Scriptnotes, Episode 492: Gray Areas, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 492 of Scriptnotes. A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Often on this program we talk about the difficult choices characters have to make. Today I want to explore the dilemmas that screenwriters encounter in the business with a mix of listener questions and things you and I are grappling with at this very moment.

We’ll also be looking at writer websites, international guilds, and hassles when joining the WGA.

Craig: Ooh, the only hassle I remember was that they suddenly made me pay money I didn’t have.

John: Yeah, there’s that. There’s also more stuff.

Craig: Oh, OK.

John: And in our bonus segment for premium members it’s time for an origin story. You and I will travel back to the moment we decided to become screenwriters.

Craig: Oh, OK. Fun.

John: And I had to think about what that moment or those moments were and you can share it with our premium members at the end of this episode.

Craig: Great.

John: Cool. At the head of the program I said this is Episode 492. That means eight episodes away is Episode 500.

Craig: Good lord.

John: You and I have barely discussed what we should do for Episode 500 except that the idea of doing a big, live show with an audience seems a little premature.

Craig: I don’t know, John. Let’s kill them all.

John: [laughs] Let’s kill them all.

Craig: What a way to go out.

John: Absolutely. So, you have to have a proof of vaccination and then you come to our live – it’s too soon for that.

Craig: It’s too soon. Also, I mean, look, it’s 500. Seems like a good round number. We can just chuck it, right? We just wrap it up?

John: You know what? Maybe we should just wrap it up. And it has got me thinking about Episode 1. So let’s take a listen back to Episode 1 and see what Episode 1 sounded like. Because I don’t think you’ve probably heard any of this since–

Craig: Since Episode 1.

John: No.

Hello. Welcome. My name is John August.

Craig: And I’m Craig Mazin.

John: And this is the inaugural edition of something we’re calling Scriptnotes, which is meant to be a podcast talking about things that screenwriters might be interested in.

Craig: Yeah.

John: What would those be?

Craig: Ah, you know, we can cover craft, the business, the union, psychology.

John: Work habits, too. Sort of like how you actually get stuff written.

Craig: Yeah. And topics for people who are working steadily, people who aren’t working steadily, people who want to work steadily.

John: Dig deeping. Dig deeping things?

Craig: You said dig deeping.

John: Dig deeping.

Craig: Please don’t edit that out. [laughs]

John: I will leave my misspoken terms right in there, unedited. But I wanted to start with a question because I figure, you know…

Oh, Craig, nothing has changed.

Craig: In a sense nothing has changed. You still do say things like “dip deeping” and I still have that stupid laugh. And other than that, good lord, we were children. First of all, it’s clear that I had no idea what a podcast was. You could hear it in my voice. You could hear it.

John: No sense.

Craig: But I still don’t know.

John: And still the brief we laid out in terms of the things we would be talking about on this program we’ve remained remarkably true to what our initial instinct was for what this podcast should be.

Craig: Let’s clarify. What your instinct was.

John: That’s true. And so while we didn’t have all the lingo down right in terms of like “things that are interesting to screenwriters,” that wasn’t quite right. We didn’t have our intro bloops yet. We were still using the CBS theme music as our intro stuff.

Craig: So good though. Makes me so happy when I hear that.

John: I can picture it. I feel like something exciting is happening at CBS right now.

Craig: I’m sitting in front of a large – and when I say large I mean small cube of a television. Remember when you would turn it on it would take a while for it to come on? It had to warm up.

John: Got to warm up the television. So nearly 500 episodes ago, but it’s also almost ten years. So I would propose that what we would really do is like we’ll go through Episode 500, fine. Episode 500 we’ll celebrate it in its own small way. But we’ll think about doing something for our 10th anniversary which would be August 30th of this year. It would be ten years of Scriptnotes. And I feel like August – something will be possible to do in August.

Craig: Well, I will be in another country. So, there is that.

John: That’s a challenge.

Craig: But, you know what? Maybe we’ll have a big Calgary show.

John: Yeah. A big Calgary show.

Craig: It’s not a big town, but if I can convince enough Calgarians to show up right off the bat.

John: Some sort of rodeo fair ground.

Craig: At the Stampede. They’re probably angry that I’ve called them Calgarians because I doubt that’s what they are. I’ve already blown it. They may run me out of town on a rail.

John: So let us lower people’s expectations for 500 episodes and raise them for the 10th anniversary to unrealistic heights for what we’re going to do. But, a thing you as listeners can do in the meantime is at Episode 300 we put out this listener guide saying like hey tell us what your favorite episodes are of the first 300. We are updating that now for the first 500. So, if you want to point to suggestions of like these are the best episodes if someone is new to Scriptnotes go to johnaugust.com/guide and let us know what are the best episodes, especially episodes between 300 and 500, which ones stand out for you.

Craig: Did I say Calgarians?

John: Yeah, you did.

Craig: Guess what? That’s right.

John: That’s right?

Craig: That’s right. I got it right.

John: Sometimes you guess correctly.

Craig: The thing is I don’t know why I was nervous because they’re very polite. People in Canada are worldwide renowned for their politeness. And I’m sure they would have just said, oh, you know, that’s not what we’re called but we accept you.

But I did call them – it’s Calgarians. Why would I have – how did I get there? Anyway, sorry. Here’s what’s happening as we approach Episode 500 I begin to ramble more and more.

John: Yeah. And Matthew has to keep cutting you back shorter and shorter. Those early episodes I was cutting everything myself. And so I think part of the reason why I became less of a terrible speaker is because I had to edit myself so much and I did not want to edit myself and so therefore I learned to just speak more clearly the first time through.

Craig: Right. Well you do an excellent job. I think the two of us have defined what excellence is for this show. We have self-defined it. We didn’t copy anyone.

John: Nope.

Craig: Clearly.

John: We made it up as we were going along.

Craig: Correct. 500.

John: Another bit of housekeeping here. So people write in with questions or stories or things they want to share to the podcast and this last week Paige Feldman wrote into the ask account. And I read it and I said like, you know what, this would actually be a better blog post, so I asked her if we could post as a blog post and I did.

So she wrote about how screenwriting competitions are incredibly expensive. And so that instead of entering all these screenwriting competitions she normally would have entered she saved that money and then used it to fund an audio podcast version of her script. And that it was a much better use of her time and her money. So, I would point everyone to Paige’s example in terms of rather than spending the entry fee on a screenwriting competition there’s probably a better way to spend your money and your time.

Craig: I totally agree.

John: But what I liked about Paige is that she showed the initiative to just put her money and her time to better use. So whether you do what she does in terms of making an audio drama, just find something else to do with your time and your money other than a screenwriting competition.

Craig: I think there may be a chance that in Episode 1 of Scriptnotes, from which you just played an excerpt, I may have said something like screenwriting shouldn’t cost money. And here I am nearly 500 episodes later saying screenwriting should not cost money. I don’t think I spent a dime. And I don’t think anybody needs to.

You can. And there are certain ways to spend money I suppose smarter than others. But you don’t have to. And I love the way that she was entrepreneurial here. And I like the fact that she took a sober look at screenwriting contests. Because, John, I’ve got to say looking around how many of us, when I say us I mean screenwriters who are sort of safely ensconced in a career, how many of us got into this by winning a contest?

John: Almost none of us.

Craig: Ehren Kruger I think.

John: Yeah. You could probably point to some folks who won the Nicholl Fellowship, which I think we’ve said probably from Episode 1 is the only one that kind of–

Craig: Kind of super matters.

John: Clearly is worth winning. Yeah.

Craig: But even then it is not in and of itself – it’s a bit like the SAT. Congrats on your excellent SAT score. It’s not actually a predictor of success.

John: No. Not a bit. Well let’s keep talking about money. So last week on the podcast we talked about writer deals. Would you read what Lisa wrote in?

Craig: Sure. She’s wondering, “Can you speak to production bonuses and how those are calculated in deals? In 2019 I signed my first screenwriting contract with one of the major streamers. It’s a multi-step deal and I was ecstatic at the numbers because I’d never made such a large sum of money in my life before. However, after listening to the episode on deals and looking at the WGA’s screen deal guide I was shocked to discover I was earning $50,000 under the median for new screenwriters with multi-step deals.

“Then again my contract does include a production bonus which guarantees me another six figure check on the other side of production. If I take the production bonus into account does that mean I’m overall earning over the median? Or are production bonuses pretty standard in screenwriting contracts and I’m actually earning under the median?”

John, this is an excellent question.

John: It’s an excellent question. So Lisa first off congratulations on setting up that project at a streamer. Congratulations on having reps who fought for you to get a multi-step deal. That’s good. And you can compare on that chart like you made more money on a multi-step deal than you would have on a single one-step deal. So hooray for you.

That production bonus, that’s not included in these median figures. Because those median figures are about what you’re guaranteed to be paid. They cannot pay you any less than that. That production bonus is not a guarantee. It only happens if the project goes into production.

So, no, that money, production bonus, is important and so worthwhile, but you cannot count on getting it, so therefore you cannot really count it as income at this point.

Craig: That’s a great clarification. Lisa, it’s an interesting game, the production bonus game. We probably talked about this a number of times, but the way it basically works for those of you at home who don’t know is when you make a writing deal for a movie it’s blank against blank. I’m going to make $100,000 against $400,000. That means I’m guaranteed $100,000. If the movie is produced and I get sole screenwriting credit then they fill that money up to get to $400,000. So in other words they add another $300,000 on.

In the case of streamers I suspect they have a much higher rate of production than movie studios do. Movie studios used to have a terrible rate of production. They would develop ten scripts for every one they made. That number has come down quite a bit. But I still think streamers – because streamers are so voracious to produce and push out content I think there’s a fairly high rate of development to production. Doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee though. A guarantee is a guarantee. Made a guarantee, made a guarantee.

So, you can sort of think of it a little bit that way. If the number is super high than it’s a bit of a gamble. Again, this is also contingent on credit. So take a careful look at what your bonus is for shared screenplay credit. Because that typically is half of what the full credit bonus is. And you don’t know what the credit is going to be. You’re working on this now. But they may hire somebody to rewrite you. That person may rewrite you to the extent that you only get half screenplay credit. They may rewrite you so you get no screenplay credit.

And if that happens you don’t get any bonus. So, as much as you can get into guarantee the better. And I think it’s a great thing that you took a look at the screen deal guide. I think this is a conversation you should have with your agents, particularly now that you’ve made a big deal and you might want to convert that quickly into another one, which I think is generally a good idea. Talk about seeing about getting up to parity there. At a minimum. Remember, that’s the median.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Try and get more.

John: Also important to point out here so this report that we talked about was the WGA put this out but the WGA and the contract they formed with the studios is really about the minimums. And so all these things we’re talking about are things that are in your individual contract that are not in the overall contract. So when we say backend bonuses and that kind of stuff those are all things that your reps have negotiated for you individually. And so while we talked that there are sort of standard terms and things you kind of expect, they’re not codified in guild language.

And so that idea that you have a production bonus where it’s this amount if you get sole credit and that amount if you get shared credit, those are all negotiated points.

Also what’s negotiated in your contract is to what degree do the optional steps count against that bonus. And so every time they’re paying you for that optional rewrite, that optional polish, that may come out of your bonus. And so really what you should be looking at at that other figure is that is the most you can possibly earn in direct compensation off of writing this project.

And so, again, when you look at headlines where it’s like someone sold a project for a $4 million deal, really that’s probably the upper limit of how much they would be paid for something. It’s not what you are actually getting as the writer going into this project.

Craig: Yeah. The magic word there is applicable. So, in almost every circumstance all of the optional steps that are listed in your contract will be applicable against that bonus. That means, again, like John is saying whatever you earn they’re only obliged to just fill that up to get to the big number.

But, there is a term called fresh cash. It’s the best term. It’s the most magical term. That means that at some point they’re asking you to do something and you realize, look, you guys are making this movie. And I’m pretty much going to get sole screenplay credit. So if I do more work that’s applicable against the bonus it’s free. I would make the same amount if I did nothing. Therefore, you kind of need to make it “fresh cash.” That means cash that’s not applicable against the bonus.

John: Yeah. And so that’s if you have leverage in the project and that they want to keep you on and everybody else wants to keep you on, you may have the leverage to negotiate for that sort of point.

So I’ll point Lisa and everyone else to an episode we did where we really walked through writer deals and sort of how they work. And so you can look at the contract because it’s so important to understand that, yes, there are minimums set by the guild but everything else is in your own individual contract and knowing what that is makes a huge difference.

All right, some more follow up. Last week I talked about how I thought Disney was going to make its next trillion dollars on selling artwork and possibly through a mechanism like an NFT with the way digital art is being sold these days.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Philip wrote in to say, “If Disney earns trillions through NFTs wouldn’t it make sense for the WGA to already be aware of this and talk to writers being part of that NFT value chain with some percentage points of their work? So that if Disney makes trillions, writers make something at least, rather than be late to the party.”

And, yes. Yes, and, challenging. And so what I would say is that writers in America have classically been able to get some piece of the pie because of the intellectual property that we are creating and the sort of weird dance we do about copyright where we sort of pretend that these studios are the creators of the work. And that’s how we sort of claw back a little bit of that money.

It’s unclear to me whether an NFT fits in that copyright chain kind of at all. It’s its own weird sort of beast. And I think it’s absolutely a valid thing to be looking at. I don’t know that it’s going to be workable in the same way that merch and the guild have a weird relationship as well. So it’s challenging.

Craig: I think this probably would fall under merchandise. And we do have some access to merchandising money, but it is very restricted. So, first of all it’s relying on separate rights. Hopefully in our show notes we can give you a little link back to our episode where we went through all the separated rights. But let’s assume you have it. You’re writing something for Disney and you have a story credit or written by credit, which as we know is unlikely given the fact that all they seem to do is remake their animated movies. But regardless if you have that then you do actually get access to 5% of the money paid to the manufacturer for such merchandise.

So what does that mean? It means that your literary material – this is where they get you – must physically describe the object or thing being merchandised. And it has to do so in such a way that it includes specific physical attributes. And if the final product substantially follows that description than you may be entitled to money for the sales of the object.

So I know that for instance Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio kind of mixed it up with Disney over the fact that Disney was selling the Aztec coins from Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyworld. And they said, “Hey, we created the Aztec coin in our script and therefore…” And they were like, “Oh, mmm, actually we’re changing that now. It doesn’t look like the way you described it in the script. So now you get nothing.” And that’s kind of how it goes.

It’s very difficult. Getting merchandise money through the guild happens, but it’s a little bit of a Halley’s Comet. So, will the companies be more likely to want to share that with us now that that revenue stream might explode? Quite the opposite.

John: Yes.

Craig: They will become even more miserly about it I suspect.

John: I think you’re right. And I would also say in the case of Disney I think what they can commoditize through something like an NFT would be very equivalent to sort of like the pins you buy at the park. And so it’s like a character. It is an image. It is a thing. And it’s hard to say that it’s the work of the screenwriter that they’re putting out there as artwork. That’s the real challenge there.

Craig: If you successfully describe something in such a way that if they were to merchandise it you would get some merchandising money they would specifically not make it look like that.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They ain’t dub.

John: And, again, this is a thing where in theory this could be negotiated in your individual contract.

Craig: Yes.

John: So Megana has provided us with a link. It was Episode 407 where we talked through understanding your contract. This is the kind of thing where you might want to do that. And I’ll say that there are properties that I’m considering doing that I actually own and control that I am thinking very seriously about like OK do I want to just pitch this as an original thing, or do I want to create some other piece of property first that can then sell? Partly it’s just so I can hold on to some of the merch a little bit more easily.

Craig: Yup.

John: So that’s a thought. I had talked about a previous One Cool Thing was Beeple who was a digital artist who I said like, oh, you should follow him on Instagram because his art is really good. The day that we’re recording this that artist, Mike Winkelmann, who is known mostly for doing one big illustration a day, and so he’d been doing it for like 5,000 days. He’d been doing an illustration a day. The most any of his artwork had sold for was $100. Today an NFT was sold through Christie’s for $69 million. So, he’s made some money on this [digital gold rush].

Craig: That doesn’t seem good to me.

John: So let’s talk some pros and cons, because it’s actually a good segue into these moral gray areas here.

Craig: Yeah. Seems troubling.

John: It does seem troubling. The whole idea of how this artwork is sort of locked down is through these chains, these block chains, that involve a tremendous amount of energy. So this idea of sort of like it’s like you’re printing a baseball card on like ivory or something. You’re actually doing terrible things to the planet to build this thing.

Craig: That sounds awesome, by the way. [laughs] I would by that. A Mikey Mantle rookie card in ivory. Ooh.

John: I love it.

Craig: Wonderful.

John: But, also it speaks to the commoditization of everything. Just the sense that things only have value if they have some digital uniqueness to them. And at the same time I’m happy for this guy to be paid money. And I’m also happy for some artist to be able to actually see value off their work in ways that they could not otherwise see it.

But, man, pros and cons here.

Craig: I mean, when you have somebody go from something that the general marketplace value is at $100 to something the general marketplace value is at $70 million, and that happens within months, something has gone awry. And it’s certainly not – it’s not that Mike Winkelmann somehow managed to receive a message from god and put that into digital artwork.

What’s happening is a marketplace is getting distorted. And we know that the visual art marketplace, that economy is insane. It is tulips times a billion. And it’s entirely about perceived scarcity. And also prestige. And essentially it is fueled by a factor that does not – there’s no relevance for you or for me. It is the vanity of billionaires is what it is.

And what I see here is the vanity of billionaires at work. And it would be a shame if these things started to become distorted by that. It’s almost impossible to say to somebody like Mike Winkelmann, who by all accounts is a perfectly good guy who was doing something that was fun, to say, “Oh, by the way, if you take this $70 million for one thing you did it’s going to be ‘bad.’”

You know, he’s got a family. He has dreams and stuff. Maybe he has charitable desires and he wants to redistribute that. That’s awesome. But that seems bad. And if NFTs are already doing this? Eww.

John: Yeah. So, a good segue into talking about gray areas and decisions and choices and things that you and I face on a daily basis. And we’ll also then lead into some questions we get from listeners about this stuff. Because so often I think on this podcast people will write in and like we’ll have clear answers. Oh, you do this thing. You don’t do this thing. Or this sucks, but here’s how it goes.

But off mic you and I often have conversations about like, ugh, this situation. Like what do we do in this situation? And there’s sort of no good answer.

Craig: Right.

John: I went on a nice walk with Aline Brosh McKenna and we were talking through some of these issues yesterday as well. There’s just stuff that comes up. It’s like you sort of do the best you can. Yet you’re grappling with these things. And to the degree that we are characters in the stories of our own lives, I just want to talk about some of the things that you and I grapple with on a regular basis.

Craig: A great idea for a topic. It’s something that happens constantly I suspect in every job, in every industry, but there’s something about the loosey-goosey nature of this business, it comes up all the time.

John: Yeah. Because it’s a relationship business. It’s a question of we’re creating art that is so amorphous and so what is an idea. There’s a lot of stuff happening here. So, we’ll start with back in Episode 372 I talked about No Work Left Behind which was back when I was on the board. It was a thing I was pushing really hard. That idea of like when you go into a meeting and you don’t leave your pitch behind. You basically don’t leave written stuff after a pitch because that is problematic both for you as a writer individually but also for all writers. It sets an expectation that people should be able to get free work out of you and that your writing is essentially worthless.

And you obviously agree with this. We’ve talked about this a lot on the show. As a general principle you should not leave writing behind. Right Craig?

Craig: You should not leave writing behind as a general principle. Correct.

John: Yeah. And yet I find myself doing stuff that’s kind of like that in real life. And so here’s an example. There’s a property that I have set up. I’ve been pitching and have sort of set up. It’s not my own original IP. I control it but I didn’t create it. And getting this thing set up and trying to figure out how we’re going to do this I’ve sort of like paused the deal-making. I haven’t signed my deal because I’m not sure we can actually do it.

Technologically – it’s not the virtual sets of The Mandalorian, but it’s kind of like that. And it’s just like, god, I don’t know if we’re actually going to be able to make this thing happen. And so I wanted to see, basically just do a test and do sort of like a vertical slide to see is this actually going to be cool because I don’t want to waste my time if this is not going to be cool.

So, I ended up writing two sequences that we could actually put through a team and work on and see is this going to be cool. And it falls in this really murky area that’s somewhere between a pitch thing and actual work. And I felt weird doing it, and yet I don’t have a better solution for how do I decide if this is a thing worth my time to do.

Craig: Well, it’s entrepreneurial. You’ve generated it. So it’s a little different. If somebody comes to you and says, “Listen, we have an assignment and we want you to come up with some pitch,” and then leave that behind that’s different.

I do think in this case you probably have more leeway, but it’s leeway, right? I mean, the whole point of leeway is where does it stop and where does it end.

And you and I are always giving general advice. But when you talk about a specific situation general advice is only as good as general advice. General advice applied to a specific situation is typically not hugely useful. You have to take that general advice and adjust to taste. And in this situation I feel like that’s called for.

John: Yeah. I don’t feel guilty on a regular basis, and yet I could very easily see where my doing this could potentially lead to some other less powerful writer feeling like they are being required to send in some sort of proof of concept thing for something else that they may end up doing someplace else, or on IP that they don’t have any control over. So it’s frustrating to both be aware that I’m probably doing the right thing for me in this situation and it could also be not a good thing for the next writer down the road.

Craig: And this is why sometimes I struggle with the moral argument that we get a lot of times from the guild, because the moral arguments do start to fall apart in specifics. They are very good for general arguments. In specific cases they fall apart. And in fact doing the moral thing ends up just being a self-defeating pointless exercise.

And what it really comes down to is where is your heart. And it seems like your heart is in the right place here. And it is unlikely given the specificity of your situation that what you’re doing here is going to make life harder for other people. We kind of know what we’re talking about. It’s a little bit of the “I know it when I see it” rule.

John: Yeah.

Craig: But for all of these things we are going to be discussing the pain of uncertainty. It’s a very difficult thing for everybody. It’s really difficult for some people. And sitting in your uncertainty can be really uncomfortable. And yet it is required at times.

John: So here’s a conversation you and I texted back and forth about. A listener wrote in with her experience working with a very well-known showrunner and saying like, “Oh my god, this was terrible. Why isn’t anybody talking about this? Have you heard anything like this?” And you and I both said uh-huh. We have about that specific showrunner and other showrunners like that showrunner.

Craig: Yes.

John: And my question for you was at what point do you think it will ever come to light and do we share any culpability by not speaking the name of this person?

Craig: I don’t know if that specific situation will come to light. I mean, over time you think probably the odds increase with every passing day. And do we share culpability? No. Because once you step into a river it’s not the same river.

The moment you say out loud this person is blankety-blank you have changed the state of everything. And it now becomes partly about you and why are you doing that. What are you trying to achieve, etc., etc. It literally changes the dynamic to the point where if your argument is if I don’t say something more people are going to get hurt, if I do say something more people are going to get hurt. And not the particular person that you’re saying this stuff about, but other people might get hurt, including the person who spoke to you.

And so there’s all this just sticky gray area stuff. It’s not as simple as like, you know, say the name. And also you and I don’t have personal work experience with that person. So, we’re kind of going – I mean, granted there sure is a lot of hearsay. But it’s hearsay to us.

John: Yeah. So I think about this also in context with #MeToo though. Is that you and I had heard discussion about certain people who we knew to be sort of personally abusive but didn’t know that they were actually sexual harassers and doing terrible things.

Craig: Right.

John: And I always think about that in terms of like two years, five years, ten years from now will it seem obvious that I should have spoken up about these things I was hearing or have tried to reach out to more people to see whether there was a consensus. And I think in this particular case on this particular person who we talked about before the answer is probably no. And yet I do wonder if that’s a rationalization for doing nothing. And the degree to which doing nothing is also a choice. And so I don’t want to sort of absolve myself of responsibility in too many situations.

Craig: You’re right to grill yourself and interrogate this. In the case of somebody like Harvey Weinstein I think one thing I discovered was the existence of the whisper network. So you and I are men. I don’t think we were part of the whisper network that said that Harvey Weinstein is a raper. I mean, I worked for Bob for many years and I did not know that Harvey was raping people. I knew that Bob was awful. And he was an abusive person, psychologically abusive. I received a lot of it.

But I didn’t know that that was going on. I think a lot of women were talking quietly with each other. To the extent that I can quietly talk to other people about what I know, I do. Because that feels like it’s not going to backfire into that person’s face or anyone’s face.

John: Well let’s talk about the talking quietly, because this is another thing that happened just this last week. There was a director who I was curious about and so I reached out to a writer who had worked with that director. And in the email to that writer I said, hey, so I’m thinking about this person, this director, what can you tell me about him. And here’s my phone number if you want to call me because you don’t want to email me.

And I find that you have to give the person that out because there’s a lot of times people will not want to have anything in print, but they will tell you honestly on a phone call. But, again, I could do that because I knew the other writer and I don’t know whether a stranger would be able to do that.

And there’s a power imbalance that is just naturally there. And so I’m trying to mindful of that while also getting through my daily working life.

Craig: I mean, I play this out in my head. Let’s say that I believe I know something. And I publically state this person I believe is this, this, and this. Inevitably within minutes somebody else is going to say, “No. That person is not that. I have more experience with that person than you do. You’re a liar. And I’ve heard the following about you.”

Now, what they say may or may not be true. It doesn’t help. And by the way let’s say I’m a shoplifter. This is not the worst thing in the world to be. It’s not great. Let’s say I just routinely like to lift Chap Stick and such. And I say I believe that John August is a domestic abuser. Sounds great. Because I’ve heard. Oh, I’ve heard.

John: Oh, you’ve heard the stories.

Craig: And I know him. He’s not. And also you’re a shoplifter. And I have proof. Well, my being a shoplifter doesn’t mean you’re not a domestic abuser. But now the conversation is muck. This is the problem with the world.

I will say if I had credible evidence or a strong reason to believe that somebody was behaving in an illegal way, breaking the law in a serious way, then I would do my best to try and get it out somehow in a way that would be also credible and believable. That is not what we’re talking. I mean, in terms of what you and I are talking about it’s really more of just unpleasant nasty behavior and not breaking the law.

John: Indeed.

All right. So going from situations out there to situations internally, a thing I often grapple with is when to bail on a project. When to say like, you know what, I just don’t think this is going to happen. And perhaps I enjoy the people involved and I would love to see this movie get made. I just don’t think it’s going to happen. And I’ve never been able to find a good rubric for figuring out, OK, for these reasons I should leave. And I think therefore I encounter the sunk cost fallacy where I’ve spent this much time on it I’m going to keep working on it, even though I probably shouldn’t.

Craig: It’s hard. And it’s hard because you are breaking up with something that you once loved. And maybe you still do love it, but you just don’t think you can love it that way anymore because you have something else that you need to attend to. Including things that you want to do. This does happen a lot.

It seems like Hollywood knows what you want and they want you to do the other thing. They know you want a job, so they won’t give it to you. They know you want to stop working on something, they will not let you. They just know. And this one always feels terrible to me. I do not like this feeling. I don’t like the feeling of disappointing people. I don’t like the feeling of letting people down. It’s a weird feeling.

Sometimes I feel like, OK, you’re a doctor in a MASH unit in a war and you could absolutely go over there and stop that guy from bleeding and probably save his leg, but this guy over here needs something else to save his heart. And so you work on that guy knowing full well that other guy, he’s going to lose a leg because of you. That sucks. But you know we can’t do everything. We can’t.

John: Yeah. Some advice that someone gave me which I’m sure I’ve shared on the podcast several times is that, and I forget which writer this was, but I think her advice was to write a letter to that project basically saying like thank you for teaching me these things. This feels very much The Art of Tidying Up kind of thing which is basically like acknowledging that that project as a thing and saying goodbye to it in a way that’s meaningful rather than just sort of keeping it on a tiny bit of life support there in your brain.

Craig: I don’t think I’ll ever do that.

John: Will never do that. That’s too rational of a thing to do.

Craig: I just would feel silly writing a letter to a concept. But that’s me.

John: Here is a thing that comes up quite a bit, and I’ve had some personal experience, but I also remember talking with a writer friend about this. Someone tells you something that they’re writing, or something that they’re working on, and it’s just a hell of a lot like something that you yourself are working on. That you’re clearly in the same space. Do you tell them that you’re working on the same thing right away? Does it matter how front burner it is versus back burner?

I find it awkward and yet it’s naturally going to happen because we’re all working in the same business. We have the same cultural impacts. It’s going to happen. What do you do in those situations, Craig?

Craig: I haven’t been in that situation too much because usually I’ve been working on things that were sort of, like a studio said we want to do this. So it wouldn’t matter whether or not somebody else wanted to do it. It was already there in existence and I’m working on it. But for things that were individual, if for instance while I’d been working on Chernobyl someone had said, “Oh, you know, I’m thinking about doing Fukushima as a big story.” I would have been like, OK, I should tell you that I’m working on this.

I’m not going to go into details or anything, but I am just so you know. And never because I want them to stop doing it, but rather more because I don’t want them to think that I walked away from that conversation going well I should work on Fukushima.

John: Yeah. A thing I’ve found myself doing, especially early on, is that I’ll be with a group of writers and someone will tell a tale or share something and if it’s close to something I want to do, or that actual incident is actually the thing we all sort of experience, and I will say like, “Hey, is anyone calling dibs on that? Because I actually could really use that thing.” Recognizing that other writers are going to find the same kind of material around you.

The same thing happens with just like people in your real life, like Mike my husband, and my daughter, things that could happen, conversations that could be had I need to be mindful of am I just strip-mining these things to use in stuff I’m writing. And I try not to, but if I am going to end up using some of it I will try to signal to them first that this is a thing that I’m going to be using a piece of, but don’t feel like I’m just taking your life.

Craig: I like the idea of you having a little light that you could turn on in the middle of a conversation. Just press a button casually and a green light goes on. And they just know, oh god, he’s recording it now. This is happening.

John: But back to the idea of competing projects, you and I have had a conversation a while back of like there was a time where we were working on projects that weren’t directly competing but were in a similar space. And it was interesting. And it was sort of fun, but it never became contentious because I think again it was clear that those properties existed independent of our involvement with them.

Craig: Yeah. And if I think I know which ones you’re talking about, there’s already been four billion things that had come out of that anyway.

John: Exactly.

Craig: And so essentially if there is a situation where you know both things can coexist even in the marketplace at the same time then it’s not an issue. It’s really more like when someone is like, “Oh my god, I have discovered this story that nobody knows about about this lady who did this thing in 1733.” And someone is like, “Oh, no, I’m also writing about that lady from 1733.”

John: Yeah. That’s the problem.

Craig: At that point two people are looking at each other and then slowly backing out of the room. It’s a duel. And all I can say in those situations is to just be charitable with each other. Because neither merit nor speed is going to determine which one or if either or both get made. There’s going to be some crazy series of luck and financial decisions and god knows what that makes those determinations. So don’t feel like once you hear that you’re doomed. You’re not.

John: You’re not. How to talk about movies and properties where you share credit, where it’s not entirely yours? And the degree to which you should claim credit for things – I’m not saying claim credit in a grabby way, but do you list those as your credits when you share a credit?

So an example for me would be Aladdin. And so Aladdin is a movie that I share screenwriting credit on. And so when people list my credits, like Aladdin, it’s like yes and it’s a shared credit. But I’m not going to go out and every time correct them to say like oh that’s a shared credit. Like to what degree is it OK to say from the screenwriter of Aladdin on something.

Craig: You kind of got to feel like where was I in the totem pole of things, you know? And if I feel like maybe I was the junior member of the writing crew then I’m not going to kind of want to say like – if someone is like, oh, Craig Mazin, he wrote The Hangover Part 2. Well, no I didn’t. I wrote it with Todd Phillips and Scott Armstrong. So, it would be strange – and literally ampersands. So in that case it’s super easy. I just don’t want that.

If someone says, OK, Craig Mazin wrote Identity Thief. Well, technically I have sole credit for the screenplay and I share credit with the story because another writer wrote a spec script. And that’s a guaranteed credit he has not matter what. In that case I’m OK with it because I kind of mostly did. Mostly. You know?

John: So, there’s going to be decisions though about when you’re going to bother correcting something and when you’re not going to. An example, our friend Rachel Bloom, whenever she’s listed as creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend she will tag Aline and say, “And don’t forget Aline Brosh McKenna, co-creator.” That’s a great, nice thing to do. Because co-created, that’s like a huge deal.

Craig: That’s an ampersand situation. It’s a team.

John: It’s a team. They did that together. But you and I also have colleagues who they share a story credit on something and they’ll be like, I’m not saying “I wrote this movie,” but they broadcast a credit that’s like it wasn’t really very much their credit.

Craig: If you talk about your own credits out of insecurity to make yourself seem like you did more than you did, or you are who you aren’t, everyone is going to know anyway. I mean, it’s not going to matter. It’s not going to fool anyone. Just be honest to what it is. Just be honest to what it is.

I mean, I have a lot of credits on a lot of movies. And then I have movies that I wrote a lot on that I don’t have credit on. And in the end no one gives a damn. If you do it long enough and you do it frequently enough you finally get to a place where you realize no one cares. When you get those first credits, oh my god do you care.

John: Yeah. Not only does it affect your career, it affects your income in a way we talked about last week. A credit does matter. So we get that.

Craig: Right. But if you have that shared story credit on a thing because you were rewritten essentially out of existence then you’re not going to get a huge bump in your career. You’re not going to get a huge bump in your salary. And you probably shouldn’t go off and say things like I wrote blankety-blank and forget the people that have like, for instance, all the rest of the screenplay credit or the rest of the story credit. It just doesn’t make sense.

John: Yeah. More ethical choices. Do you take a project where the money involved may come from places that are really problematic?

Craig: Ah, yes.

John: And so we’ve talked about this before in terms of Saudi money and things. And that can be a huge problem. But China. Also a real issue. And so there have been projects recently where it’s like, oh, you know, this would actually be an amazing movie to make with Chinese money. You can totally see that happening. And then you have all the challenges of China.

Craig: Correct. I try to keep things working directly for what I consider to be United States or UK companies that are funding themselves. There is no way to remove yourself from the global economic mesh. Everybody who walks down the street is ultimately one way or another doing business with other countries. If you don’t want to do business with China you do need to get rid of all of your laptops, all of your cell phones, all of everything. Because they manufacture everything.

Is there a difference between that and directly taking 100% funding from a particular company in another country? Yes. Of course there is. And so you have to sit in your uncertainty and make those choices. For me, I don’t really live in that world, so it’s not been a thing for me.

It would be really hard, I’m sure, as an artist if you knew like oh my god the thing that I was desperate to make that I really wanted to make, ah, but these people who are giving me the money I do not like them. And then you’ve got to look in the mirror and make a tough choice.

John: Yeah. A similar tough choice is getting involved with people who may have done terrible things. And so we can think of a list of people who have done shitty stuff who continue to work in the industry and are you willing to work with them? And sometimes it’s a case of like, oh, I can take this animation project to seven different places. Am I going to go to that place that has that guy who we’re concerned about? That’s a choice you’re going to make.

And it’s tough. Sometimes you have the luxury of being able to pick where places go. But if one person controls the rights on a thing and you want to do that thing that can be your only place to go to. And those things happen all the time. And if you rule out working for anybody who is problematic you’re going to basically not be able to work anywhere.

Craig: Well humans are problematic. Let’s just start with that. Everyone has done some really weird, screwy crap. Everybody. Nuns. Everyone has thought or done something bad. Because we’re human. And then the question is how bad, and how frequently, and did you change. I do believe in redemption. If I didn’t I don’t know how I would do the job that I do, because that’s what half of stories are about. And I do think it’s important to give people room to improve and change.

There are some people that do things where I don’t feel I need to forgive them. I’m just perfectly happy never working with them again. But for others, if they appear to be making a real effort, and they appear to have changed for the good, and are doing the work, then I think it’s important to not endlessly shun them. Because if you do you’re just kind of saying just keep being a criminal then basically. And when I say criminal I mean moral criminal. So just keep doing it, because you’re getting blamed for it anyway. So do it forever.

So, this is the sit with the uncertainty. Where is the line between unforgiveable and forgivable? Between I’m never going to do that again or this person deserves another chance? They have changed. Have they changed? I don’t know. Feel it out I guess.

John: Yeah. So the way you’re phrasing that at the end speaks back to sort of like the situations we’re often trying to find for our characters which is basically those are thematic questions. What is forgivable? Can a person be redeemed? You’re trying to create situations in which your protagonists are wrestling with these concerns. So don’t be afraid when you are the protagonist in the story and are wrestling with these concerns.

Craig: Yes.

John: And it’s natural to feel tension and for it to feel really uncomfortable. And to want to retreat into the safest possible choice, but that’s often not the correct choice. Sometimes the traumatic choice is actually the correct choice. It’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to be painful, and you’re going to push through it and figure out the best way forward.

Craig: That’s why I love the movie Doubt as much as I do. Or I suppose the play which became the movie. It is a spectacular investigation of people whose job is to make moral determinations wrestling with doubt. Fundamental doubt. And uncertainty about a moral choice. And aside from being beautifully written, and beautifully acted, and beautifully directed, Amy Adams, Streep, it’s also a philosophically smart evaluation of our inability, fundamental inability to make certain moral choices.

There’s a place we cannot see, but we have to figure out how to navigate anyway. We have to move forward. We have to make a decision. But there are places we cannot see. And we make these decisions blindly all the time. We fool ourselves into thinking that we’re making these decisions with a clear head after careful thought and evaluation. But we’re not. We’re guessing. All the time.

John: We’re retroactively creating principles that theoretically guided our decision, but of course we actually just made the decision and then decided the principles after the fact.

Craig: And to tie into the craft of writing that’s one of the reasons I love that movie so much is because you’re going along feeling like the movie is zeroing in on moral certainty. And then there’s a scene between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis that just knocks the wind out of you and makes you think maybe not. And that’s where it gets really weird and uncomfortable, which I love.

John: All right. Let’s invite our producer, Megana Rao, on to ask some of our listener questions. We’ve got some good ones. And we’ll start with things that feel like this moral or ethical gray area.

Craig: OK.

Megana Rao: OK, great. So Cedric wrote in and he said, “I wrote a movie, my first, that got sidelined by Covid. They had decent name talent signed up. Funding was approved. Preproduction was already beginning, and literally a day or two before I was going into the lawyer’s office to sign the papers Covid struck and the whole thing got frozen.

“It’s an independent project, so I don’t know that it will ever happen now. Everyone insists that it’s going forward this year, but I give the whole thing a 10% chance or less. Two questions that came out of it for me that no one can seem to give me a straight answer on. One, at what point in the process does a writer’s contract get signed? They sent out the script to talent after we finished the director’s pass, but we hadn’t signed anything other than the deal memo at that point. No one asked my permission or anything. And when I brought it up to my lawyer and agents they seemed to think it was OK because I still own the material.

“And, two, in the process of doing the director’s pass there were a number of changes I didn’t like and argued against. I was constantly told, well, if you don’t do it the director will just fire you later down the road and do it himself. But I wasn’t proud of it anymore and I was marginally embarrassed about putting my name on some parts of it. Should I have just given the director co-writer credit so I could use that as an excuse for the parts I didn’t like? Or is it still better to keep sole writer credit regardless?”

John: Oh, so much good stuff to unpack here.

Craig: Yeah, let’s chew on this.

John: And so some backstory on Cedric here is that he wrote in with a previous things like months ago about this situation before his movie got shut down. And so this is sort of the synopsis of where we’re at now.

But, Craig, we can start with the simple. At what point do writers’ contracts get signed?

Craig: Well, it’s different. It depends on the studio. It depends on the project. Sometimes – I will tell you this. I don’t have a signed contract for Chernobyl. HBO is just sort of like, you know, we had a deal in place and then sort of like, you know, this is what we’re doing. And it happened. But usually there will be a final singed contract.

In the case of Cedric weirdly the longer it takes for that contract to get signed the more leverage he has. Because if they’re going to make a movie and they haven’t purchased the copyright, they have not done the literary material sale, you can hijack them for almost anything.

So, I actually think your lawyer and agents are correct because you own this material and the longer that goes – I mean, the best scenario is they forget. They forget and it’s one day before everyone is going to start shooting and you’re like, oh, by the way you can’t. I can get an injunction. You can stop this crap tomorrow. You can’t make a derivative work of something I have copyright on without my permission and I don’t give permission. So they’re going to have to.

John: Yeah. We’re assuming this was a spec script where he wrote it himself and this company bought it and that this was happening. It wasn’t that they owned a book or something and hired him on to write it. But, yes, Craig is correct. At some point before production begins on an indie feature like this they are going to need you to sign that contract because in order to get their insurance and everything else they need for the bond and everything else they need to actually make this movie. They will to prove that they actually have control of the chain of title.

Craig: Now, the second thing is disturbing. And it’s why I suspect that if this did happen on the day before shooting your lawyer and agent should say, “Oh, by the way, you have to sign this bad deal because if you don’t then you’re dead in this business and you’ll be blacklisted.” Because you’re getting bad advice. In the process of doing the director’s pass there were a number of changes you didn’t like and argued against and you were constantly told if you don’t do it the director will just fire you later down the road and do it himself. I don’t know who is telling you that. Is it your producer? Is it your lawyer? Is it your agents?

Regardless. If you’re not proud of it and you’re marginally embarrassed and you don’t put your name on it, guess what, don’t do those. Then maybe you don’t want this movie made that way. While I understand the value of getting a movie made, there is also danger in getting a movie made if it’s bad and it is embarrassing. That word embarrass is a very upsetting word. Then maybe this isn’t the right director? And maybe you should say I don’t like this director and I don’t want to do this anymore. Because guess what? You own all the chips.

And if they want to make the movie they need you to do it. So, this is a conversation that I would have very frankly with your lawyer and agents and tell them I don’t like what’s happened here. I want this to be like this again. I don’t mind making changes but I think we should find a different director, because I don’t like this one.

John: All right. So here is where I disagree with Craig. I think it is in Cedric’s best interest for this movie to get made. And understand that the process of going from your vision of what this movie should be to the shared vision of what a director can actually do and accomplish and put on screen is an important part of the process. And I think he’s probably feeling some of this natural tension.

And the director may be terrible. The director may just be the wrong person. But the director could also in many situations be exactly the right person to direct this movie, just has a slightly different vision. And sometimes the writer has to accommodate the director’s vision because that director cannot direct a movie that he or she does not understand and doesn’t get and is not excited to shoot.

And so I think it’s natural to feel frustration at this script not being exactly what you set out to do. But you’ve got to kind of live with that. If this actually happens. But you think there’s only a 10% chance this movie even does happen, so the good news is Cedric you have the ability to sort of roll back to whatever version of the script, or a new version of the script that you think best reflects what you want this movie to be and that can be the movie that goes forward under a new situation, a new way of setting this up. Or as a writing sample to get you your next job.

So, I fully get Craig’s instinct to sort of say you have to be excited and proud about your work at every stage. But, it’s also important, I think you and I have both had this experience, sometimes you do have to bend to the situation because that’s what being a screenwriter is.

Craig: You’re right. So the question is where does the bending stop and the breaking begin? And in this case Cedric you’ve given us a perfect example of an area with uncertainty. Because I don’t think what I’m saying is wrong, and I don’t think what John is saying is wrong. I think it’s really a question of you have to ask where does this fall on that line. And there is uncertainty here. And you may not even ever know if you made the right decision. How about that?

John: Yeah.

Craig: Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

John: I look at so many of my screenwriting colleagues whose first credits are not good movies. And I think they would all prefer that those movies were better movies. But are they glad those movies exist? Yeah, because it did help. And so a not fantastic first movie I think is still in general better than not having a movie produced. And especially in terms of what you, Cedric, as a screenwriter will have learned in the process of going from this is what I had on paper and this is what showed up on screen.

Craig: Yeah. You know, you just got to kind of feel it out and see what you think. And talk about it with somebody you trust. And this is why it’s important that at least somebody among your lawyer/agent cadre, really it should be your agent, should be able to have that long term far view. And be able to then tell you, look, in the long run I think this is going to be better for you, or in the long run I do think we should make a change. That’s kind of what you’re hoping they’ll be able to do and not just think short term.

John: And you may need to make a change in your reps or your lawyer or somebody else if you feel like you’re getting bad advice.

Craig: Fire your agent. Fire your agent. I mean, we need to have those Morning Zoo buttons where I can just push a thing. Fire your agent!

John: Yup. All right, Megana, what else do you have for us?

Megana: So Max asks, “I just finished a feature that my agent and I are really excited to send out. The movie is a high concept farce with an ensemble cast and some action-y set pieces. Although its length is on par with similar scripts, it does have an objectively high page count. My agent and I are worried that the script won’t get looked at based on page count alone.

“A simple solution is to trim it down. But here’s the dilemma. Everyone who gave me feedback had a different favorite character, a different favorite scene, etc. And sometimes their least favorites were someone else’s favorites. I think this will be a strength of the movie, but it doesn’t give me a clear picture of what cuts to make. My question is should we send this out to producers and executives as is, and let them decide what they want to cut or emphasize? Or do I need to buckle down and make a decision so I don’t seem amateur and undisciplined?

“My biggest fear is sending it out and having doors close for me instead of open. Or, am I being an insane, insecure writer?”

John: Oh Max. You’re being every writer. Every writer has those insecurities.

Craig: How sad would it have been if we were like, no Max, there’s something seriously wrong with you.

John: There’s something seriously wrong.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: Put down your pen and leave.

Craig: Check into a facility immediately.

John: Craig, my first instinct is that Max feels that something should get cut. That cuts probably will help. And he’s scared of what to cut. I think he has to make some decisions and actually just make the cuts that he thinks delivers the strongest script and not worry about the differing advice he’s hearing from different people. What’s your instinct?

Craig: You can’t please everybody. So if you make a movie and in particular what you’re talking about is a high concept farce. OK, well, if you make a high concept farce and you get 75 people to like it in a movie theater you’re doing a really good job. That means a quarter of the people aren’t going to even like it. So, you don’t have to opinion shop here. That is a way, ah, so let us introduce this fantastic phrase “reassurance seeking.”

When you are reassurance seeking you are hoping for people to help you get rid of the anxiety of uncertainty. You tell me and then there will be certainty and I won’t have to worry anymore. The problem with reassurance seeking is the reassurance isn’t actually necessarily real. People will differ in their opinions of what is reassuring. And in the end you will still be stuck with uncertainty. So, I think John is absolutely right. You look at it. You’re the writer. And you decide what I think is important, what I think maybe could go.

Also, because it’s a high concept farce – farce is the important thing I’m thinking – with an ensemble cast, I’m feeling like there’s probably a lot of scenes where there’s a lot of snappy dialogue and people yap-yap-yap-yap back and forth and door-slamming. And that can inflate page count in a deceiving way.

So, one thing you might want to also – look, if it’s 190 pages I don’t think there’s anything anybody can say that’s going to help it. But if it’s 130, you can say on a little opening page, “This is a farce. People talk fast. Don’t freak out about the page count. It’s going to read faster than most scripts that are 90 pages. Trust me.”

You can own it. Right up front. It’s called anchoring. Anchor people’s context and then they won’t be like what the…

There you go.

John: Yeah. Another trick you might want to try is because it’s a farce I’ll say it’s permissible is to do the Greta Gerwig thing where you dual dialogue some stuff that’s sort of at the very edge of dual dialogue. But it’s a way of capturing that people talking quickly feeling without it just stretching on for forever. So that may be another technique. But, yeah, again I think farce is the thing here, so it’s both high speed but also we don’t expect a farce to go on for two hours. And so that’s why you may want to be underneath that kind of 120-page thing. Because that feels right for a farce.

Craig: Do what you can. But don’t freak out about it. And I will say this. You will not – if people get this, they’re not going to go, “Wait a second. This is more than 120 pages. Not only am I not reading this, but put Max on our list. He’s dead to us.” That will not happen. If they read five or six pages and they’re laughing they’ll read another eight. And if they’re laughing they’ll read another 20. And if they’re laughing they’ll get to the end. They will. They just will.

John: They will. 100%. Megana, what else you got for us?

Megana: All right. So Andrew wrote in and he said your conversation about the agencies and union agreement over packaging got me curious about union agreements internationally. For instance, I’m from Canada and the local actors union, ACTRA, has an agreement with SAG/AFTRA about honoring each other’s agreements and advocating for their members when actors work in Canada and vice versa. Does the WGA have similar agreements with international unions like the Writers Guild of Canada? Does the agreement you reach with the agencies apply to international organizations whose members work in the US?”

John: So the answer is it is complicated. And the thing you always have to remember is that unlike writers’ unions around the world, or writers’ guilds around the world, we truly are a union in the US. And most other countries have nothing like us as a union.

So there’s the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds which meets annually. It comes together. And so it includes people from France, New Zealand, India, Israel, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, South Africa. So they’re all talking about issues of common concern to film and TV writers. But a lot of the concerns look so differently because we are actually a labor organization and places in Europe and Asia and Australia they can’t do the kinds of things that we can do because we are a union.

Craig: Yeah. This is a slightly messy area because of jurisdictional issues. For instance, the Writers Guild POV – and this isn’t opinion, this is in our collective bargaining agreement – is that if you live in the United States, or if you are here in the United States geographically when you sell your material or if you are a resident of the US but happen to be temporarily abroad you are under the WGA.

Now, the Writers Guild of Canada basically says if you’re Canadian then we represent you. That’s how it works. Well, OK, now what? So you’re a Canadian. You come and hang out in LA and in about three or four months you come up with an idea and you sell it here. Now what? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I think it’s kind of a big old mess.

John: Yeah. And there’s things that come up and there’s waivers that happen. There’s lots of stuff that does sort itself out. I think the crucial thing to understand is it does sort itself out kind of over time. Whenever there’s talk of a big strike or something there’s always that threat that like oh the studios will just go hire British writers and it never happens.

Craig: The Canadians are coming!

John: There are so many British writers, but it just doesn’t happen.

Craig: No, because I think generally speaking writers are pretty cool and they understand. Nobody wants to be a scab, right? So just because you technically can, it’s like they always say, OK, there’s going to be a strike and then what’s going to happen is John August is going to move to London or France, as he often does, and then he can do whatever he wants because he’s in France.

But we don’t. We just don’t. If we wanted to cheat there’s an easier way to cheat than that. Do you know what I mean? So it’s like it doesn’t really happen. That doesn’t come up. Happily.

John: But, Megana, I see we have another question that’s very WGA related. So do you want to talk us through what Cleo wrote in about?

Megana: Yes. So Cleo wrote in and she said, “In Episode 485 you said the amazing thing about joining the WGA is that you don’t have to do anything. They will find you. I wanted to write in and share my experience joining, or trying to join, the WGA. Spoiler, it’s not as straightforward as you think.

“I was hired in December to write a feature for a WGA signatory company. I called the WGA’s membership department and emailed over a copy of my contract before the holidays. But I didn’t hear back. Oh well, I thought, they’ll flag my deal anyway and reach out soon enough. When I didn’t hear anything in the first couple of weeks of January I followed up by phone and by email and same deal. No response. Eventually in February someone got back to me to say they’d seen my email and in early March I finally received an application form.

“Now, you could blame this on the chaos of Covid, but the thing is a couple years ago I earned enough credits to become an associate member of the WGA. And no one from the guild reached out then to let me know. I didn’t even find out associate membership was a thing until much later. Whatever the reason, if I hadn’t been proactive and practically pestered the membership department for an application form I would not be on my way to becoming a member. The WGA should have some sort of checking system that flags contracts with non-members and triggers and application process.

“I’m sure I’m not the only new writer who has felt overlooked. And I sure could use the guild’s help getting my first payment, though I doubt that will happen because I’m still not a member yet. You see, I need that payment to make the $2,500 initiation fee.”

Craig: Oh boy.

John: Oh boy, lots of stuff here. So, first let’s talk about associate membership. Associate membership is a relatively new thing. It’s new within my time being in the guild. Where people who are doing screenwriting but they haven’t been hired by signatory companies to the degree they would be members can get some benefits for that. And it’s helpful and useful, but it’s a thing where you yourself have to sort of apply for it. So there’s a reason why the guild isn’t reaching out for that, because you call them versus them calling you.

My memory and my instinct about the guild is that they reached out pretty quickly when I was hired to write my first feature that was a guild feature, How to Eat Fried Worms. But it took a couple of months. And I don’t know that that’s unusual.

For folks who are writing television, it’s really clear when someone is hired in television because all that stuff happens really quickly. You’re getting paid really quickly. And the guild can see like, oh, this is a writer who is not in our system. This person now needs to join the guild and it’s easy to see. Features just take longer. And so that sense of like oh when the contract happened, well the guild wouldn’t have seen the contract until well done the road. And even in this age of agencies sharing contracts and deals they just sort of wouldn’t know for a while.

So it feels like Cleo did the right things in terms of being proactive. Are there things that the guild should probably do to improve tracking once a person has reached in? Yeah. Is it probably Covid? Yeah. But I’m not super surprised that she’s encountering this situation.

Craig: I’m not going to apologize for this. This was bad. I used to joke that the one thing the guild was really, really good at was finding out people who had earned enough employment credits to become a member of the guild and then chase them down and shake them down for that $2,500 initiation fee. Because that’s what happened to me in 1995 I think. I sold my first, it was a pitch that sold to write a screenplay with my writing partner. And I don’t know, within days or whatever I got a call from not just someone at the guild, but like the head of the membership department saying, “Hi, I found you.”

And I was like how did you even track – it was like getting served by–

John: How did they find you?

Craig: I don’t know.

John: Maybe was there something in Variety?

Craig: Maybe? I don’t know. All I know is that they were on it. And what I don’t like about this is that the – you want to talk – like the guild has this focus on organizing. The easiest organizing we can do is to organize the people that we already have the right to represent. So, yes, no question that when you’re hired in December Cleo the WGA signatory is supposed to alert the WGA. They may not have.

OK, so then you called the WGA membership department and emailed over a copy of your contract before the holidays. At that point that should have been done that day. I don’t understand.

John: They should have piggybacked like OK now you’ve got to fill out these forms.

Craig: 100%.

John: So here’s something we can do. We know the WGA folks. And so we’ll try to get an answer for Cleo about what is the normal process and sort of what didn’t happen properly here. I think our general guideline though is that Cleo couldn’t have gotten by for years without joining the WGA. They would have found her and she would have had to join.

Craig: But that’s not the point. The point is that – and this is the big point is her very last thing. I could use the guild’s help getting my first payment. Because she needs help. She’s already getting kicked around. And she needs her first payment to make the initiation fee. All of this would have been a lot easier if they had called her right then and there, right when they got back from the holidays on January 8 and said, got it, and she said, “Listen I can’t make that payment until you help me.” They would have helped her, hopefully.

John: Yeah.

Craig: But instead they sat on that email for over a month. And then, yeah, and then waited even longer. Yes, is Covid a thing? 100%. But also the WGA has managed to do a whole lot of stuff during Covid. So this seem fundamental like they should–

John: As we talked last week they were able to go through a thousand screenwriter contracts.

Craig: Exactly.

John: So her contract should have been in that.

Craig: 100%. And by the way this is a good thing that we can always hand off to a board member that we know to say dig into this.

John: Oh yeah. We will.

Craig: In fact, we’re doing it. We’re doing it.

John: Done. Send. All right. One last question, I’ll just actually read this one. This is from Graham who says he’s a screenwriter about to graduate from college and “I’m building a website for myself for the first time.” And he basically wanted some general advice.

So I just did a panel for the guild on press and publicity and advice for that. And one of the things I mentioned in there which I want to share with everybody else is I think it is very important for a screenwriter to control a Twitter account, an Instagram account, and a website, just so that you can be clear that I am this person. And so when something comes up you can point to like I am this person on the Internet. This is a source of truth for who I am.

And so register your own name if it’s possible. Your own name dot com or dot co, dot UK or whatever you want to register. Register something so that when I Google your name that will be the first thing that comes up is a simple clean website that says here’s who I am. This is the things I’ve worked on. And in the question Graham asks, “Should I include samples of my stuff?” Maybe. If you have stuff that’s actually really good of course you should. And if you have a portfolio of work or YouTube videos of things you shot that actually really good you totally should.

You don’t need to put on pitches and log lines and that kind of thing. But just let us know who you are so that when I Google you we can find you and I can say like, oh, that is this person and not the other person who has a similar name.

Craig: That’s a great idea. I think that all makes sense to me. I think people should feel free to put stuff – you know, artists put stuff up all the time. Directors put stuff up. Actors put stuff up. Writers are like, oh god, but what if they steal it? You know what the best evidence for them stealing it is? The fact that it was on your website three years earlier. That’s kind of like the best proof ever.

John: Yeah. So my only hesitation in putting stuff up is just like make sure it’s really showing your best work. But if you have a thing you own that you control that you’re proud of, absolutely put that up. Or put up the first ten pages and let people email you for the rest of it. That’s great.

And so I’m really talking about kind of a calling card website which is the minimum thing you can do. I’ll put a link in the show notes there’s a site I use called card.co.

Craig: Card.

John: Which is good for little one page things. And I use it for like if I refer to a URL in a project and I don’t really want to build a website I’ll get the URL and build a simple page for that. It’s absolutely fine for this kind of thing. So, to spend two hours making a website once is time worthwhile. You don’t have to have a blog and have everything else. Don’t feel like you have to do everything. Doing the minimum is perfect in this case.

Craig: I love doing the minimum.

John: You used to have a website yourself.

Craig: I did. I did. God, so long ago.

John: So long ago. I remember one of our first interactions was you asking how I got the little brad icon to float properly in CSS.

Craig: I thought it was like, oh, that’s probably not that hard to do. And you were like, no, it was a month of my life. It was like roto scoping a brad onto a thing.

John: Uh-huh.

Craig: That’s a whole world of stuff that’s just so mystifying to me. CSS. All the like Photoshop-y, layer-y. Oh my god. I can’t.

John: It’s a lot.

Craig: I can’t.

John: It’s a lot. I can still read CSS, but I don’t have to do it all that often.

Craig: I love the idea of you reading CSS at night like a novel. [laughs]

John: I can still often figure out what CSS element is broken when something is not looking right, but I shouldn’t. It’s one of those things where like I shouldn’t try to fix it because that’ll just make it worse.

Craig: Yeah, and you know what? It’s not your job.

John: It’s not my job.

Craig: Not my job.

John: But Megana your job is to go through all these questions so thank you for helping sort through all the people who write in.

Craig: Thank you, Megana.

Megana: Thank you for these answers.

Craig: Of course.

John: It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article by Taylor Lorenz for the New York Times. She’s writing that For Creators, Everything is For Sale. So it goes on sort of the Beeple stuff, but really talking about – I love this phrase she uses – how people “monetize the drama.” And so think about like what do writers do? Well writers monetize the drama. That’s sort of what we’re doing.

But these are people whose real life. So celebrities or online celebrities and finding ways to take a picture of their feet and make money off of just like selling the rights to their feet. Or selling the right to decide what they’re going to wear for a day. It’s that weird Black Mirror episode that we’re living in.

Craig: I don’t want to live anymore. Get me off the planet. Get me off.

John: All right. Craig, you promised something great for your One Cool Thing so I’m really excited.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s going to be great. But this is a first for us after nearly 500 episodes. I’m going to do a live One Cool Thing. And the purpose of this is to find out if this is or is not a One Cool Thing. Have I talked about Upstep before? Was that a prior One Cool Thing?

John: It sounds familiar, but describe it.

Craig: So many years ago I used to wear orthotics because my feet are – when I say flat I mean flat. Like where–

John: Elephant.

Craig: You would say to foot doctors I have a flat foot. And they’re like, uh-huh, well show. And then they would go, “Oh my god!” So I have the flattest feet.

John: How are you alive?

Craig: Yeah. Like what the hell? What planet are you from? So I used to wear orthotics and then I got these sort of like wore out. And it was a huge pain in the ass. You’ve got to go to the foot doctor. You step on this thing and they charge you like hundreds of dollars and it takes like 19 years and then you get the thing back and you try it out and you go back to the doctor again.

So, it wore out. And then I got these new sneakers that kind of had slightly built-in arch support and they were fine. But not great. And then I read about this thing called Upstep. So they send you a cardboard box that sort of unfolds into two halves. And in each half is foam. Like the kind of real soft foam. And you step in it. And then you step in the other one. And then you send it back to them and they take the imprint of your foot and the foam. You say, oh, I’ve got flat feet and I want this. And they make you insert and send them back.

I have received them. And I’m going to try – I’ll just do the right foot. So I’m opening the box right now. Upstep tips. Give your orthotics time. Start with one to two hours a day. No problem.

Here they are. They look like orthotics. So that’s good. Here we go. I’m going to put the right one in. My model is on my feet all day which is [unintelligible]. I guess they’re like your feet are so flat we’re going to call you that. So stand by.

My shoe is off. They’re going on. Oh, I’ve got to take out the – so when you do these things you’ve got to take out the one that comes in your sneaker. That one comes out. This one goes in. Oh, no, it fits. OK, it fits. I was like oh boy it’s already not cool, but it fits and it fits nice and snug and good. OK, so here I go. I’m putting my foot in.

OK. I can feel it in there. That’s good. And it does take some getting used to. I’m going to tie my shoes, stand up. Stand by. Here we go.

Oh! OK. Huh?

Well, here’s my verdict. It feels like a support. It feels like the other ones felt. Is it going to be good or not over time? I don’t know. I’ll have to check it out. But I’m going to give these a shot.

John: Very exciting.

Craig: Yeah. So I think this is provisionally my One Cool Thing. Upstep. Oh, and by the way much cheaper than going to the doctor about it.

John: I see these all the time in my Instagram feed. So, I’m sure I’ll keep seeing them more.

If you enjoy people trying on things they see online I’m going to also link you to my friends do All Consuming which is a podcast where they buy the things off of Instagram and then actually try them out on their podcast.

Craig: Oh that’s fun.

John: So you should try that as well.

Craig: That’s fun.

John: Great. Well I’m happy for your feet, Craig.

Craig: Oh, John, I have a question for you. Final question.

John: Please.

Craig: That what you just said reminded me off. Have you ever drunk bought something?

John: Oh, yeah. I will Kindle buy some things when I’m a little bit drunk. How about you? What do you drunk buy?

Craig: Back in the days when I used to be on Facebook one night I had just one too many, which for me means three. I had one too many. And I was on Facebook and there was some ad that made so much sense. It was like this is the most comfortable, these shoes, these dress shoes that you could run in. They’re that comfortable. And I’m like really?

John: Wow.

Craig: OK! And then the next day I had forgotten it had happened. And then like three weeks later these shoes show up and I’m like what the hell are these. And I never wore them. Drunk purchase.

John: And did you feel guilty about getting rid of them?

Craig: No. Not even slightly. No. I just felt like in the world of mistakes that people have made when they drank too much that was the mildest possible mistake.

John: Yeah. But talking about shoes, I do find you see advice about like you should replace your shoes after certain miles, especially for runners and such. But I realize like I’ll have shoes that are like ten years old and are basically just completely flat and I still wear them because they still work and I feel bad throwing them out. I have a hard time replacing my shoes.

Craig: You should. Well, it depends on what kind of shoe. But it’s just not good for your feet. It’s not good for anybody’s feet. So look at it this way. It will do no one any good.

Now, is there some place that maybe recycles that shoe? You could always look into that I suppose. But it’s not something you could donate because it’s going to be bad for somebody else’s feet. It’s just no good.

John: Yeah. It’s barely even a gray area.

Craig: Yeah. Barely.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: That’s right. Sure is.

John: Our outro this week is by Michael Karmon. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send the longer questions that we answer on the show. But for short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. You can ask me some questions there.

We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. If you go to johnaugust.com/guide that is the place where you can tell us which of the 500 episodes you think is most relevant for people to listen to and they should not miss if they are going to take a listen through the catalog.

You can find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter, Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll see those links in the show notes.

And you can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all those first 491 episodes and the bonus segments like the one we’re about to record detailing our origin stories. Craig and Megana thank you so much.

Megana: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you guys.

[Bonus segment]

John: So our bonus segment this week comes from a question by Isaiah Facta. Let’s listen to what Isaiah asks.

Isaiah: Hi John and Craig. I’m going to be graduating from high school in a few months and I know that I want to be a screenwriter. I realized this just after a girl that I liked told me that she didn’t want to be with anyone and then proceeded to get into a relationship two days after. Halfway through an episode of Parks and Rec I realized, hey, I’m not thinking about the girl right now. And I had my ah-ha moment of I want to be a screenwriter. I’m curious what moment made each of you decide that this was what you wanted to do with your life. Thank you both for helping me figure out where to even begin with writing as I don’t think I would be as far as I am if I hadn’t found Scriptnotes. Bye.

John: What I love about Isaiah’s story there is that experience of heartbreak plus comedy entertainment is what leads to screenwriting.

Craig: Basically. It sounds like he’s got the most important thing in place which is just pain.

I don’t know if there was a moment I realized I wanted to be a screenwriter per se, but there was a growing realization during my senior year of college that I wanted to entertain, somehow. And I didn’t know which way it was going to be, but it seemed like maybe trying to write some stuff, that there was opportunity there.

And so what I started trying to do was write sitcoms. I thought maybe I’d be a sitcom writer. And I was not. That never happened. And I became a sitcom actor before I became a sitcom writer, in fact.

But there was this desire to entertain. And I don’t know if there was a specific moment, it just started becoming clearer and clearer to me somewhere in my senior year of college.

John: Up to that point were you writing plays or sketches or any of that kind of stuff?

Craig: Nothing.

John: Nothing. Because I could totally picture you in an improv troupe. You didn’t do any of that?

Craig: No, because I was told over and over by my parents that that was frivolous nonsense. And it was drilled into me in a way that was – it’s hard to explain how – it’s just this thing. I think – I wonder, hey Megana, are you still there?

Megana: I am, yes.

Craig: Megana, I think John’s mom was probably way nicer than my mom. You don’t have to answer any of this if it’s too personal, but what did your parents think when you were like, you know what, I kind of want to go into entertainment?

Megana: They were like that’s such a fun hobby for you to do once you become a doctor.

Craig: Et voila. I didn’t even get that much. I got how dare you, you’re going to become a doctor. And so there wasn’t really space to do things like do improv or anything. It all felt guilty. It was all guilty pleasures. And so maybe that’s why the very first thing I did was work on this public affairs news show in college which seemed like the most serious version and therefore maybe potentially the most acceptable version of “entertainment” that I could find.

But I didn’t really allow myself to do anything until I came to LA.

John: Well, a common experience I think all three of us on this call would share is that while we were good at writing we were also good at other things, and so like Craig I know you were on your path to becoming a doctor and sort of did all that stuff of looking at cadavers and such. And you could have become a doctor and the same with Megana had her career at Google. There were other things you could have done that were just sort of normal and traditional and typical, and so therefore why would you not do those? And I guess of the three of us I was luckiest in the fact that my parents really did not push me in any particular direction at all.

So I always wrote and I was writing for my high school newspaper and ended up getting a journalism degree in college. But I tried to think back to what was the first moment that I realized that stuff was even written. And I’ve talked before on the show that I remember watching War of the Roses on videotape and rewinding it and starting to just transcribe everything I saw. And I realized like, oh, the dialogue is all written – someone must have written the dialogue down ahead of time.

Which sounds so naïve, because you read plays in high school, but I just didn’t have a sense that there were writers behind stuff.

I remember in fourth, so Spanish 4, so this is in high school, our professor Hugo Hartenstein asked like, “Oh, so what do you want to be when you grow up?” And I said, I was trying to find the words for oh I want to be a screenwriter. And Hugo Hartenstein is a native Spanish speaker, Cuban, and had no idea what the word was for screenwriter. So we eventually figured out it was guionista. So, a guion is a script and a guionista.

But that idea of like, oh, I want to write those scripts. And so then in college I realized like, oh, there really is a whole business and industry of people whose job it is to write these things. And Premiere Magazine. And that was sort of how I first got the notion that like, oh, screenwriting is job and a career I could shoot for and a way to write the stuff that I actually really want to write. The kinds of stories that I want to write.

Craig: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You had more of a moment there. I think, well it sounds like Isaiah is a bit freer than at least I was.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: He seems really free. There’s nobody kicking his butt about being a lawyer or a doctor or something. I feel like there’s a really cool – there’s a cool possibility, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but there’s a possibility that Megana and I do just go to medical school. And we open up a practice. And we’re like screw it, it’s happening, we’re doing it. You know what? Find. We’re doing it. And then we become really good doctors. I could see that.

John: You know, I can’t think of any examples of someone who got their medical degree late in life. I’m sure there are examples.

Megana: Oh, you should talk to my dad. He has a ton.

Craig: Yeah. A friend of mine, his dad became a doctor fairly late in life. And, yeah, it does happen. Usually when it happens they don’t end up necessarily doing what you think of as like, oh, a general practitioner that builds a practice over time, because they don’t have that time. A lot of times they actually end up in administration, hospital administration, and things like that.

And a lot of them just are specialists. Yeah. They do it. I might still do it.

John: Get their masters of public health. Some advice for Isaiah as we leave here. He’s a high school student who has realized that he wants to become a screenwriter and TV writer may also be part of that as well. Opportunities he has is just to read a ton of scripts. And we live in a time where you can get access to all those things. And so he should be writing a lot, but he should also be reading a lot.

And I don’t want to steer him to a program that is exclusively film-based. I think he should – if he’s going to college go to a place where he can get a broad education about a bunch of other things that interest him. Because it’s those things that interest you that will be the material that you get to use as a writer.

If you just went someplace to study writing, especially screenwriting, I worry you’d become far too cloistered and wouldn’t have the kind of breadth of experience and breadth of curiosity that’s going to be so important for you.

Craig: Always. Try and live life as you’re going along. And try and find something that will put some money in your pocket. Because screenwriting will not for a long time.

John: It shall not. Thanks guys.

Craig: Thank you.

Megana: Thank you.

Craig: See you next week.

John: Bye.

Links:

• Listener Guide Submissions send in your favorite episodes from 300-500!
• Screenwriting Competitions Aren’t Worth the Money blogpost
• $69 Million Beeple Auction for NFT
• Scriptnotes, Episode 407: Understanding Your Feature Contract
• Build a website on card.co
• For Creators, Everything Is for Sale by Taylor Lorenz for the NYT
• Upstep for insoles, and for more unboxing content, check out this podcast All Consuming
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Michael Karmon (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.