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: This is Episode 590 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, why do some people do bad things. More specifically, why does past trauma lead some characters to become villains, while others become heroes? We’ll wrestle with good and evil, right and wrong, and how that impacts the choices our characters make. We’ll also be answering some listener questions on character jobs and getting paid. In our Bonus Segment for Premium members, we will talk tattoos. I’ve now had mine for 30 years, but Craig, you are a newbie to the whole tattoo world.
Craig: Indeed.
John: Indeed.
Craig: Excited.
John: We’ll get into it. Now Craig, a few episodes back we were talking about phones and devices that executives used to have on their desks to tell their assistants about who’s calling in or, “Bring me a Coke.” We couldn’t think what they were called. Charlie wrote in to say those old things were called AmTels.
Craig: Yes, AmTels. It was an AmTel. Boy, I feel bad for the AmTel company. Where are they now?
John: They still sell them.
Craig: What?
John: We’ll put a link there. It’s amtel.com, A-M-T-E-L dot-com.
Craig: Oh my god.
John: They still make them. If you click through, they look kind of the same.
Craig: I’m looking. Oh my god. Oh my god. By the way, this website tells you everything. This website is like an incredible time capsule of what websites looked like in 2004 maybe.
John: It’s built with tables, the old way of the tables. You had to structure things with tables.
Craig: The little side menus that pop up and these weird window style boxing. This is nuts. They can’t still be in business.
John: I bet they could still make money.
Craig: I think this is a ghost.
John: I may get you one for Christmas, Craig.
Craig: If they can only sell one a year, that one might cost seven million dollars. Gotta keep them in business, John. You know what? They’re not in the business of going out of business.
John: That’s what it is. Flashback to Final Draft.
Craig: Oh my word.
John: Good lord. Back in the day, this is how an executive would know who was calling in, so they could see whether they want to answer it, hit a little button, say yes, reply, or, “Bring me a diet Coke.” Thank you, Charlie, for reminding us what these things were called and, wow, just a good flashback memory.
Craig: AmTels, wow, how about that?
John: That was all part of a discussion because I had asked listeners what should I do about my office phones, because they don’t ring anymore. There’s just really no sense in having them. Our listeners are the best. They have a lot of good suggestions, which Drew sorted through. One was a service called Dialpad, which is replacing a traditional office thing.
One that I found was most fascinating was, Adam wrote in to say, “I’m currently working completely remote as a producer’s assistant. We’re using an iPhone as our office line, and it’s been great. We can easily save contacts, merge calls with my boss and additional participants. I’m logged into my company email so I can quickly retrieve any relevant info if I’m away from my desk. I just turn the phone off during off hours so I’m not constantly checking two phones.” Essentially, Adam just has a second phone, which is the office phone. That’s the number it rings to there. He just does everything from that phone.
Craig: That is a very attractive solution, because the issue with the old phones is they simply weren’t connected to the systems that everything else is connected to. This is the physical object hardware version of the software solution of getting a separate Google account which I have for my business. That Google account is where we keep all of our contacts and we sink through all the things that I need to share with my assistant or my partners. This makes sense. It’s a little annoying obviously for an assistant to carry around two phones at the same time. You need more pockets. That’s attractive. That’s an attractive thought, although honestly, we just use our own phones.
John: The challenge is though, when your current assistant, when Bo is no longer your assistant, then who are they calling? They need to have a new number to call.
Craig: It’s the handover process of, Megana hands it over to Drew. A lot of emails have to go out saying, “Here’s the change.” There’s a few weeks of adjustment, but then it all adjusts.
John: Also, Drew shouldn’t have to be answering that phone at 1 in the morning.
Craig: Oh, yes, he should.
John: Oh, yes, he should.
Craig: Oh, yes, he should!
John: Crisis.
Craig: Drew, get me a diet Coke! I’m gonna ruin him for no reason at all.
John: Also, if Drew has that phone, what am I gonna throw at him?
Craig: Exactly. Now John, what I would suggest is you go and get some old phones that maybe are on sale for 20 bucks that don’t function at all, that are just being sold for parts. Just get 12 of those and just have them in a holster.
John: You’re set.
Craig: Yep, perfect.
John: The other solutions people suggested, and thank you for writing in, included Google Fi, Verizon One Talk, Webex, which some people are using. I think some agencies have moved over to Webex. We’ll see, but we’ll report back with whatever we decide as a solution for this.
Craig: Great.
John: Cool. Last bit of follow-up here, we talked about government influence on films, because we had these script consultants who were being paid by foreign powers. Phillip in Los Angeles wrote in. Craig, do you want to read through this?
Craig: Sure. Phillip writes, “In Episode 587, you spoke about how state influence on film is bigger in Europe than America. In many ways, you downplayed the US government’s role in films, specifically even military. The Department of Defense has a Hollywood liaison office that is more involved in scripts than the contractors hired in Europe. While this isn’t government dictating all scripts with military themes, access to military vehicles, equipment, and technical expertise saves studios millions of dollars and grants authenticity they couldn’t get otherwise. See Top Gun: Maverick.” There’s a link to an LA Times story covering that very thing. Phillip, agreed, but this isn’t about funding. That is not specifically funding. It’s about access, which is different, I think, than what we were discussing.
John: It is. I can also think that access to a lot of places where you want to film or things you want to use, yeah, you are gonna be consulting those people and probably even getting scripts cleared through those people. If you wanted to set a film on specifically a Native American reservation, you’re gonna have to go through the tribal governments there, and they might actually have some ability to say no, we don’t want you doing that. You can envision a lot of scenarios beyond just the military where there’s gonna be approvals that are gonna have to happen.
Craig: Tons of those things. Just in case people are wondering, there are always trade-offs. Like John’s describing, most places that are in a position to gatekeep are going to want to take a look at the material. Certainly, the Department of Defense very famously wasn’t going to let Top Gun or any of the movies that Jerry has made that connect with the military… None of them can say things or depict things that paint the military in a particularly negative light. Obviously, the military has no interest in funding something that makes it look bad.
Similarly, like you mention, we were all over Alberta. Our upcoming episode that’s coming out on Sunday was partly shot in Waterton, which is a federal park in Canada. There were all sorts of restrictions that came along with shooting there that we had to make sure we obeyed. Lots of trade-offs, but those are the decisions you make as a production. That said, Phillip, not quite what we were talking about.
John: On the issue though of military portrayals, it got me thinking back to an article I read a couple weeks ago. I’ll try to find a link and put it in the show notes about how the Army’s using these influencers who are TikTok star kind of people who are specifically there to sell how great it is to be in the military or the military lifestyle. “She’s an influencer, but she’s also in the Army.”
Craig: Vaguely insidious.
John: Insidious. It feels like propaganda. It feels like [inaudible 00:08:14]. That’s a different kind of thing than what we’re talking about with a script approval. I think that’s what we were worried about. That’s what we were worried about when we heard a script consultant from Europe, being like, oh, no, it’d have to include exactly these messages. These are going to be state propaganda films.
Craig: There is no free lunch, my friends.
John: If you’re trying to shoot a movie in Turkey these days, I bet there would be a lot of concerns and restrictions.
Craig: Yes, pretty much anywhere. That’s how it goes.
John: We have a bit of follow-up here from Pay Up Hollywood. Drew, could you help us out with this?
Drew Marquardt: Sure. Rekha writes, “Three years ago ish, during the beginning of the movement that would become Pay Up Hollywood, you mentioned Rob McElhenney as a positive example of how you treat your staff. On that same episode, you read from my anonymous letter as an agency assistant. At the time, I was so terrified I created a fake email so it couldn’t be traced back to me.
“As I’ve grown older within this industry, I’ve become much more outspoken about the realities. I moved out of the agency life, worked for some incredible writer/showrunner-led production companies, and now actually work with Jackie Cohn and Rob McElhenney. I’ve experienced Rob’s kindness and generosity firsthand. The environment he creates is so incredible and warm.
“I just wanted to point out this small connection, because it almost feels like fate. Technically, we were mentioned in the same episode, Rob as someone who is a great boss, and me as someone who’s really struggling, but years later, the universe actually put us together. I know the value of hard work and perseverance, but being raised in a lot of Indian and Hindu cultural influence, I can’t help but shake the notion that everything happens for a reason and some things are meant to be.
“Your work and your commitment means so much to me. Back then, even though you didn’t know who I was, I felt like someone was listening to me for the first time. Most people didn’t know that I was writing in at all. Sometimes I’m still scared because I’m still on the lower level side, but I think it’s important that we keep talking about it and all things affecting the treatment of people in our industry. Thank you all for being the first to listen and a force that kept me going.”
Craig: Wow, that’s amazing.
John: That’s nice.
Craig: Rekha, thank you. I immediately tensed up at the beginning of her letter, because I’m like, “Oh, no, what did Rob do?” As it turned out, what he did was what he always does, which is be awesome. Rekha, you mentioned Indian Hindu cultural inference. I’m gonna teach you a word in Yiddish. Beshert. Beshert means fate or destiny. This is cross-cultural. Do I believe in supernatural fate or destiny? No, but it’s a nice feeling. It’s comforting. I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s comforting sometimes to think of my grandmother watching me.
This is beautiful. I swear to god, I forget all the time that people even listen to this, much less are impacted and affected by it, but then I’m reminded all the time. Thank you for writing this. This is gorgeous. I’m just very happy.
John: I’m also pointing out, Rekha, just don’t sell your own agency short here. That agency may have started with you writing in anonymously to this podcast about what your experience was, but in sharing that story, not only did you put down in words what you were experiencing, you started to recognize that there were other people having the same experience. You got yourself out of that situation, into a better situation, then to a better situation, into where you are right now, which is just a steppingstone to wherever you’re headed next. I’m glad we were able to help, but we were only able to help because you spoke out and noticed what was going on around you and said, “Hey, this is not cool.” It does come back to you.
Craig: To be clear, when you say agency, you mean her volition and individual willpower, not the agency she worked at, which was apparently terrible.
John: No. That’s absolutely true. We want the good kind of agency, not the oppressive kind of agency.
Craig: Exactly.
John: Your self-determination is what we applaud.
Craig: I might actually feel good about myself until lunch today.
John: Nice. That’s all we can aim for in these troubled times.
Craig: It’ll go downhill.
John: The last little thing before we get into our main topic is, did you see the stuff about Dick Tracy?
Craig: No.
John: Do you remember the movie Dick Tracy at all?
Craig: Of course. Of course.
John: Dick Tracy, it’s a very brightly colored comic book adaption. I remember seeing it in theaters. I remember Warren Beatty starring in it. I remember Madonna was the woman in the film.
Craig: Tess Trueheart.
John: Tess Trueheart. I remember almost nothing about this film at all, but you know who does remember this film is Warren Beatty, because he continuously releases new things that are sequels to Dick Tracy, so that he can hold onto the rights. I just find it fascinating.
Craig: Why?
John: Because he can and because he would. I’ll put a link in the show notes to an article that’s speculating how he’s doing it and why he’s doing it. This most recent thing was a Zooming with Dick Tracy, where it’s a split screen thing where it’s Warren Beatty and Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy and Leonard Maltin and another film critic.
Craig: Oh, god.
John: It’s just long enough that it actually counts as a sequel. It shows up on Turner Classic Movies.
Craig: Oh my god, it’s a legal thing to just…
John: It’s a legal thing. It’s also clear that he actually has an artistic pride to it that’s interesting.
Craig: Why?
John: Because this was a comic book adaptation before they were all out there, so maybe it’s meaningful to him. Also, he just seems like, “Goddammit, no one is… “ He’s going to die owning this thing.
Craig: Wow.
John: That’s what he wants.
Craig: Dick Tracy, it was such a strange… Even when it came out. It was 1990. I was 19. Geez, Louise. I would read the comics in the paper. There are still comics in newspapers that are still newspapers, but back then a bit more common to read comics. Some of the comics were these ancient holdovers from my dad’s time, which you could tell were just soaking in this anachronistic, old-school way. It just was so old-fashioned. Dick Tracy was definitely one of them. He was a 1940s, ‘30s, ‘20s, 1920s-ish kind of guy. There were a bunch of Gasoline Alley and the girls in Apartment 3-G and Mary Worth.
John: Mary Worth.
Craig: Where you’re like, what the hell is-
John: I can’t do comic book guy’s voice, but he has, “This is the-“
Craig: “That’s the rare Mary Worth where she advises her friend to commit suicide.”
John: “Commit suicide.” Yes.
Craig: Mary Worth. I’m just like, “What is this?” Then when that movie came out, I guess I was like, “All right.” This is why these days when people are like, “Oh, we really want to make a Hungry, Hungry Hippos movie,” and I’m like, “It’s Dick Tracy. It’s old. Nobody now cares.” The point is, Dick Tracy was old-fashioned and out of date in 1990, which is why the movie was kind of a flop. What’s the point of holding onto it? Nobody knows what it is. It doesn’t matter. He has a wristwatch that’s a two-way radio. That was considered forward-looking technology.
John: Maybe it’s like holding onto intellectual property as actually just property, the same way people collect plastic cars. Maybe he just wants to hold onto this piece of IP for as long as it can be a piece of IP, because a copyright will expire. It will become public domain at a certain point.
Craig: This is like a very elaborate NFT.
John: That’s what it is. It really is an NFT before its time. I just thought it was great. I don’t have any particular comment on it. This idea of you have to keep making a thing to hold onto the rights is a real thing in Hollywood. Spider-Man famously, you had to make a Spider-Man movie every once in a while, or else the rights would all kick back to Marvel. Sony had to keep making Spider-Man movies.
Craig: I think lawyers have become much more savvy. The lawyers back when they made that deal in the ‘80s for the rights probably never considered that there was a loophole in which Warren Beatty could appear in the costume for five minutes in an interview and renew the rights for another 12 years. People have gotten smarter about that stuff, precisely because of things like this.
John: Probably the most famous example I remember is there was a Fantastic Four movie made by Roger Corman-
Craig: Yes, there was.
John: … which was just to hold onto I think Fox’s rights to it. They had to film it and then shelve it. It’s never been seen.
Craig: Somewhere on YouTube I think I’ve seen bits and pieces of it. It’s startling. Startling.
John: Startling.
Craig: Startling.
John: To our main topic today. This all comes out of Chris Csont, who does the Inneresting newsletter, was putting together a bunch of links for people writing about villain motivation and how villains come to be. When he laid them all out side by side, I realized they’re really talking about character motivation overall, whether they’re heroes or villains. So often what we think about, like, oh, that’s the reason why they’re the villain, you could just turn around and say, oh, that’s the reason why they became the hero. It’s basically the reaction to the events that happened or what’s driving them.
I thought we might take a look at villainy overall, look at some villains, and then in the lens of these articles, peel apart what are the choices that characters make that cause us to think of them as being heroes or villains and how we use that in our storytelling.
Craig: Great. I love this topic.
John: Cool. We love villains. Craig, let’s just make a list of things that villains do, what we’re talking about when we talk about villains in the course of a story. What are villainy things?
Craig: In the very basic sense, old-school way, you’ve got cops and robbers. Villains break the law.
John: They break laws that are there to help society. We also have heroes that can break laws. Villains break laws in ways that harm society or harm the community. They oppose the hero. Sometimes they seem to enjoy causing suffering or misery.
Craig: Villains oftentimes are marked by cruelty or sadism. Like you said, it’s something that undermines the social fabric of things.
John: They are selfish. They may steal. They can cheat. They will lie. They’re power-hungry. Yet all those things are things that sometimes heroes do as well. Maybe we’re sussing out the motivations for why they’re doing the thing that they’re doing. Do they have a noble purpose behind it? What’s the explanation? This all is against a backdrop. So often in these times we’re talking about antiheroes rather than villains and heroes. These are the Catwomans, the characters who are doing bad things, but for reasons that we as an audience relate to.
Craig: Sometimes villains are presented as people who maybe had a righteous grievance but are taking things too far. That’s a very typical Batman villain, not so much the Joker, but a lot of other villains. They start righteously. They’ve been hurt or wounded or offended. They want revenge, but they’re just going too far, whereas Batman was wounded and hurt and decided to make sure that nobody else got hurt again. These are the two different paths sometimes that heroes and villains go down. Heroes supposedly are doing things to care about others.
In a Judeo-Christian, emphasis on Christian, founded country, the notion of sacrifice and sacrificing yourself for the betterment of mankind is a very strong one for heroes, whereas villains are interested in either accruing power for themselves or healing themselves at the cost of anyone else.
John: Absolutely. Both heroes and villains may have trauma, but it’s what they’re doing with that trauma. That trauma caused them to lose hope or it’d inspire them to do things down the road.
Craig: Exactly.
John: That’s a factor. Also, look at the axis between conformity versus individuality or nonconformity. How willing is this person to stand up against the system? So often, we think about our heroes standing up against a tyrannical system. You can look at so many villains that are essentially the same kind of thing, where they believe they have the moral certitude that what they’re doing is correct and everybody else is wrong and therefore they will do what it takes to enact their vision. They’re not afraid of pissing everyone else off or blowing everyone else up in order to achieve their vision.
Craig: This is how you end up with that scene where the villain explains why they’re doing what they’re doing. “I’m gonna tear the whole thing down! I’m gonna make everyone pay!” and blah blah blah blah blah. This happens all the time with large-scale villains that, as you say, are nonconforming.
We have this impulse to both conform and nonconform. We want our heroes to save us all and keep the conformed society together. We despise our villains for nonconforming to the extent that they tear it all down, but we also want our heroes to nonconform so that they’re not like the rest of us.
Heroes and villains really are just reflecting the push and pull inside of our own minds. That’s why we’re attracted to the story over and over and over. It’s Punch and Judy. We have been watching this story forever, since there was fire and caves.
John: Absolutely. Just because it’s a great article on Wile E. Coyote, The 1000 Deaths of Wile E. Coyote, I would say perseverance is a thing to think about with villains as well. We think about heroes persevering, but in many cases it’s the villain who has persevered against all these obstacles in front of them that is the real story of, you keep knocking me down and I’ll just keep coming back stronger.
Craig: This is obviously all colored by the presentation of the narrative. It occurred to me after many years after watching Star Wars that we actually didn’t quite understand what was particularly bad about the Empire. We were told they were bad, but how? Why? Then later, that got filled in a bit. Mostly it’s just, man, it seems like they’re really mean to each other. It’s a really over-trained, corporal punishment-emphasizing, military group. What is exactly happening on the ground? What is it that these Rebels are fighting for?
You could certainly turn it around and go, wait, what if we were telling a story about America and Al-Qaeda? Now who’s the Empire? Now who are the Rebels? Which side are you on? It’s all about how you present these things, always.
John: I think Star Wars is a fascinating case, because you have the Empire, which is this giant bureaucracy but also has this supernatural power at the center. The Emperor is this supernatural figure who can do these magical things. In later Star Wars we see the supernatural Emperor. You also have a series like Andor, which is just about the Empire as this tyrannical bureaucracy. We see the actual human beings who are cogs in that machine and feel a sympathy for why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s trying to do both things, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
Let’s start with this article by Daniel Effron here, we’ll put in a link to the show notes, about why good people do bad things. He’s an ethicist. He’s really talking about we think that people would make a logical decision about the cost and benefits of breaking some rule, transgressing in some way, but they really don’t. Mostly, it’s not about the act itself. They’re doing things or not doing things based on how they’re going to be perceived by others. It’s that the spectator thing is a major factor. If they can do something without feeling like a bad person, they will do it. Cheating is not just about whether you can get away with it. It’s how will you feel if you do this thing.
Craig: Which is really fascinating when you consider it in the context of a traditional existentialist point of view, which is that we are defined solely by our deeds, the things we do. It doesn’t matter how you feel. If you do something bad, you are a bad-doer. That is true to an extent, meaning the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily care why you killed that person, as long as it wasn’t self-defense. He made you nuts, and you couldn’t handle it anymore, and you killed him. You had perfectly good reasons in your head. The rest of the world doesn’t care. You killed him. You’re a murderer.
What is interesting about our villains is often there’s a phrase that you and I have heard executives say four billion times, mustache twirling. The mustache-twirling villain is a reference to the old silent films where the bad guy in the Old West would steal the good guy’s gal, and he would tie her to the railroad tracks for some reason.
John: Why would he tie her to the railroad tracks?
Craig: I don’t know.
John: I never understood that.
Craig: Because he wants her to die but he can’t do it himself. He would rather watch a train do it, I guess. That train will be arriving at some point. He never checks the timetables or anything. He ties her to the rails, which actually is probably very difficult to do. Then he waits. While she’s like, “Please, no,” he has this nasty
Mustache with little handlebars at the end, and he twirls them and goes, “Meh-heh-heh.” It’s just shorthand for an incredibly broad villain. Broad villains don’t worry about feeling like a bad person. They are a bad person, and they are celebrating it. They love it, which is actually not very recognizably human. It’s just not a human thing to be like, “Oh my god, you know what I want to do today? Something bad, because I love being bad!” That’s not really how it functions, generally speaking.
John: We’ve talked many times about character motivation, villain motivation, and how every villain tends to see themselves as the hero, if they even have a sense of moral compass at all. We’re leaving out of this conversation these supernatural alien creatures, the degree to which we can apply motivation to those kind of characters.
In Aliens, we see that it’s a mother against a mother. That makes sense. That tracks. We can understand that. In most of these supernatural, demonic things, there’s not really a moral choice there. They are actually just true villains. Even the slasher villains, we might throw some screen time just setting up what their past trauma was that’s made them this way, but we don’t really believe that they have any fundamental choice. They’re not choosing to do these actions.
Craig: They made a choice. The choice was made. It is now complete. Freddy Krueger was burnt by a Lynch mob. He made a choice in his supernatural return to come back and kill all the children of the people that killed him. He’s good. He doesn’t wake up going, “What should I do today?” He’s like, “Good. One more day to do the thing I decided to do, that I will do every day. Ha ha.”
John: Aha.
Craig: There’s a wonderful clarity to being that kind of villain, isn’t there?
John: It is. In some ways, you could say that he’s cursed. Basically, he’s living out this thing. He can’t escape this. He can’t choose to get out of this. A curse is the opposite of a wish. We always talk about what is a character’s want, what are they actually going for. The curse is the mirror opposite of that. They are bound by fate to do this thing, and they can’t get away from it. There’s a kind of freedom in that.
Craig: There is, because as a human, you’re really more of a shark. There are no more choices to make. There’s no questioning of self. Sharks kill. When I say shark, I mean the fictional shark, not the regular sharks that probably are like, “I’m full. I’m not going to do anything.” You are a creature that is designed to kill, and thus you must kill. You are more like a beast than a person.
Those characters often do feel like they become part of nature. Zombies, whether they’re slow or fast, whether it’s a virus or it’s supernatural, they ultimately are will-less. They are compelled to do what they do. They make no choices. Thus they become a little bit like a storm, flood, lightning, fire, monsters, the devil, these things that just simply do stuff.
There’s a wonderful place for those kinds of things, but I think ultimately we do want villains that feel like they are reflecting something back at us, that they are dark mirrors that say, “Hey, you might feel these things. Don’t end up like me.” They are almost designed to be negative instructors to make people identify with the villain, to make us understand why the villain’s doing what they’re doing, to make us think, “I actually have felt the same things, I’ve wanted to do the same things, but here’s what happens if I do,” because typically, the villain will fail.
John: Let’s talk about some villains. I have a list of 20 villains here for us to go through. Let’s talk about what’s driving them and what’s interesting and what could be applied to other things. We’ll start with Hans Gruber from Die Hard, our special Die Hard episode. Of all the folks in this list, he’s maybe come actually closest to seeming like the mustache-twisting villain because of that amazing performance. His actual motivations are more calculating. He doesn’t seem to be just cruel for the sake of being cruel.
Craig: He’s a thief. He wants to steal money. That’s as far as I remember. Is there a greater motivation than that? It just seems like he’s a very arrogant man who wants to steal a lot of money and doesn’t mind killing a bunch of people to do it.
John: He gets indignant when somebody gets in his way. He will lash out when his plans are forded. I think of him, just because of that performance, as being grand and theatrical, but actually, he has a purpose and a focus. Also, I think he very brilliantly, in the course of the structure of movies… We talked about the false idea of what the actual motivation is is great. It seems like they have some sort of noble purpose beyond the money, and of course they don’t. It’s all just a ruse.
Craig: That was a wonderful thing that happened. It was a very meta thing. For us growing up, that was a startling one, because we had become so trained to think of these villains as people who were taking hostages. Terrorists are an easy one. They’re always taking hostages. They often in bad movies were taking hostages because they were associated with, like they made fun of in Tropic Thunder, Flaming Dragon, just some rebel group that was trying to do a thing.
The fact that Hans Gruber used that against us to make us think that’s what he was doing, and then the big surprise was, “No, I’m simply a thief,” was actually quite clever. Alan Rickman, I think his performance in no small part elevated what that character was into something that felt a little bit more wonderfully arch.
John: Let’s talk about the two villains in Silence of the Lambs. You have Buffalo Bill, who’s the serial killer, kidnapping people. You have Hannibal Lecter, who is also a serial killer, but a very different kind of serial killer. They’re two monsters, but with very different motivations. They’re very different fill-ins in the course of the story. How do we police them, and how do we think about what’s driving them?
Craig: Buffalo Bill to me, because he’s portrayed as somebody with a severe mental illness that has led him to do these terrible things, is more in the shark territory. He is beyond choice. He’s no longer making choices. He is simply compelled to do what he does and will continue to do it until he’s stopped. There’s nobody who’s going to have a sit-down with Buffalo Bill, and he’s going to be like, “You’re making a really good point. I’m going to stop killing all these people.” He’s not going to do that.
Hannibal Lecter you get the sense absolutely has choices. What is presented in his character that Thomas Harris created that’s so beautiful is the notion that he might be some kind of avenging angel, that maybe he only does horrible things to the people that deserve it. What’s interesting about the story is they tease you with that, but then what do they tell you? They tell you that he bit a nurse’s face off. We see him killing two police officers that didn’t do anything to him. He kills a guy in an ambulance. He will kill indiscriminately do protect himself.
As Jodie Foster as Clarice says at the end of the movie, she doesn’t think he’s going to come kill her because it would be rude. We get fascinated by the notion of the serial killer with a little bit of a conscience. It tempts us to think if we were interesting and good enough and cool enough, he wouldn’t want to kill us.
John: Damien in The Omen, a terrifying little child. To me, he feels like he’s cursed with that. He’s not made a single choice. He is who he is.
Craig: He’s bad to the bone.
John: Born into it, as opposed to Amy Dunn in Gone Girl, who I think is one of the best, most recent villains. She is aware of what she’s doing. She is a sociopath. She has some sort of narcissistic… I don’t want to say narcissistic personality disorder. I wouldn’t want to diagnose her with that specifically. She has some ability that puts her at the very center of the universe and sees everyone else around her as things to be manipulated.
Craig: Why we are fascinated by Amy Dunn is because her conniving and manipulation and calculations are very well done, so she’s formidable. This is something that you’ll hear often in Hollywood from executives. They want the villain to be formidable. They want us to feel like it’s really hard to win against somebody like that. I think also there’s a little bit of a wish fulfillment there, because she is occupying a place in society that typically isn’t in charge, isn’t the one that comes out on top. We get to watch the underdog go a little crazy and win to an extent. That’s always fascinating to me.
John: I think the other brilliant choice Gillian Flynn made in the structure of this is that ultimately she becomes a victim herself in breaking free of all this stuff. In executing her plan, she ends up becoming trapped by someone that she shouldn’t have trusted and then has to break herself out. We see, “You think you’ve caught me, but I’ve actually caught you,” is ingenious, so smartly done.
Craig: I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!
John: Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, a whole generation of young men thought that he was the hero of the movie Wall Street.
Craig: Oh, bros.
John: Yes, bros. I think it comes back down to his idea that greed is good. There’s more to it than that one speech, but essentially that whatever it takes is what’s worth doing. That is an American value, but it’s pushed to an extreme degree.
Craig: Which is the point. When you mention the Daniel Effron article, the average person cares a lot about feeling and appearing virtuous. If they can do bad things without feeling like a bad person, that’s when they start doing bad things. What Gordon Gekko is doing is essentially giving himself license to commit crimes. The license is through philosophy, that in fact he’s helping people. If you think about it, really I’m the hero. Somebody naturally is like, “You really convinced yourself of this.”
We always wonder when Gordon Gekko puts his head on the pillow, does he really believe that. Is there some piece of his conscience gnawing at him? We don’t know. That is a great example of somebody articulating a value that we all have ad absurdum to force us to examine ourselves.
John: Alonzo Harris in Training Day, Denzel Washington’s character in Training Day. An amazing performance, an amazing villain, amazing centerpiece role. Here he is in a position of power inside a structure, but of course, that’s not his true source of power. His true source of power and wealth is all the ways he’s subverting all that and breaking the codes to do this and is now trying to entrap Ethan Hawke’s character in what he’s doing.
Craig: An excellent film. What I remember feeling when I watched Denzel’s portrayal of Alonzo, was that he was managing to do two things at once that are very different and difficult to do simultaneously. He was letting us engage in a power fantasy, because it’s attractive. He made it look sexy and fun and awesome. The idea that if you go through life having the upper hand and being able to get over on anyone, it’s exciting.
On the other hand, he also showed you the terrible cost of it, that in fact, like I said, there’s no free lunch, that you cannot engage in power like that without it hollowing you out and gnawing at the foundations of who you are as a person until finally you’re brought low. It’s inevitable. You will come down to earth. Gravity applies to you. It’s wonderful. It’s a great lesson, which is why I think Training Day is one of the great titles of all time. It’s just such a great lesson. We’re all getting trained about the danger of having that kind of power.
John: We should put that on the shortlist for a future deep dive, because it’s been a while since I watched it. Two more I want to go through. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies.
Craig: Aw.
John: Gollum, I think he’s unique on this list, because you pity him, and yet he’s also a villain. He’s also dangerous. There are other examples of that. They’re usually sidekick characters. Here he is in this centerpiece role where he has control over this little section of what the characters need and yet he’s pathetic. It’s just such an interesting choice.
Craig: Gollum to me is not a villain. Gollum is an addict. He is somebody who is portraying an addiction. He will do bad things to feed his addiction. Where Gollum takes off and becomes somebody really interesting is when he is a split personality, when he’s Slinker and Stinker, and you can see him arguing with himself. That is so human. It’s just so wonderfully… We can identify. We feel bad for him, because we know that inside, there’s somebody who is good, who was a great, perfectly fine guy until he shot up heroin for the first time, and then that was it. He’s essentially been enslaved to his own addiction and his own weakness.
John: I think that’s the reason why we can relate to him so well is because we can see, oh, the worry that if I were to do those things, I could be trapped the same way that he is trapped. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this article about Wile E. Coyote. It’s arguing essentially Wile E. Coyote is an addict. He’s demonstrating all the addict’s things. He’s going to keep trying to do the same thing, even though it’s never going to work. It’s always going to blow up in his face, a different form of the thing. He’s always chasing that high, which is the roadrunner. If he thinks he can get it, he won’t get it.
Craig: It’s rough, man. He needs a program.
John: He does need a program, 12 steps there. Finally, let’s talk about Annie Wilkes in Misery, who I think is just a spectacular character. You look at the setup of her, and that if she did not kidnap somebody and do the things she does in the movie, she would just be an obsessive fan. She would just be someone, you know her, you understand her. She’s annoying, but she also probably bakes really well. You get along fine with her. It’s that worry that you push somebody, given the chance, some of these people would go too far and they would Annie Wilkes you.
Craig: That’s a portrait of obsession and love gone bad. What was so fascinating about Annie Wilkes, and Stephen King was so smart to make her a woman, is that in society we see men doing this all the time. Men become confused by their love for someone or they think they love someone. It becomes an obsession which turns violent and possessive and often deadly. Women are very often the victims. Here, what was so fascinating was to see a woman engaging in that very same power trip and obsession.
I remember at the time thinking that the only thing that held me back from love, love, loving Misery was that Annie Wilkes did seem like an impossible person. There was part of me that was like, “No one’s really like that.” Now we have Twitter, and we know that there are. Stephen King was right.
John: She’s out there.
Craig: Oh my god, she and he. There are many Annie and Andrew Wilkeses out there who attach themselves so strongly to characters. The whole thing kicks off when her favorite author dares to kill her favorite character. She reads it in the book, and she snaps. We have seen that a lot in popular culture. That form of love that has gone sour, that has curdled into obsession, is something that’s very human. The story of that villainry is you must get away from that person, because they are going to destroy you to essentially mend their own broken heart. That’s terrifying.
John: It’s fascinating to think, would Annie Wilkes be a villain if she had not stumbled upon that car crash? Is this the only bad thing that she’s done?
Craig: I would imagine that she’s probably done a few other things, but nothing like that.
John: This transaction would not have happened if not for fate putting him right there. If the book had come out, and she would’ve read the book, she would’ve been upset. She would’ve been angry for weeks. She probably wouldn’t have stalked him down at his house and done a thing. The fact that she could affect a change because she had the book before it came out was the opportunity.
Craig: The woman was definitely off to begin with. Anybody that says dirty birdy as a phrase, you can imagine people are like, “Here comes Annie.” She’s gotten into some pretty nasty fights at the post office, but nothing like this.
John: Let’s try to wrap this up with some takeaways here. As we’re talking about these villains, I think it’s important for us to stress that we’re looking at what’s motivating these iconic villains in these stories. These iconic villains are great, but they wouldn’t exist if you didn’t find a hero to put opposite them, if you didn’t find a context for which to see them in, because they can’t just float by themselves. You can’t have Hannibal Lecter in a story or Buffalo Bill in a story without a Clarice Starling to be the connective tissue, to be the person who’s letting us into their world.
I see so often people try to creating this iconic villain who has this grand motivation. Terrific. Who are we following into the story? How are we getting there? How are we exploring this? How are we hopefully defeating the villain at the end of this?
Craig: We need somebody to identify with. We don’t want to identify with villains, but I will suggest that if you can find moments where people are challenged to identify with the villains, that’s when things get really interesting to me, because there is a kind of story where we just give up on the whole hero, villain thing entirely. We ask ourselves, in these situations, what would you do?
When people start to drift away from the hero and towards the villain, that’s when their relationship with the material becomes a little bit more complex. It doesn’t mean it’s better. Sometimes I like nice, simple relationships with the things I watch and read, but sometimes I do like them messy. I like a messy relationship sometimes as well.
John: I thought Black Panther, the Killmonger character was a great messy relationship with Black Panther, because they both had strong points. While we wanted Killmonger defeated, we always say, “You know what? He was making some logical points there.”
Craig: He’s a good example of gone too far.
John: Indeed. Let’s do two quick listener questions. Drew, help us out.
Drew: Ida asks, “I’m having issues when it comes to establishing basic things about characters, especially choosing a career for them in stories where the profession doesn’t necessarily affect the story but I do need to see them in their workplace. Any tips on making this kind of decision?”
John: Listen. I’m assuming that you’re writing the kind of story where there’s a workplace but the workplace is not the important central point. We’re going to see them there, but that’s not where we’re spending most of our time. Get them someplace visual where they can talk. If [inaudible 00:45:36] get them a place where they can talk, where we can see them moving around through a space, if they’re supposed to working with other people.
If they’re supposed to be working by themselves, think of some sort of craft kind of thing where as an artist, an artisan, as a solo worker, as a cabinet maker, where we can see them in an individual space. I would just say look for something that’s interesting and distinctive but not so distracting that it becomes the focus of the movie. Craig, any tips for Ida here?
Craig: I guess, Ida, it does sound like because their profession doesn’t necessarily affect the story, that you’re probably going to be looking for something fairly mundane. If you can tell me anything about her character from the place she works… Let’s just start with, how much money does she make? How much money do you want her to have? What’s her education level? Has she given up on things? Is she coasting? Is her dream to be a this, so this is just a day job that she’s doing while she has to, for money? All those character things should lead you towards a general sort of thing. Then make a list of all the things that are like that, that fit in that, that you’ve seen in movies before, and don’t do any of them.
Now take a walk around your town. Look for weird things, candle shops, psychic palm readings, a place that repairs vacuum cleaners. Whatever it is that you could also imagine somebody else being in there that might be an interesting bounce-off character or some comic relief or a place where she might have to confront a customer asking for something annoying. These are the things that I think help you get specific.
A great example is, in Better Call Saul, Vince Gilligan needed to establish this mundane life for Saul Goodman. He could’ve picked all sorts of places, but he picked manager of a Cinnabon, not just employee at a Cinnabon, manager, which is worse than employee, because employees come and go. The manager, that’s his career. His career is Cinnabon.
By the way, if you’re a manager at a Cinnabon, I’m sure you’re doing fine. I’m not making fun of you. If you were a lawyer that was on top of the criminal world of Albuquerque, and now you’re a manager at Cinnabon, you can see how things have changed dramatically for you in a very specific way. That’s what you’re hoping for is something that feeds back into our understanding of who this person is and where they are in their life.
John: I would just emphasize that when we say pick a mundane job, that doesn’t mean boring. It can be boring for them, but it can’t be boring for us. There’s nothing worse than seeing a boring workplace where it’s just like, this is a boring scene because we’re in a boring place. Make sure that whatever you’re picking is going to be able to keep the ball in the air, so the scenes that do need to take place wherever they’re working actually can still land and that will make it so the movie won’t get cut because it’s dull.
Craig: Agreed.
John: Drew, one more question.
Drew: A WGA Member asks, “Has the Guild ever tried to force studios to pay penalties to writers for late payments? It’s often a months-long wait between delivering a script and receiving payment.”
John: A WGA Member, yes, they do have to pay. They have to pay a penalty per week or per month. There’s a percentage penalty too for that stuff.
Craig: I think it’s weekly. There is an interest rate that compounds. The Guild has not ever, forget tried to force studios, first of all, force is the wrong word, compel studios or require studios to adhere to the terms of the contract they’ve signed with us. The Guild has an entire department that does nothing but this and has successfully collected millions of dollars on behalf of writers.
John: Millions and millions of dollars.
Craig: Millions and millions over the course of decades.
John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to the Late Pay Desk. I have friends who work in that desk. All they do is just go after writers’ money. Here are pros and cons. The pro is you have to speak up and say, “Hey, this person owes me money. Go get my money,” and they will go get your money. It can be tough for a writer to raise their hand and say, “Hey, this is a problem here.” The writer can do that. Also, you have reps. Your reps are theoretically only getting paid when you’re getting paid. Send your reps on this.
I think so often as writers we feel like we need to be meek and not make waves, but if people owe you money, they should pay you money. Not only is there structures in place for the WGA, but there are structures in place as a system that you should be getting paid. If you’re not getting paid, it’s outrageous, so speak up.
Craig: Understand, no matter how cool your agent or your lawyer is, your lawyer has 5% of the total amount of caring about that money coming in, your agent has 10% of the total amount of caring, and you have the rest, 85%.
Also, they probably have more money than you do. The agency is a large business. The lawyer’s working for a large firm. This money means way more to you than it means to them. They don’t really actually care if the money comes in a month or two late. They don’t care, but you do, because maybe you need it for rent. You can try and say to them, “Listen, this is really important that I get paid on time.” They have to work with that studio for all of their clients. It’s much easier for them to go, “It’s fine.” The Guild does have a dedicated department that just handles this stuff.
John: I will say that I suspect you are a feature writer, because it’s feature writers who are classically not getting paid on time. That’s just what it is. Sometimes pilot writers, but really it’s feature writers. Time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article by Jennifer Senior. It’s in The Atlantic. The headline is The Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are. Craig, I’m going to ask you, in your head, how old are you?
Craig: Oh, man. It depends. Sometimes I’m 14, and sometimes I’m 51.
John: The phrasing of the question ends up being important, because they’ve done studies on it. If they ask how old you are in your head versus how old you feel, you get different kinds of answers from people, because there’s definitely days where I feel 50, but I would say consistently I do feel like I’m probably 31, 32 at a place. The studies they’ve done on this, it looks like people anchor themselves about 20% younger than their actual chronological age. They tend to peg themselves back at a moment where they feel like they are themselves, the first version that they were themselves.
Craig: That’s interesting.
John: It’s after you’ve had your first kiss, first foray out into the world without your parents’ supervision. You feel like an adult with most stuff figured out. That tends to be the moment. Going back to our villains discussion, people who have big traumas in their past tend to get stuck at those ages too. It’s a good article overview of this mental self-perception of how old you think you are. What can be useful for people who are in their 20s or early 30s is that the people who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, internally they still think of themselves likely as closer to your age than you would guess. Useful.
Craig: It is. I’m not a huge backwards-looking person. What I do know is that no matter what age I perceive myself to be, while I have changed in certain clear and I think positive ways since I was, say, 35, I haven’t changed that much. I’m still basically who I was, whereas when you’re coming up, you’re changing a lot.
I remember when I was in my 20s, looking at people who were in their 30s and feeling, “Okay, you’re a little bit older. You seem like you’re more settled down and established. I’m a bit jealous of that kind of peace.” People in their 50s were just old. The truth is, those people in the 50s did not probably feel any different than the people in their 30s. They really didn’t. I don’t feel that different.
There is a wisdom that comes with age. It’s weird. I don’t feel old, but I know that the people I work with, who are much younger than I am, look at me and think, “Old,” like parent old, which is fascinating.
John: The parent thing is really interesting, because at a certain point, I realized, “Oh, I’m now older than my parents were at this point.” It’s weird, because I always think of them as being older. When I was a kid, they were not any older than I am currently right now. That’s strange to me. I forgive them more.
Craig: How old was your dad when he passed away?
John: My dad was 67.
Craig: At some point, you’re going to hit 68.
John: For sure.
Craig: That’s going to be interesting, because you’ll know an age that he didn’t even know, which is fascinating. I have this memory of my mother throwing a surprise 40th birthday party for my dad. That just seemed like the most faraway number possible. That’s in my rearview mirror by a decade. Time.
John: Time, time.
Craig: It’s so weird.
John: I have this very distinct memory. We went camping every summer. We were in the trailer. I asked my mom how old she was. She’s like, “I’m turning 37.” That number anchored for me. It’s just wild to think, oh, wow, she was actually a 37-year-old. That doesn’t feel that old to me.
Craig: If you were with a 37-year-old right now, you’d be like, “They’re on their way up.” So strange.
John: Absolutely.
Craig: It’s so weird.
John: You’ve got one here.
Craig: I’ve got my One Cool Thing, which is gonna feed directly into our Bonus Segment. My One Cool Thing is a woman named Yeono, Y-E-O-N-O. That’s a combination of her full name. She is a tattoo artist from South Korea. Just side note about South Korea. Tattooing, you have to have a medical license to do it.
John: Wow.
Craig: The legal structure is really designed to discourage tattoo work. A lot of South Korean artists come to the US to work. Yeono gave me a tattoo. I think it’s amazing. She was a lovely person and an artist and meticulous, which I thought was wonderful. She has a particular style, which is photorealism. If you are in the LA area, or I believe she also works out of Brooklyn, so she goes back and forth, and you are looking for a photorealistic tattoo done by a very obsessive, very careful, attention to detail type person, then you should take a look at some of the work that Yeono has done. She’s terrific.
John: Fantastic. That was our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, with help from Chris Csont. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Dilo Gold. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you could send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies, and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all of the back-episodes and Bonus Segments. Craig, Drew, thanks for a fun show.
Craig: Thank you, John.
Drew: Thanks, John.
[Bonus Segment]
John: Craig, last Wednesday you came over to the house, and we were gonna play some DnD. You had on your arm a dagger. I asked, and you showed it to me. I said, “Oh, how long is that gonna last?” You said, “Forever.” The reason I asked how long is that gonna last is because it looked like a sticker transfer thing, because it was so incredibly photorealistic, and your skin was not all puffy and red in a way. I assumed you just applied a sticker to your forearm, but no, you’d gotten a genuine tattoo.
Craig: It’s actually a switchblade. Neil Druckmann and I made an oath when we were making The Last of Us. We said, “If this show works,” and we define works vaguely as either got good reviews or a lot of people watched it or both, that we would each get a tattoo of Ellie’s switchblade. She stabs a lot of people with her switchblade. It’s cool. The show worked.
John: The show worked.
Craig: I followed through. Neil has not yet followed through, I would like to point out.
John: Coward.
Craig: He is. He says he’s gonna. He’s waffling a bit about the design he wants, which I understand. I’m just going to continually shame him until he gets it. Regardless, it was my first tattoo. I’ve never had one before. I never really wanted one, but this felt significant. This was a long process. I cared very much about it. It just seemed like I had earned it in a way. I knew I wanted a photorealistic tattoo, which is why I find Yeono. The process was fascinating. I enjoyed it, actually, quite a bit.
John: The advice I gave to you on that night, and which other people around the table echoed, is you have to wait at least another year before you get another tattoo, because inevitably, people get a tattoo, and the experience is so cool that they want a second tattoo and a third tattoo and they end up with a bunch of dumb tattoos all over their bodies. I have so many friends who that has happened to.
Craig: I will try to avoid that. I think if another season of The Last of Us does well, I’ll probably get another one for that. I like the idea of tattoos commemorating large events, as opposed to just, “I want a dolphin on my ankle.”
John: I have exactly one tattoo. I got it 30 years ago. I was in the Stark Program at USC. Friends came down from San Francisco to visit. We were out on Venice Beach. They all had a bunch of tattoos. I said, “You know what? I really want to get a tattoo.” We went to the tattoo place, and I got the one tattoo. It’s on my ankle. It was great.
Craig: Is it a dolphin? Please tell me it’s a dolphin.
John: It’s a dolphin on my ankle. No, it is an abbreviation of a Latin phrase, tibbium nihil, imagus quiddum, which is, “Let me fear nothing, not even fear,” which was just a mantra I wanted to live by and honestly, genuinely helpful way of thinking about things. Most of the stuff in my life that I’ve regretted are the things I regretted not doing, that fear kept me from doing, and so to be less fearful of things ahead. It was good, useful advice.
It hurt like hell on my ankle. We can talk about this, Craig. It’s a very sharp, very specific pain, in a way that is so different than other pain, because I can see why it hurts, and it doesn’t bother me, because it’s just a very sharp pain at that spot. I know it’s not actually bad for me or my body. It’s not a warning sign the way I think pain generally is.
Craig: There are different parts of the body that respond differently. Interestingly, men and women have different responses in general to certain areas of the body. There are areas where men are more sensitive. There are areas where women are more sensitive. It’s curious. The ankle is a tough one. There are areas by joints, basically. When you’re dealing with joints, those tend to be more sensitive. Then the ribs apparently are the worst. That’s what I was reading.
John: I can absolutely see that.
Craig: The tattoo that I got is on my forearm, on the inside of my forearm, which is, generally speaking, one of the less painful places to get a tattoo, particularly if you can avoid getting close to the wrist or the inner elbow.
The pain, which I was obviously curious about, it was fascinating. It reminded me initially of a little bit of the pain of an electric shock, a steady electrical current, because there is a vibration to it. It’s like a vibration and a scratching at the same time, but I didn’t mind it, and that’s a good thing, because as you said, my tattoo is this photorealistic image of a switchblade. It took nine hours to do that. If it had been excruciating for nine hours, I think I would’ve lost my mind.
Honestly, the part that was the most annoying physically was that the position my arm had to be in on the table for her was slightly rotated to give her a flat inner arm surface. After a few hours, my shoulder started getting really stiff. I would take little breaks and just move my shoulder around and then hand the human canvas back to her.
Here’s an insight into me, John. About seven hours in, she’s like, “When it’s a long tattoo, when it takes a long time, I give my clients a little massage just to loosen them up, because they’ve been tight the whole time.” I said, “That’s right.” She gave me this wonderful shoulder, scalp massage. It felt great. That said, I was so much more comfortable being hurt than I was being helped. There’s something about people making me feel good that makes me feel uncomfortable and something about people hurting me that feels great. I can’t imagine why. Nothing happened to me.
John: Nothing to unpack there. Nothing.
Craig: Nope. We will not open the box full of bad stuff. I thought it was a fascinating process. Here’s where I’m at now. It’s been basically a week since I’ve had it. It is healing beautifully. There’s no more redness, happily no signs of infection or anything like that. I’m in the skin flaking stage.
From a medical point of view, what happens is the top layer of skin is going to heal faster than the lower layers of the epidermis. The top layer of skin is now healing. The way it’s healing is by flaking away the dead skin as the new skin on top regenerates. The skin underneath is still putting itself together. From what I understand, once all this sunburn style flaky stuff flakes away, the tattoo will then look a bit blah for another couple of weeks. After about a month from the beginning of the tattoo to then, things should be back to where they were when I first showed it to you, which was fresh and startling and vivid.
John: Craig, what is your opinion of actors having tattoos? I actually have some strong opinions about this, but I’m curious what your instinct is, because obviously, all human beings should be free to adorn themselves however they want to adorn themselves. I find it really frustrating when actors have a bunch of tattoos. I look at them like, “Man, we are going to have to get around a lot of your tattoos, because they do not fit in the world of our movie.”
Craig: I actually don’t mind it, as long as there’s not a facial tattoo. If there’s a tattoo and your face, that’s a disaster. Everywhere else on the body, if something is not covered by clothing, our makeup artists were extraordinarily good at covering up little tattoos or large ones. It didn’t take that much more time in the morning, obviously. The bigger issue is copyright, as it turns out, which is something Warner Bros found out when we made the second Hangover movie.
John: That’s right.
Craig: Tattoo artists that design original artwork are protected like the rest of us, under copyright. They own the copyright. If you’re going to put that on film, we need to clear it. Nick Offerman, for instance, has a tattoo. In our third episode, there’s a moment where he emerges and he’s wearing a towel but nothing on top, so you can see his chest, and he has a tattoo. He had already been in something where that tattoo had been visible, so he had already handled the whole clearance thing. I think he had gotten the artist to basically sign something that said, “I am licensing you to do this wherever you want to do it on camera.”
When it’s a new one, when it’s a fresh one, you do have to ask, and we have to get approvals and sometimes negotiate some fees. That part can actually be more annoying than the extra 10 minutes, because here’s the deal. If it takes 10 minutes to cover that tattoo up, we’re just calling the actor in 10 minutes earlier. It’s on them. They’re just going to be a little bit earlier on their call time to get that covered up. It doesn’t bother me too much.
John: As an actor, you’re appearing in TV shows, you’ll have to decide are you wearing some long sleeves, are you covering that up, are you getting a license from Yeono for perpetuity.
Craig: Here’s the interesting thing. I haven’t actually talked about this with her, but I’m going to. I’m going to go and see her again after a month, because she’s gonna look at it and see how it’s gone. She may want to touch up a couple of spots, depending on how it’s all healed.
The interesting thing about this tattoo is the artwork is basically a direct duplication of the artwork from the game, because I gave her these digital files of images of the switchblade that was originally designed for the game The Last of Us. Other artists had done this. Technically, I probably should’ve gotten permission from Sony, but I didn’t. Whoops. Sorry. I don’t think she would have the copyright on this, because essentially, this is a derivative work.
John: It’s derivative work. It could also arguably be work for hire. I’m curious how that’ll [crosstalk 01:07:40].
Craig: It could be, but I did not impose any of that paperwork upon her. There is an interesting legal question about how to handle this particular tattoo. You know what? I’m going to find out, because I’m going to be doing a little actoring on a show, not Mythic Quest, but a different show, in a month or so. I better dig into that or wear a long-sleeve shirt, but I don’t want to.
John: You don’t want to. You want to wear a Scriptnotes T-shirt. We cleared the Scriptnotes T-shirts for when you were on Mythic Quest.
Craig: Sweet.
John: You’re set for that. Sweet.
Craig: Nice.
John: Craig, congratulations on your tattoo.
Craig: Thank you.
John: Don’t get another one at least until Episode, let’s say-
Craig: Oh, god.
John: … 650.
Craig: Good lord. Okay, I give you my word.
John: Thanks. Bye.
Links:
- Amtel Systems
- The U.S. military’s Hollywood connection by Rebecca Keegan for Los Angeles Times
- How E-girl influencers are trying to get Gen Z into the military by Günseli Yalcinkaya for DAZED
- Warren Beatty Appears in Bizarre Dick Tracy TCM Special in Apparent Film-Rights Ploy by Dan Clarendon
- The 1000 Deaths of Wile E. Coyote by T.B.D.
- Why do good people do bad things? by Daniel Effron
- Why some people are willing to challenge behavior they see as wrong despite personal risk by Catherine A. Sanderson
- WGAw Late Pay Desk
- The Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are by Jennifer Senior for The Atlantic
- Tattoo artist Yeono
- Craig’s Tattoo
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Instagram
- John August on Twitter
- John on Instagram
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Dilo Gold (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Chris Csont and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.