Craig welcomes writer and showrunner Joshua Zetumer, creator of the limited series Say Nothing, to explore the process of dramatizing real events — particularly when the subject matter can be volatile. They discuss how to keep a sprawling historical epic from feeling like a lecture, keeping a consistent tone, humanizing complicated people, and how not to get sued by the people who were really involved.
They also answer listener questions on following up with people after the fires, charting the emotional journey of the audience, and whether writers need to cite their sources when writing about real events.
In our bonus segment for premium members, Craig and Joshua pretend to be civil engineers and ask, how can we make Los Angeles function better?
Links:
- Say Nothing
- Joshua Zetumer
- Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
- Difficult Men by Brett Martin
- Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
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- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on BlueSky, Threads, Instagram, and Mastodon
- Outro by Nick Moore (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.
UPDATE 2-12-25: The transcript for this episode can be found here.