Archives for 2019

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

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’ll discuss when you need to be tough on yourself and when you need to back off. Plus, we’ll have lots of follow up discussion on Austin, television, assistant pay.

Craig, it’s so nice to be back with you. You were in Austin all by yourself last weekend. But that’s not really true because you were there with a huge panel of people for the live Scriptnotes show. I listened to it. I thought it was great.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you. I’m so glad. You know, I’m very nervous when I’m without you. I’m nervous that I’m going to do a poor job and then I’m nervous that I’m going to do what I think is a good job, then you’ll get angry. [laughs] So, this is how I view you as a parental figure. So, I’m glad you liked the show. We had a great time. The audience was probably the most ruckus I’ve ever experienced in all of our many years doing a show there. So good on them for being ruckus. And we had a terrific panel. I thought it was a fantastic mix of people.

**John:** Agreed. And it was very interesting for me to listen to you running it by yourself because you definitely seemed like you wanted to keep the trains running on time. And when there are that many people on stage sometimes it is awkward when both of us are there because it’s hard for two people to cohost that many people. And so it was great – I think it was honestly probably better that it was just you up there trying to wrangle those people into talking about things.

My frustration though as a listener I don’t get to chime in. And so I was listening to your discussion on television seasons and the model where you drop all the episodes at once versus week to week. And people made really good points, but the point I kept waiting for someone to make and no one was making is the benefit creatively for dropped in all at once and the downside in a marketing sense for dropping them all at once.

So two anecdotes I would have shared had I been there on stage. Susannah Grant has a new show out called Unbelievable on Netflix. It got rave reviews. But one of the things she pointed out on another interview was that Toni Collette who is one of the biggest stars in the show doesn’t appear until the second episode. And what Susannah was saying was that it was very helpful for all those episodes to drop at once because people might not, you know, actually know that she’s on the show if you had to wait till the second week for her to show up.

So, them all coming out at once was really helpful. She felt like she would have gotten noted early on that like, oh no, that actor has to appear in the pilot episode had it been a traditional drop of series.

**Craig:** Well, that’s an interesting point. I mean, the fact is I had that precise issue with Chernobyl. While we had Jared Harris briefly in the first episode, but Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson did not appear until the second episode.

**John:** It worked out OK for you.

**Craig:** Well, HBO never gave me any flack about it. And basically what we all did was just make sure that the marketing materials put everybody front and center so people understood that those people were coming. And I don’t know necessarily where Toni Collette sits on the spectrum of actors that demand people’s attention but it seems like she’s kind of in the same zone as an Emily Watson or Stellan Skarsgård.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** So it didn’t seem to hurt on our end. But I understand the nervousness. Certainly when it’s time for, you know, the ongoing awards season, the never-ending awards season with 4,000 awards, you will occasionally have to submit and say I want you to read or watch one episode. For the Emmys I could send in all of the episodes, I think. But when we have to choose one episode, typically we’ll send episode two because it is more of a traditional episode with our actors and all the rest of it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I kind of understand it. But, I don’t know, I don’t think it hurt us.

**John:** It didn’t hurt you. It worked out OK for you.

**Craig:** Yeah. Worked out OK.

**John:** The other thing I would say that is a benefit towards the more traditional weekly release schedule which I think we talked about before, I think did help Chernobyl because the conversation kept building, is I would argue is almost like a disease model of television which is that you are trying to infect as many people in the world with watching your show. And if you are only releasing it all at one time you have a very limited window. And you could infect everybody with your show, but they will have less opportunity to spread the virus to other people. And by releasing week after week you’re continuously re-infecting those people and getting them talking to others. Getting them to go online to talk to others.

So I do feel like it is a great way for a show to build and snowball in ways it’s very hard when you release the entire thing at once.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, look, pretty clear where my interest lies. I like that model. It worked really well for us. You’re right. You do get to infect people slowly and people can spread. And what happens is when somebody catches up to you and infects you by saying, “You have to watch this show,” what you don’t have is that feeling of, oh god, I have to watch all of a show. No. Maybe you’re going to get there and you’re like, OK, I just need to catch up. I’ve got three episodes or two episodes and I’m caught up and now I’m on the wheel.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Of whatever that show is. So I think that that makes total sense. I agree.

**John:** A show that people could catch up on for three episodes is Watchmen, the Damon Lindelof show. And, Craig, you are now hosting a podcast about Watchmen. Tell us about this.

**Craig:** I’m hosting a podcast. I’m hosting the official Watchmen Podcast. Because, you know, the Chernobyl Podcast was this – if Chernobyl the actual television series surprised HBO with its performance, I think the podcast really surprised them. Because they had no interest in podcasts whatsoever before that moment and they were kind of legitimately taken aback. 10 million people listened to the Chernobyl podcast, which is nuts.

So they were talking about, you know, we need to do more of these. And I said, you know, I would do one with Damon for Watchmen. And they were like, “Really?” I said, yeah, I would do that, why not? And then he said, “Really?” And I said, yeah, why not? And we did it.

So, it’s a little different than the Chernobyl Podcast for a couple of reasons. One, it’s not a nonfiction show so there’s a little bit less science and history going on there. And we also only do one episode for every three episodes of the show. So we have stuff built up to talk about. But our first episode airs this Sunday right after episode three of Watchmen. And I think it’s really good. Damon really is a great articulator of his own process and intention.

And I find the show fascinating. I mean, I love that show. And I’m a fan of the graphic novel as well. So we got into everything. We talked about everything. And I think if people like Watchmen they’re definitely going to like that podcast.

**John:** Fantastic. Now, another thing that happened in Austin that I was not there for was that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had a panel where they talked through Game of Thrones. People in the room seemed to love it a lot. People on Twitter did not seem to love it as much. We have two people writing in, at least two people wrote in with comments about it.

So, Jason Kabala from Austin wrote, “I was hoping you could address the backlash that Dave and Dan have been getting in the days following their panel at the Austin Film Festival. I was fortunate enough to be in the room and hear them speak and I just don’t understand how the media and Game of Thrones fans across the Internet could further vilify these two talented individuals based on some paraphrased snippets on one person’s Twitter feed.

“It is incredibly disappointing and disheartening to see this kind of lunacy unfold in real time, especially when I feel it contradicts what I heard with my own open ears.”

**Craig:** Yeah. Brief summary from what I could tell, because I was not at their panel but I read the comments. They were saying things that they’ve said many times that are a reflection frankly of their humility. They are generally humble guys. They don’t go on a panel and explain to you how brilliant they are and why their show got 50 million to people watch it year after year after year. And why it became a phenomenon and the biggest TV show in history basically. They don’t do that.

Instead they tend to lean more towards self-deprecation and humility and that somehow has become a problem. So, as far as I can tell the argument that sort of came out on Twitter, and it was one person writing it and then everybody kind of glomming on to that one person’s account, it seemed to rest on a lot of bad math or strange math to me. It goes like this. They’re saying that they kind of didn’t know what they were doing. Therefore they didn’t know what they were doing. Women and people of color, writers of color, never have an opportunity to get a job where they don’t know what they’re doing, therefore Dan and Dave are incompetent and bad.

And I read that I thought, well, OK, rebuttal. A, everybody watched the show. It was a huge success. That should be the end of that discussion. Literally. We should just end at A. The show was great. It doesn’t matter if they’re being self-deprecating or humble. The show was great. And people can argue about the last season or the last episode and I understand that. But for whatever, if you didn’t like Season 8, and hey, you didn’t like Season 7, fine. There were six seasons of essentially undeniably brilliant television.

They were complaining also that Dan and Dave said we mostly wrote everything ourselves and we didn’t have a writing room. Amazing. That’s mind-blowing to me. It’s incredible that they were able to do that. And that’s probably why for so long the series was so consistent and consistently brilliant because it was part of one unified authorial voice.

So, that’s A. B, let us stipulate that female writers, writers of color, would maybe not get the chances that those guys had after their first pilot, which was not good, or they wouldn’t have been allowed to learn on the job. OK. Let’s stipulate this as true, and honestly I think it probably is true. What does that have to do with them? I mean, that’s not their fault. Now we’re talking about corporations that hire people and give people chances. Why are we angry at them for that? I mean, if anything what they’ve proven if you believe their self-deprecation and humility is that second chances turn out great sometimes. And they do.

And so really all we’re saying I guess then is that second chances are good. But what’s underlying all this I think is anger at very, very successful people. And I think this is connected in part to anger at the last season. Literally. I think what’s happened is a lot of really hardcore fans who are hardcore fans of the show because of the work that Dan and Dave did were upset with the last season and now hate them. And that’s just sad.

**John:** I think it’s a symptom of our time, though. That sense of turning on the thing that you once loved. Yes. We get it. We sort of know how that happens.

One small element here that we should acknowledge is that in some of the discussion I saw on Twitter about it, it made it sound like Dan and Dave just stumbled off the street and pitched it to HBO and said like, “Hey, will you do this thing.” And they’re negating sort of like the tremendous track record they had before this, especially David Benioff who as a feature writer at the time was as hot as you could possibly get.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So for HBO to land him to do a series for them was a big get. And so I think people don’t actually acknowledge what careers these gentlemen had before this all started. And that’s worth remembering.

**Craig:** It is. And listen, David Benioff, and full disclosure, Dan and Dave are my friends. I presented them with their award, absurdly at the same festival where one of the people in the audience was complaining about them, they were also in a different event receiving the 2019 Outstanding Television Writing Award from the Austin Film Festival. And I presented that award to them. And if it makes people feel better, my speech was 90% making fun of them, and 10% praising them because they deserve that. But partly I can do that with them because, yes, David Benioff is really tall, and good-looking, and he was born rich. I mean, there’s a lot of reasons, sure, to say, yeah, I’m going to throw a tomato at this guy.

But, he works so hard. They uprooted their lives and their families for nearly a decade back and forth from Los Angeles to Ireland to Iceland and Dubrovnik. And they did this tirelessly and they got so much right and we loved their show collectively as a culture. And I’m talking about the world. This was a global phenomenon. And, you know, it does inspire strong emotions. And I understand that people get upset if they don’t like that final season or if they feel that characters were betrayed. And so they’re going to latch onto things these guys say as evidence of some disease that was always there. But, no, they’re incredibly decent people, hard-working people who did a brilliant job. And for the life of me I don’t understand how people can love something so much that they forget they loved it. That’s the part of this that’s so strange. They forget.

And people are going to yell at me for this because this is emotional to them now. They are invested in the notion that these guys are villains and they’re not. They’re writers who wrote a terrific show that we loved. It really doesn’t go much deeper than that. Is there a reason to say that our business doesn’t give non-white male writers more chances and deserved chances? Yes, that’s right. And hopefully our business gets better at that and fixes it. But I have no idea what that has to do with the fact that the business did get this one right. This is not like they gave two mediocre idiots a second chance to make a mediocre show and then kept pushing it in our faces even though we didn’t want it. We loved it. It was huge. What else can I say?

**John:** Well let’s leave it with Nate who wrote in to say, “What’s most frustrating about this for me is that it seems to further reinforce incorrect notions that creative pursuits spring fully formed from the instant the creator gets the spark of their idea, like a muse gifting an artist with a story. Instead of the actual truth which sees artists having to fail countless times in figuring out the best way to bring their stories out into the world.

“In other words, if you’re lucky enough to be labeled a genius it only comes through never-ending process of trial and error.”

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you know because you did Big Fish on Broadway so you know that process, which is designed ultimately to seem like one day you went, “Oh, I know,” and then out comes this perfect crystal of a show. That’s not how it works.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** I mean, it is a constant reimagining and reconfiguring and rethinking and re-staging and recasting. And that’s the way movies go. And that’s the way TV shows go. And we’re partly to blame as artists because we are peddling the illusion of intentionality. We always meant it to be this way. But, you know, it’s not. And I just, again, don’t understand why anyone is angry about the fact that they fixed it. I mean, that’s what happened. I saw that pilot. It was bad. I told them it was bad. They agreed it was bad. Everyone agreed it was bad. They redid it completely. I saw that. And it was awesome.

**John:** That’s what you want for every writer to have the ability to go back and fix these things.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Exactly. I want that for everyone.

**John:** That’s what we’re saying.

In hiding the work, we’re only seeing the end result, which is great for most audiences. The audiences don’t need to see all the work. But, that work was there and to not acknowledge all the work was there is a disservice to the artist and the final product.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, listen, when writers go out there and say things like, “We didn’t know what we were doing,” they’re being humble and they’re being self-deprecating. I assure you they knew what they were doing more than most people. Because most people can’t do that. Almost no one can do that. It’s really hard to be the people that come up with the biggest TV show of all time. I’m pretty sure it was just them that did it. And from their point of view, of course, they must feel stupid and like they don’t know what they’re doing, just like I felt stupid and felt like I didn’t know what I was doing when I was making Chernobyl, or everything I do, because that’s kind of my anxiety. I mean, have these people never heard of–

**John:** Imposter syndrome?

**Craig:** Imposter syndrome. I mean, all of us have that. So you have these two guys being very human and vulnerable up there and sharing their imposter syndrome and I guess the answer is, “And therefore they’re imposters.” Well who made the show that you loved? I’m so confused by the math.

But, meh.

**John:** All right. Here’s a simpler thing we can resolve. So, in a recent blog post I had to spell out the word writers room. So television is written in a writers room. We all agree to that. What I said is completely accurate and clear until you actually have to spell the word writers and decide whether it has an apostrophe or not an apostrophe. So I asked a poll on Twitter about apostrophe/no apostrophe. But, Craig, I want to know what your opinion is. Writers room – apostrophe or no apostrophe? And where does the apostrophe go?

**Craig:** I struggle with this myself. Probably technically I think I want there to be no apostrophe and just it is the room with writers in it.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** However, the problem is when I look at that it looks wrong. So then I do want it to be possessive. I want it to say that this is the room that belongs to the writers. But then that’s plural. And that’s a bit goofy looking. So, the most pleasant looking is the least right one, which is that it is a room that belongs to just one writer, which I just don’t think applies. So my suggestion, and I’m excited to hear where you’ve landed on this, but my suggestion is we just dump the term entirely and call it the writing room. And then problem solved.

**John:** Yeah. So the room of requirement. Yes. So I did it with no apostrophe with the logic that it is the room full of writers rather than the room owned by writers because in a possessive sense technically the apostrophe goes after the S because it’s a plural. I agree that also looks weird. It looks like you’re leaving something out. Apostrophes in English are just a kludge and, you know, it’s weird we have the apostrophes. We pretend we have the rules for them. We really don’t have good rules for them. So I’m doing it without the apostrophe.

The poll results were 55% with S’, 45% with no apostrophe. I didn’t give the ‘S as an option. That split tells me that both are really common and therefore we should not rend our garments over which spelling we use. They’re both good. They’re both acceptable. They both make sense. And we should focus on what is happening in that writers room and not how we’re going to punctuate writers room.

**Craig:** I’m going to still push writing room and we’ll see how far I get. We know I’m not getting far at all, but I’m stubborn, you know. I’m stubborn.

**John:** Yeah. You are stubborn. We like that.

All right. Let’s talk about the people inside that writing room. We have a lot of discussions about assistant pay over the past few weeks. Brad wrote in to say, “I’m a principal consultant to a large corporation in a major US city. My blood pressure was running high by the middle of episode 422. Similar to how we set professional expectations in the wake of #MeToo, no dinner, no drink meetings, no hotel meetings, is it time to reset the role and responsibilities of an assistant?” Would that it would be so simple as to do that. Basically there’s a clear concise way to say that an assistant does exactly this and nothing more. Brad, I get the instinct. It’s not going to be just a simple job description listing I think that’s going to fix this problem for me.

**Craig:** Agreed. Would that it were so simple. We all use assistants in different ways and also the word assistant is covering many, many different kinds of assistants. So for instance John just referred to the sort of assistant that’s in the writing room. Ha, I did it.

**John:** Keep trying. The more you say it.

**Craig:** Selling it. But of course there are personal assistants that don’t work in a writing room. They are there to work for an executive or somebody and they’re really just there to do personal things. Then there are assistants that are more like executive assistants. They’re there to work for someone at a desk, at a studio, or an agency. There are all sorts of different kinds. We’re going to struggle to codify what that word means. And I don’t necessarily think we need to as long as the people doing the hiring are disclosing fully what the nature of the job is before people accent it.

What we do need to do is set a floor for how much people are paid.

**John:** Agreed. I think part of the challenge, this term assistant which means one thing in all other industries, it means kind of a different thing in Hollywood, is that the assistant position is kind of an apprenticeship. Ideally it’s kind of an apprenticeship. It’s where you get to learn how the industry works. And that’s why we had people write in talking about working as an assistant at an agency even though they had no intention of working at an agency ultimately for their career because it was a great place to learn the business.

And so that apprenticeship is broken. It is busted right now for issues that are beyond just how pay is working. But it is a fundamental nature of how this all happens. It’s why most people who are working in the industry did have a job as an assistant at some point in their careers which is different than a lot of other industries. So it is a natural place for people to get started in this business. We just need to make sure that it’s paid properly.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And in future episodes we’re going to talk more about what assistants should be doing. Because some of the email that has been coming in has been talking about sort of, “My boss has me write scenes and stuff, is that OK?” It’s like–

**Craig:** No!

**John:** Complicated. Yes. Partly that is a thing that you aspire to do, so in some ways it’s great that that person is involving you in the creative process.

**Craig:** Paying you as a writer would be great.

**John:** It would be.

**Craig:** I think that you’re right. It is a broken apprenticeship. Although I suspect it’s always been broken. I mean, I assume that throughout history here in Hollywood the percentage of assistants that have gone on to become the things that they wanted to be is rather small. Because the percentage of everybody becoming the thing they want to be in Hollywood is very small. But if we are going to have this brutal system where 10 million people are competing for three jobs, three dream jobs, then while they’re here competing and working on desks and picking up lunches and dry cleaning and answering phones they should be treated like human beings, meaning not abused, and paid a reasonable wage that allows them to live in Los Angeles while they do this job.

**John:** Agreed. So this week on Assistantdom I thought we would talk about showrunners and the holidays. So, this past week I put up a blog post that went through some of the letters we’d gotten in about how showrunners were stepping up for their assistants, especially writing room assistants, to make sure they were getting paid enough. So, I’ll point to that blog post. We’ll have a link to that.

But there were also some additional letters that came in and I thought we’d have Megana read through them. She’s our voice of the assistants. So producer Megana Rao can read a little bit more from what some people had to say about their bosses stepping up.

And I really want to focus on some of the strategies that these showrunner bosses used. This first one really speaks to understanding and sort of selling the value of that assistant. Let’s take a listen.

**Megana Rao:** Bianca writes, “Before going to the studio about a number the showrunner discussed it with me first, making sure I was OK with that rate. We shot a pilot in Croatia this past spring and the showrunner advocated for me to go with him and be bumped to script coordinator with a higher rate. When the script coordinator job finished as our pilot wrapped the showrunner asked the studio to keep me at that higher rate as a raise. There have also been several times when I was supposed to wrap but he asked the studio to extend me by telling them how important I am to his writing process.”

**John:** Great. So I think this is a really strong example of the studio is more willing to pay for somebody that is deemed vital to the production. And if the showrunner is saying, no, no, this person is vital to my creative process, they’re going to listen more carefully. They’re not going to argue like this is a disposable cog, that anyone could do this job, if you’re telling them, “No, no, most people couldn’t do this job. This person is special,” you’re more likely to get them the salary they deserve.

**Craig:** Yeah. In a very broad way I think that the studio is probably waiting for the showrunner to say something. If the showrunner isn’t necessarily advocating for something then the studio doesn’t have to worry about it. I mean, they’re the ones who are paying this. They don’t want to pay more than they have to. But if a showrunner says, “I need this person. That’s that,” generally speaking, assuming that the show is going well, that’s going to be honored. They don’t want to cause a problem there. And I think in this case there’s a pretty interesting thing going on here. Whether or not the showrunner was coming up with these ideas or whether Bianca was coming up with these ideas, I suspect Bianca had a plan.

So if you’re an assistant and – let me take that back – if you’re an employer and you’re concerned that your assistant isn’t getting paid well enough, ask them what their plan would be. I bet they have one. They’ve just either been hesitant to share it with you or they didn’t think it could ever come to pass. But they’ve probably thought this through and know more about their situation than you do.

**John:** So next strategy is for the showrunner to have business affairs deal with them, the showrunner, rather than dealing directly with the assistant. So it’s a case where you sort of intercede early in the process to make it clear like, “No, no, this is how much I want this person to be paid,” rather than having to come back in later on to negotiate it. Let’s take a listen to that.

**Megana:** Kaitlin writes, “For season one of the show I currently work for my boss actually negotiated my pay on my behalf. I never needed to negotiate for myself in person with the studio. I believe this was an outlier experience because she was a first time showrunner who had the time and the drive to go bat for us before the show actually got rolling. The way this worked was I gave her the number I planned to ask/negotiate for with Netflix, asking if she’d be willing to back me up when I did. And she said she would.

“The she reached out to me telling me that she herself had asked Netflix to pay me that amount and they came in a teeny tiny bit under. Would that be OK with me? It certainly was because I had asked for higher than I planned to receive. She totally had my back.”

**John:** Great. So this was a first time showrunner, so this was not a person who had experience doing this negotiation, but had the time and had the energy and sort of the pluck to step up and say this is what I want this person to be paid. Didn’t quite get all the way there, but got much further than this assistant would have been able to by him or herself. So that feels like progress.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And maybe it’s because that this person was a first time showrunner they were kind of fresh and new and had a healthy attitude about how this should all work. I could see how after your 30th year running TV shows you didn’t want to also add on this extra aspect of being an HR person for what is now the 4,000th assistant that has come that has kind of gone through the system. But hopefully if we can kind of get things better then individual showrunners won’t have to.

The more you do it as an individual showrunner the less likely it is you’ll have to do it next time because there will be a reasonable base pay for assistants and you won’t have to personally advocate. It will just be there waiting for them.

**John:** Yeah. Business affairs will see you on the phone. OK, this showrunner is calling to get this person bumped up. It’s a thing that happens every time. It’ll be OK. So maybe they won’t even have to make the phone call because it will just default to a higher level.

**Craig:** Correct. That’s the plan.

**John:** So the next strategy for showrunners is to keep hammering. Let’s take a listen.

**Megana:** Andy wrote in, “My boss had to lobby for me to superiors on four separate occasions. I’m fully aware that not everyone is willing to do that for their employee and can put him in an uncomfortable position with his superiors. I’m very grateful to my boss and feel very lucky. I will say my mental health has benefited the most. Constantly being stressed out about money is such a burden. It affects your relationships, your mood, and you feel like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. I feel so much better and can see a future for myself in this industry which wasn’t always the case.

“It’s kind of crazy what a huge difference something like that can make. But keep in mind this was all for just a $5 an hour raise.”

**John:** Yeah. So a $5 an hour raise is not a big deal probably in the course of the show, but it’s a huge deal for someone like Andy who is in that situation. And so for the showrunner who has a thousand other things to juggle, to keep coming back to, OK, and I’ve got to get Andy an extra $5 an hour is a lot. But it is really important to Andy. So that not sort of giving up at the first no is crucial. And believe me, that showrunner wasn’t taking no on a lot of other levels as well.

So, to keep hammering, to keep pushing for what Andy needed was crucial.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I had to do quite a bit of that when I was making a deal and I wanted to make sure that my employees had health insurance. I had to fight. What I am sort of shocked by, but I guess I shouldn’t be, is how weirdly pennywise and pound foolish business affairs and studios can be. They will fight you tooth and nail on these things, like a $5 an hour raise, which they can afford, and isn’t a huge deal. Maybe because they’re just terrified that they’re going to end up having to do what you and I want them to do, which is give everyone a pay raise across the board who does that job. That seems to be the big fear. That’s what they’re scared of the most.

So they are acting like McDonald’s, which will lobby against increases in minimum wage everywhere they are because that’s what they pay and they have to multiply it times every single employee they have. Well, tough. We’re just going to keep doing this because that’s what needs to happen.

**John:** So the last strategy a showrunner might consider is really focus on the total dollars. So, not focus on how much they’re getting paid per hour or how many guaranteed hours, but how many they’re bringing home on a weekly basis. Let’s take a listen to that.

**Megana:** Margie wrote in about kit rentals. She says, “I was a director’s assistant during post on a Netflix movie in 2016 to 2017. Part of Netflix’s policy for kit rentals for laptops is that they’ll pay up to $500 for however long you’re on the project. It was a great extra $50 a week on my paycheck for a couple of months. Then, when I hit the $500 max and I stopped getting paid to bring my laptop in, well, $50 extra a week is a huge deal for me. Losing $200 a month in salary would hurt a lot of people.

“I asked the accountant if I could renew the kit rental or if they would provide me a work laptop. And I got a curt email from Netflix production restating that $500 was their max policy and said I should have asked them for a work laptop from the start. So, they wouldn’t budge. The post supervisor knew all about this and wouldn’t do anything to fight for me. He was afraid of and loathed the producer. I got so fed up I approached the director and asked if he would talk to the producer about increasing my weekly rate to compensate for the loss of my kit rental.

“He did. And the producer upped my rate for the remainder of the project, which was nearly ten months.”

**John:** Great. So what I like about this is it’s not being hung up on the principal of like, no, no, her rate needs to be this versus that. It’s how much is she bringing home. And so she was getting this extra $50 a week as a kit rental. Once that ran out, how do we get her an extra $50 a week? Bump it someplace else. If they had to make up an excuse for it, or they’re going to rent something else of hers, great. But really for Margie what made this job survivable was that $50 a week. And so how do we get her to that number rather than figuring out exactly what this hourly rate needed to be?

**Craig:** Right. And as we go forward in this discussion I’m going to keep coming back to the notion of the bottom line, because we know now after listening very carefully to so many people over so many weeks now that the employers can play a ton of games about how they pay you. They can change your hours. They can change the amount of overtime hours. They can change how much they pay for overtime. So when you get a number, a blankety-blank per hour that actually isn’t the bottom line. They can make that rather elastic actually.

What really matters is what is the bottom line. How much money do you get per week? That’s what matters. So that’s what we’re going to concentrate on whether it is a question of improving an hourly rate or improving guaranteed hours, or improving kit rentals. Whatever it is. The bottom line is we need to find a reasonable amount per week.

**John:** Agreed. So in the weeks ahead I think we need to have a discussion about what is the amount per week that is livable and survivable on in Los Angeles and see if we can get something approaching consensus on what that is and then figure out how to get people that money.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So that’s our goal. A small goal for the New Year.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** But before we get to the New Year we’ve just crossed through Halloween, which means that it’s now the holidays. It’s now the official holiday season. We can now play All I Want for Christmas for the next two months solid. But, a thing that’s come up quite a bit in the letters that have come in to the mailbox is that the holidays are actually a really tough time for assistants because many assistants are not paid during those holiday weeks. And so in some cases it’s two weeks off, or a week at Thanksgiving. There’s real problems for assistants in a period where they should be excited to have vacation it’s actually much worse for them because they are not bringing in the money they would normally bring in.

So, Michael Greene, a showrunner, has a Twitter thread from a couple years ago that we’ll link to that talks through his recommendations for how a writing room can figure out how much to give as a holiday bonus to the assistants who are working for that show. And it’s very clear simple math based on what position you are how much you kick in in order to get people paid so they can make it through those holiday seasons well.

So, that is a first step I would point people towards.

**Craig:** Yeah. Nothing says Christmas spirit like telling people this is a time of year where you have to buy extra stuff. Also we’re not going to pay you. I mean, how about this just as a simple bottom line. Pay people. Every week. If you have an assistant they should be paid every week. They should get a couple of weeks of vacation time and they should get holidays off. And you should also pay them for those.

On top of that – on top of that – you should be giving some sort of Christmas bonus or gift, presuming that the employee is somebody that you’re not, you know, in the process of getting rid of, because that’s what freaking Dickens tells us. I mean, honestly how many versions of A Christmas Carol has this town made? 400?

**John:** We’re doing some more, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. And they keep coming. And yet – and yet – it’s just Scrooge all the way down. And it’s not fair. It’s wrong. It’s kind of anti-progressive. It flies in the face of everything we say we care about. It’s just wrong. Boo.

**John:** Boo.

**Craig:** Boo to Scrooge, you know? Like people should be paid. So you shouldn’t be looking at Christmas as a time of tension because you’re going to have to drive an Uber for two weeks. I mean, this is wrong.

**John:** Yeah. It is wrong. Also, the holidays are a time where you theoretically should be able to travel back to visit your family.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so that’s what this holiday spirt is about. Have movies taught us nothing? That the holidays are for getting back with your family and coming to appreciate your family as an adult. And we are not allowing these assistants to go travel back to their families and appreciate them as adults and have awkward conversations about their Hollywood careers. That’s why we need to give them holiday bonuses.

**Craig:** Let’s not get crazy. I mean, let’s not necessarily that we have to go back to see our families at Christmas, right. I mean, can’t a few of us get waivers on that one? I need a waiver.

**John:** Some sort of waivers will be allowed.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Let’s end this segment on some good news. Matt wrote in. He was a key set PA on season two of Fresh Off the Boat. I won’t read the whole story, but essentially because of how their schedule was working they were going to be off a week at Thanksgiving and then more time at Christmas. And it became really tough to figure out like how are we going to survive with only three out of four weeks’ pay. It was stressful. So they went to their ADs. The firsts. The seconds. The seconds-seconds. They voiced their concerns. They went to the UPM and the producer. And successfully got them to carry them through Thanksgiving and one week at the holidays.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** And so–

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** That’s an example of a show stepping up and recognizing we are putting an undue burden on the people who have really stepped forward to bear it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we shouldn’t necessarily be giving the Fresh Off the Boat people too much credit for doing what I think should just be the base right thing. But, you know, tip of the hat because a lot of people are not even doing that. So, everybody – everybody – should be paying their employees for that stuff. I mean, come on. Come on. When you were a kid did you think that my dream is to grow up and deprive my employees of pay during Christmas? Who wants that? That’s just wrong.

**John:** Your college roommate wanted that.

**Craig:** Oh god, did he ever – oh, what a disgusting person. Ugh. Did you see him at the – well, you don’t watch sports.

**John:** But I saw a photo of him wearing the Astros outfit at the game.

**Craig:** He’s the reason they lost. I’m telling you.

**John:** He’s a curse.

**Craig:** He puts on any team’s uniform and that’s it. It’s just that all the wheels come off. Ugh. What a repugnant person. Anyway.

**John:** Anyway. Let’s do a last bit of follow up. This is from a stuntman named Kevin who writes, “I just did my 20-year anniversary working as a stuntman in LA. I emailed you guys once before and said Craig is right, stunt people don’t punch each other in the face.” That was in relation to a Three Page Challenge we were looking through.

**Craig:** Oh, yes, yes, yes.

**John:** He says, “I also loved the Seth Rogan episode. His perspective on stunt people and how they process pain got me thinking. It reminded me of a conversation I once had in a [trans-mo] van from set to base when someone in the van asked me and another stunt guy doesn’t it hurt. And the delivery had the tone of why on earth would you do this. Right then I had a moment of clarity. Explained it in a way that still encapsulates how I feel about what I do. I said, ‘It hurts more not to pay the mortgage.’”

**Craig:** Well, Kevin, I don’t believe you. Because here’s the thing. There are a lot of ways to pay the mortgage. But you’re a stunt guy. And you’re a breed of people. I mean, listen, I always describe all of us collectively as show folk. I mean, we’re show folk. We’re carnie people, right? We’re in the business of putting on things. And so we’re special. And stunt people are a special brand of show folk. And they – you have to like it. You have to. You can’t – there’s no way you go to work and you’re like, “Oh my god, I approach falling down the stairs with the same trepidation as everyone.” You do not.

So, I’m going to push back a little bit and actually say, Kevin, no. There’s more to it than that. Every stunt person I’ve ever met on set and talked to has a certain kind of thing. And it’s awesome. And I don’t have it at all. But I’m glad that they do.

**John:** Cool. All right. Time for our marquee topic which is tough love versus self-care. So this is inspired by a Chuck Wendig blog post over this past week where he talks through the dueling notions of sort of do you buckle down and sit in that chair and get all those words written when you’re hurting, or do you take a step back and practice some self-care. And he’s really looking at the trap you can fall into where you’re just self-caring all the time and you’re not actually doing the hard work. And as we head into NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which is where I started Arlo Finch, I thought it was a good time to look at the dueling instincts to you’ve got tough it out versus relax and be easy on yourself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I loved this. I thought it was really smart. And the reason I really appreciated it is because there are two positive ways of thinking about things and one positive way is I need to take care of myself and be gentle with myself and not beat myself up because that’s going to be counterproductive. And there’s another positive thing that says I need to apply myself and motivate myself and push through difficult things and be resilient in order to get things done.

The problem with both of those things is that bad sentiments can easily masquerade as those things. That’s kind of the part that I thought he really put his finger on brilliantly is that the two things I just said are correct and good, but here’s something that can masquerade as tough love: a kind of brutal self-loathing and self-denial. And here’s something that can masquerade as self-care: just fear and withdrawal and a sense that engaging isn’t worth it. So, I thought it was really important that especially now because we do concentrate so heavily on self-care that somebody said, “Just watch out. There are these two imposters that will wear the clothing of these two things and neither one is going to help you.”

**John:** Yeah. Let’s go back to that tough love, because you know someone who is advocating tough love will say, “Yeah, so what? Writing is often hard. You’re not digging a ditch.” And to some degree writing is exercise and it’s just like working out. You get stronger sometimes by pushing through the pain. And you’ve got to rip those muscles a little bit so that they can get stronger. I don’t know if actually physical science would hold that up to be true.

**Craig:** That is – you did it.

**John:** All right. So, and I get that. And writing for all of us, actually sitting down in the button chair and getting to that thousand words or those three pages can be really tough sometimes. It’s hard to string the words together. We’ve talked about this a lot on the show. But, what Craig describes as that imposter is a real thing where sometimes it’s your romantic notion that art must be suffering. That writing must be hard and so therefore if writing is hard then I’m doing the right thing because that’s what writing is supposed to be like. That it’s supposed to hurt and it’s supposed to be torture every time you do it. That’s probably not true. And that’s not a healthy way to be approaching the craft that you’ve chosen for yourself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you can easily get into a trap where you think of yourself as stupid or lazy because it just didn’t happen that day. You can try and try and try. There are days where it’s not going to happen. And the healthy thing is to say that is normal. I am not perfect. Not every day is going to be optimum. But that imposter dressed in the clothing of tough love will say, “You suck. You’re weak and lazy and dumb and a real writer would have gotten it done. You’ve just failed.” Well that’s not helpful at all.

**John:** Let’s look at self-care because you and I are both dealing with shoulder pain and part of the recommendation for that is, well, take it easy on your shoulder. Don’t do things that are going to hurt your shoulder. And that really is a form of self-care. And so if you are encountering a lot of mental anguish and other things in your life that makes it hard for you to write, possibly pushing through and forcing yourself to write is going to make that mental anguish worse. And so to be mindful that there could be a good reason why you should step off the accelerator and give yourself a little bit of a break and not be pushing yourself so hard.

Chuck was writing from the perspective of he’s a guy in a shack who is writing books. I’m reading his book right now. His book is really good. He wrote a big giant tome called Wanderers. It’s sort of like The Stand. It’s as long as The Stand. It’s a big tome that drops down. But Chuck is a guy writing by himself out in the woods. He is not in a writing room. I’m going to keep using that word as much as I can.

**Craig:** Good for you.

**John:** He’s not in a writing room in a social environment with other people. And so therefore he only has himself to turn to. And so some of his advice can be a little bit different about self-care when you are surrounded by a group who can be pushing you, or also be supporting you.

**Craig:** Yeah. The self-care thing is interesting because we didn’t really have it until a few years ago. Of course it existed and people would come up with different names, but the notion of self-care and the popularity of it is a relatively modern phenomenon. And I think it is important for somebody to kind of, you know what happens is there’s this backlash where people say, “Problem is all these snowflakes with their self-care, ergo self-care is stupid.” By the way, the people that say that never use the term ego. But whatever.

That’s not correct. Self-care is actually crucial. What is correct is that self-care can be used as a name for something that isn’t self-care at all, but a different kind of self-abuse, which is hiding. And we can when we are afraid sometimes put on the clothing of somebody that is trying to take care of themselves, when really we’re just scared. And people might think, well, how exactly is writing scary. Well, when you don’t know what to say it’s terrifying. It really is. It’s as scary as a dream where you have to go on stage and give a speech but you haven’t prepared one. That’s what it kind of feels like.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a natural anxiety that happens. Like am I going to be able to do it? If I can’t do it then it’s going to suck and I’m going to be embarrassed. Even if I’m the only person who is going to see that I can’t do it it’s going to be embarrassing. So, yes, there’s a whole cycle that can stat about should I sit down and actually start writing today.

**Craig:** Correct. And you can wear the clothing of modern parlance and say, no, today is a self-care day. It is worth taking a real clear moment when you say today is a self-care day to say, “Or is it?” It doesn’t mean you’re lying to yourself. It just means let’s really ask and evaluate first. Then if everything checks out, then yes, it’s a self-care day.

**John:** So I put together a list of five questions that I thought would be a starting place for looking at is this a time for self-care or is this a time for some tough love with myself. So, let me read through here. Craig, I suspect you’ll have other things to add to this checklist.

So first I would say is check the facts. And basically that’s a chance to sort of step outside yourself and just look at the situation you’re in. Is this a situation where you’re dealing with some big stuff that anyone in your situation would say like, OK, given what you’re going through, like the loss of a family member, a big breakup, you’re moving, there are some real reasons why you are not equipped at this moment to be doing this stuff. So just check the facts. Like independent of your emotions, what are the actual facts about this situation?

I would ask are you taking care of the basics. I would ask are you taking care of the basics. Are you actually eating properly? Are you sleeping enough? Is there some basic survival function that you’re not doing a good enough job at and is that the thing you really need to fix rather than worrying about how much you’re writing on a day.

I would ask can you take smaller bites. And by that I mean rather than committing to three hours of sitting writing can you just write for 20 minutes, or an hour. Can you do a little sprint to get you through some stuff? Can you write 100 words rather than forcing yourself to write 1,000 words at a sitting?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Can you lower the stakes? And this is where I come back to Aline Brosh McKenna’s method of getting in the ocean. I don’t know if you remember her describing this at some point. But this is how Aline describes starting to swim in the ocean. Is that you sort of step on the sand and you get your toes wet, and then you get your ankles wet. Then you splash a little water up on your shins, and then your knees. And eventually you’re in the ocean and you’re swimming and you don’t even realize that you started swimming. And I always loved Aline’s visual for how she gets into the ocean, because it’s sort of true. It’s scary to jump into the ocean, but if you sort of just wander in there like, oh hey, I’m in the ocean, I’m swimming.

**Craig:** It’s literally how every Jewish woman I’ve ever seen gets into a pool. It’s like every Jewish woman slowly like wets the arms, wets the legs. It’s so careful. Maybe it’s just my family. Maybe it’s just the women in my family. I don’t know. But it’s such a weird stereotypical thing.

And I guess as far as stereotypes go fairly harmless. Because it is a smart way of acclimating to a new environment. And I think lowering the stakes is a brilliant point of view on this. Because there are times where you may say, “Listen, I think today is a self-care day. You know what? Today is a self-care day. That said, what if I did some writing on a self-care day? It doesn’t even count. It’s like free calories. Because it’s a self-care day. So if it happens it happens. And if it doesn’t it doesn’t. I’ll just try it now with like zero stakes attached because it’s a self-care day. I don’t have to sit there grinding my teeth because it’s not happening.”

I think that’s really smart.

**John:** Katie Silberman when she was on the show recently she talked about how when she starts a project she’ll write scenes and scenes and scenes that aren’t going to be in the movie that are just the characters talking. Perfect. Those are kind of throwaway scenes. It doesn’t matter. You’re just getting a sense of the voices. There’s no demand that those actually have to be the real scenes in the movie. So try writing those. You’ll be surprised. Some of those will end up in the movie. But it’s lowering the stakes. The world isn’t going to come crashing down if those scenes are not perfect.

**Craig:** There you go. Yeah.

**John:** Last I would say can you define what you’ll need to be able to do in order to get back to work as normal. And so if you say like this is a self-care day, I can’t do it. Great. What are the criteria you need to meet for you to be able to get back to work? And if you can be just a little bit more concrete about that. OK, I need to be able to sit for ten minutes without bursting into tears. Great. So that’s a thing. If you can do that then you’re on your way to being able to do the next thing.

I need to be able to focus on one thing for 20 minutes. Give yourself some real criteria, benchmarks that you need to hit, so that you can actually say, OK, I’m in this state or I’m not in this state. There’s a sense that there’s an end date to it. That it’s not going to be a permanent condition for you.

**Craig:** Those are five great questions to ask yourself. I really only have one other one to suggest. And it is simply is the biggest problem on this particular day your writing. Because if the biggest problem, the thing that is taking the most wind out of your sails, the thing that is making you the sickest in your gut is the work itself, it may not be a self-care day. It may be a day where you just have to kind of re-approach your writing and think about what’s not working.

Because otherwise you could hide forever from that.

**John:** Yeah. When I was writing the Arlo Finch books, so the third book is in and done, so I’m essentially done with them, it was a lot more regular writing than I’d ever had to do. So it’s been four years of like really regular writing to get those books done. And the word counts were just so much higher and the workload was so much higher than before. And so I did have to be little tougher on myself in terms of like, yeah, I don’t necessarily really want to do it today but I kind of need to do it today and I’m going to do it today. And I would schedule like even family vacations I would say, OK, I need an hour this morning to write. And I’m not being selfish. It’s what needs to happen. And so I would plan for, OK, I’m writing during this time.

And then once I got that writing down I was just free in a way that was great. It wasn’t looming over me because I knew I’d gotten that work done.

So I bring this up because sometimes writing actually is what you need to do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Sometimes writing is a really important way to get healthy again because it lets you step outside of yourself, outside of your own internal narrative into a different narrative. And really focus on that for a time. So, it can get you out of your head with the right project.

**Craig:** That’s such a great point. And I’ve got to tell you, that’s me. There are times where I needed a day off or even a week off because of extant circumstances. Things that are going on in my family. My son has surgery. Do you know what I mean? Like you got to deal with life as it comes and there are days where you just can’t do your work. But in all honesty 90% of the time when I am feeling miserable it’s because something is wrong with what I’m writing. And the only way to fix that is to solve that problem. So it doesn’t mean I have to write the solution. Sometimes I just have to take a long walk or a long shower. Sometimes I just don’t know the answer and I have to sit in that discomfort. But that is still a work day to me.

My fingers may not be moving on the keys, but I am thinking. I’m trying. And I know exactly what you said is correct. When I do solve it and when I write that solution the pain that I’m feeling will go away. Therefore I can’t self-care that. That can’t be self-cared away. That has to just be worked away. And it’s a really smart distinction that you’ve made there.

**John:** Cool. So we will link to Chuck Wendig’s original blog post which we thought was terrific. Chuck Wendig also writes a lot about writing and the writing process, so if you’ve not read any of his books on writing you should do that as well because he’s a very smart, clever guy and talks really honestly about the frustration of writing but also what’s cool about writing. And has a very good voice. So I would encourage you to check out his books as well. We’ll put links to those in the show notes.

Also, it is time now Craig for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Neato.

**John:** And I see you have one.

**Craig:** I do. What a shock. This one came from my old friend Craig Perry who is part of an exclusive club of people: Craigs. And it was right down my alley. This is an article in The Atlantic written by Olga Khazan and it is entitled The Therapeutic Potential of Stanning. And it’s about superhero therapy, which I did not know existed, but I think it’s amazing.

And basically, I mean, people can read it for themselves, but the basic idea here is that there are psychologists who are engaging with their clients and having their clients kind of imagining themselves as superheroes in their own lives. And processing their issues and their problems as superheroes encountering obstacles. Using people’s natural desire to interact with the world through narrative to help them unwind their own personal narrative. And obviously it’s not delusional. Everybody understands they’re not really a superhero. But it’s this kind of interesting geek therapy. And it seems to be working.

And I’m not at all shocked. Therapy has always been about kind of looking at your life as a story. What caused you to get this way? What was your beginning? What was your middle? How would you like your end to be? So this doesn’t surprise me at all. I just thought it was really fascinating that it was happening in kind of a codified way. So check that article out. The Therapeutic Potential of Stanning.

**John:** Yeah. I really liked this article a lot. And the idea behind this therapy. When I give my Arlo Finch talks to grade school kids part of my discussion is about what we mean by hero. And hero is the one who grows and changes. The hero is the one the story is about. The hero is the one you’re rooting for. And I flip it at the end saying like in real life you are the character who the story is about and in real life you are the person who has needs, hopes, dreams, and wants. You are the character that you’re rooting for. And if you look at yourself as the hero in your story that can be really helpful. It gives you a different way of looking at the obstacles in front of you. It gives you a different way of looking at who are your allies because very few heroes don’t have allies, someone who is on their side.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Everyone in these stories is an ally to somebody else. So gets you thinking outside of yourself. So to put it in a superhero context makes a lot of sense, especially in this Marvel moment that we’re living in. Smart.

**Craig:** Every superhero seems to have an origin story that is built around some kind of trauma. Well, a lot of them do. So, it’s just a natural thing to connect to. What about you’re One Cool Thing this week, John?

**John:** My One Cool Thing is a thing you’ll enjoy very much as well. It is called One Page Dungeon. It’s by Oleg [Dolya] who goes as watabou on the internets. It is a machine generated D&D dungeon, sort of like a one-page map for a dungeon that sort of is algorithmically generated. So each time you click it it’s building up a new little map of this place. It’s really great-looking little dungeons that you could imagine in any sort of published module. And sometimes the encounters are built in there. But I just really loved that it could procedurally generate these great little D&D maps that look so much better than anything I could ever draw on graph paper. So, I just loved it. It inspired me to just generate one and then build a one-off one-night encounter for some of my friends.

**Craig:** This is really cool. I also like the – they do – they look beautiful. And I like the titles that get generated as well randomly, one presumes, like this particular page. Let’s see, I’ve got Monastery of the Silent Dragon. And Secret Maze of the Dread Master. That’s pretty great.

**John:** I’m looking at Subterranean Monastery of the Red Titan. And I’ve got some rooms with some pillars in them. I’ve got different encounters. It looks great. So I just thought it was a cool way to use, you know, machines to generate some really paper and pencil kind of results.

**Craig:** Fun.

**John:** Fun. And that’s our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who also did our outro this week. 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 and feedback on things like assistants and other such.

But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts.

We have exciting news coming out very soon about the future of the premium show. But you can find all the back episodes for now at Scriptnotes.net. You can also download 50-episode seasons of the show at store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-one-with-seth-rogen).

**Craig Mazin:** Hi friends. Today’s podcast contains some salty language so if you are in the car with the young ones put their earmuffs on or wait to listen to it later.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 420 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So on September 9, 2019 at 1:09pm Chris Overcash tweeted, “@johnaugust @clmazin Can you guys have @sethrogen on for Episode 420?” Now, at 4pm Craig replies, “I’m down if he’s down.” And then at 4:03 I replied, “I’ve held off asking him until a live show, but this is a good idea.”

Then at 5:27pm Seth Rogen replied:

**Seth Rogen:** What did I say? Sure. I said, “OK.”

**Craig:** Yeah, OK.

**Seth:** Sure. Yeah, OK. Sounds like me.

**Craig:** Why move your fingers on a keyboard more than you need to?

**Seth:** Exactly.

**John:** Seth Rogen, welcome to Scriptnotes.

**Seth:** Thank you for having me.

**Craig:** This is great.

**John:** So I thought we might get into why was Chris Overcash even recommending you be on for Episode 420. What does 420 mean?

**Seth:** Well, I think to people who smoke weed it is a number associated with weed. It’s funny, you have some sort of explanation here. What I had always heard actually was an explanation more akin to like 187. Like I had heard that it was the police code some random place for weed.

**Craig:** For marijuana possession.

**Seth:** So like the code 420 and because of that people started smoking weed at 4:20 and it became an appropriated kind of thing.

**Craig:** But it’s not like, I mean, I guess you can’t really get an equivalent of 187. There is no 1:87 o’clock.

**Seth:** No, exactly.

**Craig:** So it wasn’t like there was a time to—

**Seth:** 2:27 I guess.

**Craig:** But this explanation actually – well, first of all, one question is but why would they be thinking of you, Seth Rogen? [laughs]

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** What do you have to do with this?

**Seth:** I get the joke.

**John:** Strong believer in like strict drug laws.

**Seth:** Yeah, exactly.

**John:** Craig, talk us through. We got this off of Wikipedia, so of course it’s 100% accurate.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**John:** But there were actually a lot of citations I removed from this. So, Craig, talk us through this explanation of 420.

**Craig:** I’ve got to tell you, it sounds credible. So as the story goes here on Wikipedia in 1971 there were five high school students. And I’m going to say their names because if this is true—

**Seth:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Steve Capper. Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich—

**Seth:** Or they’re just the people who edited this Wikipedia post and they’re like literally three 23 year olds who were bored.

**Craig:** Totally. Well there were four guys and then Mark Gravich just stuck his name on there. But this actually does sound like a group of guys I would have hung out in high school. I mean, I can actually see myself calling up Larry Schwartz.

So they were in San Rafael, California, and they called themselves the Waldos because they liked to hang out by a wall outside the school. This is like my friends. And they had a plan. This is cool. To search for an abandoned cannabis crop.

**Seth:** This sounds too cinematic.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, in 1971 I would imagine if you wanted to get high and you were in high school you had to find an abandoned crop. There weren’t dispensaries. I mean, what I went through in 1986 to get weed was kind of convoluted. So, they heard that there was this hidden cannabis crop and there was Beniamino Bufano’s 1940 Louis Pasteur statue on the grounds of San Rafael High School. That was their meeting place. And at 4:20pm, and their meeting time was 4:20pm, and so they referred to this plan with the phrase 4:20 Louis, or Louis if they didn’t have good accents.

And big surprise, they never found the secret crop. But, 4:20 just became a code word for getting high.

**John:** Getting high.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you know what? That’s as good of an explanation as anything.

**Seth:** It has a nice story to it. It sounds very – it sounds like some shit some people made up on Wikipedia. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Probably after getting high.

**Seth:** Yeah. Maybe I’m skeptical. Call me skeptical. It sounds too romantic for a story for that.

**John:** Well, it does sound like a movie. It sounds a little cinematic.

**Seth:** It would be lovely if that’s why it was called that. But it’s probably more likely that in Dayton, Ohio that’s the code for getting caught with weed.

**Craig:** Yeah. There was some very boring reason.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**John:** I thought we might start with that because it feels like if you saw this story How Would This Be a Movie. And so you have a group of characters together. They have this quest. There’s a thing they’re trying to do. It all falls apart. But they become folk heroes.

**Seth:** Instead they create a phrase that 50 years later.

**John:** Lives to this day.

**Craig:** And weirdly all of these guys work in the attorney general’s office now.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** What a sad, sad thing for them.

**John:** Seth Rogen, you are a writer. You’re an actor, producer, and a director. If we listed all of your credits it would be longer than our hour-long show. So, just screenwriting wise Superbad, Pineapple Express, This Is the End. Neighbors 2, Sausage Party. TV credits, Undeclared, Preacher, The Boys. If you meet a stranger, and people probably recognize you, but every once and a while you probably meet somebody who doesn’t know what you do, they say what do you do, what do you say you do?

**Seth:** It depends. Probably, I mean, I say usually I’m an actor just because I seem crazy if I don’t lead with that in the off chance that they recognize me. I seem like I’m being elusive or a dick or something like that. So I don’t want like to do that. But I probably associate most with being a writer because it’s the thing I’ve done the longest and it’s the thing that I honestly think I’m the best at out of all those many things that I do. And I think, yeah, like the movies we’ve written I think specifically have probably stood the test of time more than the things that, you know, more than other things, you know.

**Craig:** Just like your acting, but you’re not the writer of it so you haven’t participated in the creation of the script.

**Seth:** Exactly. But a lot of the movies that we – that I make I’m a producer on in some capacity and so I also, you know, heavily – I’m involved in the writing process. [laughs]

**Craig:** That has to be pretty frustrating if you’re a writer and you’re given something and you don’t – or is there any kind of relief if you’re ever handed something to just go, “You know what? Just today I can just be an actor.”

**Seth:** Yeah. Definitely. For sure. If I like completely have a lot of faith in the people that I’m working with then it’s a real – it’s doing less jobs which is just easier. You know what I mean? So, yeah. Less work is easier. That’s my big revelation.

**Craig:** Is acting easy?

**John:** Craig is acting in a show now, so is it easy for you?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, but I’m not like an actor-actor.

**Seth:** I think like anything it’s what you make of it. So I think some people you can not work hard, or you can – I think some people don’t work – I’ve worked with some actors where I’m like, wow, this person is doing a lot more than I am. [laughs] But that doesn’t always translate into–

**Craig:** Good.

**Seth:** Into good.

**Craig:** Yeah, like quantity is not the goal.

**Seth:** No, effort isn’t necessarily – some things just like with writing. Some people can spend years working on something and it’s not good, and some people can write something over the course of a week and it’s a classic movie that you watch for years. So, I think, yeah, like anything, like for some people it’s easy. I’ve also worked with some amazing actors who like it’s a very labored process for them. And it’s not easy. And it’s not like something they casually do. It’s something they like really dump a lot into and the result is good as a result of it, you know.

**John:** So I have no understanding of where you actually started as a writer. So were you on – was it while you were doing Undeclared? What was your first writing-writing that you were doing for movies or television?

**Seth:** Well me and Evan, my writing partner, started writing Superbad like in high school basically. So that was our first, like we got – like my mom bought us Final Draft when we were like 13 or 14 basically. And so we would like go home after school and write, like yeah, we were trying to write a movie basically.

**John:** And so you’re that, but what was the first thing you got paid to write?

**Seth:** Undeclared. I got hired as a writer on Undeclared when I was 18. And I was an actor on the show as well. So I was like a writer and actor.

**John:** So it was that classic kind of The Office situation where people were hired as both actors and writers on the show? Was that always – you were always going to do both?

**Seth:** No. It was like wildly uncommon at the time. It was several years before The Office, so it was like not at all – it was 2001. So like I was probably one of the only like people who was writing and acting on a comedy TV show at the time that wasn’t like a sitcom, you know. And it was hard, but it was fun. But, yeah, no, that was not at all the case. Fox, because the show Undeclared was done in the wake of the cancellation of Freaks & Geeks and the Fox Network specifically was like we don’t want any actors from Freaks & Geeks on the show. And slowly Judd got like all the actors from Freaks & Geeks onto the show.

But like I just slowly worked my way in there basically and got myself–

**Craig:** You wanted to be in front of the camera I presume? I mean, it wasn’t like they were like, “Come on, man, you’d be great for this.”

**Seth:** No, not at all. When you look like me you have to really wield yourself in front the camera. [laughs] It doesn’t just happen.

**Craig:** The thing is I think—

**Seth:** It doesn’t just happen.

**Craig:** I do look like you, I think.

**Seth:** Exactly. And it doesn’t just happen. I created the climate where people like you can just stumble in front of the camera.

**Craig:** I suspect you are as inbred Jewish as I am.

**Seth:** Exactly. We have all the same problems.

**Craig:** Just like generations. Hip dysplasia. The usual.

**Seth:** No, I was actually just saying that the other day. The Cossacks really did their thing. Like they might not have wiped us all out in like 1919, but they made it that none of us can enjoy like a cup of milk.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Seth:** And so the effects were long-lasting. Because you killed so many of us we all have to fuck each other and now we can’t have pizza and enjoy it really. It’ll give us a cold for days. So like you did your thing, Cossacks. Like in the long run you really did well.

**Craig:** I mean, they did sharpen our minds for certain things.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** The medical field.

**Seth:** Yes. We inherited trauma that really did give us a fight or flight.

**Craig:** We can’t enjoy anything really. A cup of milk is the least of it. I mean, even good news is a problem.

**Seth:** Yeah, they got us.

**Craig:** They got us good.

**John:** So Undeclared you’re writing, Judd Apatow is executive producing that show?

**Seth:** Yes. He’s the creator of that show.

**John:** And so was it through him that you started writing your own stuff, or something like Superbad?

**Seth:** No. I had been working on Superbad for a long time. I got hired as a writer on Undeclared because of Superbad.

**Craig:** Because of Superbad.

**Seth:** Like I had shown Judd Superbad and Judd was at the time trying to help us produce it, but like no one wanted to make it. So, my whole approach – it was like slightly different, but I grew up – it was the era of sitcoms.

**Craig:** Seinfeld and—

**Seth:** Yeah. So there was like a real roadmap for like if you were a comedian like you could write your own sitcom and become an actor through that. And I didn’t love – I liked Seinfeld and stuff, but I didn’t love sitcoms. I loved movies. So I was like I’ll be a comedian who writes their own movies and maybe that can become my avenue to success basically. And that’s why – Superbad I wrote – I was supposed to be the lead of and it just took us so long to make that I aged ahead of that role and Jonah Hill did a much better job than I would have playing—

**Craig:** You were so good.

**Seth:** Playing my role. Exactly. And it was one of those things where I’m like, oh, Jonah is a much more talented actor than I am. And like he did much better than I would have with the same role. Honestly. And we had done many readings with the material and like, yeah, and he really brought it to life in a way that I wouldn’t have.

**Craig:** Which is so strange because you’re writing, I mean, you’re a 13-year-old. First of all, you and Evan are the only 13 year olds who ever came home from school and wrote something that actually was good. You’re the only ones. Two. Two of you in the history of mankind. Not that 13 year olds shouldn’t try. You should.

**Seth:** It took a long time. There are some jokes in the movie that we wrote when we were 13.

**Craig:** I am so obsessed, particularly in comedy. So, you write god knows how many drafts, but then they’re also just revisions of individual lines and then the day comes along and there’s a billion versions that day, and then editing happens. And I’m obsessed with those very few jokes that make it all the way from the very beginning to the final cut of the movie. It’s like there’s three usually. So the fact that you had one from 13. Do you remember which one it was?

**Seth:** There was a lot actually from when we were 13.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**Seth:** That were like – because it was stuff – some of it was just stuff that would happen to us in high school. So like we would write it into the movie when it happened. And so it just hung out basically. Like a lot of the fake ID stuff, we were all trying to get fake IDs. So a lot of that was ripped from our lives. And the McLovin thing, honestly I think the idea that a guy–

**Craig:** McLovin was real?

**Seth:** No. But the joke that a guy goes and gets a fake ID and comes back with one word and it’s McLovin on it, I think we came up with that when we were 13 or 14 years old. It was from one of the very early incarnations of the script. So yeah, there’s stuff like that. Every once and a while on social media someone reposts a scene from Superbad or something like that and for some weird reason gets a lot of attention. And, yeah, me and Evan were talking about. It’s so weird. We thought of that McLovin joke when we were fucking children.

**Craig:** That’s incredible.

**Seth:** And it’s still a joke people really seem to enjoy.

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** So we’re talking about Evan a lot. So Evan is Evan Goldberg, your writing partner back from age 13 up till now. So you guys are still writing together. When you guys were writing together back then or now, what is the process? Are you together in a room working on stuff?

**Seth:** Yeah.

**John:** OK. So it’s not like you’re splitting up scenes and taking different stuff.

**Seth:** No we inherently like and always have kind of led different lives. Like I moved to LA when I was 16. He finished high school and went to college and that whole time we were working together. I’d go off to act in movies sometimes. He has a family. He has kids. I don’t have kids. So inherently there are moments in our life where one person is out of town for a week so the other person is writing the stuff we were both supposed to be working on just alone. And then we’ll send it to each other. But like 90% of the time we’re like in the same room with each other. Or we’ll talk on the phone with the same thing.

**Craig:** With the same thing. Which you can do now.

**Seth:** And work together.

**Craig:** Which is nice.

**Seth:** It is nice. Because we’ve been doing that for 20 years and it was not as graceful of a process.

**Craig:** Not as easy to do. Put two of you together in a room, who is on the keyboard?

**Seth:** We take turns.

**Craig:** That’s cool.

**Seth:** Totally. We write very similarly to how we have for a very long time. I think we try to write different things, so like inherently the process changes because we try not to just write like high school movies over and over. And then like with Pineapple Express, it was like an action movie so that was very different and it was like a whole different set of kind of muscles that we had never done before. And we worked on Sausage Party for years, it was an animated movie. So that was very different as well.

**Craig:** So sick. So sick.

**Seth:** So yeah, This Is the End was kind of like a horror movie that was very different and had a lot of different elements. So, yeah, I think every time we write – and we just wrote an adaptation of a comic book Invincible which is not really a comedy, which was fun to do. And we’re writing right now what’s largely a silent movie. So it’s like been a really different process because there’s no talking. And we’re basically storyboarding the whole movie.

**Craig:** That’s cool.

**Seth:** The script is like storyboards basically.

**Craig:** It’s kind of interesting that the two of you grow together. Because human beings, no matter how well they fit together at any point in their lives we grow at different speeds and our interests change and our minds change. And even when it comes to writing I think some people are the kind of people that are just who they are right out of the gate and that’s how they stay. And other people sort of grow and change and go up or down. It seems like you guys just have been moving together.

**Seth:** Yeah. I think like any good relationship, we’ve been growing together.

**Craig:** That’s kind of great.

**Seth:** I also think we’re very respectful of one another in that sometimes our tastes do change a little bit. And there are probably things that we both maybe would have been enthusiastic about making ten years ago and now one of us is like, “Meh, I don’t really want to do that now.” And it’s like a veto thing. If one of us doesn’t want to do it then we don’t do it.

**Craig:** It’s over.

**Seth:** And it’s fine. We only want to work on things that both of us are enthusiastic about so I think inherently things come up every now and then. But that’s also why it’s nice to have a production company because then there can be projects where it’s like, OK, I’ll kind of head up producing this if we’re not going to write it or direct. It’s something we can still make and you don’t have to work on it that much. You know what I mean? And that goes both ways as well.

So, yeah, it’s been nice. The production company has been a good outlet for us to kind of express ourselves in ways that maybe aren’t as interesting to the other person.

**Craig:** Right. So you individualize.

**Seth:** And allow us that when we focus on something it’s really because we both want to spend years and years of our lives, you know, working on.

**John:** Well let’s talk about production because like you guys made The Boys for Amazon which was fantastic. I just loved that.

**Craig:** That thing has taken over. It’s pretty amazing.

**John:** That thing was great. But also I felt like it was a really challenging adaptation I’m guessing because the comic book was from a certain time but the series that you ended up making was very, very 2019. It was in a universe where there is the Marvel universe and it was very aware of that. So, how do you approach that as a producer or as a person coming in to make this television show? Where do you start?

**Seth:** I mean, you start by hiring a showrunner who seems like they have a good handle on the material honestly. Like we, you know, the producers can help guide things and we have obviously loud voices in any given room, but we’re also respectful of the fact that like kind of whoever spends the most time working on a thing should have like a proportional say over that thing. Unless you think it’s just like things are going off the fucking rails basically, you know.

So Eric Kripke was just really – honestly when he first – I don’t think he had ever read The Boys before we met him. And he just seemed like a guy that at first we really liked and then when we started talking to the show about him we really seemed to be on the same page and it changed a lot. And that’s the other thing is also like with TV the thing I’ve seen more than anything is where you start is like nowhere close to where you end. So the specifics honestly are irrelevant. It’s really could you see yourself working with this person for years and years and years to come.

**Craig:** For a long time. Right.

**Seth:** And that truthfully is like when I look at the TV shows we’ve done has been like what we’ve done a good job with. We have very good relationships with the people who produce them and we are respectful of them. And with The Boys, you know, we had a lot of opinions because we were huge fans of the comic and it took us years and years and years to get the comic. So, meeting with – finding someone who had aligned tonal sensibilities with us was very important. And that was most of the work on our part was like meeting Eric, being like, oh, the version of the show he seems enthusiastic about making tonally is something that we would be psyched about.

And that was a large part of it. And all the specifics changed and what the pilot was that we went out and pitched. Like completely does not resemble the thing that we ultimately ended up making, you know. But it was more like, OK, I like this person and they seem to have a grasp – they seem to want to make the same show we want to make in general. And that is mostly it. And then it’s, you know, I think helping hire people. We have a very movie-ish sensibility and so I think that was like something that we could help out with was just making sure that we hired a great director and great costume people and great cinematographers to really set a tone of quality that would and production value that would last throughout the series. And that was something that we helped out with a lot I think was really just trying to instill the should and can if we hire the right people look as good as the things we’re kind of making fun of which it needs to in order to really function in the best way possible.

**Craig:** Well it seems like, and I’m wondereth, the way you guys do this is a function of the way you were kind of raised in the business which is to find people that you creatively trust and let them do what they do and support them as you can. It doesn’t always work that way.

**Seth:** It was one of the most interesting moments of my career that I really remember is like I was – I had been working with Judd a little bit on Superbad as a writer, like during Freaks & Geeks. And there was a few months between when Freaks & Geeks ended and Undeclared kind of got going. And he would help and he’d give notes and stuff like that. And then I started writing on Undeclared and I would turn in outlines and he would give notes. And I didn’t get that now I had to listen to the notes.

**Craig:** Right. It was a job now.

**Seth:** I remember going into his office and being like, “Do I have to?” I had like a marked up script that he had given me on something I had written. I’m like, “Do I have to do all this stuff?” He’s like, “Yes. My show.” Like you’ve got to do it. And then in parallel to that–

**Craig:** That’s kind of adorable actually.

**Seth:** Exactly. Parallel to that we’d be working on Superbad and he would give suggestions and he would always be like, “But it’s your movie. So if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.”

**Craig:** That sense of this is mine, that’s yours.

**Seth:** Exactly. And so that was actually something that I totally got and that I really liked and that made sense to me and that we have kind of tried to bring forward in our producing was like, OK, whoever has ownership over it has ownership over it. And you should respect that. And it’s not always the person who is writing it. Sometimes it’s the producer. Sometimes it is the writer. Sometimes it’s the director. It’s different on different movies kind of.

**Craig:** Figuring out who that person is sometimes is a little tricky.

**Seth:** Yeah. And that has been the thing that has been like what we look for more than anything when we now produce a movie or a TV show is who has ownership over this. Who is the person who is fighting for a specific perspective here? And only in very rare instances can it be like a collective people. There are some people we’ve worked with where it really can be. And it is like, oh, the three of us have ownership over it and it is some combination of the actor and director and producer. They’re the ones who get this. Or it’s the writer and the actor and the director and they’re the ones who get it. And as long as people are respectful of that and seem to recognize it. And I have seen that work. It’s just a lot harder than if there’s one person who is like I get this.

**John:** Craig and I have gone in on productions where a movie is just a difficult situation and there are multiple people who all have power and control. And some of the reason why we are the kind of people who are brought in on those situations is we can navigate those power structures and can sort of understand what’s happening there. And that’s not easy.

**Craig:** That’s the job right?

**Seth:** It is a lot of the job is to see like whose is this.

**Craig:** Whose is this?

**Seth:** It’s often not whose you think it is.

**Craig:** It almost never is who you think it is. And the problem is that person who you think it is, they think it’s them too.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** But it’s not. In fact, that’s probably why the movie is in trouble. And then people – there’s so much – I’ve always said like at least in features there’s a certain level of screenwriter when you come in for a movie that’s in trouble. You actually have to become all of these things at the same time. You have to become a producer. Like a quiet producer, quiet director, quiet studio executive. Without letting anybody know that you’re doing that and without stepping on anyone’s toes. Do you guys do some of those weeklies?

**Seth:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** And do you like that experience?

**Seth:** Sometimes.

**Craig:** The money is good.

**Seth:** It is. Yeah. We do it sometimes. I did some last year a little bit after Evan had had his baby just because I had nothing to do for a month. It’s interesting. It’s fun. It is fun. In a way it’s not something that like I love. Like sometimes it’s a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes. But it’s also very educational. As someone who just like is interested in movies and how they get made and what goes wrong and what goes right and, you know, the various obstacles that things overcome, or don’t. Yeah, like it’s always fascinating and that element of it I like. And they’re often the types of movies that we don’t make. And we’re like being brought in to add comedy to this thing. The type of thing we would never do in a million years or things like that. Or help structurally with something that is again something–

**Craig:** I like it when they say add comedy because they’re understanding is you can just add it like a glaze on top. I’m like that’s not how comedy works.

**Seth:** You can add a little like that. But you can’t add a lot like that.

**Craig:** No. It just doesn’t work that way.

**Seth:** That’s what we say. We say that. Truthfully we can make anything a little funnier, just with dialogue. But we can’t make it a lot funnier unless you have fundamental conflict that is interesting–

**Craig:** Characters, conflict, tone.

**Seth:** That’s the thing that people don’t seem to get the most is like without conflict nothing is funny. And they’re always trying to get us to make things funny in scenes where there’s no conflict. And so it’s always just like it’s a struggle – we’re more than happy to make this funny but we have to start structurally changing things.

**Craig:** They think lines. That’s my favorite. They’re like maybe there’s some ADR. I’m like let me stop you right there. There isn’t. Ever.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Why would you have a funny line off-screen?

**Seth:** I won’t say never. I don’t think that’s true honestly. We’ve had–

**Craig:** You can do it?

**Seth:** I know for a fact that some of – there are ADR lines in our movies that get as big laughs as any line in the movie. You would never in a million years–

**Craig:** But they’re in your movies.

**Seth:** Yes. Exactly.

**Craig:** You see what I’m saying? You go into somebody else’s movie–

**Seth:** Hard to add to someone else’s. We’ve done it a few times here and there. But it’s hard. And it’s like not something I would rely on.

**Craig:** No. Not at all.

**Seth:** If anything it can just help a little bit. But, yeah, it’s tough.

**John:** All right. Well rather than fixing other people’s movies, let’s think about some movies of our own. So we have a segment called How Would This Be a Movie where we take a look at some stories in the news and figure out how to make them into movies.

**Craig:** The news is so boring right now.

**John:** Nothing is happening. So we’re recording this on Tuesday and like as we’re recording a little news alert came up saying Pelosi recommends impeachment.

**Craig:** Yep. Maybe our president is getting impeached.

**John:** Yeah. So, that could be next week’s topic.

**Craig:** That’ll be next week’s story.

**John:** Four stories. Only one of them is long. This first one is the long one. Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence. So more than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world. So it centers around Jerry Falwell Jr. who is the son of Sr., big Jerry.

**Seth:** I think like a lot of dramatic movies this article felt like it deserved more length than it did. [laughs]

**Craig:** It was lengthy.

**Seth:** It felt as though it was a little more interesting than it was. Like the headline could have been like Con-Artist Idiot is Con-Artist Idiot. Conned many. Was idiot.

**Craig:** Yes. I have to agree.

**Seth:** Wow! Jerry Falwell Jr. isn’t all he said he is? Oh no!

**John:** Cannot believe it.

**Seth:** Liberty College is a scam? Oh no!

**Craig:** I kind of had the same vibe. I was like this is – oh, it’s still going.

**John:** There’s a lot there.

**Craig:** I mean, once you have the one incident of him self-dealing with his friend, sending money from Liberty University to a friend’s business and then doing weird kickbacks, you know, and you know what? It’s actually good to see that there’s a pattern. He does it twice or three times. By the ninth time.

**Seth:** Yeah, you’re like, “I get it.”

**Craig:** You’re starting to wheeze a little bit.

**Seth:** And if you ever thought that Jerry Falwell was – like who thought this guy wasn’t doing this?

**Craig:** Who is this article for?

**Seth:** Well, it was written by someone who went to Liberty College.

**John:** That’s also what I found so fascinating.

**Seth:** That was the whole thing where it’s like, A, that doesn’t seem like it should be allowed. That’s allowed? It’s like is that how journalism works? Where it’s like I got conned by this guy. I’m going to write an article about how messed up that is. I thought that’s not how that works. But apparently it is.

**John:** So the article is by Brandon Ambrosino writing for Politico. He was a student there. There were some good quotes in there that I singled out. This is one about Becki Falwell. “You know there’s a head of every family,” said a former university employee who worked closely with Becki Falwell for years.

**Seth:** I liked this line. This was a good line.

**John:** “But what turns the head? The neck. She’s the neck that turns the head wherever she wants it.”

**Craig:** She’s the neck.

**Seth:** The neck.

**Craig:** I like The Neck. It’s like a mobster name.

**Seth:** Becki the Neck.

**Craig:** Becki the Neck Falwell.

**Seth:** Becki the Necky.

**Craig:** That was pretty good. You say a mobster and it also reminded me a bit of Succession. The sense of like who is going to take over the mantle of Jerry Falwell Sr.?

**Seth:** What a mantle!

**John:** Yes. But I mean growing this business from $259 million to $3 billion.

**Seth:** That’s true.

**Craig:** Do you know I met Jerry Falwell? When I was in college I worked on like a public affairs radio program and we would just interview anybody we could. And we got Jerry Falwell. And we met with him. He was like in an airport. So we recorded him in an airport and, you know, I was 18.

**Seth:** Known for their sound quality.

**Craig:** Correct. So you can imagine. Well we were in a lounge.

**Seth:** OK.

**Craig:** We weren’t like at Gate 30B. But, you know, I’m 18 and I don’t like Jerry Falwell and maybe that’s why subconsciously my brain malfunctioned and I introduced him as Jimmy Falwell. I think it’s probably because Jimmy – what was the guy, “I have sinned.” Jimmy Swaggart.

**John:** Oh that’s right.

**Craig:** He was in the news. Anyway, it started poorly.

**Seth:** Started bad.

**Craig:** And it just didn’t get better. It just didn’t get better because most of my questions were basically thinly veiled 18-year-old college kid questions like why are you a dick.

**Seth:** Why don’t you do anything good?

**Craig:** Why do you keep saying bad things and doing bad things? So yeah, you know, there is a slight Succession. The problem is Succession has this amazing set up where you have these viperous children who are all incredibly competent in their own ways and incompetent in their own ways. In this case you’ve got these two sons, one of whom everybody is like, “Well he’s kind of the religious one.” That one immediately gets his head lopped off in a very anti-Christian way. And then the sort of like snakey one wins instantly. And it doesn’t even seem like the other one put up much of a fight there did he? Like Jesus would not have put up a fight.

**Seth:** And then he just got caught. And then a big Politico article came out exposing him.

**Craig:** Right.

**Seth:** Like two years later. Right after it all happened.

**Craig:** I do like that he goes to clubs.

**Seth:** I know. With those glow necklaces. That was the funniest part is like—

**Craig:** That’s the other problem is that it’s so – like their problem at Liberty University is you’re not allowed to have coed mingling or drinking. So the big scandal for that is that he’s somewhere with – but he’s not like snorting heroin off of somebody’s mouth.

**Seth:** That’s the whole thing. The revelations are pretty tame honestly.

**Craig:** It’s run of the mill fraud.

**Seth:** Yeah. Like you’re silly for not thinking this is happening.

**Craig:** What is it? Idiot con-artist is idiot con-artist? [laughs]

**Seth:** Yeah. It’s just like, yeah, that to me was like – it was a lot to explain a little.

**Craig:** Well, sometimes when you have a personal connection to something you will – your ax grinder will take over and you go like I need another 40,000 words.

**Seth:** For sure.

**John:** So RedFinch which sounds like a made up company but is actually a real company, they do SEO and sort of search engine fixing. So basically sweeping away data things.

**Seth:** I liked that.

**John:** That was an interesting angle on it.

**Craig:** That was the guy that spread the money out on his bed?

**John:** Yes.

**Seth:** Also idiots.

**Craig:** I mean, my god. Your job is to get rid of bad press and you think you should put that on Instagram? That’s kind of disqualifying.

**Seth:** People are not smart. The older you guy you realize how stupid everyone is.

**Craig:** Idiot con-artists.

**John:** Instagram is also a factor with this trainer Ben Crosswhite.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Who is through this and what the relationship is there. And why you’re giving your 23-year-old trainer a gym?

**Craig:** You sell them a cheap gym and also Jerry Falwell Jr. allegedly sent pictures of his own wife, Becki the Neck, in a French maid costume to the trainer which feels super like three-way to me. It just feels three-way.

**Seth:** But again it’s not all there. It’s such a tame scandal.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Seth:** It sounds like a scandal that’s really like sketchy to a dude who went to Liberty College.

**Craig:** That’s honestly so true. Because we live in a time where Anthony Weiner gets busted for sending dick pics twice. This is like, no, no, she’s clothed.

**Seth:** Exactly. In a French maid costume.

**Craig:** Right. From a 1950 Playboy.

**Seth:** It’s like a Looney Tunes scandal.

**Craig:** That’s actually an amazing – you know what? That is an interesting movie is the idea of–

**Seth:** Guy thinks a scandal is really tawdry when it’s not.

**Craig:** Yes. You’re a Liberty University reporter on the verge of blowing open the biggest scandal in history. It’s actually kind of sweet.

**John:** Like he was caught smoking or something.

**Craig:** It’s legitimately sort of sweet. I like that.

**Seth:** I like that, too.

**John:** All right. Next one, very different. This is about mysterious cattle slayings.

**Seth:** This was a good one.

**John:** Mysterious cattle slayings in Oregon.

**Craig:** Chills.

**John:** Mutilations alarm ranchers. When the first bull was found dead on Silvies Valley, 140,000 acres ranch, the farm thought nothing of it. But when they found four more bulls dead within the same 24-hour period they knew something was awry. The bulls were between four and five years old, the prime of their lives, each lying on their side as if they’d laid themselves down to die. But all the bulls had their tongues and genitals precisely removed.

**Craig:** That was genitals he said. Genitals. By the way, the first time they saw one of their bulls–

**Seth:** With its tongue and genitals removed.

**Craig:** They went, meh.

**Seth:** This shit happens I guess. Four of them? No! That’s weird.

**Craig:** This is actually cutting into inventory.

**Seth:** And it’s tied to – it happened in the ‘70s.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It happened before.

**Seth:** That’s the cool part.

**Craig:** That is the cool part. So the first thing is like, OK, tongue and genitals, this feels sort of satanic.

**Seth:** Alien. I think alien. Well because the whole thing is they’re like they don’t know how they killed them.

**Craig:** That’s the question. How did they – because a bull is kind of hard to lie down gently.

**John:** Yeah. You think poison, but there’s no toxicology evidence so far.

**Seth:** Who is out there poisoning bulls? That’s fucking crazy. You’re going to poison a bull? What? Has that ever happened?

**Craig:** Apparently thousands of times.

**Seth:** Yeah. But I don’t think – it seems weird.

**Craig:** I think it’s gas.

**Seth:** People are out there gassing bulls?

**Craig:** You can chloroform a bull. If you come up right behind him.

**Seth:** That’s crazy. No one is doing that.

**Craig:** With a rag.

**Seth:** That’s not what it is. Aliens. 100% aliens.

**Craig:** People are talking the bulls into it. That’s what it is.

**Seth:** They’re talking them into suicide. Self-mutilation.

**Craig:** You know, with enough negging, kind of manipulation you can get a bull to lie down.

**Seth:** It’s fully alien. This is alien shit.

**Craig:** But why would aliens want tongues and bull dicks?

**Seth:** That’s the question.

**Craig:** That’s the real question. Because you’d think they’d have enough.

**John:** Yeah. That’s the question you ask in the trailer so people will have to see the movie.

**Seth:** They’re perverted aliens. I’m the guy to write this movie.

**Craig:** Yeah, I feel like you are actually.

**Seth:** If aliens are stealing things dicks. This is way up my alley.

**Craig:** Get me Rogen.

**John:** So there’s an X-Files version of this movie. But there’s also a weird – there’s a Sausage Party animated version of this movie.

**Seth:** There is. There’s a funny comedy movie version.

**John:** Like there’s an accidental bull fighter movie. Like there’s actually a mistake.

**Craig:** There’s a Silence of the Lambs but it’s just with bulls.

**Seth:** Is it a serial killer? Like a Mindhunter.

**Craig:** It’s a bull that’s a serial killer. Or a cow.

**Seth:** It’s like a cross between Sausage Party and Mindhunter.

**Craig:** Correct. It’s like Babe meets Silence of the Lambs. So, like the cow lures the bull, lies them down.

**Seth:** That’s not a successful movie. But it’s a movie I would like to go see.

**Craig:** I’m just talking to the audience in front of me. No, I mean, this is actually–

**Seth:** It’s a cool story.

**Craig:** The problem with these things though, it feels like an episode of something right?

**John:** It does.

**Craig:** Because it’s so gross.

**Seth:** It is gross.

**Craig:** They showed a picture, which was the tamest possible picture they could show. And it was still gross.

**Seth:** Yeah, it’s gross.

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t want to think about bull balls.

**Seth:** See, I do.

**John:** Is there a cow-tipping quality to it? Is there something like–?

**Craig:** Is that real by the way? I don’t think it’s a real thing.

**Seth:** I don’t either.

**John:** We can look on Scopes right now.

**Seth:** But chloroforming bulls is very–

**John:** 100%.

**Seth:** People are out there doing. [laughs]

**Craig:** Sometimes when you need to move a bull along.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** The key is sneaking up.

**Seth:** It’s almost too weird. It’s one of those stories that someone would tell me and be like this happened. You should make a movie out of it. And I have to explain that just because it’s real doesn’t mean it’s a good movie. And sometimes real things are so weird that they couldn’t be a movie. And that’s what this is. This is too weird to be a movie. You would never write that. You would never be like, “You know what would make a cool movie? Bulls’ dicks and tongues are gone from the ‘70s and then now again.” It’s too weird. People would be like that’s too weird a plot.

**Craig:** That’s what 13-year-olds write and it doesn’t work out.

**Seth:** And it doesn’t work out.

**John:** I think this could be a moment in another movie. Like this is a scene or a—

**Seth:** It’s a Close Encounters.

**John:** It’s a small segment within a bigger movie.

**Seth:** It’s the boat in the desert in Close Encounters.

**Craig:** All of their dicks are gone.

**Seth:** Dun-dun-dun. Point where they took the thing and then it’s a whole village of people pointing at their dicks.

**Craig:** And then one person goes, “Also gone.” Well once you said dicks we don’t really care about the tongue. The tongue is – you should have led with tongue and then go to dicks, because this is the least dramatically aware village.

**Seth:** Their tongues are gone. And their dicks!

**Craig:** Yeah. Now we’re talking OK. Yeah. I agree.

**Seth:** It’s too weird.

**Craig:** It’s like that thing in Canada where feet keep washing ashore in Vancouver.

**Seth:** Oh, I’m from Vancouver and so I’m very aware of that.

**Craig:** So you know the feet thing?

**Seth:** Yes, I do know the feet thing.

**John:** They know what’s happening there.

**Seth:** Do they?

**John:** They do. Actually that’s a true thing. That’s actually been solved.

**Seth:** No it hasn’t.

**Craig:** I don’t think so.

**Seth:** So what happened?

**John:** I believe.

**Seth:** Was it you? They solved it. It was me. [laughs] You guys didn’t hear? I’m using this podcast to confess to the foot thing.

**John:** Craig knows that sometimes when I hear of a murder I’ll stop and think like, “You guys do that?”

**Seth:** You confess to it.

**Craig:** I mean, admittedly John looks like a murderer.

**Seth:** Caught myself confessing to it.

**Craig:** He definitely looks like a murderer.

**John:** Here’s what’s happening with the feet and why only feet are washing up. People are dying somewhere. That’s true. But when bodies decompose under water they break apart.

**Seth:** And the feet—

**John:** And the sneakers. They’re all sneakers. And sneakers float.

**Seth:** Oh.

**John:** And so sneakers float up and that’s why only sneakers are washing–

**Craig:** Why are – so in other words—

**Seth:** So someone is killing a lot of people.

**Craig:** Dumping them in the water and then the feet come out.

**John:** Yes. But it could also be people on the other side of the world drowning or like trying to cross—

**Craig:** Can’t you tell from the sneakers?

**John:** Sometimes they can.

**Craig:** My wife always knows when people are from another country because she goes, “Look at their sneakers.” Weird off-brand sneakers.

**Seth:** A lot of weird sneakers.

**Craig:** Like the colors are wrong.

**Seth:** Weird. So this one spot has just become like a riptide for decomposed feet.

**Craig:** So Kitsilano.

**Seth:** Kitsilano.

**Craig:** Kitsilano. The severed foot capitol of the world.

**Seth:** My sister lives blocks away from there.

**Craig:** I love that area.

**Seth:** It’s a great neighborhood.

**Craig:** That’s your UPC right?

**Seth:** Yep. Very weird.

**John:** The Holiday Burglar. 82-year-old Samuel Sabatino spent his holiday weekends driving from his home in Florida to Manhattan where he would slip past doormen in luxury apartment buildings to go on burglary sprees.

**Seth:** This one is the best movie.

**John:** Yeah. He would carry an empty black bag. Take the elevator to the top floor and then look for signs that a resident was out of town, like stack of packages or newspapers. He’d break in and steal jewelry, watches, wedding rings, and gold. Committed at least 10 burglaries. Over $400,000 in stolen goods. Law enforcement agents finally found him living under a fake alias. They used nanny cams and tracked his car and tracked him down in Florida. Tell us about this movie.

**Seth:** I think it’s a good movie. I think this is a good movie. I like anything like a lonely old person is great right off the bat.

**Craig:** You’ve got a character.

**Seth:** About Schmidt. Imagine About Schmidt and he decided to start robbing people. That would be such a great movie.

**Craig:** Plus there’s something really interesting about the invisibility of an—

**Seth:** Of an old person. Yeah.

**Craig:** Of an old man. Because doormen generally don’t just let you waltz in.

**Seth:** But people ignore old people. Especially like, hey, I think thematically it’s great because we live in a culture where especially old people are very undervalued.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Seth:** And a guy decides to use that to his advantage and starts to rob people.

**Craig:** Then the question is like, he’s 85?

**John:** 82.

**Seth:** What does he do with it?

**Craig:** And also just the effort.

**Seth:** Yeah. But he’s just trying to live. He wants to live one more time.

**Craig:** This is his job. He doesn’t want to quit. He doesn’t want to lay down. The second you stop working you die.

**Seth:** Or he finds himself good at it. Maybe he always followed the rules his whole life. And he wants to finally do something for himself as he gets older or something like that.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** It’s also happening at Christmastime, so that feels like a good environment for this to happen. So what is our story though? We have a situation – we have a central character.

**Seth:** I picture it being like The Mule. It’s like a Clint Eastwood movie kind of maybe. Yeah. I picture it being – maybe it’s kind of like that.

**Craig:** I mean there is that Sunshine Gang, you know, it was a ‘70s like three old guys, George Burns, Art Carney.

**Seth:** There’s been a bunch of movies where old guys. Remember Wise Guys with who was it, Kirk Douglas.

**Craig:** Old Criminals. Burt Lancaster maybe?

**Seth:** Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas maybe.

**Craig:** Possibly, yeah. Old guys doing crimes.

**Seth:** Old guys doing crimes is a genre. That’s that graft movie that came out with Morgan Freeman. That was an old guy crime movie.

**Craig:** We’re probably due. But I like the Christmas vibe of this, because that’s when people are loneliest.

**Seth:** But I think The Mule is actually a better old guy crime movie than any of those other movies because it takes itself quite seriously. It’s not like – it’s a little wacky, goofy old guy crime, but it’s mostly about that it’s a sad old guy that’s trying to feel important again, which is way more interesting than “let’s see if we’ve still got it.” You know?

**Craig:** Right.

**Seth:** And I think that’s a better angle I think.

**Craig:** It’s like a Walter White in 30 years. He doesn’t die. But 30 years after retirement he comes out of retirement.

**John:** So we have one character. Who else is in the movie? Who are the other characters we’re going to follow?

**Seth:** His family? Obviously his family. I basically want to rip off The Mule.

**Craig:** They stashed him in an old age home.

**John:** Except the family is in the 50s mostly.

**Seth:** He’s in Florida, so it seems like where you would go to retire basically.

**Craig:** You’re forced to retire.

**Seth:** Yeah. I think he lived in New York and he was stuck away in Florida and no one visits him and he’s alone.

**Craig:** I think, you know—

**Seth:** Maybe it ends with him robbing his own family. Maybe that’s the third act.

**Craig:** Oh, I like that.

**Seth:** Maybe that’s like the big set piece.

**Craig:** I like a romance. You know, they keep saying that there’s this explosion of sexually transmitted diseases—

**Seth:** Among old people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Seth:** Old people can get it now.

**Craig:** Which gives me hope. I mean, not that I want an STD.

**Seth:** You want an old person STD. It gives you hope because you’ve been hoping to get an STD from an old person. [laughs]

**Craig:** I’ve been chasing.

**Seth:** Yes, finally.

**Craig:** Haven’t had a nibble.

**Seth:** For years you’ve been saying.

**Craig:** Where’s my rash?

**Seth:** Get a rash from an old man.

**Craig:** Never happened.

**John:** David Robb, when you synopsize this podcast on Deadline, the headline is—

**Seth:** Oh good.

**John:** Craig Mazin, “I want an STD.”

**Seth:** Exactly. From an old person.

**Craig:** I mean, I live a pretty sheltered life. You know, I’m clean.

**Seth:** Yeah. Exactly. Old person is your best shot.

**John:** All right. I really like the idea of a romance in this story. And essentially what is it like to break into people’s lives, into people’s apartments, and sort of imagine their better life than what you have.

**Seth:** Is it that he meets someone as he’s robbing them? He meets a single old lady as he’s robbing her?

**Craig:** That’s a really good idea.

**Seth:** He falls in love with a woman as he’s robbing her or something. He sees all her stuff and is like, “I like this person.” And then he goes and tries to meet her.

**Craig:** She finds him and then says, “I want to do it with you.”

**Seth:** Or he becomes obsessed with the lady because he steals some of her shit.

**Craig:** Now it’s getting creepy.

**Seth:** And it has some meaningful element to it.

**Craig:** Starts lopping off bull penises and sending them as trophies.

**Seth:** We tie them all together. It could be a lot of different movies.

**Craig:** There’s fertile territory there.

**Seth:** It’s a good one.

**John:** The last one is a very short one. It’s a profile in Slate by Jeffery Bloomberg.

**Seth:** Don’t say that.

**John:** Ah. Hustlers’ Naked Guy and Being the Go to Guy for Nude Stunt Work. So our friend Lorene Scafaria made the amazing movie Hustlers. I’m so proud of her and I really love the movie. But this guy is in the movie. His name is Rob Stats. And he’s the guy you call when you need nude stunt work. So he calls it hyper exposed is his favorite thing.

So he’s basically a stunt guy but just for being the naked guy.

**Seth:** He’s giving himself a little too much credit. It’s exposed.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, it’s hyper exposed.

**Seth:** I think you’d have to tear your butt open for it to be hyper exposed. We’ve got to see inside there to be hyper exposed.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, it’s sort of a binary thing. You are or are not exposed.

**John:** But I remember when I saw the movie I thought like, man, that dude is – he’s in a very vulnerable spot. Not only because he’s naked, but because he has these women who have to carry him around and they could drop him at any point. And he’s got nothing to protect him.

**Craig:** Do you believe him when he said – so in the article he said to the actors that we’re carrying him, he said, “If you have to drop me, just drop me. Because I don’t want you to be hurt. They need you for this movie.”

**Seth:** For sure. Stunt people would for sure say that. 100%.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** I guess they’re like kill me. If you need to kill me, kill me.

**Seth:** And it’s like a skill. But a lot of stunt people’s skill is that they don’t mind pain.

**Craig:** They don’t mind pain.

**Seth:** Yeah. And they are also physically very skilled and gifted and some are gymnasts and fighters and different things.

**Craig:** This is why there’s not a lot of Jewish stunt people.

**Seth:** The one common thread is that they process pain much differently than you or I do.

**Craig:** Clearly.

**Seth:** There’s a lot of like – like people who worked in rodeos and stuff. Once I heard that I was like, oh, I get it now.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like when they get spiked by the horns.

**Seth:** Like it’s people who don’t have the same relationship with pain as I do.

**Craig:** So the nudity part is the thing that sets him apart is that he’s willing to just let it all hang out. But, you know, I mean, is that weird? I mean, we had a thing in Chernobyl where we had 50 guys with their dicks out.

**Seth:** They were great.

**Craig:** They did a good job. They all did a fine job. And nobody seemed to care.

**Seth:** No.

**Craig:** I mean, women have been doing this forever, right, and nobody is like, oh my god, but their–

**Seth:** I find people are less weird about it then. Like if it’s not weird and it’s like a part of the thing and everyone feels like, yeah, this is like what we all signed up for. We all agreed. Hundreds of us agreed that this was good. And we should do this. Then it’s not weird. But you just want people who are super comfortable.

**Craig:** 100%.

**Seth:** Doing it. That’s the important thing. So that everyone is super comfortable doing it.

**Craig:** I mean, Ken Jeong was not supposed to be naked in The Hangover when he came out of the back of the car. And he proposed. He goes would this be funnier if I were naked? And Todd said—

**Seth:** That guy loves getting naked.

**Craig:** “You don’t have to ask me twice.” They had him sign a waiver and off they went.

**Seth:** We hire adult film stars a lot if we need nudity. Because we know they’re – it’s just like one less thing to make me be uncomfortable.

**Craig:** We did the same thing in the second Hangover when we had a scene where we had a lot of transgender people who were I guess sort of pre-op or only had had top and not bottom. And most of them were, well, I don’t know about most of them. A key one was definitely an adult movie performer.

**Seth:** Much better that way.

**John:** I was on a podcast with Dana Fox last week.

**Seth:** Dana Fox!

**John:** She’s the best.

**Craig:** The best. The greatest.

**John:** She used to be my assistant.

**Seth:** That’s so funny. I’ve known her a really long time.

**John:** So Dana was saying that a thing she’s found in comedies is that a boob—

**Seth:** You kind of have a similar vibe to her husband a little bit.

**John:** Quinn? Thank you. I’ll take that.

**Craig:** Nope. Not getting it. Nope. Love that guy. Just two different people.

**John:** Her point was that male nudity, funny. Female nudity, not funny. In her experience when female nudity is on screen people will not laugh. And so you cannot stick a joke at the same time that you have a boob, except in Airplane which was a rare exception.

**Craig:** Because the joke was where did that person come from. That was the joke. It’s distracting.

**Seth:** Yeah, I agree with that. Our movies have very little nudity.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that female nudity can be distracting because it’s the most interesting nudity and male nudity is funny. I mean, the dick and balls are funny.

**Seth:** Yeah, it’s tough to have – I’m trying to think. Yeah, it’s funny. When we were making Long Shot there was like a scene where me and Charlize are in bed post-coital and she, god bless her, was like I would probably be topless in this scene and I’m very comfortable doing that if it seems like it’s more realistic. And we were like you can’t do that. No one will pay attention to anything anyone says. It will make – none of this. It will take all focus. Trust me. Yeah, and it will just – I think the point of this moment should be funny and sweet and unfortunately your breasts are too powerful. I cannot compete with that.

**Craig:** And I don’t think there’s a single flaccid penis that would ever do anything like that. I agree with Dana. I think male nudity is just inherently amusing to us. And, yeah, female not so much.

**John:** So getting back to this guy or a movie with this guy as a central character. You know, Love Actually has that as a small plot point. One of the through lines is like there’s nudity, but it’s just a recurring it. It’s not the centerpiece of the movie.

**Seth:** I think also movies about Hollywood are tough. Movies about the movie business in general are tough. Boogie Nights kind of did this kind of thing really, really, really well. There’s been enough. As someone who has made many movies about Hollywood and about making movies and about the entertainment industry I can say people should stop doing it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s an uphill battle for sure.

**Seth:** Exactly.

**Craig:** We just had a Tarantino movie where you had a stuntman. And I think this is kind of – it’s an interesting character but I don’t think – I don’t see a movie there.

**Seth:** It’s a tough one.

**John:** So recapping. It feels like the holiday burglar is our top choice for making it into a movie.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And you should know Seth that we have a pretty high track record. The things we pick–

**Craig:** The shit is getting optioned tomorrow. That’s how it works.

**Seth:** Great. Clint Eastwood, get on that shit.

**Craig:** If you want it, like on the way home get it.

**Seth:** I want Clint Eastwood to make it. Because I liked The Mule and I want more like The Mule.

**Craig:** You want Mule 2 is what you want.

**Seth:** I want a holiday burglar Mule.

**John:** It’s time for our One Cool Things, so where we recommend something to our listeners. My One Cool Thing is a post from 2013 by Captain Awkward entitled How to Tighten Up Your Game at Work When You’re Depressed.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** And it’s a long but really useful article about sort of, OK, let’s say you’re actually experiencing depression but you have to go to work and have to get through your day.

**Seth:** Whoa.

**John:** And really practical tips for sort of like how to kind of fake it and get yourself through that day. So it’s not saying like don’t deal with your depression. It’s saying that sometimes while you’re dealing with your depression you actually have to hold down a 9 to 5 job and not lose your job. It’s a really practical guide. It’s an old post but it was new to me and I think it would be helpful to a lot of people who are probably listening to this podcast.

**Craig:** I like that. Well, my One Cool Thing is another thing that possibly can help get you through your day, although it’s not as healthy as I’m sure this article. But somebody recommended – I haven’t used it yet, so I just like the recommendation. It’s an app called Saucey. Do you now Saucey?

**John:** I don’t know what Saucey is.

**Craig:** Saucey is you’re having a dinner party and you want to bring some food over. You call Grub Hub or you call one of those people. Saucey is that but for booze. So you need some wine—

**Seth:** Dial a Bottle we called it in high school. It’s how I drank between the ages of like 14 and 19 basically.

**Craig:** McLovin on the line.

**Seth:** Yeah. Exactly. We would call and they would deliver it to our houses in Vancouver. Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow. Vancouver. God, anything. You get feet. You get bottles.

**Seth:** These guys invented Dial a Bottle.

**Craig:** So they basically invented the app for Dial a Bottle.

**Seth:** Exactly. That’s good. Congrats.

**Craig:** So there it is. Saucey.

**Seth:** Saucey. Good name.

**John:** Seth, do you have a One Cool Thing?

**Seth:** I’ll take about Hilarity for Charity, which you can donate to. We are trying to cure Alzheimer’s but also we provide in-home care for those people who can’t afford it. So if you’re someone who is dealing with someone with dementia and you need help and you can’t afford help, you can go to hilarityforcharity.org and apply to get a grant for free in-home care.

**Craig:** That’s awesome. And that’s where we would go to donate?

**Seth:** Yes. Also hilarityforcharity.org.

**John:** Can you recap what National Expungement Week was? Because I saw your PSA for it and it sounded great. So just tell us what that was.

**Seth:** I was working with a few organizations about, Cage-Free Canada is one of them, about setting up ways for people to get their records expunged for minor offenses, especially for crimes that are no longer illegal, specifically weed related crimes. Like a lot of people have been arrested for weed and they can’t vote and they can’t get jobs. And it’s literally not illegal anymore and it shouldn’t have been illegal in the first place. And a lot of that is racially motivated and really was targeting marginalized groups in the first place. So I was helping support programs that were setting up physical places people could go and work with people to get their records expunged. Yes, exactly.

**John:** That’s great. In the 2018 elections I went with a group of other writers to various Comic Cons and we were trying to register people to vote, sort of when we all vote. And so I was shameless about just like every single person, “Are you registered to vote in California?” And at least 10 people it’s like, “Oh, I can’t vote.”

**Craig:** “I’m a felon.”

**John:** That is ridiculous.

**Seth:** So many people. It’s crazy.

**Craig:** If you’ve murdered, I understand it. I get the point there.

**Seth:** Yeah. Then don’t vote.

**Craig:** Maybe don’t vote.

**John:** Actually I would disagree.

**Craig:** Of course you would, you fucking murderer.

**Seth:** You get half a vote.

**John:** Half a vote.

**Craig:** Half a vote should be a thing.

**Seth:** Depends how many people you murdered. You get one-tenth less for every one.

**Craig:** That’s a good idea.

**John:** I would say the same systematic things that are getting a person convicted of something would probably be a factor in terms of their voting.

**Craig:** Yeah, but a murder?

**John:** But if they’re free now.

**Craig:** You’re saying they did their time.

**John:** They did their time. I think they should be able to vote.

**Seth:** I think if you are free you should probably get to vote. Is that a weird thing to say? I don’t know.

**Craig:** I mean, the trend is like in Florida for instance they overturned the whole thing—

**Seth:** If you’re like out there in society paying taxes and living in the world then you should get to vote.

**Craig:** I was just thinking about the murderers.

**Seth:** Murderers should get to vote.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** There’s your headline, Deadline.

**Seth:** I said it in a high voice. I said it in a tone of noncommittal. Murderers should get to vote.

**Craig:** It’s definitely a rising pitch.

**Seth:** If you are currently in jail for murder you should probably not vote.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s probably best to not vote.

**Seth:** I’m not going to draw a hard line in my murderers’ voting stance.

**Craig:** It’s not a hard opinion.

**John:** There are problems where there are places where prisons are built and they’re counting the people who are in prison as citizens of a county. And that’s not cool. [Because they’re not allowed to vote].

**Craig:** That’s not cool. Because if they are counted then–

**Seth:** It depends who you murdered and what they were like.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s an interesting idea.

**Seth:** If you are going to vote for the same person that the person you murdered was going to vote for then maybe you get to vote.

**Craig:** Right. Just don’t cancel out.

**John:** A proxy.

**Craig:** If you kill some guy, don’t cancel his wife’s vote out.

**Seth:** Exactly. You get his vote.

**Craig:** You have to vote the way he would have voted.

**Seth:** Exactly. You get to vote but it has to be how the person you murdered voted.

**Craig:** That’s actually the best possible solution.

**Seth:** It only makes sense, yeah.

**Craig:** And so easy to enforce.

**Seth:** Their vote lives on through you. This was a horribly offensive conversation. But I like it.

**John:** Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Seth, you are @sethrogen?

**Seth:** I am @sethrogen.

**Craig:** That’s easy.

**John:** That’s how this whole episode came to be. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find transcripts.

You can find the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. You need to sign up there and use the Scriptnotes app for iOS or Androids. iOS or Android.

**Craig:** Androids. You were talking about your own family there, weren’t you? My androids.

**John:** You can download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com. Seth Rogen, thank you for coming on the show.

**Seth:** Thank you so much for having me.

**Craig:** Thank you Seth. So great.

**Seth:** Glad to be here.

**John:** Thanks.

Links:

* [420 origins according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture))
* [‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/09/jerry-falwell-liberty-university-loans-227914?fbclid=IwAR3V5SFMjUdw6A33e6y1NB3GhRrBg3ifTaMrVMZdASAkwHDl_9GsJaOoQ00) by Brandon Ambrosino
* [Mysterious Oregon Cattle Killings, Mutilations Alarm Ranchers](https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2019/08/mysterious-oregon-cattle-killings-mutilations-alarm-ranchers.html) by Diana Kruzman
* [An 82-year-old Man Slipped Past Doormen in Upscale Buildings for Years and Stole $400k in Jewelry, Police Say](https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/08/us/nyc-burglar-82-years-old-upper-east-side/index.html?no-st=1569027413) by Madeline Holcombe and Joshua Girsky
* [How to Tighten Up Your Game at Work When You’re Depressed](https://captainawkward.com/2013/02/16/450-how-to-tighten-up-your-game-at-work-when-youre-depressed/) by Captain Awkward
* [Saucey: Alcohol Delivery App](https://www.saucey.com/)
* [Hilarity for Charity](https://hilarityforcharity.org/)
* [National Expungement Week](https://www.cagefreecannabis.com/getfree), Seth’s [PSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdmvZjz1H7s)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [Seth Rogen](https://twitter.com/sethrogen) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_420_seth_rogen.mp3).