John welcomes writer/producers Al Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville, Shanghai Noon, Into the Badlands) to discuss their process of discovering new stories within familiar worlds, like in their Addams Family hit series Wednesday.
We discuss casting actors, shooting overseas, and the difference between writers’ block and story block. We also answer listener questions on one-pagers and whether aspiring screenwriters should focus on feature or television writing samples.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John asks Al and Miles their thoughts on film school and what decisions they’d make if they had to go back.
Links:
* [Al Gough](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0332184/) on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/goughalfred/?hl=en)
* [Miles Millar](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587692/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/milesmillar)
* [Wednesday on Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/81231974)
* [The Way They Were](https://www.amazon.com/Way-They-Were-Battles-Hollywood/dp/0806542322/ref=asc_df_0806542322/) book about the movie The Way We Were
* [Moleskine Notebooks](https://www.moleskine.com/en-us/shop/notebooks/)
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* [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/) by OpenAi
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* [Check out the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Adam Locke Norton ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/578standard.mp3).
**UPDATE 12-25-22** The transcript for this episode can now be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2023/scriptnotes-episode-578-any-given-wednesday-transcript).