Scriptnotes, Episode 629: Cork Grease, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You are listening to Episode 629 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, should you break up with a producer you like but who doesn’t seem to be moving a project forward, how should a writing team discuss their individual work, and when is it okay to say no to inclusive casting? We’ll answer these and other difficult questions, plus a new round of the Three Page Challenge, where we look at listeners’ pages and give our honest and only semi-filtered feedback. In our bonus segment for premium members, we’ll delve into some advice we’d love to give ourselves. All right, Mazin.

Craig: That’ll be interesting.

John: We got some time travel. We got some hypotheticals, all that kind of stuff.

Craig: Fun.

John: But we got follow-up first. This first bit of follow-up is, Craig, you had asked last week how many of those How Would This be a Movie things that became actual movies had we recommended. I think, Drew, you did the research on this.

Drew Marquardt: Yep, I went through. Of the 12 that were actually made, 4 of them were ones you said could be a movie.

Craig: Okay. So offhand, that doesn’t seem like a great average. In baseball, it’s excellent. Now my new question is, of the eight movies that we said shouldn’t be made, how many of them were considered successful, meaning were we right anyway?

Drew: There are some asterisks on that, because Zola is one that you said no, but there’s something to take from it. I guess that’s not so much an asterisk. But there’s another one, the Kamiyah Mobley Story, that you had said no, not quite. That was the one where the girl realized the woman she thought was her mother her whole life wasn’t actually her mother. You said not exactly the story, but there’s a version. Then you went on to essentially pitch A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One.

Craig: I guess this goes to show that John and I are about as good at being movie executives as movie executives are, because I feel like this happens all the time.

John: We try to pick the winners. We definitely gestured in the direction of things that could get made. But actually, more stuff was able to get made than we even picked. Our little Scriptnotes studio did not choose to make those films, but other people did, so good for them.

Craig: Right, not bad. Batting 333.

John: Now, Craig, in Episode 627, Aline and I did a How Would This be a Movie without you. Sorry.

Craig: No, it’s fine.

John: But we actually had a success we didn’t know was actually a success, because one of those story topics we discussed was about this guy, a mathematician who figured out a way to game the lottery and win. It turns out there actually has been a movie that was basically the same premise.

Craig: That preexisted it or…

John: That was made two years ago. The story that we were talking about was actually 30 years old, but there’s been a recent movie that actually was largely the same premise.

Craig: You guys were asking if this could be a movie, when in fact it already was?

John: Indeed.

Craig: That’s a double asterisk.

John: A double asterisk. This is Jerry and Marge Go Large, which is a movie that I’ve only seen on in-flight entertainment options. It’s about a mathematician who scams the Michigan State Lottery to save the small town where he lives.

Craig: That is a pretty good idea.

John: It’s a pretty good idea. It works. One last bit of follow-up I see in the Workflowy here.

Drew: Chris in Oakland writes, John’s been talking about learning the International Phonetic Alphabet, and he recently started learning an alphabet that was created as a better fit for the sounds of English. “It’s called Shavian. It was created in honor of George Bernard Shaw. He wanted to get rid of silent letters and all the bizarre spelling and have something that made sense.”

Craig: I clicked on the link to this website and immediately started laughing, because it’s its own alphabet, and it looks so much like what I would call science fiction writing.

John: Yeah, or fantasy writing.

Craig: When you’re on an alien ship.

John: Totally.

Craig: This is alien writing. This isn’t going to happen. I guess that’s my biggest issue is why are they doing this? It’s not going to work.

John: Because you can. It’s one of those things, if you could go in from the start and actually have it make sense, this is a way that it could make sense. I spent a couple minutes going through this. I’m actually impressed by some of the choices that they’ve made, because there is a logical consistency with how these sounds work in English and what these shapes are on the page, which totally makes sense, because the IPA, for all its wonders, is a beast to read and there ends up being so many special marks on it to get the actual flow of it right. It’s hard to really read it. I think you probably could train yourself pretty quickly to be able to read this in a natural way.

Craig: Sure, but you won’t.

John: You won’t.

Craig: I understand why they did it, and I assume that they did it really well, but this just seems like a strange exercise, because it is impractical. It’s not going to happen.

John: It’s like Esperanto in the same way. It’s an artificial system that improves upon how we’d naturally do things, but that doesn’t mean it’s ever going to get used.

Craig: Esperanto at least has the benefit of being the first. They didn’t know that Esperanto would be a total failure when they invented Esperanto, but the people that did this know about Esperanto, so they really should know better. But I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest that perhaps the people that have invented Shavian understand that really this is kind of an academic exercise. I hope that they know it’s an academic exercise.

John: I do recommend everyone click through the links, because it does look really cool, and it does look like all the sci-fi science you’ve seen, which I support. I enjoy that as a thing. One of the interesting choices, as I was clicking through and reading stuff, that was very, very smart in here is that… We’ve talked about on this podcast, I’m sure, that certain Englishes are rhotic and not rhotic. In America, we say water, and we actually pronounce the R’s. In a lot of the UK, it’s watta.

Craig: Watta.

John: Watta.

Craig: Watta.

John: You don’t pronounce those final R’s. Cleverly, Shavian, their symbol for that last -er, -ar, -ir sound is one glyph that marks it as that sound. If you are pronouncing this with a British accent, you just wouldn’t pronounce the R. If you’re pronouncing it with an American accent, you would pronounce the R. You don’t have to put a separate R there that is pronounced or not pronounced based on your dialect.

Craig: But isn’t that what R is doing, in ours?

John: Yeah.

Craig: We see an R, and we either pronounce it or we don’t.

John: But if you were to put the R in Shavian, then basically everything you see there is supposed to be pronounced, and so it would not be the same word for these two people.

Craig: We’re running into problems already. I have huge issues with Shavian, clearly.

John: Is it solving a problem we desperately have? Not really. We got the IPA. We got other ways to do this. I just love people who are spending the time to tilt some windmills and do some fun things.

Craig: I think this is where you and I find ourselves differing. You love them.

John: Which is fine.

Craig: I’m like, what is going on with you? That said, I’m also the person that sits and builds large Lego sets, and there’s no purpose for that.

John: Absolutely. If these were not designed to reproduce language in a way that is spoken, but were instead a kind of cipher that was used in word puzzles, Craig Mazin, you would love it.

Craig: The point of the cipher in the word puzzle is to decipher the cipher.

John: Not to use it on a daily basis.

Craig: Correct. I do love deciphering ciphers though, and there are so many. John, there are so many.

John: There are so many ciphers.

Craig: So many.

John: Let’s answer some questions. Often, we do these late in the podcast. Let’s start it this time with some-

Craig: Love it.

John: … past questions.

Craig: Great.

John: Let’s start with George in Berlin.

Drew: George writes, “How do you balance specificity versus not excluding actors for consideration based on things like race? Where do you find it important to be more general or more specific? Are these the kind of things that you would try and rewrite after a film or show was cast?

“I’m currently writing a family drama, and the way the family functions is informed by the fact that they are a white, middle-class family in the north of England. There’s a level of arrogance and refusal to change written into the family, as a byproduct of their situation. They’re white, they’re middle-class, living in a predominantly white, smallish town in the Northeast, and this has obviously massively shaped their worldview. If my protagonist were, say, the child of immigrants, and the family were members of a minority community, I think their experience of growing up in the Northeast would have been radically different. It doesn’t necessarily mean their life would be better or worse. They would just be different people objectively.

“I want to be specific. I want to hone in on the cultural nuances and the specificity of the situation, but I don’t want to write nonwhite actors out of consideration for the role just because I wrote from the perspective of a white, Northeastern English experience. If the family’s roots were Asian, Indian West African, or East African, the family and the characters would be different in each of those culturally specific situations.”

John: I like how thoughtful George is being here. He’s trying to balance this sense that he has written a very specific family that is attuned to the experience he needs in this story, and at the same time, he would love to be able to open roles up to nonwhite actors, and feels like it’s just not going to work because of the specificity he’s put in there.

Craig: I think George is being thoughtful, but perhaps too thoughtful, meaning it seems like George is writing a defense against somebody being angry with him because he wrote parts that were specifically for white people.

Now, here’s the thing. As we change the way we cast things, and try and include traditionally under-represented actors, that’s about getting rid of what I believe we’ve called default white, so that kind of thoughtless, “Okay, I’m going to write a character, and that character is plumber. Unless I say otherwise, we’ll just assume that’s a white guy.” That’s the way it used to be. We’re not doing that anymore. We’re not doing that for small characters, large characters, big characters, small. However, when we are writing characters that are specifically connected to a culture – that’s an important word, not race, but culture – then we have to write for that culture.

In this case, George, I would suggest that you don’t think about race as much as culture. You are specifically writing about white, middle-class, Northern England culture. Therefore, you may say you don’t want to write nonwhite actors out of consideration for the role, but you have. That’s what you’ve done. That’s not a crime, because this is about white culture in northern England, so that’s okay. That’s okay.

I don’t think we should be twisting ourselves into pretzels when there is an easy answer for things. If you were writing a story about Pakistani British culture in northern England, you would be excluding white actors from consideration for the role, because it’s about Pakistani British culture. This is fine. If you’re not specifically writing about that culture, then yes, I think open casting is a wonderful thing and should be promoted and celebrated. But I think you might be complicating this a little bit, George, because you’re a little nervous maybe that someone’s going to go, “Why did you write parts for white people?” Because you’re writing about white stuff. That’s why.

John: Sometimes Craig just answers a question so thoroughly and completely that I have nothing left to add, and that’s one of these happy situations. Craig, well done.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Next question.

Drew: Chris in Glendale writes, “When Academy voters vote on Best Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, are they expected or required to actually read the screenplay, or are they allowed to base their vote on just watching the film?”

John: Easy answer. You are not required or expected to read the screenplay. I would say over the last 10 years, there’s been a much more concerted effort to make screenplays available to everybody who wants to read the screenplays. They can actually look at the words on the page. But no, you’re not required to.

Most people are not basing on that. Instead, they are basing their vote on what they perceived was the best writing, the best storytelling, the best work that was probably attributable to the screenwriter, and yet there’s no perfect way to know how much of what seems like the screenwriter’s job was that screenwriter doing that work there. You don’t know.

Craig: You don’t know.

John: In many ways, the award can also be called best film that probably had a great screenplay.

Craig: I think that applies to best directing and best casting and best editing, and even best cinematography, which you think is evident.

John: But no. Look at the acting awards. All those acting awards are also dependent on great editing and-

Craig: Great editing, great directing, and great writing. It’s really hard to get a Best Acting award if the script is bad, if the director is bad, if the movie is bad. These things are actually not particularly determinable. It’s all gut checks. I find it all fascinating from an anthropological and sociological point of view. But even though the word “best” is in front of all these categories for all the awards, in reality there simply is no way to determine that. Really, it’s just the one more people voted for.

John: One of the weird things about a screenplay though is that the absolute best screenplay of the year, if it’s not also a fantastic movie, no one’s going to pay attention to it. No one says, “Oh, that was a great screenplay, but the movie was only so-so.”

Craig: No one would know.

John: That’s never going to happen.

Craig: Also, the converse is true. When a movie gets the Best Director nomination, but doesn’t get Best Screenplay, how is that possible? How can you get the Best Director nomination but not get a Best Picture nomination? How is that possible? How can you get Best Actor and not Best Screenplay? How is that possible, since a screenplay was the thing that created the character in the first place and wrote all the words down that the character says? How is any of that possible? Really, if we wanted to be purists, there would be one award, and the award was Best Movie. That’s that. It’s a short ceremony, and everyone goes home.

John: There are awards that day. The National Board of Review is just Best Movie. They don’t give anything else.

Craig: That makes sense. By the way, also unnecessary, because we don’t need to say what the best movie is. The fact that everybody disagrees on what the best movie is is probably an indication that it doesn’t really make sense. Best movies, movies that made us happiest, all in favor. Same for television. But I don’t run these things.

John: As he’s headed off to the DGA Awards.

Craig: I myself am not nominated for a DGA Award, but I am rooting for Peter Hoar, who directed Episode 3 of The Last of Us.

John: Excellent. Another question.

Drew: Freshly Repped writes, “I started working with a new writing partner in August. We wrote an animated pilot that everyone seems to like, so much so that we got repped off it. First script, first submission, first agent. Both of us have been writing for years before this, but this is easily better than anything else either of us have. Now that we’re repped, my partner wants to show our agent her individual samples and the writing she’s done with her wife. I feel like this is a no-no, given that he’s trying to pitch us as a team. We have no credibility yet, since we’ve never staffed or sold a thing. My partner thinks there’s nothing wrong with bringing him other material, because we each have individual contracts with the agency, and nothing in those precludes us from working with other people. I’d love to hear your thoughts and appreciate your help.”

Craig: Tricky one. What do you think, John?

John: Tricky one. I would love to hear from some writing teams for what their perspective is, because I’ve never written as a team. You wrote as a team a zillion years ago. My instinct is that the letter writer is correct in assuming that it could confuse the situation about who they’re representing and what the voice is of this team. I think you should focus on the work that you’ve done as a team and not be showing the work you did separately at this moment in your careers.

Craig: Here’s the part, Freshly Repped, that is a little dicey. That is that it involves your writing partner’s wife. Look. You can certainly imagine a situation where your writing partner is at home, and she’s telling her wife, “Hey, good news. Me and this other person, we’ve got ourselves an agent.” The wife’s like, “Oh, what about the thing we did? You love that, don’t you?” She’s like, “Uh-huh.” Now, maybe she does, or maybe she’s just trying to keep her wife happy, because happy wife, happy life. I don’t know.

The other thing is, I don’t know if that stuff’s good. It may be that it’s worth having a conversation with your agent and saying, “Look. This is going to happen. I can’t stop this from happening. I don’t want to stop this from happening. That would probably be a huge fight and cause resentment. But please be honest with me when you read it. If you think it’s really, really good, then it’s good for me to know, because I kind of need to know that it’ll be a little bit of a divided attention situation. If you think it’s bad, I back you on… If you need to be polite about it, but not be super active, then we can all just play the game together quietly and politely.”

But I tend to feel like the truth is, good stuff wins; better stuff beats not-as-good stuff. If your writing partner and her wife are writing things better than you are writing with your writing partner, it’s just going to happen. There’s nothing you can do. I suspect that’s probably not the case.

John: No, it’s not the case. If you look at the first paragraph here, “First script, first submission, first agent. Both of us have been writing for years before this, but this is easily better than anything either of us have.”

Craig: I’m going to assume that, Freshly Repped, your perspective is honest and at least close to accurate, in which case, have the confidence to just… My advice would be to let it happen and just let the natural course of events take their path. The agent will not waste your time. It would be so much better for you and your new relationship with your new writing partner to let the agent say, “Guys, I’m going to concentrate on the two of you, instead of one of you and her wife.” I would just see how it goes. There’s no way to get around it, basically. That’s my feeling.

John: If we do have teams who want to write in with their perspective, I’m really curious what you guys would recommend, because I know it’s always challenging. People are writing separately and together. If you can offer some best practices, we’ll love to hear it.

Craig: I don’t love that the partner is doing this. I wish I could know if they were being coerced or not, because that does happen.

John: It does.

Craig: It does.

John: Next question.

Drew: Hrothgar in LA writes-

Craig: Hrothgar.

Drew: “A few years ago, one of my scripts was featured on a script hosting service and later optioned by an actor producer. Working with this producer has been great. They have good notes, communicate regularly. They seem like a genuinely good person. But they’ve also never produced anything. It’s been several years now. And though we’ve attached a qualified director, the project feels like it’s moving forward at a glacial pace.

“Recently, another director found me online, expressing interest in the project, but only if they direct. What’s more, they claim to have financing, and based off of their resume, I’m inclined to believe it. I want to remain loyal to my original team and be patient, but I’m also deeply broke, and staying the course gets harder and harder every year I lose money being a screenwriter. I don’t want to be an asshole, and I want to make good art, but I’m also tired of selling my plasma to afford ramen.”

Craig: Oh, good god.

Drew: “How do you know when someone just can’t get a project off the ground? Is it foolish to chase the shiny offer and maybe actually get paid or does loyalty actually count for something in show business? If you do ever take a project away from a producer, how do you go about doing it?”

Craig: What do you think, John? Hrothgar is selling his plasma for ramen.

John: It’s making ramen money. For a different project I was working on, I did look up the business of selling plasma. It’s profitable-ish. It’s a thing people do. You can’t sell blood, but you can sell plasma.

Here’s my guidance for Hrothgar. I think you’re right to be independent of this director coming by and expressing interest. I think you’re right to be wondering whether this is ever going to move forward with this director and producer situation. I think it’s worth having a conversation with them about it.

You can honestly say, “Listen, guys. Another director has approached about doing this. They seem to actually have money and a plan for production. I want to talk to you about this. I don’t want to blindside you, but let’s be realistic. Are we actually going to get this thing made?”

That’s a conversation you can have. It’s also a conversation your reps can have. Nothing in your letter says that you’re repped by anybody, but the fact that this did get set up and has some stuff around it leads me to believe you might have some reps who can help you out in this situation, which is part of their job.

Craig: I think that’s right. There’s nothing disloyal or unethical about telling the producer, “I have good news. We may have found a director and financing.” You would be actually committing malpractice if you didn’t mention it. This sort of thing happens all the time. You’re not saying, “Hey, this director is going to make the movie, and also, you’re gone.” The actor producer stays. They stay on as a producer. It happens all the time. It’s a credit, so that gets figured out.

Now, if the director is saying, “I have financing. I want to direct. Also, no other producers,” that’s different. Then they can fight about it. But you don’t have to fight about it. You were the hot one in the bar, so let these guys beat themselves up over you. But you don’t need to… This isn’t about disloyalty. You need to pursue it if it’s a legitimate offer and situation. You owe it to yourself to pursue it. Of course.

John: First sentence, it says, “Optioned by an actor producer,” so there was a contract at some point that was official. It wasn’t just, say, like, “Hey, I really like this. Let’s just talk about stuff.” But it doesn’t seem like it’s significant money, certainly not enough for Hrothgar to be able to live and afford his ramen with just this money. It does make sense to have a conversation with them about this outside party. It gives you an excuse to have the bigger conversation. It’s like, is there any plan to actually get this thing produced?

Craig: When these things happen, sometimes there are some hurt feelings that are just mis-expressed shame, because they haven’t been able to get it going. But if you are kind and generous about it and just clean and simple, I think the producer has as much interest in you and seeing the movie get made. It’s the attached qualified director that’s going to get pinged off of there. You don’t have any loyalty to that person at all.

I apologized to that director, but this is one of the weird cultural things about Hollywood where we overindulge directors and their feelings, and routinely discount and underindulge the feelings of writers. You’re selling part of your blood to eat food, and you can’t afford to worry about this director’s feelings. They didn’t write anything. They didn’t do anything. They haven’t done anything yet. Just attaching themselves clearly wasn’t sufficient, so I think if there’s an alternative, you must reach for it.

John: Also, I’d say that the fact that some other director has expressed interest, maybe there’s other folks out there who are also interested, and so this could be a moment to really look at, is there an interest out there for this project in general. Yes, have the conversation with this new director, but also be looking, is there another way to get this thing actually made, because you’ve probably been so fixated on trying to make it with this one producer and this one attached director. There may be other ways out there.

Craig: I do admire you, Hrothgar, in that you’re even thinking about these questions and loyalty and art. When I was poor, I did not. I just didn’t feel like I should be selling my blood. I will say, maybe this will sound mercenary and counter to the far more self-care-oriented and self-regard-oriented values of Generation Z and Millennials, but I feel like getting some financial stability in your life will give you freedom to grow and be a better artist, especially for screenwriting, because screenwriting is one of the only arts in existence that doesn’t become complete until people produce it. That is its completion. Yeah, get yourself paid, Hrothgar.

John: Do it. Let’s do some Three Page Challenges. For folks who are brand new to the podcast, welcome aboard. Every once in a while, we do a Three Page Challenge. We invite our listeners to send through the first three pages of their script. It could be a pilot. It could be a feature. They sign a little release. We discuss it. We put the pdfs up online so you can read through them with us if you want to. We’ll also give you a short summary. But as a reminder, everyone here has asked for this feedback. They are coming in here with eyes wide open that we may not love everything that we see.

But this is a chance for us to really talk about the words on the page, because it’s one thing for us to describe character arcs and the importance of white space, but when we actually look at those examples on the page, we really can drill down to the specific things, the choices we’re making word by word, sentence by sentence, as we do this craft. I think it’s a thing we love to do. It’s an exhausting task for our producers. Drew, thank you for sorting through the hundreds of people who have sent these things through.

Let’s start off with Routes by Colton Miller. Drew, can you give us a summary for those folks who are listening at home?

Drew: It starts in suburban Los Angeles. Young sister Samantha, 17, and Brooke, 12, burst out of the front door of a house to escape the abusive chaos inside. Sam leads them to an old Chevy Impala, and they quietly escape with nothing to their name. The story then transitions to six years later, where an 18-year-old Brooke is now in the back of a rideshare in Los Angeles. She’s lost in thought. Brooke is brought back to reality by the rideshare driver, indicating their arrival.

John: All right. Routes, three pages here. Just taking a look at the title page, simple, straightforward. They got the email address on the bottom, so if someone wants to track down Colton’s information, they know where to email him.

Craig: I do like a simple title page.

John: Craig, I was struck by how real-time these first two pages are. It’s a lot of scene description. It felt like overwriting for me at times. I actually kind of dug it. I liked how bit by bit it was. It just felt like we were in one static camera shot of looking at this house and eventually these girls coming out and getting in the car and backing away. It was a strange use of time on the page, and yet it kind of worked for me. I’m curious what you thought.

Craig: I agree to a large extent that there were some beautiful moments that were very visual. I could see everything. I could hear things. I could almost smell the outside. I really enjoyed some of the description of the inside of the car. There were a lot of evocative things.

My issue is that in fact it is kind of unshootable as it currently is on the page – and we can get into why – but easily adjusted to be shootable. Then there’s just a question about how we frame the timeline, because – just a simple thing – it begins with a title that says “six years ago.” “Six years ago” is not a great title to put on a film as the first thing, because six years ago from what? Now? If it’s for now, just give me the year maybe.

John: Give me a year. Agreed.

Craig: Then give me a new year or just the word “now” when we get to now. It’s a little bit of a wonky bit. You can also not include it at all, just show the first couple of scenes, and then when we get to the next time in “INTERIOR RIDESHARE (DRIVING) – NIGHT,” you can say “six years later.” You can also wait. You can see this older version of Brooke, and then, “We’re here.” “Yeah. Thanks.” She gets out of the car, walks towards something, title, “six years later.” You could always do that as well. Let’s talk a little bit, John, about where we are having an issue maybe with time and how we’re managing time here.

John: The first thing I underlined on Page 1 is fifth paragraph down, “All is quiet. The car is motionless, lifeless.” All cars are lifeless. That was my first-

Craig: Not in the Transformers.

John: That’s true. It could transform.

Craig: Or it could be the Love Bug.

John: It could be. We could think of more examples of living cars, I guess. But it wasn’t necessary. The problem was that it made it think, is this a movie about a car, because all we’re talking about is this car, when really we’re just trying to set up we are looking at this house. That, I liked.

There’s next paragraph down, “Until – we hear plates crash. Muffled yelling. Shattering broken glass. O.S. from inside the house.” You would never really use O.S. that way. We understand what it means, but-

Craig: “From inside the house,” is redundant.

John: Is enough. That’s O.S. Where we’re having some time problems and some geography problems, once these girls come out, they are whispering in a wide shot, which doesn’t actually work. It feels like a closeup of feet. You’re trying to get two things in a frame that don’t actually fit together. This is where it felt like if you’re writing the novel version of this, sure, you can do that, because you’re in this imaginary space, but it doesn’t actually work here. We can stay in this wide shot. We don’t need to hear them whispering. We can see what’s happening. We see they’re sneaking to this car. And then cut to we’re inside the car and we’re in a better place.

Craig: Completely agree. There’s nothing wrong with starting with silence. And then it says, “Until – we hear plates crash.” Now, that’s kind of a weird start to an argument. Generally speaking, it isn’t like people are quietly talking and then someone just starts whipping plates. We might want to hear a little bit of a raised voice and then more of a raised voice, and then the plates crash, and then there’s glass, just because suddenly plates crashing out of nowhere is going to feel a little contrived, I think.

“The front door to the house swings open, revealing two girls, 17 and 12, in ratty long-sleeve shirts and sweatpants.” Now, when we have two people, you might want to be a little bit more, so it doesn’t seem like they just are wearing a uniform of long-sleeve shirts and sweatpants.

“The older girl holds the younger girl’s hand. This is young Samantha, ‘Sam,’ and young Brooke, 12.” You probably don’t need to say “young” here, because we know their age. We’re going to see them later. It’s Brooke. She’s now 18. So I don’t think we need to do the “young Sam,” “young Brooke” here.

I will read the following: “Sam and Brooke walk briskly towards the car in the driveway. With urgency but trying to not draw attention. Push in on Sam.” Let me stop there. How are you pushing in on Sam while they’re walking briskly toward a car in the driveway? That’s not a thing. You can’t. You’re moving with them, right? I assume. You’ve even called out it’s urgently, briskly. This is where I’m starting to get confused. How close are we? How far are we? Are they moving? Are they not moving? That’s where things like “push in” are tricky.

John: Agreed. There’s moments where we clearly have “cut to,” closeups on things, which is great and fine. “Close on Sam’s hand. Her right hand clutches Brooke’s hand. Sam’s fingers – with chipped black nail polish – wrap tightly around Brooke’s palm.” Great. Okay, we’re seeing those things. Again, in a normal script, I would say this is overwriting, but what they’re trying to do here is actually just play in real time and milk this moment. Great, go for it. I have no objections.

Craig: I would suggest that there’s a perfectly good version of this where Sam and Brooke say nothing, because here’s what Sam says: “Whispering to Brooke, ‘Let’s go.'” I’m pretty sure that was already said.

John: We get that. We get that.

Craig: It’s not like Brooke is going to go, “I’m going to hold your hand and walk outside, not asking any questions until you go, ‘Let’s go.'” They’ve already gone. They’re going. It’s happening. And then Brooke, “Sam?” Again, probably would’ve been like, “What are we doing?” “We’re getting the fudge out of here.” That already happened inside. I think you probably don’t need this dialog. If you’re scared, Colton, about having non-dialog pages, that’s okay. You’ve actually done such a nice job of putting all this beautiful white space on the page and giving us reportage, punchy bits. I think all that’s really good. Do you know what I really like, John?

John: Please.

Craig: “As Brooke adjusts in the seat,” this is the car seat, “her bare feet,” which is interesting. I think that wasn’t indicated earlier. It should be. We’re going to notice that. “Her bare feet slide around on a pile of waxy yellow McDonald’s burger wrappers and other trash littering the floor.” That’s cool. I like that. I heard it. I saw it. It teaches me things. It was cool. I like it.

John: Craig, this first scene, is it day or night?

Craig: In my mind, it’s night.

John: Yeah. Look at the first page. It was day.

Craig: What in the world? Whoa. Mandela effect moment.

John: I totally saw it as a night scene.

Craig: How is this not night?

John: How is this not night?

Craig: How is this not night? It’s clearly night.

John: The question was, I was thinking, what sounds do you hear? I was thinking night sounds. You’ve got the crickets. You’ve got the city hum. Nothing’s silent, and so what does it sound like? Night and day sound so differently.

Craig: Wow.

John: I think this is a night scene. Now, I can see what Colton’s going for. This was a day scene, and then we’re going to cut to a night scene. But in my head, I was thinking it’s night scene and night scene.

Craig: You can absolutely cut from night to night. Here’s why in my brain I just immediately made this night. “It’s quiet in Reseda.” Now, yes, Reseda is a suburban neighborhood of Los Angeles, but it’s a massive sprawl. There is highway noise, distant sirens, cars honking, traffic, the lawnmower guys with the leaf blowers. There’s no silence in Reseda in the day. Night, yeah.

Also, people generally don’t have these big drunken fights in the middle of the day. They do. I’m just saying it’s probably more likely… It feels more of a night thing. More importantly, if it’s day, other people are awake. That means people are hearing it. That means they’re going to come outside and see. No one is on the street in the day, apparently, to notice this or to see these two girls walk out in Reseda. Also, it’s just less dramatic, isn’t it, if it is in the day?

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s just cooler at night. Anyway, I think night.

John: If it’s early morning day, that could be great. That would be a good choice.

Craig: Sunrise maybe.

John: Gotta be specific.

Craig: Exactly.

John: Drew, tell us the log line for this. We’ve only looked at these three pages, but we ask the Three Page Challenge writers to tell us what happens in the rest of the script.

Drew: “An adrift recent high school graduate journeys across the U.S. one summer in search of her estranged older sister who ran away five years ago, desperate to finally find her and bring her home.”

Craig: That’s nice.

John: That tracks.

Craig: Completely tracks. With that in mind, another recommendation, Colton. The young Samantha, Sam, 17, is – my guess – a troubled person, because Brooke is trying to find her, which means she’s sort of lost. It might be interesting to see a little bit more than just the nail polish, just something, because by the time you get to… Nobody who’s a troubled 23-year-old was a not-troubled 17-year-old. I’m just going to go out on a limb here. There’s already a problem.

This is Reseda. It’s Los Angeles. What does a troubled 17-year-old look like? Is she pierced? What has she done to her hair? Is there a bruise? Is she cutting? Is she too thin? Is she missing a tooth? Does she have braces? Just give me a little bit of a sense of who she is, more than just this, especially if we’re going to be hunting for her and she’s not going to be in the script for a while.

John: Agreed. Let’s take a look at our next script. This is Megha Genesis by Priti Trivedi.

Drew: Megha, a 37-year-old skateboarder, confidently maneuvers through a crowd in Austin, Texas. Skating to her family home, she encounters her mother, Deepa, who enthusiastically insists on dressing her in dated power suits for an upcoming job. Amidst the fashion chaos, Megha reveals in voiceover that she’s about to have her first day at two very different jobs. We then cut to a week earlier, when Megha sits on Zoom with a recruiter and is offered a job teaching executives.

Craig: Stuart special.

John: Stuart special. Title page, clean and simple. A lot of people would put an email address on there. I think it’s a good idea, just because if someone absolutely loves this, that’s how they can get a hold of Priti to talk about how much they love the script. But now, as we get into the actual script itself, Craig, do you want to go first? Want me to go first?

Craig: Happy to start. A little bit of a fish with feathers here. There’s something that happens almost immediately that causes a loss of confidence. This is why the first page, the first third of a page is so important. You just want to start to invite people to feel safe as they read.

John: Can I guess what it is that you marked?

Craig: Sure you can.

John: “Confidently boardslides.”

Craig: Actually, that wasn’t it, because I had already lost faith before that point. It says, “This is Megha, 37, whose short hair and slight frame make strangers routinely confuse her for a 13-year-old.” No, they don’t. No. Nobody who’s almost 40 is confused for a 13-year-old. That’s not a thing. There are people who are almost 40 who are confused for somebody in their 20s. That can happen. 13? No. The tone is in deep question here. That really threw me for a loop. Then, yes, “Confidently boardslides down a railing, nods hello to some teens practicing flips nearby. They nod back.” Not a great ending to a scene. Nod. Nod.

John: Yeah, because I don’t understand, are they nodding like, “Oh, that’s cool,” or like, “Dude, you’re old.” I don’t know what the tone is here. It clearly was trying to do a tone. I also don’t know, is she skating home? Is she skating from point A to point B and she’s going through the park, or was she at the park, skating? Those are very different experiences. If it’s a 37-year-old who gets around on a skateboard, yeah, I get that, but it’s a 37-year-old who also boardslides.

Craig: She’s in a park, so I’m thinking that she’s just enjoying a fun afternoon of boarding. This is also an issue that there’s no reason for this, because I didn’t learn anything really, other than the fact that she can skateboard. But does she fall? Is she really good? Are people impressed? Are people not impressed? What am I supposed to deduce from this? I’ve learned nothing about the character. I’ve only learned a fact, that she can skateboard. It doesn’t matter.

John: We often talk about the difference between mystery and confusion. It’s not mysterious really that she’s a 37-year-old skateboarder. It’s just kind of confusing. I don’t know what I’m supposed to know about her or think about her, based on this little first chunk, which seems like we’re putting way too much emphasis on this, but again, you have to start someplace, and this was not a place that was making me feel confident to start.

Craig: Then she does arrive home on her skateboard, which, okay. “The windows are ringed with multicolored string lights.” I don’t know what we’re supposed to draw from that, because it doesn’t sound like it’s Christmastime. Maybe this is how they decorate their home, which is fine.

But when we get into her room, we go from her skating up to, boom, she is standing in her room, static. That’s not a good cut. When people are in motion, you generally want to go from them in motion to them in motion, or them in motion to them entering the frame. You just don’t want to pop them into, I have just teleported into a room.

More tonal issues. “Her mother, Deepa, 60s, barges in with an armful of business clothes that were stylish when she first bought them in the late ’80s,” and she starts dressing Megha. It says the following. John, I will charge you with figuring out how to direct the following. “Deepa starts draping pinstripe jackets, ruffled blouses, and pencil skirts onto Megha, who is soon engulfed in a blizzard of synthetic fabrics and shoulder pads.” How do you do that?

John: It’s not going to work. How do you put a pencil skirt on her? I don’t know what this is.

Craig: How do you do that? How do you do that?

John: You don’t.

Craig: You can’t. Why is Deepa’s mother saying the following? Priti, if this hurts a little bit, I apologize, but it’s going to help. We’ve all been here. This is important, because it’s her mother. Now, funny moms are a long and storied institution in films, but they still have to be mom, which means they talk to their child as if they’ve met them before. This is what Deepa says: “Try these on and we’ll see what fits you. Oh, I’m so glad I saved these. You always said you’d never wear a suit to work, but I knew that someday you would get a real job and make real money.”

Now, are there moms that make passive-aggressive comments about their kids finally getting a real job and making real money? Completely. Are there moms that sometimes think they’re complimenting their child by saying something like that, when in fact it’s slightly hurtful? Absolutely. But are there parents who say, “You always said you’d never wear a suit to work.” No. Parents don’t cite back to you things you’ve always said, “But … ” It feels a little ChatGPT to me.

John: I also had a question about, we are told that she is 60s, “Slightly taller and rounder than her daughter.” Is she native-born American or has she immigrated to America? I want a sense of culturally, where is she at? What accent is she using? These are all things I could make assumptions, because I’ve seen other shows, I’ve seen other movies, but you shouldn’t just have me make that assumption, because it’s a different experience if it’s coming from an immigrant background versus she was born in Austin, Texas.

Craig: There’s Megha’s cousin Bina, who’s fine. She’s hanging off the bed. I like that she calls Deepa “Auntie.” Deepa: “Oh, I forgot my pumps.” “Megha shakes off the clothes like a dog shaking off water.” That’s a funny thing to write. It’s a funny thing to read. It is not possible to do.

John: Both the clothes on and the clothes off, you can sort of see it in a Disney Channel kind of way. It’s just feeling incredibly broad. Maybe this is an incredibly broad story that we’re trying to tell here, but my guess is it’s not aiming to be that.

Craig: There’s some geographical things. We’ve got a drum kit and a recording setup in one corner of the room. Bina is on the bed. She’s hanging off of the bed. I don’t know quite what that means, backwards or just sitting on the bed?

John: Head hanging off maybe.

Craig: Head hanging off. “Looks up from her phone, bursts out laughing,” has a little exchange. Megha says, “I feel like a pomegranate.” “Bina does a rimshot on the drum kit.” How’d she get over there?

John: Talented long arms. Again, tone. It’s incredibly broad you’re going there.

Craig: Then Bina seems cool. Bina seems like she’s on Megha’s side. She’s like, oh my god, “Auntie, you’re going to drown her. Polyester doesn’t breathe.” Bina’s like, yeah, don’t wear any of that. Then Megha’s like, “Maybe I won’t wear anything,” ha ha ha. Then Bina says, “Stop! You need clothes! You need to make a good first impression.” Wait, now who’s Bina now? Did she not get that that’s a cheeky comment?

Now, clearly, Megha is going to be involved in some sort of job that is sex-work-adjacent here, because that’s what is being implied, that she’s going to be working two jobs, like a straight one and a sexy one. But why is Bina saying, “Stop!” “Stop! You need clothes! You need to make a good first impression,” reminds me of Patton Oswalt talking about Germans and their lack of a sense of humor, like they don’t understand humor, and so they just take it very, very literally. I’m confused by these characters.

John: I’m mostly confused that they’re the ages that they are.

Craig: They’re kind of weirdly old for this.

John: They’re kind of weirdly old. If these were 23-year-olds, yeah, I could kind of see that, but they’re not. She’s living at home. She’s 37 years old. Something has gone wrong in her life or very strangely in her life that this is her situation. By the end of Page 2, I guess I need to know more about that rather than about clothes, because there’s some fundamental premise thing I’m missing here. By the end of Page 2, I don’t know anything about Megha. I want to, but I don’t know it.

Craig: I would say, Priti, that when we get to Page 3, what I think you really need to work on in a fundamental way is dialog, because Daniel and Megha are both speaking in a kind of super textual way. Everything that they’re thinking, they’re saying. There’s no sense of complexity. They’re just announcing things. It just feels very wooden, and I don’t want it to be. I want there to be subtext. I want there to be feelings. I want there to be emotions. I want them to be concealing things, hiding, playing, flirting, arguing.

John: Agendas.

Craig: Agendas, passive-aggressive, making choices to not complain about something that someone just said that’s a little off, anything that you can do there. This is all super textual. I think that you’ve got some dialog issues you need to work out. You may have full, great understanding of these characters, but in the execution, we’re not getting any of it. I would focus my work on that, Priti. Great title though, Megha Genesis.

John: I really do like it.

Craig: That’s awesome.

John: We’re inclined to like anything that reminds us of Megana Rao, our beloved producer.

Craig: Do you think that Megha’s pronounced MAY-guh, because it’s like Sega Genesis?

John: I think the title is MAY-guh Genesis. That would make the most sense.

Craig: MAY-guh, yeah, I think that makes more… Who knows? Maybe it’s not. But it’s a great title either way. Love that.

John: I love it. Drew, tell us the log line.

Drew: “Nobody puts baby in a corner, and no one can put Megha in a box. In this comedy series, a former academic turned adventurer attempts to live the corporate life and rebel against it at the same time, all while acting as a catalyst for change for everyone around her.”

John: That’s not what I got off these pages.

Craig: Deeply, deeply confused. What was the sexy stuff? What was that? I’m so confused. Adventurer?

John: Academic turned adventurer. Let’s say that she was top of her class, but then she just ran around the world and just lived her 20s and 30s just crazy. She was everywhere, she was doing everything, and now she’s come back home and she’s trying to make a start of it. Great. These were not the pages to get me into that story.

Craig: No, nor was there any indication that there was anything adventuresome about her whatsoever.

John: She had a skateboard.

Craig: That’s not high up on the list of things that adventurers do. If she’s an Indiana Jones roaming the world, that’s a very specific kind of person. That’s an adrenaline junkie. That’s somebody who’s faced danger and death. That’s somebody who seeks out the exotic and extreme. She’s just a 37-year-old skateboarder, and then she’s just letting her mom throw clothes at her, and then she’s just having a boring Zoom. I don’t understand it.

John: Adventure may not mean Indiana Jones. It could mean just something like Instagram influencers before their time. She’s always just going from the next place to the next place and never having a normal job. Sure, great. Or maybe she worked in the Peace Corps. That’s not what we’re getting here. If you’re going to use a voiceover, which you are right now, let that help understand what her perspective is and why she’s a 37-year-old who seems to be just starting out.

Craig: Lots of issues there. Keep going. Keep working at it. Address some fundamentals. I think that’s step one here. I think step one: dialog.

John: Dialog, agreed.

Craig: Dialog.

John: Our third and final Three Page Challenge is Thoughts and Prayers by Eric Hunsley.

Craig: Good title.

John: Drew, help us out.

Drew: In an amphitheater during a summer evening concert, a concertgoer, Paulie, and their companion, Dawn, prepare for a picnic. Simultaneously, a clarinetist revealed to also be Paulie tunes up his instrument backstage. However, up in the lighting grid, a gunman, revealed to be yet another Paulie, assembles a rifle. The musician notices the gunman pointing the rifle down at him and freezes, and then Paulie wakes up out of the dream with Dawn sound asleep next to him.

John: On our first page here, Thoughts and Prayers, Episode One, so this is meant to be part of a series. We have a full grid of information with email address and phone numbers and things like that. Sure, but no one’s going to be sending you a postcard, so email address is probably fine here. Phone number used to be important. When Craig and I were starting, we didn’t have email necessarily, so people would call you. I got cold calls from producers who had read stuff. Sure. That doesn’t happen anymore. Email’s plenty fine.

Craig: You could get a text. People do like texting.

John: People do like texting. If you can text, you can email. But yeah, you can get a text.

Craig: The kids love texting.

John: They do love texting. Craig, I had to read this twice, but on second reading, I did actually quite appreciate what was going on here. I had some very specific issues and concerns, but I liked a lot of what I saw here. The thing I would want to point out is, of all these Three Page Challenges, we’ve had some good use of white space. The pages have looked nice, and so I want to call it out for all three of these entries.

Craig: Absolutely. It took me a bit. I think it would take everyone a bit. Then again, what I find is, if there’s a little bit of difficulty in, let’s say, Page 1… I don’t know if you had the same feeling. It was just a concertgoer off-screen. That was a tough one. I was like, what’s happening in my POV? I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. I have a suggestion for how to mitigate that, perhaps. If you get to a place – and we do, on Page 2 and 3 – that makes you go, “Oh-“

John: “I see what you’re doing here.”

Craig: “… that’s interesting,” then all is forgiven. If you don’t, nothing’s forgiven. In this case, we did get to something interesting and provocative and very bait on the hook that justified a little bit of the trickiness at the beginning. Where did you start to get yourself a little bit lost?

John: Right at the very start, I was nervous, as we were moving into the POVs, but also there’s some repetition of words that don’t help you. “POV – concertgoer strolling on the lawn towards the stage.” We were strolling a few paces behind Dawn Berenger. The double strolling is not helping you there.

Craig: Double stroll.

John: This relies a lot on POV, but then I felt like we were popping in and out of it in ways that were not helpful. We could’ve lost the bottom half of this first scene. “How’s this?” Male voice, “Perfect.” She lays out the quilt on the grass. We don’t go in for that first matching of actions. They just go right to the clarinetist, because we’re about to set this routine where we see similar actions happening in all these places, and we’re starting to realize there’s some pattern thing happening here that’s going to be interesting. But I didn’t need it on Page 1.

Craig: Here’s my suggestion. It’s just food for thought, because I think it would help what you’re doing. It’s not to change what you’re doing, but to help it. That is to not not see our concertgoer, but rather to not see his face. You’re allowed to do that. We’re walking a few paces behind Dawn Berenger, 40s, and her date. We can’t yet see his face. She’s holding a picnic basket, stops, turns, hands the basket to him. This looks good. You don’t need him to say anything other than, “Perfect.” We don’t need, “Earth to Paulie. We’re gonna eat?” “Oh, yeah, sorry about that.”

“The concertgoer’s POV scans the lawn, taking in the crowd.” If that’s meant to be purposeful, it’s not going to do what you think it’s going to do. It’s just going to be an unrooted, information-less POV scan. What you want instead, I think, is to be behind him and note that he’s turning his head as if scanning the crowd, and then, “Paulie, we’re gonna eat?” “Oh, yeah, sorry about that.” Then the picnic basket hingey bit I think would work a little bit better because-

John: I like that.

Craig: … there’s a human there. It’s not just a nobody. It’s not a POV camera, which is a very specific science fictiony way of doing stuff.

John: Agreed. You know that I was a clarinetist.

Craig: As was I.

John: We talked about this on an earlier show. Craig, you do not swab a clarinet before you put it together to play it. You swab at the end of a performance to get all the spit and the stuff out.

Craig: Correct. You’ve got your little spit valve, and then you do your cleaning. What you do before, maybe you put a new reed on, you put a little-

John: Cork grease is what I was thinking would be a better choice for what he could be doing, because as you’re assembling this thing, you have this little thing sort of like ChapStick that you’re putting on the corks to put it together.

Craig: I can smell it now. That white goop, I can smell it. It’s pungent.

John: Most people are not going to know that you don’t swab a clarinet before you put it together, but enough people will get that right. It’s going to work great. It actually makes more sense with what you’re trying to set up and do here-

Craig: I completely agree.

John: … in terms of putting a gun together.

Craig: Yeah, because he’s got ammunition cartridges, and maybe he’s putting rounds into a clip. Similarly, a professional clarinetist would have a few reeds. They would select one. They would put it in the mouthpiece, tighten the clamps. There’s lots of good stuff.

John: Craig, I have so many sense memories of what it is like, what a new reed tastes like, how dry it is, how it pulls the saliva out of your mouth.

Craig: Sticks on your tongue. I also have memories of what an old reed looks like, all chipped at the end like a broken fingernail.

John: Absolutely. You’re always picking which of the reeds is going to be good enough, because if a reed is too firm, it’s not going to work right. You start with really soft 1 reeds and you move up to 2s and 3s. It’s a whole thing.

Craig: I assume that you, like me, we couldn’t afford lots of reeds. My parents would dole reeds out like I was asking for a kidney. Assembling the mouthpiece, getting it ready, all that, the mouthpiece is the biggest issue. Cork grease to put the pieces together of the body of the clarinet. You got your two pieces, and then you got your mouthpiece going in the top, but the mouthpiece gets the most attention.

John: 100%. These are all things, small little changes, but I would say overall, I was digging this. I was a little disappointed it ended in a dream.

Craig: Me too.

John: Because I was thinking this is going to be some sort of cool heisty thing. For all we know, then the whole sequence continues beyond this and it actually is more than this, but we have not taken a look at the log line. I would say overall, I was digging these pages. I thought they were a nice use of the reader’s attention and really rewarding the close reading of lines.

Craig: I completely agree. My hope – and Drew’s about to let us know – is that it’s not just a dream, and that there is something weird going on where Paulie is three different people and he’s gone through a reverse cloning machine or something. I don’t know. I guess it’s probably time to find out.

John: Drew, tell us the log line.

Drew: “Having just closed the case of a mass shooting in his community, a police investigator must now track down a new threat. Pro-gun legislators have become targets of a serial shooter who, rather than going after the politicians themselves, hunt down their loved ones.”

John: Okay, so it’s not a science fictiony kind of premise. It literally was just the stress of it was making him feel this thing.

Craig: I’m not as big of a fan of this now, and here’s why. In a weird way, Eric, you’re kind of a victim of how interesting these three pages are. It’s such an interesting concept that you want it to be relevant beyond just, “I’m anxious about mass shootings.” Totally. Many of us are, and certainly, police officers and detectives, law enforcement officers who are charged with protecting us from these things or stopping them or finding the people who perpetrated them are even more anxious. But this is so specific and science fictiony that it’s going to be hard to just go into a straight-up political thriller.

John: Yeah, it is. I do wonder if Eric has written a cool short film that just wants to be its own thing, and it’s not the right way into the story he wants to tell, because I like the log line, I like these pages, I don’t think they’re the right combination is my guess.

Craig: Also, you don’t suck on the reed. You moisten it.

John: You moisten it.

Craig: You moisten the reed.

John: You let it plump up in your saliva.

Craig: You gotta get it soft. This has become more of a clarinet discussion.

John: It basically has become a clarinet discussion. But also, you do swab out your clarinet at the end of a session, but during the time, during a long rehearsal, you are also sucking the spit back in, which is really gross, but you gotta do it.

Craig: You just gotta do it. One last thing. This is just a formatting thing. Typically, until you’re in production, you don’t need to put scene numbers on your scenes.

John: Agreed.

Craig: But if you do want to put scene numbers on your scenes, that’s fine. You just want them to be consecutive at that point, because on Page 3, we go from Scene A to Scene 13, which implies that scenes have been omitted, which again is fine, but that’s really only relevant to production. Typically, in production, it would say “Scenes 9 to 12 omitted.” Not particularly useful here, and certainly not a good idea, if you do include them, to have them be non-consecutive.

John: I will also say that I’m looking now, it’s Episode 1, so this is part of a series. As a series, this moment works a little differently than as a feature, because if this were the opening sequence to a feature film, I’d be like, mm. With a series, I can imagine this kind of thing maybe playing a little bit better, but-

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know.

John: Not for you?

Craig: No. It’s a tone thing. It’s giving us a big tone hit. Any time you have a dream where someone wakes up… It’s very useful to do. People have fascinating dreams. I have no problem showing a dream that somebody has, and then they wake up. I particularly appreciate that Paulie didn’t gasp awake. Thank you.

But typically, we know something about the person before, so that we understand a little bit more or we can connect with them a little bit more and their anxiety as they’re in the dream space. We also probably get a sense that it is a dream space. It’s just to meet somebody like this and have it be so…

Also, here’s the other issue. Dreams are not this cinematic. Dreams don’t cut perfectly between three different perspectives. They certainly don’t have weird POVs and then third-person views layering and cutting back and forth like that amongst the same person. It just doesn’t seem like a dream.

John: It isn’t dreamy, no.

Craig: It seems too real.

John: Those are our Three Page Challenges. Thank you to everybody who wrote in. Thank you to these writers, but also everyone else who wrote in with their pages to take a look at. If you have three pages you want us to possibly examine on a future episode, you go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all typed out. There’s a little form there. You click some buttons. You attach your pdf, and it goes into the inbox. If you’re curious about doing this for us, please submit. Craig, it is time for our One Cool Things.

Craig: Submit.

John: Submit. My One Cool Thing is a product I bought off of Instagram. I thought it was really well done. It’s called Delve Deck. It’s by a company called Boardwalk. I think I got this ad served to me by Instagram because I do Writer Emergency Pack, and we buy Instagram ads for Writer Emergency Pack, so the algorithm just always serves me things that are kind of like Writer Emergency Pack.

In this case, Delve Deck is a bunch of conversation starters. You pull a card, and it has a single question on it that you can randomly choose. It might be for a party. I was thinking it could also be for a writers’ room. I may send one of these with my kid, who’s going to be a summer camp counselor, because it feels really great for talking to a bunch of kids about-

Craig: Icebreaker.

John: Icebreaker kind of things. Nicely made. It’s a little LA-based company. If you’re curious about it, we’ll put a link in the show notes to Delve Deck.

Craig: “Have you ever murdered someone?”

John: The answer is no, but I did stop and think about that.

Craig: Next card.

John: I want to make sure that I got the answer right. I will say our bonus segment is going to be three of the cards that I pulled out of there randomly, genuinely randomly.

Craig: Great.

John: We’ll answer those questions.

Craig: Fantastic. My One Cool Thing is a restaurant. I don’t normally do restaurant reviews. I’m always a little nervous that if I talk about a restaurant on our podcast, we’re suddenly going to start getting emails from restaurant promoters, because we sure get a lot of emails from publicity people trying to get people on our show. We’re just not that kind of show, John. That’s not what we do.

John: Not good.

Craig: That said, I did visit a restaurant here in Vancouver that I thought was so delightful and interesting. Have you ever been to a restaurant that was specifically Afghan cuisine?

John: I have not. That is one of our goals for 2024 is to try three new cuisines, so Afghan would be a good choice.

Craig: I have never myself been to a specifically Afghan restaurant. Afghan cuisine, as explained by the owner, is kind of an interesting blend of where Afghanistan sits. It’s somewhat Mediterranean. It’s somewhat influenced by Indian. It’s somewhat influenced by more Eastern Asian. It’s got a lot of things going on. This particular restaurant is called Zarak, obviously here in Vancouver, where I’m currently staying. It is family-owned. I thought it was fantastic. Really, really good. One of the best old-fashioneds I’ve ever had-

John: Great.

Craig: … which is saying something, because I’ve had them everywhere. The cuisine was outstanding. Just a really, really good time. It’s one of those things where, at 52 and living in Los Angeles, you think, I’ve eaten everything. No, I hadn’t. It wasn’t like there was anything that was served where I was like, “What is this?” But the specific way that Afghan cuisine is prepared I thought was really delicious. If you are in the Vancouver area and you’re interested in trying something new, or if you are already a fan of Afghan cuisine, check out Zarak, Z-A-R-A-K.

John: Excellent. I do want to make it up to Vancouver at some point while you’re up there shooting. If I do make it up there-

Craig: Zarak.

John: … I’ll hit the restaurant.

Craig: Nice.

John: Zarak.

Craig: Zarak.

John: Love it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Matt Davis. 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. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the 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’ll find them at Cotton Bureau.

You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and bonus segments and advance warnings when we are going to try to do another Three Page Challenge, so sign up there. Craig, Drew, thanks for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: We’re here on our bonus segment. Thank you to our premium members who make these bonus segments possible, and the rest of the show. As I said in the One Cool Things, I got this thing called a Delve Deck. I’ve pulled three cards out of here, and we’re going to just try to answer these questions. I looked at them earlier on, so I have some answers, but Craig, you’re good at thinking off the top of your head.

Craig: We’ll find out.

John: First question. Drew, I want to hear your answers to this too.

Drew: Oh, no.

John: “If you could ask any living person a question and be assured a true answer, who and what would you ask?”

Craig: Wow. If you could ask any living person a question and be assured a true answer? Oh, my.

John: This feels a little bit like Speak with the Dead, the spell in Dungeons and Dragons, except it has to be for a living person, and they are compelled to tell you a true answer to that one question. I think there’s different classes of questions you might want to ask. Some cases, there’s one person who knows the truth, and you could ask that one person the truth and actually finally know the answer. Who killed JonBenet Ramsey, I’d want to ask John Ramsey, because he might know, or just know that the family was not involved at all. I might ask OJ Simpson.

Craig: I wouldn’t waste that one. He already wrote a book called-

John: If I Did It. The hypotheticals there. There’s another class of questions, like, what does this person truly think, truly believe? Craig, what are you thinking? Of living people, who would you want to ask a question of?

Craig: That’s actually a very difficult proposition, because there are certain people who might have information that is valuable, but just because they tell me doesn’t mean anyone else would know or believe me or believe that they told me that. If there were a way for me to capture, for instance, on camera, Donald Trump answering truly, do you really think that you were a good president, although he probably does.

John: He probably does.

Craig: He probably does. He probably does.

John: I guess focusing on something that is more objectively true, like how many abortions have you paid for, something like that, which you could capture.

Craig: That’s an interesting one, not that it would matter to the people who would vote for him.

John: It wouldn’t matter.

Craig: Nothing matters to them.

John: Literally nothing matters [crosstalk 01:07:58].

Craig: Literally nothing matters. I might be interested, I suppose, to ask, let’s say, I’d go with Barack Obama, because I feel like he would give a very thorough answer.

John: That’s true.

Craig: I would ask Barack Obama, do we have solid evidence of intelligent life on other planets, and what is the nature of that evidence?

John: That’s great.

Craig: He’s gotta know.

John: He’s gotta know.

Craig: He’s gotta know, right?

John: The argument that he doesn’t know is that Trump then would also know, and Trump can’t be quiet about anything.

Craig: I think they might’ve just hidden it from him. I feel like there’s so much stuff they just were like, “Let’s not tell him.”

John: Drew, what question would you ask, and of whom?

Drew: This is tough, because I feel like the ones that are popping in my head… What’s nice about John Ramsey or OJ Simpson is you would probably get a confession, which would do some good, whereas a lot of them, someone might just be like, “No, I had nothing to do with that,” and then it’s a waste. I might go for family drama. Maybe I would ask one of my parents-

Craig: If they really love you?

Drew: If they really love me, yeah. No, that one’s too close. Your parents especially are people you don’t have the whole picture of. You just get the pieces. I don’t know, I’d go for gossip, like, did you ever cheat on each other or something.

Craig: Oh, wow. Drew, you’re so dark.

John: I do like it though. I do like it.

Craig: I like it too.

John: Next question. What is something you’re still angry about?

Craig: Oh, boy.

John: Oh, boy.

Craig: Oh, boy.

John: Craig has had some anger and umbrage over the years.

Craig: Nothing but.

John: Nothing but. I would say that in my personal and professional life, I don’t actually have a lot that I’m actively angry about. I don’t ruminate about past wrongs that were done to me often, or if that does happen, at least I’m not able to think of them now. I tend to be angrier on behalf of other people or angry on behalf of society. I’m angry about things that happened that I don’t feel have been adequately adjusted for.

Craig: There’s so much that I’m still angry about. What, among the many things, is most notable from all the things I’m still angry about, hard to say. I could go for small things and big things. I guess on a big scale, I am still so angry about Andrew Wakefield and his stupid, fraudulent, non-study study that ignited a bonfire of anti-vaccine rhetoric. That guy, I don’t believe in Hell, but if I did… The misery and ruin that he has caused, and the fact that he is so unrepentant and so stupidly, stubbornly in self-aggrandizing denial, it’s infuriating. He’s a real villain. Apparently, I’m still angry about it, John.

John: Apparently, you are. I hear that in your tone. Drew, anything you’re still angry about?

Drew: Off that, I think COVID response, the way that everyone handled it. It might be worldwide too, because some countries just didn’t have any lockdowns. That felt like something that we could’ve handled, but instead, selfishness just seemed to win, or maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe that was something that was always going to be an endemic thing.

John: I do hear what you’re saying, that sense that obviously no one could know exactly all the information, but the people who weren’t listening to people who had the best sense of what to do, I’m angry on behalf of and because of our citizens at times. I get angry about January 6th and the attempt to pretend like it was no big deal or not acknowledge this thing that we saw live on television.

Craig: No, you didn’t.

John: No, you didn’t.

Craig: It was Antifa.

John: You can’t trust your eyes.

Craig: That was Antifa. It wasn’t like anybody pooped on the Speaker of the House’s desk. It’s all just insane. Have you guys seen the Herman Cain Awards, that Reddit?

John: It’s given to the person who dies of the thing they were making fun of?

Craig: Yeah, basically.

John: Is that the idea?

Craig: Yeah. When you say given to the person, it means every day, 12 people. But one of the things they do there is they will provide you with a slideshow, and it’s almost always Facebook posts from an individual mocking medicine, Dr. Fauci, vaccines, the fact that COVID even exists, masks, all of it, and then, inevitably, of course, they contract COVID, and then shortly thereafter, somebody else posts to say, “So-and-so has gone to the Lord.”

There’s this thing that so many of them say. It’s actually disconcerting, because it makes me feel like maybe they are NPCs, because it’s so consistent, and it’s so weird how they all use the same phrase. When they get COVID, so many of them say some version of, “I have COVID. Guys, this thing is no joke.” It’s like, you mean the thing that you’ve been turning into a joke for years, that thing that you’ve been making fun of? Now you want me to know it’s not a joke, because you have it, and you’re in the hospital? They, over and over, go, “Oh, this thing is no joke.” They’re shocked.

John: Related to that is people who, when they get COVID, they pretend it’s something else or it’s not really because of the COVID, it’s really because of something else. It’s like, no, it’s because of COVID. This syndrome that you have right now, you have long COVID.

Craig: It’s like homophobic relatives telling you that so-and-so died because of pneumonia. You’re like, “Your 31-year-old gay son died of pneumonia in 1983? Uh-huh. Sure, sure, Aunt Ethel, sure.”

John: If you could go back and talk some sense into your teenage self, what would you say? Third and final question. Time machine, magical, however you want to get back to give some advice-

Craig: Oh, my.

John: … to your teenage self-

Drew: Oh, no.

John: … your specific teenage self-

Craig: Good lord.

John: … what would you say? Mine I’ve talked about a couple times on the show.

Craig: What would you say?

John: Simple one is, stop playing clarinet, and instead, stick with piano, because you will play piano the rest of your life. You will not pick up that clarinet again.

Craig: Put the clarinet down.

John: Clarinet down.

Craig: I’m sure that your teenage self would hug you and say thank you.

John: Thank you. Thank you.

Craig: Thank you.

John: It makes so much sense. Or you don’t have to go back to piano. Learn guitar. Guitar will serve you better. Then obviously, come out sooner. That’s every gay kid.

Craig: When did you come out? How old were you?

John: I was 22.

Craig: It was 1993?

John: 1992.

Craig: For 1992, you were pretty early there, I would say, relative to so many other people I know. Give yourself some credit.

John: Some credit. I could’ve come out in college. It would’ve been fine.

Craig: Absolutely. Could’ve. Didn’t. That’s okay. I think I would probably tell myself that despite the fact that I was not given a lot of positive feedback at home, that the positive feedback I suspected I should be getting was in fact the positive feedback I indeed should have been getting, and that I was the kid my parents insisted I was supposed to be. I wish that I knew that sooner, because it’s incredible how many years I lost as an adult to trying to get the approval of other people, when in fact that was never going to work. In the end, either you approve of yourself or you do not. If you don’t, you’re in trouble. Now, I don’t know if giving myself that advice would’ve worked. Then I would’ve hit me, just to really underscore it. “Stop hating yourself.” Punch.

John: “Stop hating yourself.” Punch. Let’s say you only had two or three sentences of advice. What would you actually tell young Craig?

Craig: At the risk of sounding sappy, “You are absolutely worthy of love and respect, and you are good enough.”

John: You are. There’s many men in their 40s who are still struggling with that.

Craig: No question. There are people in their 90s. It feels a little generic, because it seems like it’s such a problem for everybody, except when it’s you it’s not generic. Your self-loathing is incredible specific to you. That’s probably what I would do. Now, I assume that Drew is going to go back and tell his teenage self to go ask his mom if she’s been cheating on his dad, but let’s see.

Drew: There you go.

Craig: What will you do, Drew?

Drew: Oh, god. This one’s tough, because I feel like I was a decent teenager for a while, I was a theater kid, and then when I was a senior in high school, I became a real douchebag, because I felt like that gave me some kind of cache. I had an acid tongue, so that was helpful, especially when you’re 18. The meanest person usually wins. I still feel really, really horrible about all of that. I’m trying to boil it down to a concise thing.

Craig: Don’t be a douchebag.

Drew: Don’t be a douchebag. There’s no value in that. Carry it with you.

Craig: That’s one of the natural responses to not liking yourself. Suddenly, you’re mean. I’ve been mean, definitely. When you’re miserable, you’re mean. Facts.

John: Hurt people hurt people.

Craig: Hurt people hurt people.

John: A couple other really simple ones, just quick things younger John August should’ve known, first off, you should change your name, which I did later on, so that’s fine. That I can run. I never thought I could run, and then actually, in my 40s, I learned how to run. I was like, oh, actually I could’ve been running this whole time. That’s great. Also, to not worry about my hair. I shaved my head at 23, 22, basically the same time I came out. The best thing I ever did to stop worrying about my hair. I wasted teenage years worrying about my hair falling out. Doesn’t matter.

Craig: I get it. Because I didn’t really start losing my hair until I was in my 20s, it wasn’t, I don’t think, as troublesome. I think if you start losing your hair when you’re in high school, it can really rattle you. It’s a fairly rarer circumstance. You’re in your 20s and you’re a guy and your hair is starting to thin out, you’re like, yeah, me and about 12 other guys. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.

John: I’m not going to blame myself. But I think my advice to the younger version of myself was, it’s going to happen. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t let it occupy more thoughts than it deserves.

Craig: Have you, for Halloween or anything, put a wig on?

John: Yeah, but not a good quality wig. That’s something I would love to try to do at some point is to actually see what I would look like with really good toupees, because sometimes Instagram reels will show me, here’s this toupee thing. I’m like, “Jesus, that’s a really good toupee.”

Craig: I did this one episode-

John: For the episode you had hair.

Craig: I had hair, yeah. On Mythic Quest, I was playing a guy in the ’70s, and they were like, “Let’s put some hair on you.” I was like, “Fine, do it.” It was eerie. It was weird. It was weird to have hair. It felt strange. I can’t say that I was like, “Oh, I should be doing this all the time.”

John: Was it hot?

Craig: No, it wasn’t particularly hot. I sort of forgot it was there. Then when I would look in the mirror, I was like, “Whoa.” I showed a picture of it to my wife when I was in the makeup chair, but I was wearing a mask, because it was still COVID time. I’m wearing a mask, and then I’ve got hair on. I sent her the picture. She said, “Who is that?” She didn’t know it was me.

John: That’s amazing.

Craig: Even though you could still see from my nose up.

John: Drew, in your acting career, did you have to wear a lot of wigs?

Drew: No, I never got to wear a wig. I dyed my hair once. That’d be fun.

John: Alas.

Craig: Wig yourself. You know what? Wigs are cool, actually. I have to say, at the Emmys, there was the inevitable parade of drag queens when Drag Race wins, because they literally win every year. By the way, side note, for the television Academy, I think there should be a rule if you win five years in a row, you’re done. Mercy rule. It’s crazy. That said, still awesome to see the parade of drag queens and the wigs.

John: Incredible.

Craig: The wigs are astonishing. I was like, there’s a world where I just wear a wig.

John: Just wear a wig all the time.

Craig: I don’t pretend it’s not a wig.

John: Men used to wear hats.

Craig: Or wigs. Founding Fathers, wigs.

John: Wigs.

Craig: Wigs.

John: Love it. We answered our three questions here. Well done. I’ll keep this around on the desk, so if we need a future One Cool Thing topic, it’s handy.

Craig: Pull a card.

John: Pull a card. Thanks, guys.

Craig: Thank you.

Drew: Bye.

John: Bye.

Links:

• Weekend Read 2
• ROUTES by Colton W. Miller, MEGHA GENESIS by Priti Trivedi, and THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS by Eric Hunsley
• Delve Deck
• Zarak by Afghan Kitchen – Vancouver
• 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 Matt Davis (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.