Scriptnotes, Episode 618: Clearing out the Mailbag, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 618 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig Mazin has been buried under an avalanche of work, so today on the show, producer Drew Marquardt and I will power through a stack of mostly career related questions that have been piling up in the mailbag for weeks, months?

Drew Marquardt: Weeks, or months, some of them. But I’m excited for all of them.

John: Usually what happens is we have on the outline a bunch of the topics of the day and then questions. We get to the questions or we don’t get to the questions. They stack up there.

Drew: I usually have about five or so for each episode, and we’ll get to one maybe two sometimes. This is good.

John: We’re going to look at everything from disclosing why you were fired from your last job to who pays for coffee. There’s a few craft things in there, but it’s more work stuff in this batch of mailbag. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we will discuss weddings, because Drew Marquardt, you were just married.

Drew: I was.

John: You are still married, but you just had a wedding I think is the crucial thing. We’ll have some hot takes on what makes a wedding work, because coming off of this wedding, Nima Yousefi was at the wedding. He asked, “How many weddings have you been to?” I said, “I think maybe 15,” and then actually made a list in Notes on it, and I’ve been to 43 weddings.

Drew: Oh my god, that’s a lot of weddings. You’re an expert now.

John: I’m fully an expert on what to do at a wedding and what not to do. You just went through it recently, so you can tell us the 2023 take on how to stage a wedding.

Drew: You’ve thrown your own too.

John: Absolutely. I’ve officiated weddings. We can get into all the details there. Let’s just start with some questions. This first one is a doozy, so I don’t know. I’m going to stretch. I think I’m ready for this one.

Drew: This first one’s from Anonymous. They write, “I’m a mid-level TV writer. Right before the pandemic, I was fired from the show I was working for for making off-color jokes. They weren’t anything worse than what you’d hear on a show like Friends, and they weren’t aimed at any actual person, but I own up to my guilt and feel bad that I offended someone enough to make them complain to HR. I certainly learned my lesson. I won’t be making any jokes outside of the writers’ room ever again.

“My problem is that I’m currently getting ready to pitch on a show of my own. I have a fairly big production company attached. While they know that I wrote for my former show, they don’t know that I was fired or why. They’ve never asked, and I’ve certainly never volunteered. I’m terrified that they’re going to try and set a pitch with the studio who fired me, who are going to tell the producers that I’m blackballed and why, and then it will snowball into me being fired off this pitch and my reputation ruined. What do I do? I’m scared to try to get out ahead of it, but I’m also scared to stay silent. I’m wildly ashamed about the whole thing but am trying to be professional and figure out how to manage my career going forward.”

John: Anonymous, because you wrote in with a question, we have to take you at your word, because we have no other information about this. Let’s talk a little bit about you being fired from your job for these off-color jokes. HR complaints typically aren’t somebody who just said some bad jokes. They’re usually more about behavior. If that behavior was that you are in this room saying these off-color things and making people feel uncomfortable, maybe that’s enough, but maybe it’s not. We don’t know the whole picture here.

You say you feel guilt over it. Okay. Great. You say that not directed at any actual person, but it’s worth thinking about what the person who actually did complain to HR, the people who complained to HR, how did they feel about that, and then what were you doing that really brought them to that situation. Like all these questions, we can only take you at your word that it really wasn’t as big of a deal, but it was big enough that you actually got booted from the show. It sounds like it wasn’t like you weren’t invited back for the second season, but you were let go mid writing room.

Drew: I feel like, I don’t know the situation, but one time probably wouldn’t land you in hot water with HR.

John: We don’t know this. You reference Friends. Of course, Friends was a pretty famous example of a show that the writers’ room was very bawdy, and there were complaints about what was happening in that writers’ room. It didn’t sound like it was the kind of show like that.

Regardless, what’s tough for us right now is that we’re trying to hold onto two things. First off, that people make mistakes, and they can change after that. That sounds like that’s what you’re trying to do, Anonymous. We love to celebrate those inspiring stories of the ex-con who turns their life around. We believe in restorative justice. We’d like to see people and characters grow and change. So there’s that whole aspect of this.

But then also, we want to see writers and other folks working out there to have a workplace that is free of harassment. Given that there are limited seats in those rooms, there’s a natural concern, like, “Are we going to give one to the guy who was just harassing people or was sort of a dick in that room?”

Those are the things we’re trying to balance, try and make these good, productive writing rooms that feel inclusive and safe, and also believing that people can grow and change. This whole answer, it’s predicated on the idea that you do feel bad about what happened, you want to change these things, and you’re deeply ashamed and embarrassed.

Let’s talk about what you do next here. You’ve got to get out ahead of this. It’s insanity to think that this will never come up and that you’re going to wait around for someone to say something about this. I’m curious what your reps know, your manager, your agents, your lawyer. What are they hearing? What are they feeling? Are you actually blackballed or just perceive that you’re blackballed at that studio, that they would never hire you again? Talk to them about this.

What is your relationship like with the previous showrunner, the one that you were fired from? Is it still somewhat cordial? Do they hate you, despise you? Are they never going to return your calls? You’re a mid-level writer, so you’ve been working on other shows too. What is your relationship like with those other showrunners who can vouch for you not being a jerk in the room?

Then when it comes time for this project and these producers, this production entity, I would say start the conversation in terms of this specific studio that you may be going into with this pitch, and so while you don’t necessarily know what their feeling may be, that you’ve left on bad terms. Then talk about what actually happened in there.

You don’t know what that conversation’s necessarily going to lead to or what the journey’s going to be like, but I think that’s your best bet, because I think you coming to them with this information is much better than you being on your back heels when they come to you and say, “We’ve heard these things.”

Drew: Would Anonymous be able to refer them to the other people that they’ve worked with, if they have someone who can vouch for them, basically?

John: That’s why I think looking at previous showrunners, previous shows they’ve been on might be helpful for, I think, overall more context. I think Anonymous is going to have to explain for themselves what happened in that room and why they got let go of that show, why they got fired off that show. I do think that having a broader context around that could be helpful, other witnesses on his side.

I’m curious what happened. Again, we always love follow-up, to hear what happened down the road with these things. Anonymous, let us know what’s happening six months to a year from now.

Drew: Please. Next comes from MD. They write, “Probably a stupid question, but when you’re meeting someone for coffee, like an agent invited you or an established screenwriter accepted meeting you for a possible mentorship, who picks up the tab?”

John: There’s two basic guidelines here. First off, the person who invited the other person is paying the tab, generally. You can split it if it’s a mutual decision. You can split it, but generally the person who asked the other person to come picks up the tab. If you reached out to this established screenwriter and sat down for coffee, you should pick up the tab. The established screenwriter may not let you do that, but you should certainly offer that.

The other general rule here I would say is that the person with the expense account pays. An executive, an agent, those folks are likely going to have an expense account as just part of their business, and so let them pay if they’re offering to pay.

Drew: Is that why you make me pay every time [crosstalk 07:42]?

John: I’m so sorry, Drew, but yeah, I think you’re learning so much here that it’s good for you to always be asking whether you can pay.

Drew: Good to know.

John: That’s nice.

Drew: Next comes from Judy in Wisconsin. She writes, “It’s hard to be a manager or a boss in a creative field. What have you learned about creating a good work environment? Any advice, tips, or strong feelings? When you have lost your cool, what do you do after?”

John: I would say the challenge of being a boss in a creative field is you don’t have real metrics to go back to. You don’t have metrics on productivity, like, “Oh, is this person doing a great job? What are their sales figures?” It’s very hard to do that. In other fields, you can say, “Oh, this person is achieving these things. These are the goals we set for them. This is what they’ve been able to do.” It’s not that. Basically, in a creative field, it’s like, “How much are they making my life better or worse? How much are they helping me do my job, get this project going, get to the next place?”

I think as a boss, as a manager in a creative field, what you’re trying to do is describe where you’re headed, what you want to be there when you get there, what absolutely needs to happen. You’re trying to provide a framework. You’re working with a lot of other professionals and specialists and sometimes other artists, and they’re going to have their process too, so you need to describe what it is you’re trying to achieve, but not tell them how to do their jobs.

That’s a thing I definitely learned on the set for my movie The Nines. Talking with a cinematographer, I could describe the feeling I was going for, but I’m not going to tell her what lenses I want or what film stock I want. That’s not my area of specialty. I can just describe the vibes I’m going for. Same with a composer. Same with an editor. I’m not going to tell them how to do their specific jobs, but I’m going to describe what it is I’m going for, what the things are that work for me.

Drew: I think you’ve also been very fortunate to work with people who, when you describe those things, can probably get to that point. What happens when you have someone who’s a little bit newer, a little more green, and they’re not quite getting there yet?

John: That is really a challenge. It’s happened with other folks working as a PA or an assistant kind of level too, where they’re not fully getting it. That’s tough. You have to talk them through what your expectations are, what it is they actually need to do to get to the next step, maybe introduce them to folks who are doing their job in other ways, in other places, so they can understand how it all fits together.

The times where I’ve lost my temper a bit is when somebody who, they’re in the right position, they should know how to do this thing, and either they’re not listening or they’re just not catching a brief of what it is we’re trying to do. Those are the folks that I’ve needed to let go at times, on a set or in real life, normal working stuff.

I think those are the challenges in the creative field. You can’t point to like, “This is not working out because you’re not hitting these numbers.” It’s not that at all. It’s just like, “I need a certain thing to feel a certain way. I need this all to work a certain way, and this is not working for me.”

Drew: Next comes from Brett. He writes, “I’m working on a secondary character who needs to help tell a story while opposing the lead. In this action comedy, the lead is a tough ass Marine. She’s strong and athletic but a little bit dense. My supporting character, by contrast, needs to come across as smart but soft, dainty, dare I say effeminate. I worry about this word’s context. I’m not a master of lexicon. I’m a redneck boy from Tennessee who learned later in life that I love to tell stories. My secondary character is a child, so his sexuality matters none. Is the word ‘effeminate’ okay when introducing this hilarious 10-year-old intellect?”

John: I think “effeminate” has become a code word for gay, so it’s going to read as you’re saying gay no matter what you do. I think I would avoid that word. It’s not that it’s a slur, but the moment you say it, you’re putting that character into a gendered space. You say his sexuality doesn’t matter, but you’re putting him into this gendered space, where he’s not acting like a good boy should act. It just creates a whole host of issues.

I would say think of an equivalent character from something else and words you might use to describe them. If you look at what is Young Sheldon like or Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Bastian from Neverending Story, what are some words you might use to describe them? Effeminate probably would not be on the top list of things for those characters.

It’s also important to remember that adjectives are not super important. You have that initial character description where you’re giving his age and a little bit, a tiny little sketch, like a sentence. Really, most of what a reader and an audience are going to get about that character are their actions, the things they’re saying, the things they’re doing, how they’re reacting to stuff around them, what their interplay is like with this other Marine character. I don’t think you need to be so hung up about what is the one word I’m going to use to describe that character on first introduction versus what is the personality I’m creating for this character.

If effeminate going for more classically girly stuff is going to be useful or important for that character, find some ways to actually make that happen in your story, but it doesn’t sound like it is. It sounds like he’s mostly there to be bright and hilarious. You might find some other ways that point to the very specific things that this character is doing in this story that make it fit and make him a good, interesting foil for your main character.

Drew: Perfect. Borges writes, “Craig’s mentioned time and again how he thinks in the shower. I have the same habit, and it sucks. I have no way of taking a fast note. The same thing happens when I’m swimming. It’s freaking annoying. How do you do it? Any memorization tips?”

John: First off, you pronounced this guys name as bor-juhs. It’s B-O-R-G-E-S. Bor-juhs is a good choice. I would’ve said bor-hehs. I guess we don’t know.

Drew: I feel like there was a TV show called Borges or something like that. It was Italian.

John: The Borgias.

Drew: The Borgias?

John: That was B-O-R-G-I-A-S, I think, wasn’t it? The Borgias?

Drew: [crosstalk 13:40].

John: You’re Googling this right now. While you’re Googling that, I would say there’s no great way to take notes in a wet environment. For a while, I had this notepad in the shower that was the kind of stuff that script supervisors use on set. It’s really a plasticky kind of paper that you can write on with a pencil. It was pointless. I never actually wrote a note on that, because I could never really read it afterwards.

Here’s what you do when you have an idea and you’re in an inopportune place. You get out of that place and quickly write it down on a handy note card. I should say keep note cards nearby when you need those things. In my house, on the bathroom counter, there’s a stack of note cards and a pen. If I have an idea in the shower, I get out of the shower, I write it down on the note card so I don’t forget it. The same with bedside table. There’s always note cards there so I can write that stuff down.

What’s important about writing stuff down is it gets it out of your head. It keeps you from wasting brain loops to keep an idea floating in your head. It’s a really unproductive use of your brain to just hold onto ideas like that. Instead, get it out of your head, put it on a piece of paper, set the paper down, and you can come back to it later on.

Drew: I’ve also used Siri just in the bathroom.

John: Perfect. You can call for that. Are you saying, “Take a note,” or what are you saying?

Drew: I say, “Siri, take a note.” Then I’ll say the thing, which will usually just be some stream-of-consciousness thing, but it’ll be enough that there’s enough little cues in there that I know what I’m…

John: I don’t do this. If you were to do a note that way, does it show up in the top of your Notes app, or where does it appear?

Drew: Yeah, it does. It’s right at the top. Of course, it syncs across all of your devices, which is great. I usually take those off there and put it into a larger document. If it’s something for whatever project, I’ll put it into…

John: That’s very smart. We’ve talked a bit about note taking and putting all your stuff together. For me, when I have one of those note cards, those all get stacked up by the bedroom door. I write them down. I stick them by the bedroom door, so that when I’m heading downstairs in the morning, I have those things. They go with my daily agenda thing. Then every day I will go through and take all those note cards and put them in Notion, which is where I’m keeping all my general ideas about projects and things. Whether it’s a snippet of dialogue or something else, I actually have a thing to do with that note card, so it doesn’t have to hang around for forever. I get it into Notion. Then I rip it up and recycle it.

Drew: Once it’s in Notion, do you have a time limit that you keep that idea floating around, or do you ever flush those, or do you keep them forever?

John: For every project, if it’s a project I’m generally thinking about, I will just keep a page in Notion that’s just a dump of all the stuff. For active projects, I’ll have at the top of that page a open/unprocessed, which is where I throw everything that doesn’t belong into a specific category. If I haven’t broken out the characters to the degree that I have a separate page for each character, I’ll just throw all that stuff in there, little snippets of things. For this TV show, if there’s things related to a specific episode, I’m at the point now where I will put stuff in the episode note for that, because I know Episode 6 is about this character and this situation, so I’ll throw it in there for that.

Drew: If you have a loose idea, how far back have you gone to grab some of those?

John: We’ve said before on the podcast that I had a list of 35 projects I’ll never get to. This was on the Neil Gaiman episode. Some of those are years and years and years old. I’m not actively going through constantly to sift through, like, “Is that an interesting idea?” But surprisingly, something new will come about those projects every once in a while. It’s nice to have a place where I can just like… It’s a real thing. I can put it there. It has a home. It’s a home that’s not my active brain thinking about it, which I think is important.

Drew: You use Notion, but have you used Miro boards at all?

John: No. Tell me about it.

Drew: Miro boards are what writers’ rooms have been using since the pandemic basically. It’s a note cards app, or it’s online. You can visualize it all. You can have it in all sorts of different colors. It’s been really helpful for me.

John: That’s great. Are you using that for holding onto ideas or for organizing thoughts like sequences and scenes?

Drew: Organizing thoughts and sequences, not holding onto ideas.

John: I’m not using Notion for that so much. I’m using Notion much more for like, these are related documents that are all about a certain thing.

Drew: Cool. Next comes from Dahlia. She writes, “I’m a short film writer-director from Paris. While watching the last edition of Project Greenlight, many development producers on the show kept saying this screenplay and the different cuts of a film made the world of story feel small, like a short film. After watching the feature, I shared this impression as well. However, I can’t pinpoint exactly why. More importantly, how do you address this kind of problem when transitioning from short films to features? What are your thoughts?”

John: Drew, I’m curious to hear about your thoughts, because you have an award-winning short film.

Drew: Thank you.

John: We’ll talk about that. When I hear, “It feels like a short film. It feels small,” the ideas that pop to mind for me are that it has low stakes, that it has few characters, that it has a very short journey that’s more like a snapshot than a voyage, and it has a limited visual scope, that we’re in one location, there’s nothing ambitious about the visual storytelling of the film. Those are things that feel like short films to me. Drew, tell me about what think short film versus a feature or something else.

Drew: It’s tough, because I think when you’re transitioning from short films to features, usually you’re not going to have a lot of money, so you’re going to be writing to something very contained or something like that. Because of that, you’re either looking at a contained amount of time or a contained amount of space. I think you’re right. We had a teacher who taught us that a short film is either a joke or a poem. I always really liked that. Like you’re saying, one central idea. I am curious how that scope shifts and why something like The Babadook feels like a complete movie in a way that some things do feel a little bit-

John: Yeah. The Blumhouse horror films are very classically one location. You’re contained, limited cast, all the things, but they’re not feeling like short films. I think because there’s a beginning, middle, and end, there’s development, there’s a sense of this is the progress that you’ve gone on.

Here’s the thing I notice about a lot of short films, especially the situational short films. You could rearrange the scenes in any order, and it would feel largely the same. You don’t feel like characters are making a lot of forward progress. You don’t feel like the movie is making forward progress. You feel like you’re just stuck in a place. It’s an exploration of a place and a time, which ain’t great.

There’s other movies, like [indiscernible 00:20:15] films, that are a small cast, but they do feel like movie movies rather than short films. You couldn’t make it as a short film because things change over the course of them. The conversations and the issues being explored do progress over the course of them, so they don’t feel like a play or like a short film to me.

Drew: I think that’s fair. How about something like Aftersun? I’m not sure if you saw that.

John: Aftersun is an example of a film that I’ve only seen on my neighbor’s seat back on the flight back from your wedding. Visually, without the words, I don’t have a sense of why it is progressing. I’m just seeing, oh, it seems to be these same three people having different conversations in slightly different places. Yet based on people’s reaction to it, a lot is actually happening. What’s been your experience with Aftersun?

Drew: Aftersun to me seems to be built on reveals. I could be wrong about this. It’s been a year since I’ve seen it. It is more of a character exploration. I think those are very difficult to sustain over 90 minutes or something like that.

John: Absolutely. A character exploration does feel like you might get the same complaints about it feels like a short film. It feels like you’re not actually progressing enough.

I didn’t see this last season of Project Greenlight, so I don’t know what the specific movie was or why those complaints were levied there, but if a bunch of people are telling you the same thing, there’s something about that. I think it’s always worth them interrogating what it is specifically about the film that they’re seeing that’s giving them that reaction, because again, always looking for what’s the note behind the note. What are they looking for more of? What are they missing? Why are they not going on a movie ride with this, but they feel like they’re in a short film?

Drew: Our next question comes from A Young Producer. They write, “I’m a filmmaker, baby writer, that has produced one low-budget feature. While I’ve been working on my own original material since then, I’ve managed to obtain the IP of a popular book. I know the hard and fast rule regarding unsolicited submissions, but I’m wondering if there’s any difference in approaching production companies as a producer. I’m currently unrepped and therefore don’t have anyone who can make the appropriate introductions on my behalf. Is my only hope a manager-producer hybrid? I know cold emailing is barely a strategy. I’ve received some varied opinions from industry friends. I’d love your thoughts.”

John: Great. Let’s define some terms and maybe un-define some terms. First off, “baby writer” can be pejorative. Some people see it as infantilizing to call somebody a baby writer.

Drew: I thought it was a very defined term.

John: Tell me what you think the definition is of baby writer.

Drew: A baby writer is someone who is writing and either has a manager or has a foot in the door, let’s say, but isn’t necessarily staffed yet, doesn’t necessarily have any credits to their name, or professional credits.

John: I think that is the common assumption of a baby writer. I think people’s frustration with the term – and I’ve heard this from other folks – is that it’s infantilizing to the degree that it feels like they’re not actually a person or a human being with their own volition and their own things. It can be dismissive in a way. Just saying a pre-WGA writer is a nicer way of saying baby writer.

Just be aware of that. If you’re calling yourself a baby writer, it’s one thing. Obviously, don’t all other people baby writers, because I feel like that may not be really fair to their experience. Also, if they’re a baby writer, but they’re 50 years old, it’s a weird thing too. It assumes that aspiring writers should be in their 20s.

Drew: That’s a really good point.

John: The other thing which we talk about in this question is unsolicited submissions. That rule about unsolicited submissions is that most agencies, producers, studios, they say, “We will not accept any submission from people that we did not specifically ask for.” Basically, they’re trying to keep you from just cold emailing them a whole script.

What’s important is that a submission could be solicited. It’s possible to approach these people with this property, with this project, with this book which is apparently popular, and say, “Hey, I have the rights to this book. I’ve written the script. I would love to share it with you.” That’s okay. That’s fine. Don’t be afraid of doing that. The fact that you have rights to this book does change the equation, because you’re not just pitching a project. You’re pitching a thing that’s actually based on something they may have heard of.

This feels controversial to me. I’m not sure I agree with this thing I’m about to say. Sometimes on Deadline, I’ll see some producer has optioned the rights to this book, and it’s a whole little, short article. I’m like, “Why is this in Deadline? Who cares about this?” Yet the person who cares about this is the person who got Deadline to print it.

I think there could be an argument for the press release that basically says, hey, you’ve optioned the rights to this book or this property, and you’re now shopping it around town. I would say Google and find the examples of that thing, and just write that same thing. Maybe Deadline or the trades or something else will run it, because then suddenly you might get incoming calls rather than having to reach out there with it. Cold emailing some managers/producers may work. It’s worth a shot. This is all going to be hustle at this point, and so I say don’t be afraid of that.

In terms of who you should approach with it, I would say look for producers who have made films like yours recently, including stuff that you’ve seen at film festivals. There might be some people who are up and coming and hungry. Look who made them, and reach out to them, and see if there’s somebody who feels like the right fit for this.

Drew: I also think if it’s a well-known enough book, that publishing company’s not going to give you the rights if they didn’t believe in you or…

John: It’s not the publishing company really. It’s the author. Basically, the publishing company might have a little bit of sway, but really, it’s ultimately the author and their agent. You did talk to those folks to convince them that you are the person to get the rights to this and that you are actually a good steward for it. Obviously, you had enough hustle and moxie and other terms like that that you were able to convince this author and their agent that you’re the person for it. Trust yourself in that hustle, and keep going, and find somebody who is the producer who could push it into its next stage.

Drew: Continuing on the hustle, Oliver writes, “Last year, I officially sold my first script to a mid-size studio, and it was shot in early 2023. As part of the agreement, there was an optional rewrite clause, although the studio assured me that the script was essentially good to go. On the early Zoom calls, everyone I met was lovely and thrilled about the script. The producers and director were so excited that everyone began sharing ideas, which was super fun, until it wasn’t. Months later, having gone down numerous rabbit holes, the entire process became bleak and disheartening, to the point that days before production, one of the producers was in the script, inserting expedition.

“In hindsight, I feel like a lot of this can be attributed to my naïve approach to filmmaking. I assumed that the studio process would foster a no-bad-ideas atmosphere, where the best ideas can percolate to the top. Next time, assuming I’m lucky enough to have another option converted, I’m tempted to keep my mouth shut, limit my enthusiasm for brainstorming, and focus solely on the necessary edits to move this thing into production. Am I looking at this the wrong way? How might a more experienced writer approach things differently?”

John: Let’s pretend we are not a podcast about screenwriting, but we are a relationship show, and so we are a show which people write in with their love questions. Here is Oliver’s question restated for the purposes of that show. “Dear John and Craig, I fell in love with this beautiful woman, but ultimately it did not turn out the way I wanted it to, and so next time I fall in love, I won’t make the same mistake.”

We would point out that that’s absurd, because you can’t help falling in love. You’re going to fall in love. Falling in love is the point, the purpose. That’s a thing you’re going to do. Going into a relationship with all your defenses up is not going to be productive. You have to let yourself be open to the experience, the process, to know that it could end badly, but still believe that it’s going to end great.

Now we come back to the Scriptnotes podcast, where the exact same thing holds true. In you selling your script to these people, you had to go into it with the belief that this is going to be great, and we are going to be able to make a movie here that we’re all going to love. It’s going to be fantastic. It’s going to win awards. It’s going to make a zillion dollars.

You have to go into it with that kind of love and enthusiasm and belief that it’s going to work, because if you’re trying to shield yourself from heartbreak the entire time, it’s just not going to work. You’re not going to have a good experience. They’re going to see it. They’re going to see your reluctance. It’s just going to be a bad situation.

It wasn’t the brainstorming that was the problem. People throw out ideas as part of the chewing over of stuff. What ultimately happened is that they decided to make some choices that weren’t your choices. That’s frustrating to you. You don’t know how the movie is going to be. You’re concerned that it’s going to suck. You’re concerned it’s going to have your name on it. These are all reasonable concerns, but it doesn’t mean you should fundamentally change your approach next time.

This wasn’t your fault per se. There may have been certain moments along the way where you could have done things differently and had a different result. More experience might’ve helped you there too. You’re trying to blame yourself for things that are out of your control.

Drew: I think it was Chris McQuarrie who said if there’s no time limit on the script, you’ll have a million notes, and if it goes into production on Monday, you get none.

John: Exactly. Listen. You wrote a movie that went into production, so celebrate that. That’s a huge accomplishment, very, very exciting. Let’s hope it turns out well. Let’s talk about how we can help that movie turn out well.

First off, you don’t say whether this was a WGA project or not a WGA project. I’m going to assume that it was, because it sounds like it’s a big enough studio that it was covered under the WGA. If so, the bits of writing the producers did feel kind of hinky, because they really weren’t hired on as a writer. They wouldn’t be a participating writer for purposes of credits. But you might be the only writer who’s credited on this movie, which is great. This movie might have your name on it.

There’s no reason to burn all the bridges and assume that this is going to be a terrible situation. You don’t know that that really was their intention or that’s what’s going to happen. I’d say fake some positivity. Fake that you’re really excited to see what happens, that you’re excited to see early cuts, you’re excited to be part of that process, whatever that entails, so you can make sure that movie’s in its best possible shape. I would say don’t project anger towards them, because that’s not going to help you or help that movie be the best possible movie with your name on it.

Drew: Does it help to know whether the production company you just worked with has any animosity towards you afterwards or whether they were like, “Oh, no, we got this made. We’re happy with it,” and that’s going to serve you too?

John: 100%. I’m thinking back to a couple weeks ago, I was at a memorial service. I talked to a friend who was also a producer. Afterwards, he called me and said, “Listen, John. I felt really bad about some of the stuff that’s happened over the years. There’s been projects we’ve pursued together, and I feel like I dropped the ball on those things. I wanted to apologize for those situations where I feel like I didn’t do as much as I could have as a friend and as a producer.” I said, “Listen. I totally hear that, but also know that I did not feel that at all. I felt like you’re a producer doing producery things, and most stuff just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t happen. There was zero animosity.” Stuff just falls apart and goes away, and that’s just the business of it all.

I would say, Oliver, don’t assume that they think badly of you just because you feel kind of bad about them. They may think, “Oh, no, this is great. This is fantastic. That kid did a great job for us. We would work with him again.” I’d say definitely don’t assume that it’s a problem on their side.

Drew: It got made.

John: It got made. Again, I’m asking everybody to write back in with follow-up. I’m really curious from Oliver’s perspective how does the movie turn out, how is he feeling, what’s his relationship with that. He’s saying, “Listen, if I’m lucky enough to get enough option converted,” this is what you should be working on right now. Don’t dwell on this. Make sure you are working on new stuff that can get made.

Drew: Back to setting up options, James writes, “I recently finished a feature-length script based on a true story. I became aware of the story when my aunt wrote a book about this woman a decade ago. As far as I can tell, she’s written the only book about her. It’s based on original research that she was the first to uncover and stitch together. It’s also not a widely read book. It was released by a regional publisher with a small footprint.

“I’m a little worried that I might start shopping this around, and a producer will decide that they like the idea for making a film out of the book, but they will want to use a different writer and cut me out all together. Now that I’m ready to introduce my script to managers and producers, should I first have my aunt sign a shopping agreement? My thinking is that it would, A, allow me to put a producer hat on and help ensure that I’m attached to the project as a writer if there’s an interest in making it, and B, it’ll help pique the interest of producers and managers, given that I have IP relationship on paper.”

John: Great. I’m going to start this with again defining a term and making sure we’re using the term correctly. A shopping agreement really isn’t the right word for what you’re describing here. A shopping agreement is generally, I’ve written a script, and I’m going to give it to these producers and say, “Okay, we have a shopping agreement.” They can shop around and see if they can find a home for it, without really fully optioning it from me. It’s just a way of representing that stuff. You can also hear it in terms of agents, but I think really any producer has a shopping agreement to take a project around that they don’t really own or control. It’s limited control over things.

That’s not really what you’re talking about with a book. With a book, you’re optioning a book. You’re not optioning a book. You’re buying the rights to a book. It’s your aunt. I think you just option your aunt’s book for a buck or whatever. Have a conversation with her so that she understands.

It really sounds like you did adapt her book, or at least without that book, there really would’ve been no movie. This wasn’t a case where you did a bunch of original research and found your own thing. Without this book, there was no movie. I think it’s a good idea for you to lock that down, so that it’s clear that you really did base this on this, and that this book and your script really are a joint deal.

Then I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think you need to actually walk in there with, “Oh, here’s my signed option agreement.” It’s title of the movie, written by James your last name, based on the book by your aunt’s name. Great. People are going to respond to the script or not respond to the script and the story in the script. But they’re not going to be like, “Oh, this is a fascinating story, but we really want to shake this James off of it and take this book.” They’re not going to do that. I think you’re worrying about a thing that’s not really going to be an issue.

Drew: I wrote a pilot based on a book once. Going out with that, you would get the question of, “Oh, do you have the rights to it?” You say, “Yep,” and they said, “Great.” That was the end of it.

John: No one asks you for that paper.

Drew: Trying to find a good way to transition into this.

John: I’m looking at these next few questions, and they’re obviously red flag questions. Let’s read them and just talk about why they’re red flags.

Drew: First one’s from Anonymous. “I’ve been doing freelance work reading and writing coverage and feedback on scripts for a screenwriting contest website.”

John: The alarm is already sounding.

Drew: “They promise their winners they’ll pitch to industry contacts, and they’re offering me more responsibility on the pitching side.”

John: I don’t believe they’re going to pitch to industry contacts.

Drew: “John, do scripts get made this way? Site runners consider the company an agency that’s financially supported by contests.”

John: Oh, god. They’re not an agency.

Drew: “Does the industry see contest runners as agents?”

John: No. There’s so many things wrong with this situation. Nothing wrong with the question, Anonymous. Thank you for the question. A screenwriting contest is not an agency. Agencies are actually defined organizations under state law. This is not any of these things.

Listen. Are they paying you to do this coverage? Is the payment that they’re giving you enough that it’s worthwhile for you? I can’t fault you for working for this company if you need the money to do this thing. If you’re actually getting something out of it, okay. But I don’t believe that they have meaningful industry contacts.

I just don’t believe that anything good is going to happen out of this situation. I feel concern for the writers who’ve submitted these scripts to this contest, that they believe there’s some plus to this. There isn’t.

Drew: I’m also worried because Anonymous says, “They’re offering me more responsibility on the pitching side,” which seems to sort of imply that they would be made to seem like it’s a development executive almost, when that’s not really what’s happening.

John: I’m concerned for all sorts of levels. I would say, Anonymous, get yourself out of there. You’re probably writing in to this podcast because you are a writer yourself who wants to see their work getting made. This is not a place that’s going to lead to that. Sorry.

Drew: The next one comes from John, who writes, “A producer is interested in my feature screenplay and wants to enter into a producer agreement with me, in which they’ll provide packaging services that includes attaching high-value talent, script notes, and equity to be put toward production, etc. The strange part is that all of these services would be performed by the producer’s production company for a fee, a fee that I would be paying to that producer’s company. My gut tells me that this is not correct. Is my gut reaction correct, or is this an actual opportunity?”

John: Your gut is correct, John. You should not be paying producers. Producers get their money from making movies and television. They get their money from the people who are hiring them to actually get the stuff made. You are not a studio. You are a screenwriter. Do not pay producers.

Amend this to one thing. I think there are situations where screenwriters, some of whom have written in to this podcast, have gone to people specifically to get notes. There are very smart people who give terrific notes on scripts, but they’re not going to them as producers. If you are choosing to pay somebody for notes, whose job it is to write really good notes for things, I think that is valid. That is useful to you, the same way that a novelist might go to somebody who’s a freelance editor who goes through and helps you tighten up your work. That’s fine and that’s good. But that does not sound at all like what John is describing here. I’d say do not pay these producers.

Drew: SR writes, “I made what I thought was a bold move. I’m a non-union screenwriter, and I’ve been stuck in my career writing romantic comedies for a production company out of Canada. When I heard of this Comedy Fantasy Camp being run by icons of comedy, I was excited. It promised to focus on comedic writing for movies and TV as well as writing stand-up. It was quite expensive. It was $3,500 for four days, but I thought it could be worth the risk, especially when there was promised meeting with literary managers and agents with an added price tag of $1,000.”

John: We’re now at $4,500.

Drew: “It turned out to be nothing that it promised. The camp ended up being filled with nearly 100 people, not 15 is what the email stated. A documentary about camp seemed to be the primary focus, so the only people who got any help whatsoever were the few participants they decided would be featured in the documentary. I was never seen or talked to the entire camp.

“Now for the $1,000 manager meeting, it was a dinner where some managers showed up, but they proceeded to have conversations with each other the entire time. I didn’t get to talk to anyone. They couldn’t have cared less that I or anyone was there.

“Some of the crew who are filming the documentary told me they thought the whole week was a scam. There’s so much more that I could say about this terrible experience, but I’ll stop here. Something that could’ve been great and potentially life-changing turned out to be one of the worst experiences that I’ve ever had, and the most expensive. I took a financial risk during a difficult time due to the strike, and it bit me in the ass.

“Do you have any advice on how I could take anything positive from the experience? I know a handful of people who are calling their credit card companies, claiming the camp was a scam. Could that have any negative impact on my career?”

John: The first word here is oof. I’m so sorry for SR. It genuinely sucks, what happened here. I don’t know too many details about this specific camp. There’s a little bit of stuff we cut out of the question. But it was expensive. $3,500, or really $4,500 for four days, I think you went into this assuming it was going to be intensive, really workshopping on your stuff, figuring out all the nuts and bolts of things that could be really helpful from you, and that you were going to meet people in that group who were super smart about comedy, and that you’d really learn stuff from there. That didn’t happen.

We can be generous and say that the big names who are behind this thing or the people who are behind this thing really did have intentions of a certain kind of thing that just didn’t actually end up happening, and that they really felt like this was going to be a game-changer and useful, and they didn’t set out to make a scam perhaps, but it felt like a scam at the end.

Asking for your money back will not hurt you. If you can get your money back, get your money back, because right now it sounds like you were basically an extra who paid to be in the background of a documentary that was filming about this thing. That sucks.

As far as what you can take from this that is meaningful, listen. Sometimes tough experiences do find their ways into other stuff we’re writing down the road. We can think about this experience and reframe it as something that’ll be useful for you down the road, in terms of something you could write. The way you felt about this right now, make sure you’re remembering what this felt like, because you’re going to write characters who have similar feelings somewhere down the road. It’s worth introspecting on that experience.

Were there other people who met during this process, other folks who paid the $3,500, who were at all good, that you can actually at least keep in contact with them, trade your stuff, get a sense of the community around you? Drew and I both went through the Stark program at USC. What I always say about film school is that it’s not nearly as much about the instructors of the class. It’s about everyone who’s in your class together, the fact you’re all trying to do the same things that are so, so helpful. People at your same level are going to be much more useful to you than that one great lecturer. Those are some things you can take from it. Drew, I’m curious what your feelings are.

Drew: I am sad that it was such a scam, but at the same time, it was called Comedy Fantasy Camp. There’s Rock and Roll Fantasy Camps. The fantasy camp experience is definitely a thing that’s out there. I think they position themselves as being an industry thing, which undermines it.

John: I’m thinking about this in context of Austin Film Festival, specifically the Screenwriters Conference at Austin, which we go to many years – and we often do a Scriptnotes there – and the ambivalence I feel about how Austin is marketed, as a chance for screenwriters to come together and learn from other screenwriters, and there’s some big names and you get exposure to people, and we do a live Scriptnotes. In that case, it’s a nonprofit, so you don’t feel as bad about it.

If I was approaching this as a person who’s going to Austin to hang out to famous screenwriters, the truth is that famous screenwriters are just hanging out by ourselves. We’re ultimately going to dinner ourselves. We’re going to panels, but we’re not actually sitting around the bar and talking with you all that much. We’re happy to say hello, but there’s thousands of people there, and we’re just ourselves. It’s not going to be transformative the way that a person might hope.

In the case of this Comedy Fantasy Camp, I think there was a reasonable expectation that something kind of transformative could happen. There were promises made about the $1,000 extra for the manager meeting. I think you would have a reasonable expectation that something good could come out of that. Doesn’t seem like it was structured in a way that was even remotely possible.

Drew: I do feel like if you are a manager or anyone participating in those, you do have a certain duty to the people who’ve paid for that dinner or something like that, to at least talk to them.

John: I don’t know the names of the comedy folks who are involved in this, but I’m curious what they think this experience was like. Do they think it was actually meaningful for the people who attended? Do they feel good about this weekend or bad about this weekend? I don’t know. I’m wondering, almost back to the question we asked at the start, what is the experience of the people in the writers’ room, what did they think about it. They may just be two completely different universes of how people felt about how this weekend went.

Drew: You want to go back to craft questions for a little bit?

John: Sure.

Drew: This next one’s from Will. He writes, “In Episode 611, John and Craig discuss the four or six or seven Fs. In my view, the most interesting and compelling protagonists are ones who are driven by moral principles that enable to rise above these base instincts, for example, Frodo in Lord of the Rings. These characters have fears and fights, but their primary drivers are enduringly moraled and principled. I agree that these moral characters are, on the surface, harder to relate to, but clearly a good writer can make it work. I think these are really important types of heroes to write about and to make compelling. I’m curious, what are your tips?”

John: I don’t disagree with you. I don’t recall the exact edit of where we got to when Craig and I were talking about the Fs. I hope what we said is that even the most noble characters who are doing things for very highly specific and higher-level human reasons, there’s going to be some underpinnings or some undergirdings of these Fs in there, that there’s going to be some aspect of greed or propagation or some really defensible base instinct that could be behind that pride, that morality.

Look for some of those things too, but not to get away from characters who have a moral agenda or for some higher human purpose behind a thing, for altruism, for something else. Don’t run away from those things, but just recognize that it can’t be just about that.

There’s always going to be aspects on a story level, but also on a scene level, that really are about those more primal needs there. Part of what makes those characters feel relatable is that you’re seeing both their rationality or irrationality at the same time you’re seeing that they are animals doing animal things.

Drew: I’m trying to think of a character who is purely altruistic that does feel relatable. I also feel like even Frodo has failings and has all those things too.

John: Absolutely. It’s important that we see Frodo originally in the context of his family, the context of his happy shire life, and that he has those real, understandable, primal connections to those people. He’s going on this journey, which is terrifying and arduous, but he’s still connected back to that initial place. His morality is so important, but it’s not necessarily driving him from moment to moment. He’s often running away, or he’s figuring out how to get to the next thing. There’s a lot of survival happening there is what I’m saying.

Drew: Would you say it’s important to see the character overcome some of those Fs?

John: For sure. Absolutely. I think that’s one of the things we relate to. Sometimes even we’re thinking about, Free Willy’s popping to mind, but other stories involving animals or when they see non-human characters do things like, oh, they’re not just doing one of their Fs. They’re actually doing some sort of higher, more noble purpose.

Drew: When you see Lassie going to get someone from the well.

John: 100%. That’s why we love Lassie, because Lassie’s acting in a human way that does not meet any of a normal dog’s needs. That’s why we love Lassie.

Drew: All my very contemporary references.

John: 100%. Who is the new Lassie right now? I don’t know. Is there an equivalent?

Drew: Is there a Lassie? I feel like kids and animals don’t really have a thing on TV, but I could be wrong.

John: I’m trying to think. There was a Channing Tatum recently which is him and his dog, but I can’t think of anything else. Where are the live-action dog movies that we need?

Drew: We need more.

John: We need more. We need more.

Drew: Nico writes, “Lately I’ve noticed a lot of shows that seem to be judging their characters hard. For example, in Succession, the final episode seemed to be driving home what Roman says in the last episode, that we’re all bullshit. The end of Sopranos, Dr. Melfi decides to stop treating Tony because he’s a sociopath. While these shows’ endings aren’t out of left field and do fit thematically, I often feel somewhat betrayed when these final judgments come down. Weren’t we supposed to be rooting for the Roys even though we know who they were the whole time? Weren’t we cheering for Tony to go to therapy? What are your feelings on judging your characters as a writer? Doesn’t it go against the idea of taking your main character from antithesis to thesis because at the end the characters simply have been terrible all along?”

John: I think it comes down to the idea that you’re writing to a point. You’re writing to a conclusion, a consequence. In the examples you bring up here, Sopranos and Succession, really these are antiheroes. They’re not classic heroes. The degree to which every antihero is also kind of a villain and needs some consequence and comeuppance for all the things they’ve done, it does feel natural.

As a writer, you are seeing things from your characters’ point of view, but you are also aware that they are in a universe in which the things they are doing are not necessarily good. I don’t think it’s judgey to say that Tony Soprano killed a bunch of people and is not a good guy. That doesn’t feel judgey to me. The same with the Roys. They are individually incredibly problematic. I think it’s fine for us to say who they are and what they’ve done deserves some judgment. That doesn’t feel bad to me. Drew, what do you think?

Drew: I feel like a lot of the examples too are towards the endings of these things. The shows are studying these characters’ behavior. When they do these things over and over and over and over again, to your point, it’s consequences. It adds up.

It does feel like a little bit of a judgment. I guess I feel like there’s a difference between the judgment of fate, like the universe judging, and a creator judging. I might agree that The Sopranos feels like a bit of a creator judgment, because I think that changed a little bit for me. I think Succession is one that feels more of like a universe judgment, that all of their behaviors led to this point.

John: What is the difference between the universe and the creator? The creator created that whole universe, or the team behind it created that whole universe. To me, looking at the Roys, because we are so tightly focused on the Roys and what each of them is trying to do at every given moment, it’s easy at times to forget, oh, there’s a whole world around them that is actually being negatively impacted by the choices that they’re making.

In that final season of Succession, where they’re running the news network and making presidential calls that have huge impacts on the entire world, I think it’s right for us to feel incredibly uncomfortable that we feel almost complicit in watching them do this stuff.

Drew: Next, Ollie writes, “I’m struggling with how to best format names in my screenplay, which is based on the discovery of the structure of DMing. Two of the characters have incredibly similar names, Watson and Wilkins, so I thought I would use both their first and surnames to avoid confusion. Should I use both names throughout the whole thing or only in scenes they share? It looks really weird having two names when everyone else in the scene only has one, but I also want to make sure it’s crystal clear to readers. Alternatively, should I only use their first names, even if I’m using surnames for anyone else?”

John: Ollie, this is the right question to ask, and you’re asking it at the right time, I think, because you’re going to want to make a fundamental choice about how you’re identifying these characters and make sure it’s really clear from the reader’s point of view.

As an audience member watching this film, we’re not going to get them confused, because they’re two different people. Just their names happen to be so similar. They’re both starting with Ws. People will get confused reading your script if they’re both there together. It’s going to happen. Is your story truly a two-hander, where they have equal weight and equal prominence? If it’s not, my instinct would be to give the person whose story is more, use the first name for them, and use the last name for the other character.

Drew: I like that.

John: That way, it pulls us a little closer in to the character who we just have the first name for. It feels more familiar, more intimate. The other character is a little bit more distant. That may be a choice that works for you. I would also say experiment. Using both first and last names is going to feel weird and kludgy I think on the page. It may not even help you with the confusion between the two names. It’s just going to be more to read. There are two character names in scripts. It’s not that uncommon. It’s not the default.

An important thing to remember about screenplay format is at a certain point, we stop reading character names. We just look at the shapes of them. It’s a weird thing. You don’t notice them. Once you’re in dialogue, it just flows. It’s why you’ll see mistakes in scripts where the wrong character’s given a line of dialogue, because you get in back-and-forth pattern behind them. It is the right moment to be thinking about how you’re going to do this, because Wilkins and Watson are just too close. Your readers are going to get confused.

Drew: I’m trying to find right now if the Oppenheimer screenplay is out there and what they used for him.

John: Perfect. We will take a look. By the time this episode’s posted, we’ll have an answer for you.

Drew: We’ll put something in there.

John: The Oppenheimer script, if it’s posted there. We’ll put it in Weekend Read if nothing else.

Drew: Absolutely.

John: Oppenheimer’s chock full of probably last names for a lot of those characters. I bet they were all last names. I’m curious whether Oppenheimer is Oppenheimer or Robert.

Drew: That just feels like a lot of real estate on the page if it was Oppenheimer every time he has a line.

John: OPP.

Drew: One more question for things based on a true story. Sam writes, “I’m writing a script based on a true story from the past few years. I’m currently taking a pretty conservative amount of artistic license. The script is structured around actual events, and the characters are based on actual people and their characteristics.

“I’m having a problem, however, with providing suitably compelling stakes and motivations for my main character. I invented a backstory that hangs over the character and influences his choices. I think it’s the right narrative decision, but I’m hesitant as to whether I’m cheating the truth too much. I’m especially worried because the events in question are so recent. If I was writing about an event that took place long ago, I would have fewer qualms about shaping the story as I need to. Can you give any guidance as to how you know when you’re going too far in applying artistic license to a true story?”

John: Sam, just like Ollie, you’re asking the right question at the right time, because you’re thinking about how much do I need to bend events or invent motivations behind things to have them all make sense. The truth is probably yes, you do need to do some of these things, because their motivations are opaque to you. You aren’t going to know exactly why characters were doing what they were doing. Your story needs to make sense. You’re not telling fact. You’re telling a story. You’re telling a story with characters who go through a change. If there’s not an inherent change in the true life story, you may need to invent some reasons for why you’re creating this perspective on the story, that has a beginning, middle, and end, and a real journey to it.

Listen. It’s not going to be uncontroversial for you to be introducing motivations behind characters and what they’re doing. But if you look back to, we’ve had people come on Scriptnotes and talk about the projects they’re working on, they did that a lot, because that’s the job of the writer is to create motivations and create reasons for why characters do what they do.

Drew: If a writer’s writing a script about a true story on spec, should you be cautious if those motivations aren’t necessarily there, because then you maybe just have a scenario?

John: I would say honestly, if you’re writing something on spec – so there’s not a studio involved, it’s not based on a book, it’s not based on anything else – I think you actually have quite a bit of latitude in figuring out why your characters are doing what they’re doing and what is it about these characters and the choices they’re making that is a compelling story.

The obvious example you can go back to is The Social Network. That character’s not really Mark Zuckerberg. There are moments that are taken from real life, but the real motivations behind Mark Zuckerberg are not the motivations of the character that’s portrayed in that movie. The movie’s successful, and I like the movie a lot. But if I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would be pissed at the movie, because it’s portraying him doing things for reasons that were probably not the reasons he did those things.

Drew: Makes sense. Steve writes, “I’m writing a period war script in which US forces get encircled by the enemy, sort of like the old newsreel footage. I want to show the action of the firefights and positions being overrun, but with a map overlay over it, basically showing all the enemy positions in red moving in and smothering the US positions in white, until all that’s left is one little white dot. Do I just write that, or is there a technical term for this type of post add-on?”

John: There is nothing that I know of as a technical term. Just write that. The description of what you just in your question will make sense. We’re used to, in scripts, seeing things that are not strictly what the camera is shooting, but what we’re seeing on screen. Go for it. It’s going to work.

Drew: Niroberto writes, “What would make you prefer being a producer instead of a writer on a project?”

John: Almost nothing, Niroberto. I would almost never choose to be a producer on a project rather than a writer. I’ve done it once. In that situation, it was incredibly frustrating. It felt like being in the cockpit of a plane and seeing all the controls and not being allowed to touch them. I knew what I thought we needed to do to the script and to the story, and I was not allowed to touch those controls and actually do that work. I found it incredibly frustrating.

Drew: Were you giving notes to the writer?

John: Yeah, I was giving notes to the writer. Just so I’m not being oblique here, it’s Jordan Mechner, who’s a good friend and a very good writer. This was on Prince of Persia. But there are definitely things where it was like, “If I could just do this myself, it would be faster and better, and I wouldn’t have to figure out how to note this to death.”

Listen. In the end, the movie was not the movie either of us wanted to make, for various reasons, but that part of the process was really frustrating. When it was out of our control, and when other folks were making the movie, my name is on this, but I had really very little control over certain choices and decisions that were made. For me, producing is not that exciting, but you just graduated as a producer. Are you excited to produce things you have not written?

Drew: I think so. I more than think so. Yes, I am. But I’m also at a point where I’m just excited to get things made seem exciting to me. I don’t think that’s been… Tainted is the wrong word. But he practical realities of what it takes, I haven’t lived through yet. Right now it’s all just excitement about big ideas and all that.

I’m also at a point in my career where I love writing, but if I don’t get to write the thing, if there’s other people that are going to get this thing across the finish line, and I can be that for that person, that’s what’s most important to me. Just getting things made is the most important thing.

John: I’m first and foremost always a writer, so it’s always about how do I write the thing to make it happen. In my non-Hollywood stuff, like the software we make, I am not fundamentally a coder, so I feel fine being a producer on that project, because I’m not a designer, I’m not a coder, I’m not that person, but I am a good leader of people in that situation. If I were a talented coder, I’m sure Nima would hate me, because we’d be arguing about esoteric stuff in the code. That’s I think the difference is that I fundamentally identify as a writer first, and I will produce if it’s helpful for me to be producing. But producing and then I’m not writing, it’s just not a good fit for me.

Drew: Fair. Finally, Danny writes, “I have been a professional late-night comedy writer for 13 years now.”

John: Great.

Drew: “And only during this strike did I learn that I’m part of the Writers Guild known as Appendix A. I realize that we’re a small fraction of the Guild membership, but I find this name to be troubling. An appendix, by definition, is a thing tacked on to a report that no one reads, or an internal organ that can be surgically removed from the human body and not missed whatsoever. I know in three years the Negotiating Committee will have many issues to hammer out, but I feel like getting this changed should be top priority for everyone.”

John: Danny, first off, I hear you. I think it’s great that you’ve been a professional late-night comedy writer for 13 years. I’m not surprised you didn’t know that all this was covered under Appendix A. Appendix A is not a term that the WGA invented. It’s not anything pejorative.

Basically, there’s a whole big contract that covers film and television writing. There’s a whole section on screenwriting and feature writing. There’s a whole section on TV writing, which is mostly also what the streaming stuff is. Then there’s everything else. Everything else that could be covered under the WGA, it got all put in a thing called Appendix A, which is just a grab bag for everything else. It covers you as a late-night comedy writer. It covers game shows. It covers talk shows. It covers daytime talk shows. It covers soap operas. Everything else that is not a feature or a normal episodic television show gets put in Appendix A.

It’s an appendix just because it’s an appendix on the end of this big agreement. It’s been there for a long time. It’s not going to change. They’re not going to change the name. It doesn’t matter. It is not worth any capital at all for the Writers Guild to try to push this into a different part of the contract, because it wouldn’t change anything. It’s still just a third category of writers who are protected underneath the Writers Guild.

What I will say is the folks who are writing for Appendix A shows, especially late-night comedy variety writers, have incredible advocates in the Guild. Going into this negotiation, everyone in that negotiating room learned so much about how Appendix A shows work and how we need to protect them, particularly for the changes that are happening as we go into streaming and into AVOD and into other future technologies. Don’t feel like you are some useless appendage that is not part of the main Guild. You are right there in the center of it.

Also, so many writers work in multiple fields. I started as purely a screenwriter, but I’ve also written TV. So many writers we’ve talked to and writers who’ve come on the show started off doing late-night comedy variety shows and are now doing features or are now doing TV. It all blends together. We need to make sure that writers are covered, no matter which work area they’re working under.

Drew: That’s great.

John: Cool. We answered a lot of questions. I’ve lost count. That was good.

Drew: That was a marathon.

John: We did skip a question. Jocelyn Lucia in Orlando wrote, “In the Bonus Segment of Episode 582, Craig hinted at being very involved with the Foley work in The Last of Us. He said he would give the podcast an exclusive story regarding this following the completion of its airing. Now that the season is out, is it time for the story?” Listen. I’ll leave it to Craig to tell exactly what his Foley was, but I think those doorknobs, all Craig Mazin.

Drew: I could hear it.

John: You could too. You hear it.

Drew: Those little, yeah.

John: Yeah, that’s it, 100%.

Drew: 100%.

John: He’s all the doorknobs. He’s the doorknobs and hinges. There are a lot of squeaky hinges, and that’s all Craig Mazin. He’s basically a squeaky hinge.

Drew: That makes sense.

John: Time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing was something I saw this week which I thought was terrific. The headline is An Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods. It’s from the New York Times. What they did is they basically surveyed people all throughout New York and greater New York about, “What is this block called? This block that you’re in, what is it called?” Literally, block by block in Manhattan, but also throughout Brooklyn and everywhere else, it’s, “What is the name for this place where you are?” because if you look on Google Maps or other places, they’ll have these categories for what these places are. There’ll be voting districts and things like that. But how people actually identify their block can be very specific.

What I love about how they charted this on this New York Times, again, incredibly detailed infographic with interactive elements, you can see really block by block how people identify. You can see the hazy borders between some places. Other times it’s super crisp, because on this side of a highway, it’s this; on this side of a highway, it’s that. I just thought it was great. There’s historic names. There’s newer names. I remember they were trying to rebrand Hell’s Kitchen as Clinton for a while, and that didn’t work.

Drew: Lower Manhattan on this is just a mess. Block by block, it’s [crosstalk 01:04:29].

John: Block by block. It’s great. I think it’s one of the reasons why New York is terrific but also really intimidating for outsiders is people will say a name, like, “I don’t know what that is.” “I have a friend who lives in Astoria.” I’m like, “I don’t know what Astoria is.” It’s like, “Oh, it’s that thing.” Surprisingly, that’s actually a very well-defined area.

With the exception of Roosevelt Island – either you’re on Roosevelt Island or you’re not on Roosevelt Island – a lot of other places are very ambiguous about what the boundaries are. In some cases it’s gentrification, or Upper East Side keeps getting pushed further and further north, where there used to be clearer boundaries between things.

Drew: Also, it looks like people on the Upper East Side also identify as being in Yorkville, which I’ve never heard before.

John: See, yeah. But a New Yorker would know maybe what Yorkville was. Of course, there’s going to be new stuff always coming online. Even driving to LA, we’re at the edge of Koreatown, which originally I was like, “Wait, is that pejorative? Is it bad to call it Koreatown?” No. It’s the largest Korean population outside of Korea in the world. Our Koreatown is really big. There’s also Historic Filipinotown. We have a Chinatown. We have Little Armenia. We have specific neighborhoods that come and go, but our boundaries are really blurry in Los Angeles too.

Drew: Do you believe East Hollywood is a thing?

John: I do not believe in East Hollywood.

Drew: I don’t either. That feels like we really tried, and we’re still trying.

John: For folks who don’t know Los Angeles, West Hollywood is actually a separate city. It is literally not part of Los Angeles. Fully surrounded by Los Angeles, but it’s not part of Los Angeles. Hollywood is just Hollywood. I guess it makes sense why you might call something East Hollywood, but where does East Hollywood start in people’s minds?

Drew: I think it’s between the Hollywood of the Capitol Records building and Little Armenia, basically.

John: To the freeway or past the freeway?

Drew: Maybe it’s everything east of the 101, but not quite. I don’t know. It’s so vague.

John: The 101 would be a good way to divide that, but I don’t know. A couple years ago, I think Curbed did a thing kind of like this for their site for Los Angeles. But I really want New York Times or LA Times to do the exact same thing, because I’m really curious what people would identify, because I would call this Hancock Park, but Windsor Square is right next door. People in Windsor Square, they just call it Hancock Park. No one really calls it Windsor Square anymore.

Drew: That’s very cool. Mine is much more low-tech. Mine is your local photo lab.

John: Tell us why.

Drew: For my wedding, we had about a dozen disposable cameras on the table. Every time in the last 10, 15 years I’ve gotten pictures printed, I’ve taken it to Target or CVS, and they are terrible. They’re about the same quality as if I had printed them at home. I don’t really know how to print them at home either.

We decided to go to a local place. They are lovely. They are so much cheaper than… We looked online at places that would be able to take the cameras. We were in Massachusetts. We were in Danvers, Massachusetts. This place was about a third of the price. They care about your pictures. They are guys who have been around these chemicals since high school basically and know what they’re doing. They took the cameras. They had us create a little Dropbox folder, or you can do Google Drive. They scan all the negatives, plop it right in there. You can pick what you want, and they print it out for you.

That’s the specific one, but I think most places… Not everyone still has a photo lab in their hometown. If you have them, check them out, because it’s people who care about your pictures, that make way better pictures than just the stuff you can order online.

John: Drew, are you old enough to remember one-hour photo labs?

Drew: Oh, yeah.

John: At the mall, you could actually take them in and get your photos back in an hour. Those all went away, because we all have digital cameras now. That machinery, that stuff still exists somewhere. It’s frustrating that if you go to CVS now – my daughter used a disposable camera for this hiking trip she took – if you send it in, it takes two weeks to come back. How soon are you getting photos back? Have you gotten them back yet?

Drew: We haven’t gotten the physical copies back yet. I think they’re going to ship them out this weekend.

John: Have you gotten the online ones?

Drew: Yes.

John: Great. That’s what you want.

Drew: It’s helpful too, because you can post them and all that stuff. Also, I don’t know, I get a little sad having my photos just sit on my camera. You don’t revisit them the same way. With those one-hour photo labs, used to, you’d get them and you’d sit down right there on the floor and you’d rip it open and look through them. I miss that a little bit. I think it’s more than just nostalgia. It’s genuinely people who care about the quality of it, which is great.

John: Great. Thank you for this One Cool Thing, because my assumption going into this was just you have to go to CVS or Target, because they’re the only places who can do that stuff. Of course there should be labs who can do that. That’s an established technology.

Drew: They’ve got all the same stuff.

John: Cool. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, who’s right here, edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Drew: Woo!

John: Outro this week is by Nico Mansy, and wow, it’s a really fun one. Thank Nico for this one. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions, which Drew will file and organize, and we’ll eventually get to them in an episode. 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 weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. If you’re Stuart Friedel, you can find a few of them left downstairs in the racks.

Drew: I think we have two.

John: Either one. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on weddings. Drew, thank you for all your hard work on this mailbag episode.

Drew: It was fun. Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Drew, so you got married. Congratulations.

Drew: Thank you.

John: How does the wedding ring feel? I see it in your hand.

Drew: I keep playing with it a little bit. We were talking a little bit after the wedding about getting sleeved, and now I can’t stop worrying about that. It’s a little bit loose, so I’m constantly worried that I’m going to just catch it on something and it’s going to take my skin with it.

John: The terrifying thing that I brought up to Drew and ruined his life was the fact that it has happened that people have gotten their rings caught on things and then fallen or it pulled off all the skin on their finger, leaving just bone, which is absolutely terrifying.

Drew: It’s a new fear that’s entered my life. It used to just be losing my teeth.

John: But you did not lose your teeth or your finger. You got married. Let’s talk through wedding stuff, because weddings are so important. As I said in the setup here, I believed I’d been to a dozen or so weddings, and of course I’ve been to 43 or whatever. I’ve been to so many weddings. Yours was lovely. Yours was really great.

Let’s talk about some of the things that made your wedding great, the plan going into that, and as a person who I’m sure has been to a zillion weddings because of your age cohort, things you were looking for, things you were trying to avoid.

Drew: I actually haven’t been to that many weddings. I think people my age, especially in the entertainment industry, seem to be pushing the weddings further and further out.

John: Weirdly, your college friends are not married. I met a bunch of your college friends. For whatever reason, they’re not married.

Drew: They’ve been dating for decades, some of them, but yeah, they’re not married. This was one of the first in my friends group. We’ve been engaged for two years, which maybe helped. It gave us some time to plan. But I will say it didn’t change that much, because I think there are some things you can’t start doing until certain points. About a year out, that’s when you can start sending certain things, and that you get certain information. I’m not sure that necessarily helped make it good.

John: For the folks who weren’t there, which is hopefully most of this audience-

Drew: Yeah, could be.

John: Let’s start with the venue, because you picked a historic venue, and the whole wedding took place at that venue, including the reception and everything afterwards. There was no go to one place, then hop in your car, drive to another place for the party thereafter. That was a fundamental decision?

Drew: That was a fundamental decision. The place we chose was a historic landmark, which you think might be expensive, but actually, because it was government-owned, it was actually pretty cheap, compared to some of the places that you look at where it’s $10,000 for the night or something crazy for a barn. That helped. We also wanted a nondenominational wedding. We picked that place. It was beautiful enough as it was. Sorry, what was your [indiscernible 01:13:06]?

John: The venue was great. You picked it early on. You reserved it. Clearly, that venue had been used for weddings a ton. You didn’t have to invent everything, correct?

Drew: Correct. The nice part also about picking that venue was that, because it was a historic building, they had certain controls in place. They had their caterers, who knew the building. They were the only caterers we could work with, so we didn’t have to go taste a million things. They had recommendations for everyone. They do weddings all the time, so they had their people, which we were happy to take their recommendations. We used their recommendations. Also, little things like no actual burning candles, nothing like that, so safety was built in. Especially as we were planning during COVID, they were very strict about that, so that was important to us too.

John: Great. Let’s talk about guests. We got a save the date and then we got further information. How early on did you have a sense of how many guests there would be?

Drew: You go in with the big dream of everyone you’ve ever met is going to be at this wedding. I think I still would have loved for that to be the case. Then the practicalities and money and all that very quickly winnows that down. We knew we were looking about 100 guests maximum.

Then you’re also doing the balance too, where you have your family, and you have to figure that out. You want to make sure it’s balanced between the two people, so that no one feels like it’s one family’s wedding or that it’s the other family’s wedding. All those little politics things start coming into play. We were really lucky. We had two great families who were very understanding and all that stuff. Still, you never want to push anyone into places where they’re going to feel uncomfortable or any of those things.

What was nice was take big swaths out of the equation. I just went through the Stark Program. I was able to say, “That’s 30 people. That’s going to be too much of one block. I don’t want to pick and choose, because I love them all. I’m just going to say no one from grad school. I love you, but it’s not going to happen this time.”

John: That was a question, because I was wondering where the Stark friends were there. For our wedding, we were about the same size. What we did was we did a bachelor’s night party the night before the wedding, where we just invited all the folks who we couldn’t invite to the wedding. We had a venue and a bar, and we were all there. We had little photo booths. It was just like an extra little reception-

Drew: That’s great.

John: … but just the night before, so it wasn’t the wedding. That ended up working out well for us.

Drew: Sorry. Was it for your wedding guests too?

John: No. Wedding guests were not invited to that. It’s just the folks who we couldn’t invite to the wedding, like our dentist and other friends like that. I guess there may have been a couple people who were at both, but really the expectation was not that you were going to be at both. You were going to be at one or the other. It was fun. It worked out really well. I don’t want to say these were second-tier friends, but this is what we would’ve invited all the Stark friends to. We did invite a lot of my Stark friends to that.

Drew: I think we probably need to do that too. We’ve promised people that we would do something like that.

John: That’d be great, just an LA reception for this. Now, you were a destination wedding. Neither of you live where the wedding was. This was her hometown. How early in the process did you decide that it was a destination wedding?

Drew: Fairly early on. We played around with the idea of it being in LA. But part of it was cost. Part of it was getting her family out here had been tough, and grandparents too.

John: Of course.

Drew: Especially if you want to make sure certain grandparents are there. I don’t have any grandparents, so my family was very mobile and able to go. That felt like that was the smartest idea at the time. The idea of it being a destination wedding definitely comes into play. You realize that you’re asking a lot more from your guests-

John: Absolutely.

Drew: … than if you were just doing it even in a backyard or something.

John: Absolutely. I have friends who are in their late 20s, early 30s, who are at the really peak age of a zillion weddings. All their college friends are getting married. Megana went through this as well when she was doing this producer job, where she was just constantly going from one to the next. It becomes that cliché of 27 Dresses or Plus One, where your life is just spent going from wedding to wedding to wedding and feeling frustration that you don’t have a life of your own, you’re just a guest at weddings.

Drew: The money, especially for Megana, being part of those bridal parties or bachelor party. You want the friendship. You want to be invited. But oh my god. I feel so bad for my best man. How much money he spent on me is humbling. I think that’s been a thing too that’s been really hard to cope with is how much people do for you, and you have to just accept it and not feel guilty about it. It’s overwhelming when you start realizing how much people are doing for you.

John: Let’s talk through some of the cliches of weddings and also things we’ve seen in movies and television. The fact that on your wedding day, you’re not going to have a chance to talk to anybody or spend more than two minutes with any person.

Drew: Kind of true, especially ours. We had a time limit in the building, basically. You’re just on a train track, and it goes by really fast. You get enough. You get to talk to people if you make the time to do it, but not any meaningful conversations or anything like that.

John: One of the things I actually really enjoyed about your wedding, so your wedding was from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. at this historic building. You were out the door at 10:00 p.m., literally, like, “Lights are on. You gotta leave.” I really enjoyed that about your wedding, because I’ve found so many weddings, I don’t know when it’s time to leave, or the people are hanging on too late, and you feel like you have to stick around. It’s like, “Nope. You gotta go.” You and Heather also provided electrolytes to put in our water bottles as we left. Delicious. I was not hung over the next day.

Drew: Those are great.

John: Good choices.

Drew: Especially with an open bar too, you want to make sure that they’re-

John: The open bar is a considerable expense. It wasn’t as much as your catering, but it was not a cheap open bar.

Drew: It was part of the catering, but yeah, that was a little bit more. That was important for my parents. I think that was their must-have. It was great. I think food and bar were the most expensive part of the whole thing. I’m very good with that, because it’s kind of like being on a set. Honestly, the whole thing ends up feeling like a production. Especially if everybody’s fed, if there’s food all the time, and there’s drinks, everybody’s happy. If anything falls apart, no one cares.

John: I’ve been to 43 weddings or something, and a huge range of how they were staged. The successful weddings for me are definitely the ones where I felt like, “Oh, this couple’s in love. They’re doing it for the right reasons. They’re doing this for themselves. They’re enjoying their day.” It didn’t matter whether it was in someone’s backyard or at a very fancy resort if it felt like they are doing this because they want to have this great experience, and they want to share this great experience with a bunch of people who are really close to them. That’s what your wedding had.

It’s also what makes me happy when I see it is the weddings that really prioritize what is going to be great for this couple as they head off into their next thing, what’s going to create memories that they’re going to be excited about, rather than showcase weddings that are just whatever.

Drew: I don’t think we would’ve been good with a showcase one. I think with each decision, as long as it’s personal to you, the cumulative effect ends up being a very personal wedding. At the same time, we didn’t want it to just feel like it’s just for us and no one else, because you’ve definitely been to weddings where it feels that too, where it’s almost like the couple are in their own world. It feels not contempt that you’re there, but there’s like, “It’s you and me against the world.” You’re like, “We’re here too.”

John: “We’re on your team. We drove here.”

Drew: “We did a lot. I put on a tie.” We didn’t want it to feel that way either. You want the songs to be fun and danceable. Heather and I are nerds for all sorts of music. You start to cut some of those favorites away, just because it’s an odd beat to dance to. It’s all balance. It’s so stressful, but it ends up being fine. You worry about every little choice. I can’t imagine the people who have also other people in their ear telling them about things too. That’s a whole other level that I’m very lucky we didn’t have. Then the day comes, and it’s fine, and everyone’s pitching in to make it the best.

John: You had the disposable cameras on the table. Mike and I are of course very good students who make sure that every photo’s taken. We got to make sure we got everything documented. You also had a photographer there to shoot. Obviously, in a wedding you’re going to think about photography. To me, most important for our wedding and other events I’ve been to is you want somebody who’s good at actually filming what’s happening and shooting what’s actually happening and not just about the staged things. Because you didn’t have a wedding party, you didn’t have to do all that other stuff. It’s just like, what did the night feel like? The thing I loved so much about our wedding is we have a good compiled book of just the photos from the wedding that really feel like that night.

Drew: I think that was super important for both Heather and I is that it felt like is and it all felt real. We had a fairly journalist photographer. We had those disposable cameras. Even Heather had to really talk her makeup artist back from doing the full bridal makeup, because we didn’t want it to feel like this staged thing. We got pictures with everyone. We made sure that all the boxes were checked, and everyone will have those things, but that you can hopefully feel the energy when you look back on it.

I also didn’t want a videographer. This might be controversial. But there’s something better about looking at pictures and remembering than actually seeing. The few videos I’ve seen of myself dancing on the dance floor, I hate. I can’t do it. The pictures are good. The pictures look very fun. It’s how I want to remember it. You can fill in the blanks as opposed to seeing the stark reality.

John: 100%. Congratulations again. First and hopefully last wedding you’ll be through for yourself.

Drew: Thank you for being there. It was great.

Links:

• Oppenheimer: The Official Screenplay by Christopher Nolan
• WGA Appendix A
• An Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods by Larry Buchanan, Josh Katz, Rumsey Taylor and Eve Washington for the New York Times
• TFI Photo Lab in Danvers, MA
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
• John on Mastodon
• Outro by Nico Mansy (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.