship? What was that?

**Megan:** It came from an internship where over a summer I had a job at Fox in comedy, the network, current and development–

**John:** We should clarify that for folks. So current means the shows that are on the air right now. Development is shows they’re trying to figure out how to get on the air, or they’re going to make pilots and they’re going to figure out which ones go. That handoff is always really weird. So you start in development and then if your show keeps going then you’re handed off to current. Is there more prestige in current or development?

**Megan:** So I don’t know because I felt very lucky to be at Fox Network because it was the same person, like when you start with a project in development you get to keep it through current. So, the executives did both, which I think is relatively rare. Most places it’s split up. But I think it’s also just very different skillsets, too.

**Craig:** That was my first internship, too, was current programming at Fox. And I remember that – you know, they had I don’t know three, four, five current programming executives, so they would assign everybody a few shows. And their job was to go to the table readings and to give network notes and so on and so forth. And the least seasoned of them, he was a fairly new hire, I think this was his first executive job, he was given The Simpsons. And I asked my boss who was the head of current programming, I was like just out of curiosity why would you give that guy The Simpsons? And he goes, “Because it’s The Simpsons. We don’t need him to do a good job.”

**John:** It’ll be fine.

**Craig:** It’s gonna be fine. They don’t give a damn what we say anyway. The sort of prestige portion of current programming is when you’re kind of put in charge of a rescue mission I think.

**John:** Yeah. Now, Megan, this is a question I never thought to ask you but when did you start listening to Scriptnotes?

**Megan:** I think I started listening during Stark. I don’t have a sense of what episode I came in on or anything, but as soon as I started listening I backfilled.

**Craig:** I really wanted you to say, “Oh, I’ve never listened to Scriptnotes.”

**John:** I’ve never listened to your show. Even though as I produced it—

**Megan:** I just assume they’re fine and I publish them.

**Craig:** Yeah. The wave form has come through, so I’m good. Yeah.

**John:** How did you find out about this job and what was the process there?

**Megan:** I found out about this job – a friend of mine, thank you friend, forwarded the blurb about the job and was like, “Hey, is this the kind of thing you’re interested in?” Because they knew I wanted to transition to a writing thing. And I was like yes I am. And so then I was lucky enough to be able to go through the process.

**John:** You sent through the email, the resume, we talked and you did a little assignment. And then you were hired into the job. What does a writer’s assistant do? What did you end up doing when you were doing this job in addition to producing Scriptnotes? Like what are the things that you think a good writer’s assistant is doing for a feature writer mostly?

**Megan:** I think it’s so, so different job to job because you’re so self-sufficient, so I feel like the standard part of a writer’s assistant job was much less for this. For me besides doing Scriptnotes the majority of the time was just on tech support for Highland2.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Megan:** Which was delightful.

**John:** Yeah. We are a software company as well, so there’s a lot of tech support that you stepped up and helped us out with that. But you were also writing a lot. And so what were you writing before you came here and what were you writing during here? What were you thinking your career was going to be about? Were you trying to do TV? Were you trying to do features?

You had directed a short that was great, which we linked to very early on in your run as a producer. But what was your plan getting here?

**Megan:** First of all I was just so thrilled to have this job because I mean obviously the best writer’s assistant job you can have. But as far as next steps/game plans, I had just started talking with my manager who is wonderful, Scott Stoops. Mostly I’m focusing on TV, so I had written a couple of TV scripts, a couple anthology specs which is kind of cheating. And then while I was here I was working on a feature, a couple more pilots. But I think the sample I’m using now is one that I actually gave to you–

**John:** Yeah, I read your pilot.

**Megan:** Right at the beginning.

**John:** Back then. And so I wasn’t hiring you as a writer, but I just wanted to see like does this person have the ability to put words together in a meaningful way. Does this person get it at all? So that was the goal behind that.

You very quickly skipped over this like “oh, and a manager.” So talk to us about how you came across this manager. Because it was a transition where it wasn’t quite clear whether you were represented by him or if it was a friendship. So talk about how you met this person and how it develops.

**Megan:** Yeah. I mean, I was so lucky, again, for this one through one of my writer’s groups we would organize every semester like a practice pitch thing where you would practice pitching in like a very fast way your idea to people in the industry. And so my manager Scott was among the people that would come in and listen to our pitches and give us notes on them. And I pitched him my project and he’s like, “Wow that sounds really interesting. Is it written?” And I was like yes it is and it’s printed out and here you go. And I gave it to him and he read it that night. And called me at work at the office. I told him who I worked for at the time. Called me at her number the next morning and was like, “Hey, just want to say I read your script and I loved it. Would you want to work together?”

We really hit it off. At that time I had kind of been talking to a couple people. There’s a strange thing where–

**John:** Was it about the chemistry or did you just trust him? Was it you felt that he was the right person or you weren’t even quite sure at that moment?

**Megan:** Well, no, I really got great vibes from him. And I had been talking to someone else, so I didn’t know when things become official and like that kind of thing.

**John:** Let’s pause here because Craig–

**Craig:** Are we dating? Are we exclusive?

**Megan:** I wanted to say that but I was nervous.

**Craig:** Are we boyfriend/girlfriend, or are we just friends-friends? Or like where are we?

**John:** You and I had this conversation about him because it wasn’t quite clear for a little while there. But, Craig, I want to sort of wind back here because a lot of what Megan is describing feels really familiar. And so it’s that sense of like, oh, I must be really lucky, and she’s not noticing how much hard work she did.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Like how many things she wrote.

**Craig:** Shall I punish her for this? I mean, you’re not lucky. You are no luckier or less lucky than anyone. I think that certainly the way life functions there’s going to be circumstances and things, but I think in general we – you know, once you get past the luck of where you’re born and what kind of family environment you’re born into, when you get to Hollywood there’s just not enough luck. There’s literally not enough luck possible to make you have a career.

So, and by the way, I would also say there’s not enough bad luck possible to keep somebody brilliant down. It’s not going to happen. If you are talented and you are hardworking and you are a person of conscience, an honorable person with a work ethic, then you’re going to make it. Chance favors the prepared mind, and so on and so forth.

So it’s not luck. In fact, if anything I could argue that you are unlucky that somebody that was talented enough as you were to get hired and be put on a show as you are now – it should have happened sooner. You are unlucky. [laughs] So I’m glad that even as unlucky as you were you were able to finally get a job. See, that’s how I do it.

**John:** That’s how you do it. I would say that I’ve actually seen a lot of people in exactly your chair sort of moving up through. And what I recognized was there was a time at which you would have some phone calls where you’d have to step outside to take the phone call about a thing, or you’d say like is it OK if I take this meeting. So, your manager is setting up these meetings and you’re going to just general meetings and see who you hit it off with. And I saw that happening and I saw it happening more frequently and more frequently.

And so I would say to Craig I think she has about three months left before–

**Craig:** Yep. He would.

**John:** Before she’s out the door.

**Craig:** Before she gets really lucky. [laughs]

**John:** So you have a manager. At one point do you have an agent?

**Megan:** Now I’m getting confused with my timeline because it just feels like, you know, god I’ve been working ever so long now. But I think there gets to be a point where it’s getting close to like time to get staffed, time to do this, and that’s when I started meeting with agents. And also my agents are wonderful at Verve. But, yeah, the kind of thing where it’s like, OK, if we’re going to put you up for staffing jobs it’s helpful to have someone else to follow up and to find opportunities and covering agents and stuff like that.

**Craig:** Covering agents for those of you at home are the agents who are assigned a studio or place of purchasing. So they’re like, OK, I cover Warner Bros. I get a call from Warner Bros saying we have an open writing assignment for so and so.

**John:** Yeah. Or on a specific project. But how did you get to Verve? So this is your manager sending your script to people at Verve saying like I represent this young woman, she’s fantastic, you should read her? Is that the process?

**Megan:** Yes. It was for me.

**John:** Great. And so then you go in and you talk to the agents there. You see if you hit it off. But when you say you’re being put up for shows is it just the agency sending it in or is it also your manager who is talking to folks? Is everybody sort of working together to do it?

**Megan:** I think, yeah, everyone is working together. They’re always in communication. My agents will submit me to some shows. The show that I’m working on now I think initially my manager was the one to kind of initiate it, which I’m very excited about.

**John:** So there was a moment about two months ago where I came back after a meeting and you stayed back late and like I could tell you were really, really excited. And so what was your excitement over?

**Megan:** This is when I was called – it was after work on like a Friday evening and I was packing up to go. But I had a call with my team planned and it was like, oh, you have a staffing offer. And I was like oh my gosh. What it was was Scott being like, “Hey Megan, you know, on this thing, you know, they really liked you. I’ve got some bad news.” And I’m like, OK, yes, of course, like I never expected to get this job. Of course. And he’s like, “The bad news is you’re going to have to quit working for John because you got staffed.” And I was like oh my gosh.

**John:** So talk to us about the show that you ultimately ended up signing onto?

**Megan:** So the show that I’m staffing on now is a Marvel show for Disney Plus about Scarlet Witch and Vision.

**Craig:** Ooh, cool.

**Megan:** And it is just my dream job. It has been – it’s too good to be true, where like I’m loving every minute of it but also like very anxious that it’s too good to be true.

**John:** Yeah. So we should have said earlier on that the stuff that you’ve been writing has classically been science fiction or sort of like Twilight Zone anthology-ish. It’s very much in that sort of mode. And so this felt like, wow, that’s a great show for her to be staffed on.

**Megan:** Yeah. It feels like a really good fit. And everyone is so nice to each other. It’s going to be good. I can’t wait for everyone to see it.

**Craig:** You know, I’m telling you these kids growing up now in an age where people must be nice. And I feel like they’ve weeded out the real psychos. I hope they have. You know, back in our day Megan it was just psychos. You’d open your door and it was fields of waving psychos everywhere you looked. Ugh. Now you guys, I love it. I’m happy. I’m glad that it’s that way. It should be that way.

**John:** Yeah. I’m really glad it’s that way. Talk us through that first day being in a writers’ room, because that’s got to be just a completely different experience for a writer who has always been working by herself. So what is it like?

**Megan:** Besides just totally magical, I had met with some friends in advance who had been staffed on shows before to be like, OK, give me all the tips, what should I do, what should I not do. And so I thought I was like, OK, I’m going in and I know vaguely how much to talk and how much to not talk. And I felt all set. And as soon I get into the room I realize oh my gosh, like I don’t know what seat to pick.

I was one of the first ones there, of course, because I was new and nervous. And I was like this is definitely a thing. Like when I was in China I learned much too late that the seats where you sit at a dinner table is like meaningful. And that was very embarrassing to me then. So now here I am in this room being like I just have no idea. So I picked a seat and everyone was nice and it ended up being fine.

**Craig:** Again, I wanted you to be fired on the spot, just like, “Oh, you have to go now. You can’t come back. You picked the wrong seat. You picked the wrong seat.”

**John:** You picked the wrong seat. Are you still sitting in that seat today?

**Megan:** Yes I am.

**Craig:** That’s how it works.

**John:** And so right now you are in the room, you are breaking story, you are figuring out all that stuff. So you’re not writing on a script yet? It’s all secret because it’s Marvel.

**Megan:** Yeah. Everything is very secret. That’s one thing we learn the first day.

**John:** There’s a red dot moving across the wall. I don’t want it to land in the middle of your chest. Well, anyway, Megan, we are so, so happy that you are on a show and a show that you’re very excited to be on. We were so sad to lose you, but fortunately we found Megana who is great.

**Megan:** Yeah.

**John:** And so this is so confusing to everybody. Megan’s replacement is named Megana. And she is fantastic and she’s a friend of yours from before this.

**Megan:** Yeah.

**John:** So she’s been great. So she’s been on the job for a couple weeks. And you’ve trained her how to do all the Scriptnotes-y things.

**Megan:** Yep.

**John:** Let’s move on to our Three Page Challenge. You’ve done a bunch of Three Page Challenges. We have three this week. Our first Three Page Challenge comes from Christopher Cramer. For folks who have never listened to a Three Page Challenge before, here’s the deal. So we put out a call to our listeners saying we will read the first three pages of your script, your screenplay, your teleplay, whatever you want to send us that’s script-like and give you our honest feedback. And so Megana looks through them all and picks things that are going to be interesting for us to talk about. So they’re not necessarily the best things she’s read, but the things that had the most interesting stuff for us to talk about.

So three very brave people, actually four because it’s a writing team for one of these, have sent through their stuff and we are talking about them. These people have volunteered for this, so just reminder to everybody – everyone wanted us to do this. They went in full knowing that we were going to do this.

If you want to read along with us you can follow the links that are in the show notes. We have PDFs that you can download for these things.

All right, our first script is called Three Weeks Gone by Christopher Cramer. It’s morning on a ranch in Wyoming. Jim Young, the owner of the ranch, checks the progress of the farmhands repairing a fence. Through their conversation we learn that Jim’s nephew Mason has been having a hard time adjusting to the farm and that he damaged the back hoe recently.

Mason hasn’t come to help yet but was seen going into the barn. The conversation is interrupted by the sound of a gunshot, presumably Mason scaring off Coyotes. Then Jim goes inside to see his wife Laura. He grabs a bite and asks what Mason was shooting at. Jim leaves to check on his nephew. After a standoff with a coyote outside of the barn, Jim enters the barn to find his nephew dead. And that is where we’re at at the bottom of these three pages.

Megan, we’ll start with you. What was your first impression reading through these pages? What did you get out of this?

**Megan:** I think it does set up a story. Like you understand kind of what we’re doing here. You understand the relationships I think really well right from the beginning. Something I noticed before, through reading through hundreds of them, it used to be that sexual violence was the thing that was in so many of the scripts. And then more recently for all the scripts I’ve been reading suicide is now like in so many of the scripts. And that’s not to say that it’s not used perfectly well here. But something to look out for as you’re writing.

**John:** So this one ends, the reveal with the body at the end. And it may be because we’re asking for three pages that there’s the pressure to get to a big showcase moment at the bottom of three pages. Rarely is it just sort of trickling out at the end of three pages. But it sort of a big moment. Craig, what was your first take on this?

**Craig:** My first take was that I was bored to death. And, look, here’s the thing. Christopher, it’s not that your pieces of story are boring, they’re not. But the way you’ve laid it out you’ve forced me to wait for something that clearly is bad. There’s no surprise here. The second there’s a gunshot that goes off I’m waiting for somebody to be dead.

Everyone is acting like, oh, he must have been shooting a coyote. No he’s not. I know that the – because really here’s the thing, Christopher, do you really think that any of us are sitting there going, hmm, yeah, it’s probably a coyote. No. We know it’s a show or movie, so we know he’s dead. We know. Or someone is dead, right? So you’re just making me wait for this thing that I know is there.

So I was bored. And also I thought, and this is a theme I’m going to bring up in all three of these, I could have written all of this in a half a page as far as I’m concerned. You’re not using this precious space very well. There’s a lot of just yapping. There’s yapping about posts. There’s yapping about where’s my nephew. There’s yapping about him being in the barn. Then he gave me a heart attack. What was he shooting at? I don’t know what he was shooting at. How was he? Yeah, he didn’t eat much. It goes on and on.

And as far as I’m concerned you have a bunch of guys that are working on a post. They’re hitting the post with a hammer. Ping. Ping. Ping. Someone goes where’s Mason? Don’t know. Ping. Ping. Bang. They all look over. Somebody starts running. I’m watching that. Do you know what I mean? It’s just dragging this out. There’s not enough drama to warrant these three pages.

I mean, I have a lot of other small things that I want to mention, but that’s sort of my tough love beginning for you here.

**John:** Yeah. From the moment we hear the gun shot I sort of know that Mason is dead, and so I’m just waiting for everyone else to catch up with me, which is a really bad place to be on page two.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So there’s more here that I did kind of like and I want to highlight some stuff that I thought was possible here, it was possible to sort of enjoy here. So the overall setting of the world is not bad. We’re on a ranch. I like that there’s people working on the fence. I like that there’s a lot more fence to be building. I liked the moment on page – it’s really page two here. His page numbering is off. But Jim says, “Take it easy on him. Your first three weeks here weren’t nothing to write home about either. He’s a good kid.” That’s a pretty good way of giving me a sense of who Mason is.

Now if I had seen some of that and I’d seen Mason walking around, or I’d seen Mason walking with a gun that is scaring off coyotes I would have been fine. In a weird way if you’d set up Mason with a gun before all this had happened, or we just see him walking by in a shot that would have been fine. I wouldn’t have assumed that he’s dead. But because we’re talking about this character and then we’re hearing a gunshot we’re naturally going to assume that Mason shot himself.

**Craig:** That’s what a gunshot means. It means Mason shot himself. There’s a bunch of things that stylistically I think it’s important to take a look at because this is somewhere in the – it’s Wyoming, right? So we’re dealing with ranchers, cow hands, and so on and so forth. Everyone kind of talks a little bit like a robot for a while. And then they start talking not like a robot. First of all “Its” possessive does not have an apostrophe. Please proofread your work.

Jim says, “How is it coming along?” That’s really weird and stilted. How is it coming along? Not how’s it coming along. Things like that are a bit odd. And there’s a bunch of them actually in the action description as well. It is summertime. Even in action description if it’s not dialogue, if it’s taking place on a ranch in Wyoming there should be a slight familiarity there. The contractions are going to help you.

There’s a long conversation with a ranch hand and his name is Ranch Hand. No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** We’re going to hit that on another script today, too.

**Craig:** Exactly. I think also it’s important if you – Jim says, “How’s it coming along?” I’ve already done the contraction for you there, Christopher. And Ranch Hand says, “Oh, you know, one post at a time.” OK, a mild ranch joke I guess. But then the next thing you say is, “Jim cracks a smile. ‘There is no other way to approach such work.” Is this like a computer is explaining the joke to us? It’s very odd.

**John:** Yeah. So here’s a way to do that kind of joke. So, first off Jim is capitalized there for no good reason. But you could say Jim cracks a smile and then in italics go, “How else you gonna do it?” That sense of like you can give the unspoken line that he would be saying if he was going to say the line. But as it is right there it doesn’t help.

But then the idea of he reacts to that and then we reveal how much more of the fence there is to build, that’s fine. That’s great. To the degree it’s a misdirection about what is going to be happening next that can work.

**Craig:** Yes, I agree. Although it seemed like then everyone ignored the reveal. In other words if you’re going to make a reveal it usually comes at the end of something, not at the middle. So this is the moment where suddenly the scene has to stop so that we can do a reveal, and then it picks back up again. That’s not how it’s going to work. I mean, camera-wise if you think this, look, you know us we’re a big defender that writers can use the camera, but if you’re using the camera you got to use it right. So we pull out to see the expanse of the field and just how far along the fence isn’t. It is going to be a long day. Great.

Then the next thing. Ranch hand, “Haven’t seen your nephew yet this morning.” Well he’s a mile away from you now because I’ve pulled back. Like what’s happening? So that comes in the beginning or it comes at the end. But I don’t think you can put it in the middle here.

**John:** Megan, talk to me about geography in here. Did you get lost at all sort of where things were? Like the barn was close – he’d driven up in the truck but he said he’s already seen him go into the barn. And then we also have people walking through doors. Is this a thing that you notice a lot in these Three Page Challenges? I just felt like our confusion of geography is a thing that hits for me.

**Megan:** Yeah. On this one it didn’t bug me. I think I got more attentive to that after the Austin Film Festival Three Page Challenge where you guys talked a lot about geography and now I really look for it. In this one I saw it all pretty close together. But–

**John:** So let’s say that this is somebody in one of your writer’s groups who delivers these pages. What is the feedback you give to Christopher who is a friend or at least a colleague? What would you tell him to focus on?

**Megan:** There are just some things that he stylistically – he does a lot of things that are in all caps that I wonder like why is this in caps and why is this in caps. So *hot day*, *restless huff*, *long day*. And I can totally – it works really well, like sound of a gunshot. Yes, I definitely cannot miss that.

**Craig:** Sure.

**Megan:** But for some other things it just like if there’s too much capitalized or bolded then I don’t know what I should really be paying attention to.

**John:** For sure. So like on page three there’s a coyote is uppercase and bolded. Sure. Great. We’re seeing that it’s a big thing. But if we hit a bunch of those before then we don’t know what to pay attention to.

Let’s talk about the cut to-s on the second page. You didn’t need them. And so you can have cut to-s in your script. You can leave them out. But they didn’t feel like they were providing anything new. Because it was a kind of continuous action and you could get rid of those cut to-s and nothing would have changed.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I’m a big fan of using cut to when you really need to signal to the reader this is a big shift. We’re really going to a new place and time. Otherwise drop them out, because just doing the scene header is going to give you the sense that you’re cutting to a thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Cut to-s are really there to just say look there’s an interesting cut happening, not a cut. Similarly at the end, smash to black, that’s not a thing. I don’t know how you smash to black. You can cut to black. But there’s no smashing.

**John:** No. Can’t smash it. And then the blood on page three, there was just a long time on the blood. All the bottom half of the third page could have been done in two lines.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s movies and television, so we have seen blood 14 billion times by the time we’re 12. So, when you want to show blood I think the last thing you want to do is all caps and bold and underlined – a pool of dark red liquid. It’s blood. I mean, it’s not that, do you know what I mean? Just say he notices something on the ground. He cocks his – I would cut it. Just literally cut the next three lines and just say, “He cocks his head to the side and then looks towards the barn. It’s seeping out from under the large door.” I would say it. Let people – we’re good at this sort of thing. We want to play. We want to be invested. We want to get to fill in a few little blanks. So why hit us over the head with something as mundane as blood?

**John:** Yeah. Agreed. All right, last thoughts for Christopher. I would say the idea of the world is good but I don’t quite know what movie I’m going to be following on page four. Like if I’m reading page four I don’t know what movie I’m in. And so I don’t know if this is going to be a crime thing. If it’s going to be a family dealing with the death of their son, or their nephew. I just don’t know kind of what movie it would be on page four and that’s kind of a problem.

I have a sense of the world but I don’t have a sense of like where this could go next. Fair?

**Craig:** Fair for me. I mean, I don’t know where it’s going. I assume it’s a ranch drama. But it’s too – it’s flabby. These are flabby pages I think.

**John:** Craig, do you want to take Am I a Man Yet?

**Craig:** Sure. Am I a Man Yet by David Koutsouridis.

A day before his 21st birthday David confesses to his budget psychologist Xavier that he is not only a virgin but that he has never been kissed. Xavier suggests David take out Xavier’s younger sister tomorrow night. Xavier says she has definitely broken up with her boyfriend. We then cut to David’s birthday dinner with his overbearing mother who gifts him a framed portrait of himself as a cherubic angel. David storms upstairs where he discovers the phone number of Xavier’s sister and decides to call her. He shows up for the date where Xavier’s sister, Renee, initially assumes that he is her waiter.

So, John and Megan, what did you think of I am a Man Yet by David Koutsouridas?

**John:** This was a good example to me where pages don’t have to be perfect to be enjoyable. And that you can see that person has the ability to do this thing called writing even if not everything is really working right. What was your first take, Megan?

**Megan:** Yeah. I think it has some very funny moments. I think a thing that I got frustrated by was there would be a very funny joke and then the next character would explain the joke which wasn’t necessary because we got the joke.

**John:** Yeah. It’s very joke-joke-jokey. And that can be great. But I had a challenge on page one where I didn’t believe the psychologist for most of page one. And then when we got to the bottom of page one, “A framed certificate print-out on the wall. It’s been poorly made in Word.” Oh, I kind of get now more what this cheap psychologist is, but I didn’t – because I didn’t get that earlier on I couldn’t read his dialogue with any sense that it could possibly be real.

**Craig:** Yeah. I had the same reaction. Actually I would say also to get rid of the Word thing because I don’t know – he’s a therapist and so you can’t do it. It’s illegal to just print something out. So that’s kind of a tone violating thing where the world doesn’t even make sense.

So tone on page one, page two, page three of broad comedies is incredibly important. It’s also where everyone I think early on at least washes up on the shore and their boat smashes apart because it’s tricky. So in this case, actually there’s a really funny bit here and what I would do is just eliminate some other things. I mean, he’s saying, “I’m a 20-year-old kiss virgin.” And Xavier goes, “What?” I would just keep him like a psychiatrist. “A kiss virgin.” “Well, yeah, it means that I have never been kissed. Also I’m a full virgin.” And then the psychiatrist, or psychologist, could do this line which is really funny? “Well, if you haven’t been kissed, I’d hope so. I’d hate to think you hadn’t kissed someone but you fully penetrated them. How do you even initiate something like that?” That’s funny in the context of a guy who is not doing other wacky stuff.

**John:** Yeah. Just that run of dialogue if you took out all of Xavier’s lines between that and let David keep talking, a character who keeps talking can be a lot funnier. So this might be a situation where you do some beats or something just to break up that thread so it’s not so dense to read. But I believe one character talking through all of this. And all those jokes play better if Xavier hasn’t spoken.

**Craig:** 100%. There’s a little bit of a – again, we giveth and we taketh. We are empowering all of you to use the camera, but then we are demanding that you do not make the camera do things cameras can’t do. For instance we are close on baby face David. We pull back to reveal an oddball psychologist, Xavier. That’s not possible. Because unless Xavier is not facing David, if you pull back you’re going to see the back of his head. You know what I mean? That’s not a thing you can do.

You can’t just use pull back as this like reveal. If you want to reveal, reveal.

**John:** Say reveal. You’re allowed to capitalize reveal. That works.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** In many ways I questioned the nature of like his being so babyish. On page three we also get into his bedroom which is “Bed-sheet with dinosaurs, plush toys serving as throw pillows. He grabs them, throws them into a garbage bin.” I didn’t quite believe that character because if the character is at the start of this thing frustrated that he’s never even kissed a girl and he’s 21 years old, but he just got frustrated today? Like why has he not sort of fixed his bed before this? Why does he still have dinosaur sheets?

**Megan:** Yeah. Someone who is frustrated with being read as a younger person would try – would overcorrect for that.

**Craig:** I feel like based on his name that he’s Greek and so he’s writing hopefully something that’s familiar to him with the character of Nancy, his mother. But we have seen this mother many, many times. We’ve seen her actually as a Greek mother. We’ve seen her as a Jewish mother. We’ve seen her as a Chinese mother. We’ve seen her as an Italian mother. This is the most clichéd of clichéd moms.

And I was a little confused because it began with David cheerily sits at the kitchen table. So he’s happy. And then she hands him this thing and he just doesn’t like the gift. At which point I’m like what’s your vibe, dude? If you’re super happy to be having your 21st birthday alone with your mom you can’t really flip out when she gives you a present that is consistent with that. Do you know what I mean? Like if you’re glum, if you’re depressed, if this whole thing is just like a total death of joy moment and then she makes it worse by handing you this gift I understand. But I’m like you, I’m confused. How aware is he that he’s like a child? Has he just become aware? That was a little tricky.

That said, I do agree with your initial point which is that these do feel like there’s promise there with polish and time and thought. There’s an intelligence behind this. There is some legitimately funny things that are happening. And so it just needs the usual thing that I would say to everybody that is starting to write comedy: logic, logic, logic, tone.

**John:** Absolutely. So the logic I would really stress is that you can have this scene with David and Nancy, with the mom and David. I don’t think it can be the first time that we’re meeting them because it doesn’t give me enough information to process how these people could possibly fit together. So I need a different thing that even if you’re not telling me everything I can believe it can fit into this universe and this world. Because I didn’t buy this first time you’re really starting at a deficit when it comes to later things.

But what Craig has pointed, like I see moments of really promising writing here. Page three, so he’s stormed off. Then David suddenly reenters, maintaining his anger, as he quickly finishes the last bit of his cake. He storms off again. That little tag on things, we’ve seen that kind of thing before but it worked in this scene and it felt like the right thing. It told us something about David and his impetuousness. And if I had a scene that set up how codependent he is with his mother or sort of like what their relationship is it could have even landed better.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** One last typo, page one, first word that isn’t INT is psychologist but it’s misspelled.

**Craig:** I mean, guys–

**John:** Got to proofread.

**Craig:** I mean, honestly. They have machines that do it for you now.

**John:** Yeah. It would be underlined with a little squiggly. So just look for the squigglies here.

**Craig:** Remarkable.

**John:** Our third Three Page Challenge is Chow by Carrie Wong and Herman Ming. Helen and Michael Chow, a Chinese-American couple in their 50s, shop for custom cut tablecloths at Home Depot. Helen questions Michael’s claim that the cheaper tablecloth has the same quality as the more expensive tablecloth. He convinces her that they’re the same and they check out.

A Home Depot employee tells them not to buy the cheaper tablecloth and that they are in fact not the same quality. The employee had bought the tablecloth herself and it quickly ripped.

We then cut to their 20-year-old son’s bedroom where their son Jimmy lies sleeping. And that’s as much as we know at the bottom of page three.

I’m going to start with a question specifically for Megan McDonnell. What typeface is used in these three pages?

**Megan:** I’m going to say Courier Prime.

**John:** It is in fact Courier Prime. You can tell by the lower case Ys.

**Craig:** Kissing up.

**John:** She doesn’t have to anymore. She doesn’t work here.

**Megan:** Right.

**John:** But this is a product I make.

**Craig:** Oh no, she’s not. Carrie and Herman are kissing up.

**John:** Oh yes.

**Megan:** And it worked.

**John:** It worked. It worked. They got picked. Just yesterday I was explaining to Megana how to tell which is Courier Prime and which one is not. So, yeah, now she knows.

**Craig:** Now she knows.

**Megan:** It’s so beautiful. If you guys haven’t seen it, read these pages.

**John:** Beyond the beautiful font what was your first impression, Megan McDonnell?

**Megan:** I really liked the dynamics in this. I really liked the characters. I think the way that they’re kind of looks are juxtaposed is really nice. I do think that the employee takes up such a huge percentage of the talking that maybe isn’t necessary, maybe slows the pace down a little bit.

**John:** The employee is just set up as “A moment later, a Home Depot EMPLOYEE (early 20s) approaches them.” But we don’t get a gender on the employee and later on it kind of becomes important because apparently she says, “When me and my boyfriend moved in together, he, like, bought the same…” And so not having any more information about that employee made it tough because that employee speaking probably has the most lines in these three pages and is just employee.

**Craig:** Yes. Employee. [laughs] This was another one where I thought I could have probably done this in one page. It just goes on. And I don’t know why. There’s nothing interesting happening here. The value is that the wife, Helen, is suspicious that Michael is pushing her towards a cheaper option. And it turns out he is. This is not high stakes, nor is it particularly interesting, nor is it something I haven’t seen before a billion times. This is almost the province of commercials. You know, dumb husband. And I’m fine with dumb husband, but three pages of it?

And the employee is just rambling. So sometimes we’ll call this shaggy dog. It’s rambling, rambling, rambling. The story that she’s telling is nowhere near interesting enough to warrant all this time. This story would have to go to some amazingly f-ed up placed where literally Helen and Michael are just staring with dropped jaws to justify the amount of time for which it goes on. This is the beginning of your movie. And what you’re telling me is that this movie is going to be sort of mumblecore like low-stakes chitchat. And I don’t like that.

And I think honestly that Carrie and Herman have done themselves a disservice because I think they’re good writers actually. The writing itself in and around these things is executed nicely. It’s just it has not been compressed. It has not been shaped. There’s not a lot of interesting things going on. People just arrive slowly. There’s no interesting ins and outs. There are two zoom outs which we’ll get into in a second. But this was sort of my trouble with this, like the first pages we went through, it felt like a prodigal use of what is incredibly precious real estate.

**John:** Some things I admired about these pages. We always talk about hair and makeup and really describing your characters. And so you look at the descriptions of Michael Chow and Helen Chow, they’re really good, and I can picture them in my head. And to skip out on that for the employee is sort of one of the big problems here. But to me this kind of felt like you have this writing team who has an idea for these two characters and just sort of gets them talking, or puts them in a situation and watches what they do. And this would be great practice for how to use these characters or practice for how these characters interact. But I don’t think it’s a great first scene in a movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s not setting them up on a big adventure. I’m more of a fan of the mumblecore, like stuff happens and people just talking and it’s loose, and that can work really well. But the things that work best it feels really loose but it’s actually getting to a point.

**Craig:** Exactly. I mean, when it’s done well people say, well, it’s mumblecore, but when it’s done well that’s just kind of the affect of the performance. But what’s happening is fascinating. So you have two people mumbling-coring at each other while somebody is watching and doing something else. The frames are interesting. The storytelling is good.

You know, you’re not going to get the movie made if it’s just boring talk. And this kind of is in the boring talk zone.

Small thing, in three – I think three different places, yes, bowl-shaped, gold-rimmed, mild-mannered, these things take hyphens. If you don’t put the hyphen in it’s just weird to read.

**John:** Yeah. You want to do this. Did both of you watch Master of None? Did you see the series Master of None?

**Craig:** Not completely but a number of episodes.

**John:** There’s an episode that I’m pretty sure Alan Yang directed where it’s this deaf couple in a store trying to buy something and it’s basically just them trying to have – the whole segment was just them trying to have this negotiation about what they’re going to buy. And it reminded me of this. But it’s the shaped version of this where you see their entire relationship is sort of summarized by their decision of what they’re going to buy here.

And I kind of feel like our writing team here could get there with the husband and wife because there’s something really interesting there that’s underneath this, but the employee is just dominating the whole thing. To see sort of what the manipulations are that they play with each other could be great.

**Craig:** Yeah. It just doesn’t – there’s no twists, there’s no turns. You know, there are versions of this where it seems like a normal thing and she’s like, oh yeah, no, because it rips. And then Helen just starts crying because this is the straw that broke the camel’s back and then the employee is like, “Oh, but it’s not the worth tablecloth.”

There’s all sorts of things you can do to justify these things, but you can’t do none of them. That’s the one that you’re not allowed to do.

**Megan:** I’m also curious about the way that this is opened, which is, “DARKNESS, A SERIES OF THIN GREY STREAKS, We SLOWLY ZOOM OUT to reveal…The bowl shaped hair of MICHAEL CHOW.” And I think it’s really interesting, an interesting visual, and I’m wondering are we supposed to be very curious about what it is. Are we going to come back to this? Because it is a pretty bold decision to start your film on something we don’t know what it is right away.

**John:** It reminds me of the start of Roma where you just see these squares and there’s water and eventually there’s mopping and eventually you sort of get to a thing. It can totally work. And maybe that really is the tone of what this is going for. Maybe we think it’s a mumblecore comedy but maybe it really is Roma and we’re supposed to be appreciating all this stuff around it.

If that is the case I think we would need to see our universe a little bit more and get a better sense that we are living in this space with these people and that we’re doing the slow pans through things, we’re really following them all the way up to the counter. And maybe it’s Roma. Maybe we’re missing that.

**Craig:** I don’t think it is. And if it is, this is not the way to start it.

**John:** The employee is written as a comedy.

**Craig:** The employee is written as a comedy. Let’s talk briefly about the difference between zoom and pull out or push in or those moves. So, typically in modern movies we don’t use zooms ever. A zoom is when the lens is doing the moving, not the camera itself. So as you’re zoomed in you’re looking at a small thing and as you zoom out the image essentially is like zooming out like on Google Maps, right. Whereas when you’re moving the camera itself, pushing in or pulling out, that’s more of a sense of you get parallax and motion and all the rest of it. And generally speaking zooms are bit ‘70s and a bit cheesy. They can occasionally be cool.

But in this case I’m guessing we don’t want to zoom out here, because if we did it would just be like one of those weird science movies where it’s like, look, you know, a tiny bug, and now the city, and the planet, and the galaxy. I don’t know.

Look, if you know the difference between zoom, and dollying in and dollying out, then cool, I apologize. But it’s important for people to know that there is a difference. I also – I have a question about at the end of this we arrive at the son. I assume this is their son because he’s got the same last name. Chinese-American, and then in parenthesis ABC, which I had to look up. It means American-born Chinese. The deal with this one is ECU, so now we’re extreme close-up on a yellow earplug. We slowly zoom out, again, so it’s the same gag. Is this on purpose? To reveal – and then the undersized ear of Jimmy Chow. I have no idea what that means.

What’s an undersized ear? I mean, like deformed?

**John:** Yeah. We don’t’ know if it means that he’s just a person with small ears or if there’s something really weird that’s going to actually be a factor. I agree. Undersized draws your attention without rewarding you for drawing your attention to that.

**Craig:** Perfect way of describing that. Yes.

**John:** Let’s talk about the ABC, American-born Chinese. I knew that term but you didn’t know that term. I think a safer bet for this script going out the first time is in that parentheses you say American-born Chinese, ABC, or ABC, American-born Chinese. And then once you’ve defined it you can use ABC after anyone else’s description if it’s helpful to you. Because in the nature of this project there could be lots of Chinese people with Chinese last names and it might be important to distinguish who was born in China versus who is born in the US.

**Craig:** Correct. Correct. Yeah.

**John:** Cool. All right. So those are our three samples, so our three Three Page Challenges. Thank you to all of our writers who sent them in. And to everyone who didn’t get picked, you’re still in the queue so we may get back to them.

Now, there was a question that came up on Twitter today asking, “Hey, last time you said that you wanted to have a bunch of female entries to the Three Page Challenge,” because historically those numbers have been low. Megan, you actually counted at one point and it wasn’t great. It certainly wasn’t 50/50. And so we want everyone to send in their three pages, but we’d really love to pick more women for these because the percentages are not fantastic.

If you have three pages you want us to take a look at you go to johnaugust.com/threepage. And there’s a button there. You click the button saying it’s OK for us to talk about your thing. You attach your script and it goes into a queue and we will take a look at everything that gets sent in.

**Craig:** Neat.

**John:** Neat. It’s come time for our One Cool Things. Megan, have you ever done a One Cool Thing on the show?

**Megan:** No.

**John:** You get to start. What’s your One Cool Thing?

**Megan:** This is thrilling. My One Cool Thing, I saw my friend Hunter’s setup. I love a second monitor when I’m working and his setup had the second monitor but it was like portrait, oriented portrait, which I had never seen before. This might be very obvious to everyone else. But I’ve got to say I set it up myself and Highland2 looks beautiful on a vertically-oriented monitor.

**John:** Nice! I love that you’re still selling our software.

**Craig:** Always be promoting.

**Megan:** Everywhere I go. People, yeah.

**John:** All right. So you write in Highland2, but you’re saying it works well done vertically.

**Megan:** Yeah. And you just can see so much more of your script and I think it’s really helpful for me.

**John:** Great. Fantastic. Craig, what’s your One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is this tiny, little, dorky novelty item, but I saw it in my producer Jacqueline Lesco’s car. And I was like, ooh, what do you got there. And she showed it to me. It’s a charger. It’s a phone charger. That’s it. It’s a phone charger except – this is so dumb – but it lights up. So it’s got like these LED swirlies going around the cable and when you plug it in it lights up. And you’re like, OK, cool. But then when it’s charging the lights move.

**John:** Oh my god. [laughs]

**Craig:** It delights the child in me. It really does. It’s like you’re watching electricity flowing into your phone. It’s just delightful. I just stare at it. It’s hypnotizing.

**John:** Megan and I are going to watch the little video that shows what it looks like as it’s doing and, yeah, it does. It sort of snakes around.

**Craig:** Yeah. Look at that.

**John:** It’s like Vegas in your car.

**Craig:** Yeah. Vegas in your car. It’s the El-Aurora Lightning, it’s a USB cable. 360 Degree Light Up Visible Flowing, Glowing LED iPhone charger cable. I suspect that Amy August would love this.

**John:** OK, so are you using this in your car or in your house?

**Craig:** In my house.

**John:** All right. I guess it would be distracting in your car possibly. You could line your windshield with it and so everyone would know that you’re charging your phone and that you have this thing.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** Now, Craig, I’m noticing that it has 286 customer reviews but they’re three stars. That’s not a very high – but it doesn’t matter?

**Craig:** Well, you know, some people can’t be pleased. I mean, you just like – you know, they just – apparently for a lot of people it didn’t work. But you know what?

**John:** You know what? It set your house on fire. But it looks so cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. Somebody in their review, “Anchorman: 60% of the time it works every time.” [laughs]

**John:** Ah-ha. Good stuff. My One Cool Thing is a thing that probably everyone has talked to you about already. It is Russian Doll, the show on Netflix. I thought it was just fantastic. Megan you said you watched it all in one sitting?

**Megan:** Loved it. Yeah. One sitting.

**John:** Loved it. Oh my god, nothing could be a more Megan-y kind of show because it’s a puzzle box show. It’s like a cross between Lost and Girls. I don’t know, but it’s just so great. Craig, did you watch it?

**Craig:** I have it queued up. I’m going to watch it this weekend because I’m doing a little traveling this weekend. And I’m very excited for it. And I do think, you know, Natasha Lyonne should come on the show. I can’t believe we haven’t had her. How have we not had her on yet?

**John:** Well we crossed paths with her because remember when we did our Slate Culture Gabfest crossover she was the guest after us. But we’ve never had her on the show.

**Craig:** She was so cool. I remember when we were walking off the stage from that, because we went on and then she came on, and when we were walking off the stage she is like walking on the stage and she just gives me the fist bump. It’s just like what a cool person. Just look boop, my turn.

**John:** Boop.

**Craig:** Yeah, we should have her on. It’s actually fascinating watching the evolution and kind of progression of Natasha Lyonne over time because she’s been doing this since she was a kid. And I’m always fascinated by those people because I feel like I’ve kind of been weirdly growing up with them myself. It’s like knowing Jason Bateman is a fascinating thing because he doesn’t know it but I first met him when we were both 10. Do you know what I mean? And just like watching this thing happen is really cool.

And she’s just doing some really, really interesting work right now. Everybody loves the show. I know I’m going to love it, too. I can just tell. So I’m very excited.

**John:** Yeah. So it was created by her, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland, a great director who directed a lot of it, but Natasha Lyonne directed it as well. It’s just really well done. It’s one of those rare cases where everyone was hyping it up a lot and then you watch and it’s like, oh yeah, it’s really good. It didn’t actually diminish from everyone’s hyping it up. So, now that I’ve set the bar way too high–

**Craig:** No, no. I will.

**John:** Enjoy Russian Doll.

**Craig:** I’ll love it.

**John:** You’ll love it. Cool. That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Launch and Jim Bond. It’s called The Stuart Special in honor of our original producer, Stuart Friedel. Our producers have done pretty well. Godwin Jabangwe set up a show at Netflix.

**Megan:** So exciting.

**Craig:** I know. How about that?

**John:** If you have an outro of your own you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions, but for short questions on Twitter I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Megan, are you doing Twitter?

**Megan:** No.

**John:** No, Megan is not on Twitter. Don’t try to tweet at her. But you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a comment.

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

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. Craig, just today I realized only 10 more episodes and we hit the big 400.

**Craig:** I know!

**John:** 400.

**Craig:** It’s almost too much.

**Megan:** Is it going to be a live show?

**Craig:** Oh, it should be. Well…

**John:** Actually I’m thinking ahead and it could end up being a live show.

**Craig:** It could be. Because we’ve got a little something planned. And I will give you a little teaser, not to give away too much, but I recently recorded something that is associated with Chernobyl and I did it with somebody who is a prominent radio person. And the people who were producing it were, you know, I think they were concerned somehow that, I don’t know, that we needed help or something. And I was like, look, he’s a pretty big radio guy. And then I realized – and I’ve done almost 400 podcasts. I think I’m also pretty good at this by now. I get it. I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m doing.

**John:** You do. Craig, it’s always lovely talking to you, but especially nice to talk to Megan McDonnell again. We miss you but we’re so happy that you’re doing so well. And continued success on everything.

**Craig:** Welcome back and good luck.

**Megan:** Thank you so much for having me on.

**Craig:** It was a pleasure.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Bones Decision](https://deadline.com/2019/02/bones-award-profits-lawsuit-emily-deschanel-david-boreanaz-fox-appeal-1202564758/)
* [The Peter Stark Program](https://cinema.usc.edu/producing/)
* Three Pages by [Christopher Cramer](https://johnaugust.com/Assets/3WGCramer.pdf)
* Three Pages by [David Koutsouridis](https://johnaugust.com/Assets/Am-I-a-Man-Yet-3-page.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Carrie Wong and Herman Ming](https://johnaugust.com/Assets/Chow-Three-Pages.pdf)
* [Megan’s Desk Setup](https://johnaugust.com/Assets/Vertical_Monitor.png)
* [Light Up Phone Charger](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075WSSFV8/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
* [Russian doll](https://www.netflix.com/title/80211627) starring Natasha Lyonne
* Submit to the Three Page Challenge [here](https://johnaugust.com/threepage)
* Submit to the Pitch Session [here](https://johnaugust.com/pitch)
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [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)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) The Stuart Special by James Llonch & Jim Bond ([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_390_Getting_Staffed.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-future-of-the-industry).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 389 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we will be discussing nothing less than the future of the film and television industry.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** With special guests to talk about the ongoing agency negotiations and a new initiative to bring the special magic of Sundance to more filmmakers around the globe. But first, Craig, I have to ask why have you destroyed my Twitter timeline?

**Craig:** It’s fun? Oh no, I know the answer to this. Because it’s there.

**John:** Argh. So here is what happened this last week is somebody asked like a screenwriting formatting question, or basically like was it a “we see” kind of question, or directing from the page, and tagged both me and Craig into this question. And then for the next week my entire mentions is nothing but this question and people responding to this question.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, we were joined by other writers like Rian Johnson and Chris McQuarrie and James Mangold and Beth Schacter and so everybody brought all of their people along. So there was a lot of interest in it. But you know, John, you can just say ignore conversation.

**John:** I can ignore the conversation. I should just ignore the conversation. I was curious at some points what people would say, but mostly I felt like we had talked about it so much on the air. That’s my frustration. I wanted to point people to the podcast and say like, no, no, we really have gone through this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But for people who haven’t been listening to the podcast, and we could just sort of dispense with this in a little five-minute chunk, let’s talk through some of what came up in that thread and why it’s nonsense and how to move on past it.

So I think the initial question was the sense that are rules about what a screenwriter can or can’t put on the page and that it crosses some sort of line at which it is directing from the page. So classically things like, oh, you shouldn’t put camera angles there. You shouldn’t say “we see.” We shouldn’t do any of that stuff that is a director’s job rather than a writer’s job.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And the answer to that Craig is what?

**Craig:** That that’s the stupidest thing in history. Because for whatever reason, and I don’t know why they do this, a lot of these screenwriting gurus or sometimes sadly screenwriting professors will push this narrative that screenwriting follows the same sort of union divisions as like work on a set where an electrician can’t move equipment and a grip can’t plug something in. That’s not at all the case. There’s this feeling that somehow if we “direct” on the page we will be offending a director. No we’re not. And if they are offended, screw them.

Our job is to create a movie in your mind. That means of course we’re directing on the page. In fact, I would argue that’s what screenwriting is. It’s literally directing a movie or a television show on the page. So, this comes up all the time. Now, of course, of course, two things we’ll get back all the time. One is that a lot of amateurs will overuse things like stage directions, camera directions, and so on. Of course. You can do anything poorly. They also write dialogue very poorly, but we’re not saying you shouldn’t write dialogue.

Secondly, people will say, “Well OK, that’s true for you guys because you’re established.” Let me ask you something, John. Before you were established did you ever write “we see” or “close on?”

**John:** I 100% did. It does not matter sort of where you are at in the industry. You don’t cross a threshold in which like suddenly you can do anything on the page, where there’s a certain set of rules for what’s on the page before a certain point. And as I was scrolling through these things and not trying to engage with the conversation, I would see people saying like, “But you don’t understand, it’s harder for a young writer.”

**Craig:** Ugh.

**John:** “Or for a writer of color or for other people.” That can all be true. That can all be true that it’s hard for people in different circumstances to do stuff, but that does not change the words on the page or sort of the rules for the words on the page and the over-insistence on a set of rules that someone made up at some point. So that thing your screenwriting professor taught you about you can’t do that thing, always question it.

**Craig:** Always. Always. And whatever makes your circumstances uniquely difficult, the one thing I can assure you is that it’s not that you’re not able to write “we see” or “push down” or “tilt up” or “pan right.” None of that is a problem for you. We did hear quite a few people say that their professor at – or professors at Chapman, I guess it’s the dodge school, just sort of laid out this orthodox you cannot write any of these things and if you do you will fail.

So, I want to go there. [laughs] And I just want to say like, what, you can’t tell them – that’s malpractice.

**John:** It’s silly. So, here’s the best counter example I can offer to folks is that one of the best things that’s happened in the last 10 years is that all of the Academy nominated scripts are available online. You can find a PDF of every screenplay for pretty much every movie that’s been nominated for an award.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**John:** So read these scripts. Read these scripts and you will see that they are full of things that professors might call directing from the page. And then the next person will rush up and say like, “Oh, but it was a writer-director so it’s OK for that writer-director.” It’s not any different. There is not one standard set of rules for how it all has to work. You can do stuff in the scene description that creates the experience of watching the movie. That’s all you’re trying to do. And if to do that you end up saying “we see/we hear,” if you end up invoking a sense of angles or like shots, that’s fine. That’s good.

There’s clunky ways to do things and so we are totally not arguing for clunkiness. We are arguing for the best way you have to express what it is that would feel like to be in that theater experiencing this movie.

**Craig:** I wonder why film schools that are so invested in pushing the auteur theory are also apparently invested in convincing us that directors should be feared even when we’re writing on the page. Huh? Huh? Hmm. Pfft.

**John:** Pfft.

**Craig:** Only in academia could something called the “auteur theory” not refer to the actual person authoring a movie. Oh my god. Don’t even get me going.

**John:** Yeah. Now, let’s talk about sort of what things are useful to learn as you’re reading through these screenplays. Because hopefully you are taking advantage of this wonderful time we live in that you can just read all these screenplays. It used to be so difficult when Craig and I were starting. You would trade scripts will people and you would actually have to physically copy scripts and stuff. Now it’s so easy. So you have all of these resources.

I would take a look at how are they conveying the information that they want the reader to get about what the movie will feel like. How are they describing how characters are interacting with their space? How are screenwriters describing what you will be seeing and what you will be hearing in that scene? Look for how they’re doing that and you’ll find there’s different techniques. And different writers will have different techniques. It’s OK to use multiple techniques. It’s OK to use whatever works best for you. A voice is partly deciding what the things are that you’re going to focus on.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**John:** That’s great. So find what works for you. Experiment. But don’t just be beholden on someone’s rules that you cannot do X, Y, or Z. Quentin Tarantino, you know, labels the kinds of cameras and angles he’s using. He really wants that very specific classic cinematic feel on things. So he and James Cameron will both reference cameras and specific lenses at times. Great. If that works for them, if it gives you a sense of what it feels like more power to them. That doesn’t mean that you need to do that, that you have to do that, or you can’t do it. It just means that is a way of conveying what something is going to feel like.

**Craig:** Amen brother.

**John:** All right. So this is going to be an unusual episode for us because generally when Craig and I are recording an episode we are on Skype together and it’s all kind of happening largely in real time. This episode is going to be cut together from different conversations that we’ve had over a couple of different days. And so when we come back from this break we are going to be sitting and talking with Chris Keyser about the agency negotiations.

And we’re back. Chris Keyser is a writer and showrunner whose credits include Party of Five, Tyrant, and The Last Tycoon. He’s also a two-time former WGA president and frequently leads the MBA negotiating committee along with David Shore and Meredith Stiehm he’s leading the negotiating committee for the ongoing talks with the agencies. Welcome back, Chris.

**Chris Keyser:** Thanks John.

**John:** It’s nice to have you here. So I think last time you were sitting talking with us was about an MBA negotiation a couple years back.

**Chris:** I only show up for–

**John:** Ah, he’s here to talk through stuff. But let’s recap what’s happened so far with the agency stuff because it’s been a while. So the guild met with members about the issues regarding agencies as we came out of the last MBA negotiation. So you led the last MBA negotiation. What were those conversations? You were just sitting down talking with members about where they felt the industry was at?

**Chris:** Yeah. We talked about a bunch of different things and the pressures on writers and one of the conversations was about the way in which the relationship between writers and agents might be affecting the downward pressure on writer’s pay for example in television and features. Or the inability of feature writers to actually solve some of the pernicious problems.

**John:** So, every three years we have to negotiate with the studios and that’s called the MBA, but what I wasn’t aware of until I joined the board is that there’s also an agreement with the agencies called the AMBA. And we negotiate that once every–?

**Chris:** Well, it’s been 42 years I think.

**Craig:** That’s a normal cycle. Yeah.

**Chris:** I think it’s like six times, or seven times Brigadoon.

**John:** Yes. So it’s a crazy document. It comes in this yellow folder. And it is not – you try to read it and it doesn’t make much sense because it’s describing a time that is so different from what we’re in right now.

**Chris:** Right. By the way, can I back up for a second and just explain? You know, the guild is the legal representative of writers. The guild in fact is the only organization that has the legal authority to negotiate for writers. But because writing is not the same thing as some other professions because writer’s salaries vary based upon their experience and their success, the guild has allowed individual contracts to be negotiated by agents. In order so that we franchise those agencies. And that franchise agreement, the AMBA, which they have to sign on to, permits them to negotiate for individual members. Similar thing happens in the sports world and a few other places.

**John:** Yeah. The most analogous situation is if you’re a professional football player or professional NBA player you have a union, but you also have an agent who is negotiating for you above those minimums.

**Chris:** Right. So we negotiate for minimums. We negotiate for pension and health and certain working conditions. The things that unions usually do. And the agents are changed with negotiating over scale pay for our members.

**John:** So in your conversations with members you’re saying some of them felt like the agencies weren’t doing their jobs in negotiating those above scale things?

**Chris:** Exactly. Exactly.

**John:** So in order to change this agreement, this franchise agreement the AMBA, we had to give a one-year notice. Part of the actual existing agreement was that you had to give a one-year notice. And so we had these member meetings and then we gave notice to say that we would like to renegotiate this agreement. And then nothing publicly happened for a very long time. So–

**Chris:** Well there were member outreach meetings through last year. David Goodman, the president of the Guild.

**John:** But that was before we signed–

**Chris:** In and around.

**John:** Yeah. Around that time. And then we sort of went quiet because there was kind of nothing to do publicly because you didn’t want to have a protracted conversation when there was not actually a thing you could solve or fix at the moment.

**Chris:** Right. And we were spending that time, the guild was spending it’s time – you know because you were on the board – spending your time thinking about what the new AMBA should look like, what specific requests we would have at the agency to sign onto. I guess requests is the wrong word.

**John:** What we were looking for. What the actual outcome was that we wanted. And so then we started the member meetings and that’s been two or three months. We talked with the captains. We talked with screenwriters. We had this big meeting at the Sheraton Universal a couple of weeks ago with like a thousand people.

**Chris:** 1,500 writers have shown up. Maybe more at this point. It’s a fair percentage of the guild.

**John:** And the public goal was to really talk with every member about sort of what was going on.

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** And so then at those big meetings and smaller meetings we had – David Goodman would read his speech. That speech is probably out now for everyone to see or to read. And there’s more details specifically about what we’re asking the agencies to sign onto, sort of what we would like the agreement to look like. Plus there should be some FAQs out answering a lot of the questions that you and I get. So we end up getting emailed a lot of questions and so that’s been really useful because we can talk to members about sort of what their concerns were, but now there’s FAQs that can really answer a lot of that stuff.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And I think that’s good language that you’re saying what it is that we’re asking them to agree to, because in a very real way this is the opposite of how things go with our negotiations with the AMPTP. In those negotiations we’re asking a concern to give us stuff. And in this negotiation, whether they know it or not – and I’m not sure they have yet come around to absorb this – the agencies are asking us for something. We’re not asking them for anything. They’re asking us. They’re asking us to be allowed to represent writers. So, we’re kind of in charge. Well, in charge, I think anybody that’s in the giving side of a negotiation has a little bit of a built-in upper hand.

**Chris:** That’s right. I mean, in this case we get to say what’s in that AMBA. And if they don’t sign on to it, they are not permitted to represent members of the guild.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** Whether we can’t – what we decide to ask them to sign onto depends upon what the membership votes to, you know.

**John:** So there can likely be a vote sometime at the end of March about stuff, but we’re not there yet.

**Chris:** We should get back into that. We should be clear about what that means, what the vote is going to be about. But that probably takes a little bit more conversation about how we get to the point of that vote.

**John:** So at some point there could be a vote from the membership asking whether we want to sort of impose this agreement. Basically–

**Chris:** Let me put it this way. So right now we’re in the middle of negotiating with the ATA, which is the organization that represents talent agencies. A number of those meetings have taken place already and they will continue to take place between now and the April 6 expiration of the AMBA.

In those negotiations we’re trying to hash out exactly what the terms of the AMBA will be. If those negotiations do not provide us with a fruitful resolution it’s within the guild’s right to impose a code of conduct, much like the code of conduct that professional sports unions have imposed on agents there. And David Goodman for example mentions that all CAA agents who are part of their sports management group they all sign on to the player’s association code of conduct.

The vote by the membership at the end of March will be to approve the code of conduct, say we should adopt this code of conduct onto which the agencies must attach their signatures.

**John:** So what is the single issue that is at the heart of this discussion/negotiation?

**Chris:** The heart of the conversation is about conflict of interest. The idea that the agency practices have ceased to align their economic interests clearly and solely with the economic self-interests of the writers whom they represent. And that’s a fundamental problem.

**Craig:** And so for people, I think a lot of people probably have a general sense of how this is supposed to work. Agents represent writers. Agents get writers work. They are allowed to do that by the very power that this AMBA grants them. And then whatever the writer earns, the gross, the agent takes 10% of it. Seems very simple. And in fact they used be known as ten-percenters.

And so the more the writer makes the more the agent makes. But as it turns out that simple reality isn’t really the reality at all.

**Chris:** No, in television in fact essentially the standard method of payment now for agencies is to take what they call a packaging fee. And that packaging fee is tied both to the license fee of the show and ultimately the profits the show produces. So the agency makes – and we talk about this and if you read or have seen David Goodman’s speech he’s pretty explicit about this – 3, 3, and 10 is the standard formula. They make approximately three percent of the upfront license fee for a show, although that’s negotiable, somewhere usually between $30,000 and $100,000 an episode. There’s three percent of the backend that’s differed that is not often collected by them. And then 10% of the adjusted gross.

**Craig:** And that’s great information, but again just to sort of simplify it for people what we’re talking about with these packaging fees is instead of the agents taking 10% of what we earn as writers what they do is they don’t take any commission from us. Which, ooh, great, we get to keep that 10%. Except, what they are getting in return is more than that from the studios that are producing the television shows.

**Chris:** That’s right. And in fact they make deals specifically with the studios and in our budgets we see the results of studios that are made independently between the agencies and the studios, often without the writer knowing about it, that identifies what the agency is going to get. And what they get is not tied to how well we do but how much money is spent on the show on the one hand and how much the show makes on the other.

**Craig:** Correct. Essentially in this arrangement rather than the agency being concerned, financially at least, with the amount of money their client is earning, what they are concerned with is the amount of money the show is earning, meaning the amount of money the studio is earning. So suddenly their interest is in aligned with the studio’s performance, not their own client’s.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**John:** Now, I want to separate out two terms that I think get conflated a lot and we really need to think about them as separate complete concepts. So there’s packaging which is a verb. And what packaging really means is that you have a writer or a script. You have a piece of talent like an actor. You have a director. And sometimes agencies or management companies will put these elements together and that will be a package. And through this packaging process they create value because they can get more for that client, they can get more for the writer, they can get more for the director because they have a full thing together. They have a script, they have a director, they have an actor. They can sort of sell that on the town and get good money for everybody.

That kind of packaging is good. That kind of packaging can help a writer get his or her script out there in the world. It’s attaching that piece of talent. It’s attaching that director. That kind of packaging we don’t really have a big issue with. The problem is the noun of packaging fees. Packaging fees is that 3-3-10, or is that other cut that the agent is taking that is not related to a person’s commission. It’s not that 10%. It’s a special fee that they’re getting for the work that they’ve done to put this thing together which in some cases is really kind of no work at all.

**Chris:** Yeah. Maybe no work at all. And even if it’s a good deal work, the argument you would make or certainly used to be made is every person you add to that package, every attachment you make of talent you get 10% of that individual salary. So you have a writer, and a director, and an actor, maybe a couple of actors on a show. You get 10% of all of their salaries and the total of that is how much you ought to make for a show.

Here’s a thing that gets complicated for us because one of the arguments that the agencies are making back to us and are almost certainly making to their clients individually which is this: you want to eliminate packaging, which means you want to eliminate our ability to make your shows more valuable in the presale moment by attaching talent to it. What they’re essentially saying is if you don’t pay us the outside fees we’re not going to do our job. It is essentially the same thing they’re saying to the studios which is – and here’s the reason – why do studios pay these packaging fees? They don’t need to pay the exorbitant packaging fees. They pay those packaging fees because in a sense the agencies have said we have all of our talent corralled behind a fence. If you want access to them in order to get access you need to pay a kind of ransom. You need to pay a packaging fee to us which is over and above what we would make from the show.

Now they’re saying to us if you don’t allow us to charge the studios that exorbitant, over scale compensation we won’t actually do the work of attaching your script to a writer or a director. Well, if they don’t do that what else are they doing?

**Craig:** Ah-ha. Exactly. I mean, look, when we are wooed by an individual agency – and I’m talking about the big ones. So the big four agencies that we talk about in town here are CAA, WME, UTA, and ICM. When they’re trying to grab somebody from say CAA to go over to William Morris, but it’s Endeavor, but it’s always the same – look at all the other people we have. We can help you get your movie made. We can help you get your television show on the air because we have all these other people. They don’t say, “But only if you accept a circumstance by which we may make more money off of your work than you do.” They don’t mention that.

And the interesting thing about the circumstance is they are free I suppose to engage in this kind of extortion with the studios because the studios don’t have necessarily any kind of legal gun to the agencies’ heads. But the agency does apparently have a legal gun to their head behind held by us. And their behavior I think up until this point has been to essentially ignore that face. And so we’re entering this fascinating and somewhat disquieting period where the way that things have been going for decades is now suddenly not just being threatened to be toppled over the way that for instance a strike may topple over the labor market for who knows up to a year or something like that at most, I suppose. But permanently. We may permanently topple a kind of bedrock manner in which the business operates because packaging has been going on for decades as well.

**Chris:** Yes. That’s true. You said a lot of things and I want to comment on all of them, but now I can’t remember the first few you said.

**Craig:** That’s how I do it.

**Chris:** Exactly. Let me say a few things about that that strike me. The first one is this. Those packaging fees they’re requiring, they are doing that because they claim to be attaching actors. Now what work are they doing for actors, for example? It may be that as a writer I can bring my script to the agency and that agency can say we’ll submit this to the studio. That’s the job we’re going to do for you. If you want us to do more you have to pay more for that. I don’t think that’s true.

But what do they say to the actors? We’re not going to introduce you to a particular project.

**Craig:** That’s crazy.

**Chris:** What is that work that they’re doing? I don’t think it’s anything at all. The other thing we should say by the way is that packaging is more insidious than packaging fees and the system by which talent is corralled and then packaging fees are assessed on the basis of having that talent in your stable can be very detrimental to writers because – and you probably have had this experience, both of you. If you are at one agency looking to for example attach a director from a different agency, or an actor from a different agency, what you end up with is a lot of resistance often from that agency because they’ll end up having to split the packaging fee.

And so I just heard another story just the other day of a writer who said my project is being delayed because of a contentious negotiation between two agencies about who is going to get which packaging fee. By the way, splitting of packaging fees belies the entire notion of packaging because it means you’re not even attaching two things. Two different agencies are attaching pieces of talent to it.

**Craig:** Exactly. They have something called a half packaging fee, which tells you everything. What you’re kind of getting at is there’s absolutely no service that agencies can provide in return for this packaging fee that they cannot and should not provide just in return for the normal 10% of our earnings.

**Chris:** Right. What writers need to be aware of though is they’re going to hear this argument back. They’re going to hear the conflation of packaging fees with packaging which means attachments. Here agencies say to them you’re going to be a big risk for ending packaging fees because it means you’ll no longer have the advantage that you had by signing on with CAA, WME, ICM, or UTA and having access to this other talent. That’s not true.

**Craig:** Of course not.

**Chris:** Business itself will take care of that. The studios and networks that want movies and television shows made need the actors and writers and directors attached to each other. And so if those particular agencies refuse to do it except for an outside fee, someone else will do it for them.

**John:** So, the idea of packaging fees has been around for decades. That’s not a new thing. But what is relatively new is producing. So this move by talent agencies to really become direct producers of material. And so the notable ones in town right now are probably Endeavor Content which is related to WME, wiip which is related to CAA. So they are affiliate companies. They are not the same company. It’s not literally CAA producing, but they are very closely connected companies.

And to be clear the problem isn’t with those companies, it’s with really any move by an agency where they are directly owning content. Where they are competing with the studios for content. And puts a writer in a situation where that thing you write may be owned by your agency. Where you are actually an employee of your agency rather than them being an employee of the writer.

**Craig:** I mean, can you imagine? That’s exactly why the law that allows agents in California, the Talent Agency Act, that allows them to represent us – so they need two things, right. They need the Writers Guild to allow them to procure employment on our behalf. And they also need the state of California to license them to procure employment on our behalf. And in exchange for that right, that exclusive right, they get two limitations. One is they can only change 10%. And the other is they cannot be financially interested in the employment that they’re procuring for us.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** What they’ve done is they’ve set aside these little side companies, but I believe the first time I ever heard of this was I think MRC, which was tied into Endeavor, I think, maybe even before it merged with William Morris, and all sorts of alarm bells went off in my head. But it is spreading now like Kudzu. This is not a good thing for us as writers at all.

**John:** Well let’s list some upsides, because sometimes you’ll hear upsides. That they’ll say like these are the good reasons for having these affiliate companies.

**Chris:** We hear a lot of writers talking about the fact that they’re getting better deals. The agencies themselves say we’re more generous in our backend. We often for example in television have less onerous spend requirements. All of these kinds of things.

**John:** We’re already your friends. We’re already on your side.

**Chris:** We just want to provide new opportunities.

**John:** Our clients are asking for these opportunities and we’re providing these opportunities.

**Chris:** And you don’t need to take it if you don’t want it.

**John:** Absolutely. And sometimes they’ll say like well we require that you have an outside attorney to review the deals. So those are things that they are saying. The downsides are also pretty obvious. So you can fire your agent. It’s very hard to fire your boss. You are competing with them for IP sometimes. Like if you want that book they may own that book. And so you’re actually in competition with them for the things you’re trying to buy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s also just the most classic conflict of interest possible. Something that David Goodman says in his speech is you wouldn’t want Peter Roth negotiating your salary. And that’s ultimately where you’re kind of getting to.

**Chris:** Right. I would make two arguments about this, one on either side of it. On the one had we’re fully in favor of the idea of more buyers, more people making content.

**John:** 100%.

**Chris:** They just don’t need to be our agents. And those studios that they’re forming, they can exist if they want as long as they are separate from – really separate from – our agencies. In the same way that MCA in the 1960s, in 1962, the largest talent agency in the country–

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Chris:** Was forced by the justice department to choose between its talent practice and becoming Universal Studios. And they chose to become Universal.

**John:** And what happened to all those agents? They became agents somewhere else. That agency business kept going. But they separated completely.

**Craig:** Or they moved on to become producers. And Lew Wasserman, who was the head of that talent agency became the head of Universal and in many ways became even more powerful. And that’s fine. You can do it. You just have to do one–

**John:** That’s fine. We’d love another studio.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just one or the other. The whole reason that writers, actors, and directors want agents is not just merely to do the formality of being a buffer between us and the people paying us, because lawyers can do that pretty well. It’s because we need people who understand aspects of the business that we don’t necessarily understand or are as invested in. Giving us counsel. What would be the right job to take? Who would be the right person to work with? What should we avoid? How far should we push it?

All of these things are what we agree to pay 10% for. And behind that is the theory that their bargaining acumen will also pay for that 10% because they’ll be able to bargain that much more than we could on our own. But, if they are involved in the production of the work we’re doing there’s absolutely no reason to think that nature and quality of the advice that we’re getting isn’t going to be infected by this very different role. Essentially we are asking them to manipulate us for their benefit instead of ours. Whether or not an individual agent does so, you won’t know. And that’s the problem with conflict of interests.

**John:** There have been so many times in my career where I’ve run into a situation on a project with an employer where I’ve had to go to my agent for help. And I needed that agent to be a separate person who had my back and didn’t have the other person’s back. And that is a crucial role for an agent to play and I just don’t know how you play that role when it is your own agency that the person is working for.

**Chris:** Right. I think the risk for us though is that at least early on these studios may be offering pretty good deals. You know, maybe even loss leaders.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t exactly–

**John:** They may be offering more backend. I think it’s good to have outside people who want to spend some money and build stuff up because that’s good and it can help push other deals up or help push other studios to try to match those deals in order to attract talent. So outside folks, fantastic. And Endeavor Content, the wiips, they have outside money because outside money wants to make stuff. They want to make content.

I think that outside money would find a way to do it that’s not through these two giant companies.

**Craig:** Now, I want to ask you guys something. What do you think they say to outside investors who are considering investing in Endeavor Content or wiip? What’s their big selling point do you think?

**John:** They have access to all of the best talent. All the best writers.

**Craig:** Bingo.

**John:** The best directors. And the best actors.

**Craig:** There is literally – there is nothing else, literally nothing else, they have to offer that would distinguish themselves other than that. So one of the things that I think we are all struggling with right now is that as this kind of creep has occurred, right, where it started a little, and then a little more, and a little more, what’s happening is the people that are supposed to leverage our talent and our efforts into more for us are leveraging our talent and our efforts into more for them. And I do not like being somebody that’s being – like I famously told this story. The way I found out that CAA was packaging Chernobyl, I did not know. I literally didn’t know.

What happened was one day I got a check from CAA. And I didn’t know why. And I think a lot of people get a check and they’re like, yay. I get a check that I didn’t ask for and I’m like, mm-hmm. Somewhere someone is taking advantage of me. And that’s how I kind of delved into this world of packaging. And in the end what concerns me more than anything is that they are using us. And on a principle level it’s driving me crazy.

**Chris:** Right. I think that our big challenge is to remind writers of exactly what you’re saying, Craig, which is that their value is inherent in themselves. That it doesn’t come from the agent who represents them. As generous as that moment was when that first agent said I see something in you, ultimately it is our talent that’s making the profits for these studios and for the agencies. And while when we negotiate with the companies at the MBA we have to respect the fact that capital and the risks they take give them some real reasons to push back against us. In this case the agencies have nothing but us. There is nothing of value. The leverage is our leverage and not theirs. But it’s hard for writers to think of it that way. In part because the agencies have cultivated a kind of aura of – we talked about – and people talk about this all the time – that we work for them. You said it yourself. You got your check from your agency. It said CAA on it.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Chris:** You walked into their palace.

**Craig:** Did not like that.

**Chris:** Nicer than any office you’ve ever had. And the feeling that you get from that is I’m working for them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Now, Chris, you also lead our MBA negotiations often, so I want to sort of both combine and separate out a little bit of stuff that’s happening here, because I think what’s also true is that at this moment we are in a really strange place in the industry and time, where we have consolidation of these mega corporations. We have Netflix really upending sort of how things are done.

Agents will argue that this is the wrong time for this fight because now more than ever we all need to be working together to confront the challenges ahead of us. So what do we say to agents as they propose–?

**Chris:** I entirely agree. Now more than ever we need to be working together. But we need to be sure we’re working together for this. It is a time of very great risk and therefore writers cannot afford to have studios looking to take advantage of us in whole new fresh ways. And agencies who are conflicted and make their profits off of the success of our shows rather than our own success.

**John:** We want to be rowing in the same direction. And I don’t feel we are.

**Chris:** The fact that this is antagonistic to whatever extent it is is because this has gone on for a long time and it’s hard to make change. But in the end we see agents as our allies, true allies, are what we need. So we’re working in that direction. But I want to say this about the MBA negotiations in relationship to the AMBA. Because in the long run although we’re all upset about the thing that smells bad about our agents using our leverage for their gain, and the fact that they are almost certainly violating their legal obligation as fiduciaries to us, maybe, both California statutes that require them to do that and we will find that out in time. There have been economic consequences to the fact that the agencies have behaved the way they have. And one of the things that we realized is that as we push writers to take risks in our MBA negotiations to shore up their salaries, to increase minimums, to decrease spans so that their above scale is not driven toward minimum we’re losing what we gained in those MBA negotiations because the above scale negotiations that our agents are doing has consistently failed to keep up.

So, in the last decade or so while the industry is expanding, while company profits are skyrocketing, while as far as we can tell from all the outside evidence because their books are closed agencies are doing better than ever, writers are doing less well. And our writer surveys that we sent out in 2016 and 2018 prove that. In television over a period of time at one point writer above-scale income went down 23%. That’s what concerns us. Because when agencies say, “Hey, this is fine. Yes, we’re getting a lot out of this but periodically you save the 10% on your commission and you’re doing OK. You should be quiet about it,” we need to think good and hard about whether we’re going to ask writers to do something that’s actually ultimately going to be in their financial best interests.

**Craig:** That is a really important point, because I think a lot of people might say, OK, hold on a second. The people that are kind of getting ripped off the most are the showrunners because what’s happening is the agencies are converting the showrunner’s work into these massive profits that otherwise would go into the showrunner’s pockets but they’re not.

Let’s say I’m a rank-and-file writer. I’m a staff writer. And honestly I’m not getting any of those anyway. And I am not having to pay 10%, so why am I going to be cannon fodder for these rich showrunners? And to that I always run this little experiment. You are on a show that your agency doesn’t package. And the studio calls your agent and says here’s the thing, we want to bring back Chris but we’re a little squeezed on budget this year so we want him to take a pay cut. What does your agent do? I’m going to guess says, no, and fights. Because her money comes out of your money.

But if they do package and the studio calls and says, listen, we’re on the fence about bringing this show back. We need to reduce. Can you convince Chris to take less money? Why wouldn’t they say, sure, I can do that? Because their money comes from the continuity of the show, not you.

This absolutely impacts rank-and-file writers. It’s really important that they know that this is not about making sure that showrunners get their pockets stuffed with even more money. It’s about protecting their ability to be represented effectively by their own agents.

**Chris:** I think that’s right. That’s right. Each constituency in the guild is affected in a different way. Showrunners affected because their backend may be hurt. Showrunners may be affected because their inability to access talent across packages is hurt. But the rank-and-file members are hurt because their agents, they have been unable to defend their quotes because by and large in agencies whose money comes from packaging fees rather than the specific weekly income of writers are either less inclined to push for that or more inclined to rollover on studios who say we’re sorry that’s just all there is. By the way, that’s another thing we have to deal with.

We have to deal with these myths on how that in eras of rising budgets for shows and for movies that the only thing set in stone is how much money writers can make and there’s no one out there who can get us a single penny more. These agencies who have defended their own packaging fees without any reduction over all these decades somehow will be entirely incapable of budgeting those writers.

**Craig:** Great point.

**Chris:** And, by the way, that’s true for screenwriters as well.

**John:** Absolutely, so let’s talk about screenwriter issues, because packaging does exist in features. It tends to be much more invisible because it happens as part of foreign sales. It happens as part of an early gathering of talent. It’s more complicated and it’s hard to sort of see it at times. And there will be times where you have sold a movie and not even realize that it is a package. So it is confusing on that level.

But there’s fundamental things that you also rely on your agent to do like to protect you from abusive employers, or for like that ninth revision on a script that you thought you turned in. So, a lot of the work that I’ve been doing with the screenwriter subcommittee this last year for the WGA has been doing stuff that we kept saying like isn’t that the agents’ job? And it is the agents’ job but they’re not doing their jobs and so we’re trying to sort of make up for the agents not doing their job. So when we do our campaign for No Work Left Behind, we’re just encouraging people like don’t leave that stuff behind. Your agent should be the one who is telling you not to do that stuff because agents should know that it’s a terrible idea, but that they’re not actually communicating that. So they’re telling you to, oh sure, go on, send in that treatment, do that free work for people. It’s ridiculous.

And then this is the second thing we implemented this last year was the Start Button. And so the Start Button is a way of tracking like this is when a person started on a project. This is when he turned in a draft. All the stuff that we built, the system we built to track especially feature projects and the steps you’re going through on a feature project we built that because screenwriter contracts were not being sent through from the agencies the way they are supposed to be sent through. If we had all the contracts we wouldn’t need to have the Start Button at all because we would see where people were at in their drafts and be able to figure out, OK, are they getting paid on time?

**Craig:** And there’s always been a certain built in conflict of interest that’s unavoidable simply because your agent represents 30 different writers let’s say. So there’s only five studios. If they push it too hard on your behalf they may lose out on another client’s behalf. So there is always a little bit of a balancing act there.

I personally–

**Chris:** Craig, let me tell you a story. A bunch of years ago, about five years ago, the guild tried to institute a policy by which the agencies would agree to send us the invoices for contracts when drafts were done. And we actually met with all the agencies and they all agreed to do that. And we said let us be the bad guys. You don’t need to do it. We understand. We’ll do it. We’ll actually consolidate those things and we’ll go back to the studios and say here are the writers you haven’t paid on time. We’re going to collect the money that’s owed in interest.

And almost no one ever followed up. Even when they were not actually going to be implicated in it, we just couldn’t get their energy up for–

**Craig:** They don’t care. In the end, that’s not really their gig. I will say that I’ve never – whether or not there have been packaging fees associated with a script that I’ve written that’s gone into production, I’ve never not paid commission. So I suspect that that hasn’t necessarily impacted me. But one of the reasons that I think this is becoming a much larger issue now and one that the agencies can’t simply skate by on is that the divide between features and television is collapsing. Not simply because there’s so much television production that a lot of feature writers are also dabbling in television like I am. But because the nature of what is theatrical and what is television is smooshing together into one thing.

So, at this point now this issue of packaging fees ultimately impacts everyone. And I do think that A-list feature writers have a really interesting role to play here. Because for a long time our relationship with our agents was not and has not been tainted by this. We have the ability to start talking with our agents in a kind of clean way that isn’t soaking in a certain amount of recrimination and regret and say, “Listen, going forward this makes sense. How do we get you guys to kind of get your colleagues come around to be the kind of agent that you have been for me in features?”

**Chris:** We’re having a conversation and we’re being pretty tough on the agencies here. And they deserve for us to be tough on them after all these decades.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Chris:** That’s not the same thing as saying those things about our individual agents. And it’s hard to hear somebody say, hey, this is an attack on a system that has not actually played out in your own personal economy. I’ll say a couple of things about that. The first is in cases of all guild action this is not really about our individual experiences. This is about systemic problems. And trying to solve a problem for the membership as a whole.

The fact that you have a wonderful relationship with your agent is not a counter argument against the fact that the system as a whole is disadvantaging writers. And even your wonderful agent, by the way, has not succeeded in ending the scourge of late pay and free rewrites and one-step deals or the downward pressure on income both for screenwriters and for most mid-level writers in television. They haven’t been able to buck that trend.

They do however work if you are represented at one of the big four agencies for companies or they are partners in companies who make massive profits off a system that takes advantage of writers. They take that money home. And so that friendship that you have with them, as meaningful as it is, it comes with an extra price that you’re paying that they’re not paying. And that can’t go on forever.

**Craig:** Yeah. And normally in those circumstances the people that we call are our agents. And so in a strange way what I’m suggesting in particular for feature writers because as you know that’s the drum that I will bang forever is just making sure the Writers Guild continues to fairly and properly represent its feature writer segment is talk to your agents. Have the conversation. And be armed with all the facts that we’ve given you here. And if they say something that contradicts it write it down and then talk to the guild about it. But have the conversation.

I think it’s important that we all start talking about it, because the more we talk about it I think the more they’re all going to feed back upstairs that this is a thing. Because what I don’t want is for these talks to be so unproductive as to ultimately end up sliding off the edge of a table. There is a certain value to a stable working environment in any industry. And there are great costs. And great costs to upending an apple cart so thoroughly.

So, talk to your agents. I think that’s really important.

**Chris:** And then privately be OK with your own anxiety about this.

**John:** That’s what I think is crucial, too. That’s the takeaway I lead with a lot of people is that I think it’s OK to feel unsettled because it is so different. I mean, you have a relationship with your own agent which is different than you have with a studio executive or any other thing. So it does feel different going into this because when you go into a MBA negotiation, you know this as well as anybody, that it’s going to be a range of outcomes. We’re going to ask for X. They’re going to say Y. And we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.

This is going to be a big change sort of no matter what happens here. And six weeks out we can’t tell you exactly what the world is going to look like as this all shakes out.

**Chris:** Right. No one will be asked to walk off a job.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Chris:** We don’t face that kind of risk. But we face a real anxiety in putting under stress what may be for many of us are most secure relationship.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Chris:** In the business. That’s no small thing to ask. And by the way John you and I, we’ve been dealing with this for a year, coming to terms with it. But many of our members, they’re just hearing about it for the first time. And even in MBA negotiations it takes a while to process what exactly is being asked of you. What are the gains?

**John:** I always try to remind myself of that, is that when people say like, “Oh, this feels so sudden and so rushed,” I’m like this has been 16 months. But if they hadn’t come to one of those initial things a year ago and they’re only just now hearing about it, it does feel like but what.

**Chris:** And if you do feel anxious, you have concerns, you disagree with anything that the guild is talking about, you think it’s wrong, you have a counter example that you want to provide, you have to talk to somebody. Because the guild wants to hear from everybody. It’s impossible actually to hear from every individual person, but the more we know about what member experience is the better we’re going to be at making a deal.

**John:** Yeah. So I would say obviously good resources are take a look at the speech, but take a look at the FAQs because they are written in a way that is meant to anticipate what your concern and your question is and can maybe address that question. But come to one of the meetings and ask your question or ask a question of us.

**Chris:** Or talk to a captain if you’ve got a captain.

**John:** Absolutely. So almost everybody is going to have a show captain, a screen captain.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I think it would be good if you’re experiencing anxiety or concern or fear about this, the other reason I think it’s important to share that with your agent is because you need them to feel it, too. I think the first – if I were an agent the first thing I would be doing right now is assuring and reassuring my client that everything is fine. The guild is incorrect. The way it is now which say has been serving at least in appearance my client well this is the way we’re going to keep going. Don’t you worry. Everything is going to be fine.

Because that’s generally what agents are doing for us anyway. They’re reassuring us and calming us down. In this case I think it’s important that they start to feel the anxiety, too. Because that’s the only way they’re going to start talking amongst themselves and more importantly to their superiors because while they work for us in a sense, they’re also working for somebody that can literally fire them. And if enough people start saying, no, no, no, you don’t understand, we are now panicking, then things might get precipitated, or at least it might help.

**John:** Chris, as we head into these last six weeks can we have you back as our uncertainty grows and things change?

**Chris:** Sure. Of course. I’d love to come back.

**John:** Cool. So obviously we’ll follow up and sort of as stuff develops we may have special episodes just about things that are happening. Because as a once-a-week Tuesday show that’s great for some situations, but there may be cases along the way where we have to do some special episodes on stuff.

**Chris:** I can’t believe you’re making me say yes to this on air, but that’s OK. Fine.

**Craig:** That’s how he does it. He does it on air to shame you.

**John:** Thanks Chris for coming on the show.

**Craig:** Thank you, Chris, so much.

**Chris:** Thanks for having me. Bye.

**John:** So, Craig had to head off to deal with more Chernobyl drama. But now I’m joined by a new guest. Michelle Satter is the founding directing of the feature film program at the Sundance Institute which for the past 37 years has worked to foster independents, risk-taking, and new voices in film and narrative storytelling. I know her from Sundance Labs where I am often an adviser.

Michelle, welcome to Scriptnotes.

**Michelle Satter:** It’s great to be here with you John. Thanks.

**John:** I mostly know you from the Labs, and so the Labs experience from my perspective is I get to go up there as an adviser.

Before I’ve gotten up there I’ve read through these screenplays by some really talented filmmakers and I get to sit on these one-on-one meetings with them and talk to them about these movies that they want to make. And the first time I did it I was like well this is magic. Who could have ever thought up this idea of doing it this way? And it was you. You are the person who came up with this idea of the Labs. This place for filmmakers to sort of have other filmmakers help them out on the things they’re trying to shoot. Congratulations.

**Michelle:** Thank you. It’s a very simple idea but it works. And we’ve revised it along the way because we’ve been doing it for a long, long time. We were just thinking about it today in terms of is there anything that we want to change. Not much about it. Because the opportunity for writers on a project that they’re developing to have that deep dive and dialogue with a working professional screenwriter is like nothing else.

You know, you can say it’s a secret sauce of Sundance, but that kind of investment in a project on the part of an adviser like you and others and getting to go on a thought experiment, getting to learn about craft, specifically on a particular project. I mean, all that work that you all put into it preparing for it. And then that incredible experience of a two-to-three hour meeting which is as much about feedback as it is about an interrogative approach and going deeply into a project and finding out what the intentions of the writer that you’re working with.

**John:** What I think is so great about the process is that usually as a writer is getting notes that person who is giving notes has some agenda. So either they are a producer who has a vision for what they want the movie to be, or they are a friend or loved one who really wants to support that person but may not be an expert in that field. As we’re up there as advisers we’re just there to help. And so your sense of like what is the intention that is exactly always my first question. What movie do you see yourself trying to make out of this? How can I help you make that movie? I have no intention, no motivation other than just helping you do your thing.

**Michelle:** Yeah. And that’s a very – you know, that creates that safe space. Because no one is trying to impose anything. And, in fact, you get to do whatever you want once you leave Sundance. But the best thing you can do is go in very open but also with a clear vision of what you’re trying to communicate. What is the story that you want to tell that only you can tell as a writer? And every writer is so helped on craft, which is such an important part of it, because we often select a little bit more for voice and potential and where they need to learn is more about the craft.

That intersection or that connection of craft to story and voice, you know, is kind of perfect.

**John:** It is perfect. And what’s perfect about it is it is a small, safe environment. So generally we’ll have 12 to 15, maybe a few more fellows up there. We’ll have a few more advisers because advisers are talking to multiple fellows. But it’s a small, safe place and you’re in Utah. You’re up at this resort. You’re sort of isolated from every place else.

Now you’ve taken that same model and you’ve gone around the world with it. So, there’s Labs in different places and sometimes you’re helping establish the lab and it just runs by itself. So, you may have come up with the concept but you didn’t trademark it. You didn’t patent it. You’ve let other people do what you’re doing. But it feels fundamentally like it can’t scale all that far. It’s constrained just by it takes so many resources of advisers, and the logistics of getting everybody physically together in a space to do.

**Michelle:** Yeah. We’ve looked at numbers along the way and we have found that kind of perfect number. Because intimacy is really important. The fact that everybody gets to meet everyone and be in dialogue, not necessarily in a one-on-one meeting, but get to be a part of a community and build a family together is so key to the experience of the lab. And it has to be small.

**John:** There’s also the question of access because in order to go up to the lab you have to be able to take that time off from work or I know you sometimes have funds that can help bring those people to the labs, to help support them to some degree. But not everyone can sort of join you up on the mountain in Utah. And the question of how do you get some of that expertise and how do you get that experience to people who couldn’t show up there.

So that’s really mostly why you’re here today is to talk about this new venture that you’re coming up with which can sort of broaden that access to people. So this thing is called Sundance Co//ab. What’s the motivation behind it?

**Michelle:** For Sundance it’s opening access. It’s being able to reach many more writers, many more creators. Being able to reach out to parts of the world that we haven’t been in or even haven’t selected writers to support from. It’s looking at more under-resourced and underrepresented communities. You know, how do we create an inclusive, generous learning space and community for global creators.

**John:** Well there’s certainly, so Co//ab is an online community, or at least the first of it you see is an online community. So you go and there’s a website and it’s a really well put together produced website. And there are other websites out there that are about filmmaking or about sort of stuff, but deep down it’s like they’re trying to make a buck and that’s not sort of the impetus behind Co//ab. It’s not an attempt to corner the market on narrative storytelling on the web.

What is the model? If this is really successful five years from now, what do you hope it will look like?

**Michelle:** That’s such a good question. Four hours today thinking about what do we want it to be. What’s the future that we can imagine for Co//ab? And part of it is we have to look at where we are today. This is not a money-making venture for Sundance but we will charge a fee for courses and masterclasses and some of the things we do.

So much of the site, I would say over 50% of the site is free. And it’s an opportunity for people who are interested in writing especially right now, although we’re expanding to directing and producing and all the other creative disciplines that Sundance works in, but this is an opportunity for you to learn from some of the greats like you, John August, in a video that’s about the writing process for you. And sort of taking you through in a very short amount of time. They’re about eight minutes long because we know people have shorter attention spans. But you get nuggets of really important learning and inspiration from these what we call our learning library or videos.

But as importantly it’s creating a community online. It’s an opportunity for writers to share their work and get feedback. Get feedback from the community but get feedback from advisers who are rotated and on and are, again, giving back.

Tiger Williams who was our first instructor, and he teaches at USC, and he’s also an adviser at Sundance at the Sundance Lab, and was really exciting for this group of writers. They were from all over the world. People were up in the middle of the night to take part in this course. So it’s taking from a new idea to getting to an outline of what the story might look like going forward. You know, big focus on developing characters and character work as character evolves story. So a lot of the core elements of screenwriting.

But here’s what was beautiful about it, because I was worried about it by the way. I was thinking how do we take what we do at Sundance in person and bring it to an online community?

**John:** Because the Sundance experience is very much like we’re across a very short table and we’re just looking into each other’s eyes and down at the page. It’s a very intimate thing. And online can’t be that, so what does it feel like?

**Michelle:** Well, first of all you’re in a virtual community. We use a link. There are a lot of conference links. We use Zoom as a conference link. What you have to do is you have to get used to that space first. But what people felt is that they were there with Tiger in that space. They were learning about screenwriting. He spent one of the session just going through Moonlight as an example of great writing and choices that Barry Jenkins made as a writer and also as a director.

You know, it was pure gold.

**John:** Yeah. I would say that from our Scriptnotes listeners we have a ton of writers who are just off on their own someplace and really don’t know anybody else doing the craft of screenwriting. So the common things that happen again and again if you’re not in a group where you can sort of see like, oh, she’s struggling with the same thing that I’m struggling with, that can be hard. And so having some sort of group activity, some sort of group focus can be really good. Because it’s not just the feedback you’re getting on your own project. It’s what you’re hearing from the people around you can be great.

So, something like Tiger’s class, how many students would be in one of those classes?

**Michelle:** Well we went big. Not huge, but bigger than our intimate lab of 12 to 15. We had 30 people.

**John:** 30 people. So more like a traditional class.

**Michelle:** It was more like a traditional class. And Tiger was, by the way, worried about it.

**John:** Yeah. I can understand.

**Michelle:** It’s like I’m used to working with 12 in a workshop.

**John:** So let’s talk about access. Is there an age limit? Do you have to be a certain age to sign up for one of these classes? Do you let 16 year olds take this class, or do they need to be adults in college?

**Michelle:** Well, we don’t ask for their age.

**John:** All right. So as far as you know the people were old enough to do it. But I mean obviously the geographic thing is a huge aspect because I’m sure you had a bunch of international writers in this, but people in the middle of the country who are not around anything like this it’s a chance for them to actually talk with other writers and sort of explore.

**Michelle:** It’s a great opportunity for them. And it’s a great opportunity for writers who are working internationally. It’s interesting in forming Sundance we were very aware that – this was, as you said 37 years ago, we were very aware that there was very little instruction in writing at any of the universities, at any of the schools. Now, that has changed to a great extent.

But the value of that is sometimes questionable.

**John:** The cost of it is not questionable. It’s really expensive.

**Michelle:** It’s prohibitive for a lot of people to do that. And so we saw that not only in the US but really all over the world where there was no instruction around screenwriting, there wasn’t a value placed on writing in terms of teaching.

**John:** Well, also a lot of places around the world there isn’t even a concept of screenwriting. It’s just that a director makes a movie and the director might write the movie first, but there’s not a sense that like there is a writing process and a thinking process. You get your movie on the page first so you can use that as a jumping off place to make your film. And a lot of international communities don’t have that as their basis for how they’re telling their stories.

**Michelle:** Yeah. And what was surprising to us is there’s literally people up in India, you know, in Lebanon, in Australia, all over, Kashmir, I mean really all over the world who wanted to connect to learning about – to this community and also learning about writing.

**John:** Great. So right now the site is up and some people are using the site now. It’s growing. If listeners want to check it out, they go to – what is the URL they should go to?

**Michelle:** It’s collab.sundance.org.

**John:** Great. So they can check that out. They can check out all of the free stuff and then if they’re curious about the online classes, those just come up regularly right? So there’s new ones starting all the time in different topics?

**Michelle:** Yeah. There are. Our next screenwriting class is starting in about a week. And then the one after that, that’s our winter class. We have a spring class and it will start sometime in April. And we ask people to apply for the classes. And the reason for that is we want to make sure that people are serious about wanting to make a commitment to the class.

We’re not looking for sample work and we’re not reviewing the project that they’re working on. But it’s really important for us that the people that are going to connect with Sundance in a course at least this is an opportunity for them to really do the work.

**John:** While I have you here I want to make sure that we don’t miss any other aspects of the Sundance Institute process because Craig and I are often hyping the episodic labs and sort of the other things. So when I first got started with Sundance there was the screenwriting lab which tied into the directing lab. And so they were sort of two poles of it. But it’s really grown tremendously over the years.

And so I know there’s a producing lab. There are composer’s labs. There’s a theater lab. There’s episodic television, or episodic storytelling I guess, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s a network drama or some sort of webisode kind of thing.

What I admire about Sundance is the way you’ve recognized that storytelling exists in all these different media and there are common threads linking them all in that sense of what is the story that you uniquely can tell. And that’s what I always stress to people who say like, “Oh I’m going to apply for the Sundance Lab. I have this thriller about corporate espionage.” And it’s like that can be a great thriller. That does not sound like the kind of story that only you could tell. And that’s the thing that I think Sundance is so good at helping people do is how to excavate that story that’s inside you that you are uniquely qualified to tell, in whatever the media is.

**Michelle:** Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s an interesting process, you know, to work that through and find those projects that we want to get involved with. But one of the things that’s interesting to us and we don’t get enough of is comedy.

**John:** Oh, of course.

**Michelle:** Thrillers. Horror films. I mean, we really are open to all genres. And also right now looking at hybrid. What is the fiction/nonfiction story to tell? We supported Bart Layton on American Animals and that was such an interesting process. We want to be challenged, too, and our writers to be challenged. I remember when we brought Beasts of the Southern Wild to the Sundance Lab and it was a very early stage script. And Ben described it as an unruly child, which was interesting. But to really help him shape that beautiful idea that came full cloth out of him was a long road, both in the writing process and in the editing process.

But look at the result of it?

**John:** Oh, absolutely.

**Michelle:** I mean, just a gorgeous film. So, yes, we’re supporting writers/creators across all forms, all formats. We also have a new Frontier Lab and we’re supporting artists and it’s very much a collaborative. I mean, it’s always a collaborative process, but artists working with technologists, working with biologists. I mean, it’s scientists, architects. You know, it can be anything. You know, a lot of the work more recently has been around virtual reality storytelling and augmented reality. But there’s so much going on with AI and mixed media. It’s really exciting. So Sundance has also become an incubator for that kind of work.

But what distinguishes us even in new frontier is we’re grounded in story. There’s a lot of so-called incubators out there supporting – and hackathons – and supporting a lot of really great, and interesting, and innovative work. But Sundance takes it back to sort of what is the story that you’re trying to tell. What is uniquely compelling and complicated and complex about these characters? And what’s the movement of this story?

So we’re looking at, in some ways very conventional craft, but bringing it to different forms and different formats has been incredibly exciting and an incredible learning experience for everybody.

**John:** Great. Well I can’t wait to see what happens with Sundance Co//ab. It seems like a really well thought out project and a great way to sort of – you describe it as widening the funnel just so that you can actually reach people who couldn’t actually make it to the top of the mountain in Utah and really benefit from what you’ve been able to create there.

Michelle, thank you for coming on the show and thank you for talking about it.

**Michelle:** This has been fun. And thank you. And I hope your listeners will check it out. We’re also looking for feedback, always. So if there are gaps or things that you want that you might be missing or that Sundance could be doing online let us know. Reach out to us.

**John:** Will do. Great. Thanks Michelle.

**Michelle:** Thank you.

**John:** And, Craig, you’re back. And so we are back because it is time for our One Cool Things. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing for us this week?

**Craig:** I do have a One Cool Thing for us this week. As people know I am a big crossword nerd. I’m a mega crossword nerd.

**John:** You are. Everyone knows that.

**Craig:** Everyone knows this. And as you proceed deeper and deeper down the path of crossword nerdiness you start to accrue more crosswords to do. So I used to just do the New York Times crossword every day. And then it was like, OK, I’m going to do the New York Times crossword every day and I’m going to do the Washington Post Sunday by a guy named Evan Birnholz which is fantastic.

Then I’m also adding on Matt Gaffney’s meta crossword every Friday and the Wall Street Journal meta crossword every weekend and it just goes on and on. I’m collecting these. Fireball. And American Variety Crossword. Anyway, it’s out of control.

But there’s one that I wanted to draw people’s attention to, even if they’re not big crossword people but they’re just generally interested in social progress. There’s a new subscription crossword service called Inkubator. And it’s run by two women, Laura Braunstein who herself is a super crosswordy person, and Tracy Bennett who also similar crossword maker-builder-constructor. And the two of them are seeking to address this very stark issue – and believe it or not there are stark issues in the worlds of crosswords – and that is that by and large crosswords still are primarily authored by men, at least I should say the ones that get published in major newspapers.

The gender balance is wildly out of whack. And yet I think the demographics of people who solve puzzles are not at all out of whack. So what they’ve done is essentially put together this incubator with a clever INK Inkubator to not only bring puzzles constructed by women to crossword solvers like myself but also to start to train women who are interested in constructing crosswords how to do it. Just like David Kwong kind of trained me how to create a crossword puzzle.

So it’s a really cool thing they’re doing and the puzzles themselves are really interesting and oftentimes feature answers you would never see in the New York Times. So, if you go to inkubatorcrosswords.com you can see how to subscribe and support the excellent work that Laura and Tracy are doing.

**John:** Fantastic. That sounds great. My One Cool Thing comes from those videos you probably see online where a person is singing with themselves. And so you have videos where a person starts singing and then it split screens and they’re singing with themselves and they’re forming harmony with themselves and they’re doing sometimes really elaborate orchestrations of just them singing with themselves.

And so it is entirely possible to that with just off the shelf stuff and you just splice it together in an editing program and make it all work. But then this last week I noticed that someone had posted something that was done in an app called Acapella which is not new, I had just never seen it before. But it makes it incredibly easy to do that sort of split screen singing with yourself stuff, where you record one track and then you listen to it in ear phones and you sing along with yourself. And then you sing along with yourself again.

And it’s really just fun to do and really simple. And on the app you’ll see a bunch of examples of other people doing that kind of thing. But it’s great. And so I’ve had fun playing with it. So, it’s Acapella. It’s in the iOS App Store. Try it. Craig, you would love it.

**Craig:** I’m pretty certain that Jessica Mazin is all over that.

**John:** That sounds like a very Jessica thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, but I’m going to double check. My guess is that I’m going to say hey Jessie have you heard about Acapella and she’s going to roll her eyes and say, “Oh my god, dad. I’m on to the fourth thing behind Acapella.” You know, because they know everything. Did you know that, John? Did you?

**John:** They know. Yes, teenage girls especially.

**Craig:** My god.

**John:** They know everything.

**Craig:** Everything.

**John:** And any given thing is either not worth their attention or it’s old. And so occasionally I will introduce my daughter to something that is just about to break and she’s like this is dumb and this is stupid. And two days later she loves it, but she will never acknowledge that I was the person who interested it to her.

**Craig:** To be fair I then also play the role of teenage daughter in your life. Because I do that to you all the time.

**John:** So we cut this out of the live show in Seattle, but it was the only time in Scriptnotes history where I was about to recommend something and Craig said like, “No, no, I already recommended that on the podcast.” Because that’s happened before. So it was the book Less, which is a fantastic novel. And Craig it turned out was right and he had actually recommended before I recommended it.

**Craig:** Oh my god, you cut it out? Ugh.

**John:** It was a long episode. So, Matthew had to find things to cut.

**Craig:** That’s fair. That’s fair. You know what? You’ve owned up to it here and now. And, of course, you know better than anybody you would have totally gotten away with it.

**John:** He never listens. And I may have Matthew cut this out, too.

**Craig:** Ah!

**John:** And that’s our show for today. So I want to thank Michelle Satter and Chris Keyser for coming on the episode to talk to us about the future of the industry. Our show is produced Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by XLNYC. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we love to answer.

For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. John is @johnaugust. I might mute your conversation if it goes on for more than four days, but you’re welcome to start a conversation.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a comment.

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

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. Craig, thanks again. It was good to have you back.

**Craig:** Thanks John. Good to be back.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [WGA Agency Agreement 2019](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/agency-agreement#list)
* WGA President David A. Goodman [Speech](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/agency-agreement/wga-membership-meeting-david-goodman-remarks)
* [Agency Campaign FAQ’s](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/agency-agreement/faq-agency-campaign)
* [Co//ab at Sundance](https://collab.sundance.org/)
* [Acapella App](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/acapella-from-picplaypost/id924635678?mt=8) for iOS
* [Inkubator](https://inkubatorcrosswords.com)
* [Less](https://andrewgreer.com/less) by Andrew Sean Greer
* [Chris Keyser](https://twitter.com/chrskeyser) on Twitter
* [Michelle Satter](https://twitter.com/SundanceSatter) on Twitter
* [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)
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