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’re listening to episode 700 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, we are doing something we haven’t done since 2020, a live show with our listeners on Zoom and on YouTube. Hello, listeners. Like a lot of things about the pandemic, we only half remember what we’re doing. [laughter] While we’re still an audio-first podcast, we are going to be doing some things in this episode that benefit from being able to share screens and look at things.
If you’re listening to the audio version at home or your car and happen to be close to a screen, consider going back and watching some of this later on YouTube because there’s actually images to see. We’ll also be answering listener questions live on air, including a few in the bonus segment for our premium members. To help us celebrate 700 episodes, we are joined by some Scriptnotes champions over the years. Let us welcome to the podcast, Stuart Friedel, our very first producer of the show.
Craig: Stuart.
John: Stuart.
[applause]
Stuart Friedel: There we go. Hi.
John: Oh, my God. Look at that background. Stuart Friedel.
Craig: Oh. Such a good background. Classic.
Stuart: I need a Scriptnotes poster or LP or something to put on the back.
John: Yes. We’re going to release the whole show on vinyl. It’s a lot of vinyl, but it’s worth it. I’m just to have that for that perfect audio quality.
Stuart: It’s a weight. It’s for working out.
John: Absolutely. We have Megan McDonell, Scriptnotes producer. Megan McDonell, welcome back to Scriptnotes.
[applause]
Craig: It’s Megan.
John: Oh, my gosh. We’re so excited to see you.
Craig: Another good background.
Megan McDonell: Thank you.
John: Megan, you were a crucial part of the professionalization, I think, of Scriptnotes because when Stuart first came on board, it was– [laughter] We were just winging it. We were just trying to figure out what it was. We didn’t know how long it was going to go.
Craig: He’s right there.
John: He’s right there.
Stuart: It is true. It’s absolutely true.
[laughter]
John: You were a crucial part of that and also helped me out so much with the launch podcast, which we were, again, figuring out along the way. How are you, Megan?
Megan: I’m great. It’s nice to be here. Thanks for including me.
John: Of course. Drew, do we have Megana?
Drew Marquardt: We do.
Craig: We always have Megana.
John: Megana Rao is the producer who people first heard on the air. I think she was the one who sort of crossed the barrier and became like, “Of course, it’s Megana. She’s talking on the show.” Megana, it is always a joy to have you here. Oh, my gosh, it’s Megana.
[applause]
Megana Rao: Hello.
Craig: Megana, she was really the first star, right? Maybe the only star. I don’t really think you or I qualify, but Megana gets stopped on the street. I’m sorry.
Megana: I hate that you can see my face.
[laughter]
Craig: You look beautiful.
Megana: Oh, I just want to cower.
Craig: You have such great hair. Look at this.
Megana: Wait, where is your beard?
Craig: Oh, I got rid of it.
John: He got rid of his beard and the hair on top of his head. He’s basically just trying to steal my look.
Craig: I did. I do like it when people are like, “Where’s your beard?” I’m like, “Where do you think?” Yes, it doesn’t come off in one piece.
[laughter]
John: Ripped it off. Yes, absolutely. Is this with hair and makeup? It’s back in the van. Megana, thank you again for being awesome on the show and for joining us here today. If Stuart was the originator of the show, he was the one who got the train running. Megana sped it along and got us figuring out a little more stuff. You were the heart, the soul, the smile, the laugh of the show.
Megana: Oh, thank you.
John: Then there’s Drew, but whatever.
Craig: It’s just really hard to work for John. That’s what I’m getting.
Drew: Grinds you down.
John: Now, the very first episodes of the show were edited by either me or by Stuart, but at a certain point, we’re like, “Somebody who don’t know what they’re doing should be doing this.” That’d be Matthew Chilelli. Matthew Chilelli, cross from post-production into production. Join us here on the Zoom as we celebrate 700 episodes.
Craig: Ooh.
[laughter]
Matthew Chilelli: I beamed in somehow.
John: Oh, wow. Yes, Matthew. He had to pipe in a studio background so it would feel really impressive. That’s actually where you do all the work on the show. It’s like this high-tech launch center for the show.
Matthew: Absolutely. It’s so you can’t see my husband working behind me.
John: Yes, there is that.
Craig: I like that Matthew works in a studio that is carefully painted to be blurry.
Matthew: Yes.
John: That’s good stuff. That’s a highly selective focus. 700 episodes, guys. Thank you so much for getting us here. I have to say, 700, Craig will attest to, that was always my goal was to make it to 700 episodes. [laughter] I said that from episode two. It’s like, “My goal is just to make it to 700 episodes.”
Craig: Had you said that, I would have been gone within minutes.
John: Yes. As we talked about in episode 100, I was hoping to make it to 100 and had no instincts beyond that point. It’s crazy that we’re here now. With a book coming out, so many people on this Zoom were so crucial to getting this book in good fighting shape. Drew, we’ve been getting a bunch of people sending in their receipts from the pre-orders. Thank you to everybody who’s ordering this book. It’s out December 2nd worldwide. People should order it now so that there’s enough copies so that everybody can enjoy the book for the holidays.
I have a topic that I want to discuss with this group before we move into other things, which is how do you talk about a movie or a show without spoilers and where is the boundary between, “Okay, this is just a thing in popular culture we need to talk about,” versus, “This is a spoiler and I have to be really careful to discuss this thing.” The specific thing is the movie Weapons, which I really enjoyed, and it went in without any spoilers at all, which was fantastic. I managed to not know anything about the movie.
Yet there’s, I think I want to talk about on the show in a very specific way that I think won’t ruin things, but what is our feeling about talking about a thing without ruining a thing for other people? Craig, start with you. What’s your instinct when it comes to a spoiler?
Craig: I think I’m pretty good about this. There are things that I feel like, okay, if you know this, it actually won’t ruin any surprise. In fact, you’re going to hear about this or find out about it as part of the general setup of the movie or story. I’ve been trying to get everybody to watch Hunting Wives, and it’s worked because it’s the number one show on Netflix, I assume because of me.
John: Yes, absolutely. You are the salesperson for it.
Craig: Yes. When I talk about it, I’m like, “Okay, none of this is a spoiler. It’s going to sound spoilery. You’re going to hear about this as part of the setup.” I feel like setup is fair game. Once you get past setup, then you get into that territory of, “Are you ever going to watch this or not? Because then I’ll just tell you what happens.” [laughter] I keep it inside of setup. I think that’s safe.
John: Stuart, what’s your feeling on spoilers?
Stuart: I think it’s context dependent, and it is dependent on the person hearing to make their boundaries known. If you want to talk about a movie on a podcast that’s educational about movies and how to make movies, I think you just need to tell the audience, “Tune out now,” and then go ahead and talk. Don’t hold back the efficacy of the conversation because you don’t want to offend somebody who had the opportunity to push stop.
John: Now, Megan McDonell, you’ve been working on a lot of shows that are either under NDA, so of course, you can’t talk about those things. Even a WandaVision, you know what’s coming up. You have a sense of what it is. When on WandaVision, did you start talking about– was it only after an episode dropped or after you made sure that people had a week to watch it? What’s your feeling about it?
Megan: Stuff I’ve worked on? I don’t know. I still don’t talk about it. [laughter] I’m context dependent. I’m one of the people that spoilers don’t affect me at all. Like, “Oh, he was dead the whole time?” This does not affect my enjoyment of the movie. [chuckles]
Stuart: What movie would that be?
John: Stuart Little, which is so surprising. I had no idea that mouse was dead the whole time. It was dead?
Craig: That would have been an improvement. No offense to E.B. White, but that would have been awesome.
John: Now, Megana, you and I are chatting a lot about things, and I feel like we have a good shorthand. We have a friendship where you can say like, “Oh, have you seen this thing? Are you going to watch this thing? Can we talk about this?” How about you with your other friends and people around you? How do you communicate about what you want to know and what you don’t want to know?
Megana: I’m like Meg and Stuart, especially working in this industry. Spoilers are just craft. If there’s a big twist coming up and you tell me about it, it’s like then I’m watching it with a different lens, being like, “Okay, how did they set this up? How does this work?” I do try to be respectful for people who don’t work in film and entertainment and not spoil things for them. I feel like as soon as you land at LAX, spoilers are free game.
Craig: Wow.
John: Yes. I also feel like there’s some time limit that happens where Mike hasn’t watched Severance, but it’s like, I might watch Severance. It’s like, oh, well, I can’t talk about anything Severance-wise in your presence. On work Zooms, just for daily office stuff, we do have to have a conversation about like, “Okay, are we going to talk about this thing or not talk about this thing, or people will mute themselves during part of it,” which can be rough.
Specifically, the thing I want to talk about in Weapons, which I really genuinely think we can have a good conversation about without any spoilers, is midway through the movie, a character is introduced for the first time. I thought it was a really smart introduction in that an assistant comes into the office and says, “Your two o’clock is here.” He’s like, “Okay, send her in.” She just lingers a bit to set up, “Do you know who this person is?” This is so strange and weird. There’s a lot of screen time spent on what would just be, you could cut out the scene, but it was so important because it sets up this expectation of the audience.
It’s like, “Who is this person coming through the door?” Without it, we would not have an appreciation for, like, “Oh, wow, that is just so odd.” It made me believe that we out of the world more that like this assistant was like, “This is a strange situation that’s about to happen.” I just really enjoyed that. To me, it doesn’t feel like a spoiler. You’re going to encounter that moment, and you’ll say, “Oh, John talked about that,” but I didn’t ruin anything for you, hopefully.
Craig: Feels ruined.
John: I’ve ruined the movie for you?
Craig: Yes.
Megana: I’m holding back tears now, actually, I really am upset.
John: I’m sorry.
Craig: That’s Megana’s upset?
[laughter]
John: A giant beaming smile.
Craig: Yes.
John: Matthew, did you see Weapons, and do you know the moment I’m talking about?
Matthew: No, I haven’t seen it yet, but I still feel like that’s fine to talk about and also not that this is a judgment at all, but editing this show so many things have been ruined for me [laughter] plot-wise, and then I just keep it inside and turn it off and don’t share with anybody, but it hasn’t affected my enjoyment of movies.
Craig: You just let it out. You just shared it. Now everyone knows. I feel terribly guilty. Here’s why I feel guilty. I never even considered that. I took you for granted, and I’m sorry. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep doing it. At least now, I’ll be guilty along the way instead of just suddenly all at once on YouTube.
John: Yes, there’s two things I’m realizing now that we’re doing this live, is that first off, all the mistakes that Matthew cuts out, and it’s mostly my verbal mess-ups that Matthew fixes that he can’t fix on a live stream, which is great, good for the world. Second, there’s so many cases, not every episode, but every second or third episode, where Craig and I will say, “Oh, Matthew, you have to cut that out. What I just said cannot be in the air.” You know as much stuff that is sealed in the vault. So good.
Craig: Because Matthew’s so good about cutting all this out and you rely on him, what people don’t know is that John and Drew have the exact same thing they do when they do a verbal flub. Matthew, can you do it for us? I know you know what it is.
Matthew: Oh, right, yes. It’s almost the sound of a tape rewinding. As a person, it’s like, you’re in the middle of something, it’s like, “If you don’t put it up, blah, blah, and then you go back to the beginning. [laughter]
Craig: Yes, it’s [onomatopoeia]. It’s like that.
John: I listen to the Slate podcasts, and when their hosts mess up, they must be trained to go, “3, 2, 1,” and they read the line, and so it works for them. Every once in a while, a 3, 2, 1 will make it into the show, and like, love it, oh, just, it so reveals the process behind stuff.
Craig: That’s what lets us know it’s not AI.
John: Yes, before we get to our main topic here, we have two little bits of news. Drew, we have a new video in the ScriptNotes channel. This is on Breaking Bad, it’s Vince Gilligan’s interview, and it’s really well cut together.
Drew: Yes, it’s a really good one. It’s him just talking about how to be a good showrunner and running a room, and it’s really great.
John: That was a great episode. You have a new Weekend Read collection up this week.
Drew: We do, we’re back to school.
John: What are some of the titles in the back-to-school collection?
Drew: We’ve got 10 Things I Hate About You, Big Little Lies, Bottoms, Clueless, Dead Poets Society, Dear White People, Easy A, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Friday Night Lights, Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, Never Have I Ever, School Days… loads. Wednesday.
Craig: Do you have Back to School?
John: The Rodney Dangerfield classic?
Drew: Ironically, no.
Craig: What the?
John: Some of those scripts are really hard to find, Craig. For some reason, there’s not a staggering demand for people trying to find those scripts.
Craig: That script actually is a really well-structured.
John: Oh.
Craig: It’s very well done for like a classic comedy. The structure was actually quite smart.
John: While he’s going to hype up Back to School, I’m going to hype up Bottoms just for folks who haven’t seen Bottoms for whatever reason. It is gonzo, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s why these people are stars.” They’re just so well done. All right, a topic for the group. Since we have a screen that we can all look at together, and our listeners can look at the screen together with us, I wanted to talk about the challenge that all writers face about how we describe the things we see in our head, so that the readers are seeing the same things in their heads.
Today, this exercise, Drew put together this slideshow of images we took off of ShotDeck. These are all from different movies and TV shows, or documentaries, all that we’ve pulled from there. What I want us to do is work together to figure out how would we describe this thing in a screenplay so that our readers are seeing the same thing that we’re hoping for them to see. We’re calling this People, Places, and Things. We’ll start with four different people, and we’ll talk about who these characters are and if this was the first time we’re showing them on screen, what would we talk about?
Because Craig, I know you love to talk about hair, and wardrobe, and makeup, and all those things, and help us get character details. Let’s start with our first image here. For folks who are just listening at home, again, you should really look at the YouTube for this so you can see what the images are, but it is a woman in an office situation. Craig, you’re looking at this. Who is this woman? What are we seeing? What are the details that you think might make it into a scene description for her?
Craig: Depending on where we are, if this is the beginning of the scene, I would probably make a point of saying intentionally whether or not this is how it actually turns out. Medium close on Brenda, 50s, standard office attire, practical short blonde hair, sitting in an office populated by late ‘90s, early 2000 equipment. She looks appropriately tired for a nine-to-fiver.
John: Those are all things I love about that. I love Brenda as a name for her. It feels like it puts her in the right decade. I get what that is for her. There’s something about her expression that I feel is good to sell, and you can give that one sentence. She has a face that she’s always looked like she just smelled something terrible. [laughter] There’s something uncomfortable about her. I like standard office wardrobe, but also, it’s like sort of a fun pattern underneath a blue blazer that she’s trying to inject some spark there under this.
Craig: And failing.
John: And failing, yes. If we were talking about the overall thing, it’s like flat office lighting is doing her no favors. It’s not a glamorous look. Stuart, Megan, Megana, do you have any more suggestions for things we might talk about with this woman if this were the first time we were seeing her on screen?
Stuart: I’d say something like, in a happier life, she’d be a school librarian.
John: I like that. It’s sort of the “as if” or the replacement thing gives her a sense of who she is.
Megan: I might mention something in relation to who she’s talking to. If she’s talking to her main character, maybe something like– and she is not pleased to see this guy.
[laughs]
John: Yes, I like that a lot, because it gives you a sense of relationship to the space around her and to what’s actually really going to happen in the scene. Megana, anything else jumping out for you about her?
Megana: Just a suit jacket that doesn’t quite fit. Shoulder pads that extend beyond the shoulders.
Craig: Maybe that was her look.
[laughter]
John: It’s probably clothes that she’s had for the last eight years. She has a standard uniform and hasn’t updated it with time. That feels fun. Drew, show us what this is from. It’s the Snowtown Murders, written by Shaun Grant. Jenny Hallam is the actor we’re seeing there.
Cool. Next up, we have another young woman in this case. The image we’re seeing, if you’re not watching this, is a young woman. She’s sitting on the grass. The wind is blowing through her hair. She’s looking over her right shoulder. It is a beautiful painted– it feels like a painted backdrop, but it’s outdoorsy grasslands. Who wants to start with this image? It’s so striking, but I want to know if this was the first time we’re seeing this character, how do we describe her?
Craig: If this is the first time, I would say something like, again, medium-close on, let’s call her Anita. I’m going to say late teens.
John: Yes. Age is ambiguous in a way that I think is worth noting.
Craig: Late teens, staring off at everything and nothing at the same time. She sits in a windy field somewhere in the great plains. Her hair blows in the wind, as beautiful, messy as it would be done up.
John: Yes. The wind catching her hair is such a striking thing about this. We have to establish that her hair is long. That feels important. I think we need to acknowledge her race, and as the writers, we can choose what we want to say here, but mixed race. I think we need to acknowledge that she’s not white because there’s that default white thing that happens.
Craig: Isn’t that the default white thing? We didn’t talk about the last lady being white. I don’t know if her race is relevant here. It’s hard to say. I don’t know.
John: Yes. Choosing Anita doesn’t tip us one way or another, but if we could pick a name that would obviously it’s still on race.
Craig: Why did I say Anita? Is anyone named Anita anymore?
John: No.
Craig: No. Possibly it’s cool. [laughter] I don’t know. I just went with Anita.
John: Stuart.
Stuart: You bring up a good point here that I think applied to the last one, too, with era and decade. There is a little bit of context that informs what’s important about the character and what happened at casting.
John: Yes. That’s a great point, too, because we haven’t been talking so much about character here, but I think Craig was noticing that she’s looking off to the side. Basically, she feels like an observer. She’s constantly surveying things. What I see there doesn’t feel like an extroverted character, it feels like someone who sits at the edge of things and observes, as perhaps like a sniper energy rather than a driver. Megan, Megana, other thoughts?
Megan: Back to the air thing, I feel like there’s a little bit of a timelessness about the scenario, which I might mention if it’s worth mentioning.
Megana: There’s something nice about how she’s holding her knees and holding herself together, but seems very comfortable outside with this windswept hair.
John: Let’s talk about wardrobe because of at least what we’re seeing with wardrobe, because I thought it was so helpful with our previous example. She’s wearing a tank top. Megan, Megana, what would you describe that as? At least as far as what we’re seeing.
Megana: A spaghetti strap.
John: That could be jean shorts, it could be jeans. We’re seeing a bit of denim there.
Craig: Jorts. I’ve never typed the word jorts in the script, but I’m tempted. It’s hard to tell exactly.
Stuart: It seems like an outfit that could be like out of any time and any place, but depending on the time and place would inform if it were a hipster getting ready to go to the mall, or like in modern day, or if it was something from the thrift store bin in a small town, or not even a town, in a rural–
Craig: Also, I think in an image like this, one thing I never shy away from is just saying, she’s beautiful. Because I believe that beauty should be an intentional thing. Meaning, we don’t just, everybody, it’s like, okay, there are shows where everybody just happens to be beautiful, it’s part of the tone of the show, I get that. In something that’s a little bit more grounded, not everybody is beautiful. Beautiful people are beautiful, and they’re notable, and so someone like this, I think you need to point it out. It feels relevant.
John: Yes, we’re talking about her and trying to describe her, but if we were describing the overall scene, I feel like I’d also want to call out the watercolor sky behind her. Everything feels painterly, and she feels like she’s in a painting at every moment. Craig, your point about, like, she’s beautiful, especially within the context of this world, is notable, because anybody who would see her in this world would acknowledge that she’s beautiful.
Stuart: It’s a beautiful shot. If it’s the first time we’re meeting her, too, I don’t want to direct on the page too much, but it does feel like a very intentional placement within the frame where she’s looking and where she’s looking back.
Craig: It’s hard to call those things out. It’s hard to call out placement of frame, but what I do think you can do as the advocate for always directing on the page, if it’s important here, John mentioned this watercolor sky, is to say, she’s somewhere in an open plane that stretches on forever. Long lens turns the background into this beautiful watercolor blur.
John: That helps me see what I’m looking at. Drew, show us what this is from.
Drew: This is not the first time we meet her, but I included from the script, the first time we meet the character.
John: The actor is Taylor Russell. This is from Bones and All, screenplay by David Kajganich. First time trying to pronounce that. We have a description from the script. It says, “Maren, 17, mixed race, haltingly plays Sibelius’ Swan of Tuonela. She wears a cardigan big enough to be her father’s and no jewelry or makeup. Sherry, 17, comes in looking more like an American teen in 1988. Oversized top, lip gloss, and bangs.” That oversized cardigan feels right. It feels like it’s not what we’re seeing on screen right now, but it feels like the same clothing vibe.
No jewelry or makeup also feels like what we’re seeing here.
Craig: I was pretty close with Anita. Maren, Anita, very similar.
[laughter]
John: The script did call out mixed race for her, which I have not seen the movie, so I don’t know whether that becomes an important plot point. It very well could. All right, our next example, let’s take a look at a gentleman here. [chuckling] For folks who are at home and can’t see this, we have an older man looking just off center of lens.
Craig: [laughs] Oh my God. What did they do to Scott Glenn?
John: They did a lot to Scott Glenn because it’s not Scott Glenn.
Craig: That’s not?
John: No. That’s Ed Harris.
Craig: Oh, sorry, it’s Ed Harris. You know why I do that? I do this all the time because Ed Harris was John Glenn in The Right Stuff, I believe, and so I just Scott Glenn Ed Harris constantly. What did they do to Ed Harris? They turned him into the Crypt Keeper.
John: Yes, I cannot look at this without seeing Crypt Keeper, and I feel like you’re going to go for it, and why not?
Craig: Just say Crypt Keeper.
John: A very tan bald man with long pale brown hair hanging like a broken crown. You have to describe that he’s both bald and has long hair.
Craig: Crypt Keeper.
John: Yes, exactly.
Craig: It’s right there.
John: It is.
Craig: I would say it.
John: Yes, I think you say Crypt Keeper. The glasses also feel important. He’s wearing almost like Bjorn Borg glasses. They feel like very ‘70s thin-framed glasses. His shirt is specific and wonderful. It feels like a rare find in the ‘80s bin. A lot of it’s just great.
Stuart: I’m always cognizant of trying to match my prose to the tone of the script, so I wouldn’t necessarily say this in everything, but I think he looks like Dave Gruber Allen’s mean older brother.
John: I wonder if we could marry Crypt Keeper and how tan he is. He’s like a South Florida Crypt Keeper.
Craig: Yes, weathered skin, Crypt Keeper style hair flows from his otherwise bald head. He has the strange panache of an aging hippie who is now stuck as a motel clerk in Tallahassee.
John: It’s worth noting that you were able to read Motel Clerk just because, in the background, we see a bunch of keys hanging on a board and just shows how economical you can be in terms of setting up where somebody is and what a place is. Those keys did the job.
Craig: Unless he’s a key maker.
John: Megan, Megana, any other thoughts on our Ed Harris here?
Megan: Not really. There’s something about his eyes that feel worth mentioning. I don’t know if they feel like wet or something, but there’s like a sparkle, maybe that I would mention.
John: Yes, I think that’s a good point because they do still catch the light even though they’re sunk pretty deep in there, and they’re hidden behind the glasses.
Craig: I would also add, even though he’s not Scott Glenn, you can’t help but feel like maybe something about him.
John: A Scott Glenn presence. Also, granted, we know this is Ed Harris, but even though I didn’t know this was Ed Harris, I have a sense of what his voice probably sounds like, which is like a raspy smoker’s voice. You sense the age in it. Show us what this is from, Drew. This is from Love Lies Bleeding, written by Rose Glass and Weronika-
Craig: The great Rose Glass.
John: -Tofilska. All right, our last person. This is actually two people. What we’re seeing is two kids on a basketball court. The one on the right is holding a basketball. He’s walking next to his friend, who is counting something emphatically on his fingers. How do we talk about these boys? How do we set them up individually and together? Let’s assume that they are principal characters in a story, and this is the first time we’re meeting them. All of our attention goes to the one on the left because he’s counting and he just has an energy to him.
He has this purple sweatshirt that feels great and iconic to him. The way he’s counting, making his points on his fingers, he talks with his hands clearly. It feels like a thing you can establish early on about him. He has gold-framed glasses. They both have high and tight hair, so I don’t know if that establishes them well. The one on the left has a rounder face. What else are we calling out about these two?
Craig: On the page, since you have to do this before you get here, right? We have two kids, about 10 or 11 years old, on a basketball court. Let’s call Brian taller, thin, quieter, nervous. Walks holding the ball with his friend. Let’s call him Anthony. Shorter, stockier, constantly talking, emphatic, bright colors. He’s smaller, but he’s the one who stands out.
John: Yes, smaller but a giant personality, a giant presence.
Stuart: Feels like LeBron and Maverick Carter. [laughter] Anthony focuses on the stats so that Brian can keep his focus on the game.
Craig: I like that.
John: Megana, what are you thinking?
Megana: There’s also something about their expression which lets you know that these characters have this conversation or this argument several times a day.
John: Yes, we want to hear that in a scene that follows. The first lineup needs to be from, we’re calling him Anthony on the left, and just him listing all the points of things. It just feels so right. Yes, you can get some of that in the description, but the first bits of dialogue are going to tell us a lot about what their dynamic is. Let’s just show what this is from. This is from He Got Game, written by Spike Lee. I would say Anthony on the left feels like a Spike Lee character. I feel like I see him, and I love to see him in these movies.
All right, so that’s people. Let’s talk about some places. These are some settings for actual movies that have happened. This first thing we’re seeing, they’re islands. There’s cliffy islands in a very blue sea. Let’s be more specific about where we are. If this is a setting that we’re traveling to in the movie, imagine this is a helicopter shot bringing us in here.
How are we describing this? Megan, let’s start with you. If this is a thing that you’re putting into your story as an establishing shot, how might you describe what you’re seeing?
Megan: I would call it like an untouched island in a beautiful blue sea, not a person or a building. I don’t know. I feel like dinosaurs should be here.
John: Yes. It feels super vibrant. One of the challenges with the island is my default goes to survivory desert island, and this is not that. To me, this feels like Greece or Thailand, but high cliffs are what really establish it, that it’s like a forest atop cliffs over this vibrant blue sea.
Craig: I’d probably go for a sprawl of islands just so that we get the sense it’s not just one, because that’s what people go to, sprawl of islands, high-cliffed islands, covered with low, dense clumps of trees. They sit amidst the peaceful blue water. We’re not in the open ocean. I hate describing shots like this, personally. I hate it, it’s just–
John: People skip it.
Craig: Yes, because like–
John: Because nothing happens.
Craig: Right, the truth is, in a shot like this, just looking at it as a picture, because the drone isn’t moving, this isn’t a moving picture for us, but would be in whatever it is, it just feels like a tourist, like a pamphlet cover. If it were moving, then maybe something would be happening, but really, it’s just sort of establishing.
John: Yes, it is establishing. Any more thoughts? Megana?
Megana: Okay, say this is the first shot of your movie, and you are establishing tone through this, there’s something so glossy about this image. It makes me feel like this is going to be like a fun rom-com or a screener sort of thing.
John: Yes, I feel like Meryl Streep is going to be singing a song at the edge of one of these cliffs.
Megana: I was just going to ask, like, how you guys would describe this image to set up the tone of that.
Craig: I wouldn’t. This is not to me, like you can’t set up the tone of a movie with this, because you might as well just say opening, fairly conventional shot of beautiful islands. [laughter] This is going to be one of those. You don’t want to do that, you don’t want to undermine your own cause.
John: Craig, I’ll say, like, if you’re talking though about bright, joy– I don’t want to say joyful sunlight, but a sense of, like, it’s bright and sunny and fun and poppy, that feels like a certain thing. Describing the weather and the tone and the mood, because these same islands in the middle of a rainstorm would feel very different and feel very dark. Establishing the tone of a place, you can do.
Craig: I would want to connect that to people.
John: Yes, I agree.
Stuart: It feels to me like this is the flyover shot before we get to the layer of the bad guy in an Austin Powers, like a parody of a spy movie.
Craig: To me, I feel like this is midway through a rom-com, they’ve arrived at this beautiful lagoon. Then this is the shot revealing how beautiful it is, although there are no boats here. Who the hell even knows? [laughs] I don’t know.
Stuart: In any of those contexts, there are different ways to do a one-line, quick establishing. If it’s a parody of a spy movie, I’d say the craggy cliffs of a Windows default background. If it were a rom-com, I’d say uninhabited seas, we might be the only people for miles. One, it doesn’t even go on the line two, but either way, quick and snappy.
John: Everyone thinks this is something funny or it’s a rom-com. It’s not, it’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Screenplay by Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely.
Craig: This is why we were struggling. This isn’t even on earth.
John: Yes, it’s not.
Craig: This is Narnia, you guys. Really, the way I would describe this is, Narnian Islands in the great whatever sea. Beautiful Narnian Islands.
John: Cerulean seas, yes.
Craig: Yes, it’s Narnia.
John: It’s Narnia, dude.
Craig: Of course.
John: Of course. All right, we’ll be getting back to Narnia with Greta’s new movie. I’m excited to see that happening. All right, next setting. Speaking of villain’s lair. In the shot we’re seeing, there’s a very overcast, a storm, but we’re seeing this, I guess we can call it brutalist, but brutalist modernist building that it’s all concrete and glass. We’re seeing soldiers or police people approaching the front doors of it. How do we talk about this? To me, it feels like a Tetris piece that’s turned into a house. I think you want to talk about the square angles of it all. It feels like some sort of discarded piece of a puzzle.
Craig: To me, this would be all about the movement. A single file line of SWAT team members move guns out, pointed forward towards the glass wall of an angular, concrete, and glass modern home, two stories, sitting in the middle of this absurdly perfect lawn under gray skies. The house is actually not– it’s John Wick house, basically. It’s like a smaller John Wick house. Oh, actually, there’s a whole other row of soldiers. Sorry, there are two lines of soldiers. It’s hard to tell because the other ones were blending into the background.
Yes, I would just say SWAT soldiers in two streaming single-file lines move towards an angular concrete and glass home.
John: Yes. I might also, clad entirely in black. There’s something futuristic about just how black and minimalist the police officers themselves are. Megan, Megana, Stuart, other thoughts on describing this shot?
Megan: I got to go talk about that hedge. It’s extremely perfectly manicured.
John: Yes, it’s all straight lines in this space. All right, let’s show what this is from. Mickey 17, written by Bong Joon Ho.
Craig: They haven’t seen it.
John: Yes, I saw it and it’s a little, I don’t remember the shot in the movie, but it is delightful, and it feels of like a part of the movie.
Craig: It’s on earth. It’s not on Narnia, so it’s fair.
John: This one is on earth, and it looks like– What we’re looking at is a shot of what seems to be a Middle Eastern city. It is all tan, multi-story buildings jammed incredibly tight together. This is a very long lens that is making everything seem incredibly compressed. Buildings nearly fill the frame with just a tiny strip of white sky at the summit of this. Hey, if you put this shot in a movie, we know we’re someplace Pacific in the world. I do like this as an establishing shot. How else would you describe this? What’s interesting to say about this?
Craig: One road, there’s one road.
John: A single multi-lane road bisects an incredibly dense city of all yellow concrete buildings.
Craig: What city is it? That’s what I would do. I would say, da, da, da, and then point out a compact sprawl of hundreds of squat yellow buildings. They all look the same.
John: Yes, the uniformity of it is, I think what’s so striking about the image. What was this from, Drew?
Drew: This is from War Dogs.
Craig: Oh, yes. My boy, Todd Phillips.
John: Do you know what city this is supposed to be, Craig? I feel like this is probably Jordan, maybe?
Craig: I can’t remember, I’m going to guess Middle East. I don’t know where it was set versus where they shot it, but sounds right.
John: Great, but that was fun. We’ve never done that on our show before, and I liked it as an exercise to go through this. Let’s do some listener questions. We have some listeners who have joined us on the Zoom, and so bring them on. I’ll have them ask their question. All right, first we have Eddie.
Craig: Eddie.
Eddie Hamilton: Hello. My name’s Eddie Hamilton from London. I’m a film editor. I’ve listened to every single episode of Scriptnotes since the show started.
John: Incredible.
Eddie: I started around episode 40, and I listened to the back and listened every week. It’s the only podcast to listen to every week. My question is, John and Craig, please, would you briefly discuss your experiences of rewriting and restructuring your own scripts and advising other filmmakers while in post-production? Editing is the final rewrite. Every movie I’ve cut has been refined enormously once the shoot is over, and the editorial adventure begins after the first assembly, and I would love to hear your perspective on this, please.
John: Yes, it’s a great question, Eddie. My experience with movies, specifically in post, where I’ve not directed the thing, generally I’ve gotten them up to production, and then I’ve walked away and done other things. Then I’ve come back, and I’ve seen that first assembly, that first cut or first audience screening, and I find where I’m most helpful is coming in with a set of notes that is really responding to the movie that I saw, that it has a memory of what the intentions were behind those things, but it’s not trying to get us back to the script that I wrote.
It’s really reflecting, this is the experience of watching the movie now. This is where I was curious, where I got confused. These are the opportunities I see, and I try to be the first person with the most clearest notes. I give those to the director or the producer. They agree with what they agree with, and then they bring those to the editor and start working on the next cut.
Eddie: Are you always invited in?
John: I am not always invited in. In the movies that have turned out well, I’ve basically always been invited in to do that function, and I feel like in many cases, like on Go, I was there for every frame shot, but in movies where I wasn’t, like Big Fish, being able to have some fresh eyes was so important because I could have the memory of, like, this was the intention, but this is what I’m actually seeing was really helpful because editors, obviously, they’re finding all this footage. They know what they have and what they don’t have.
I’m just looking at sort of, here’s what I’m seeing. Here’s where I’m engaging. Craig.
Craig: Actually, I was talking about this last night with– I did an event with Tim Good, who is one of our editors on The Last of Us and is yet again nominated for an Emmy, and we talked about this very thing. Once I get into the edit, I’m really trying to work with what I know we have, which is, it’s different. There are times where I will watch an editor’s cut and go, “Okay, this scene, I’m not going to give you notes on this scene. I’m going to give you the script back, read it. Go back to the script now, because you edited what you saw, but the script had more information.”
I want you to go back and conform this, not moment by moment, but feeling by feeling, speeds, adjustments, tempos. It’ll give you a sense of when to get close, when to further back, and then we’ll go from that. Usually, it’s pretty close. What you’re talking about, Eddie, that does happen sometimes, is you will watch and you’ll go, “Okay, structurally, our theory was incorrect.” I’ll give you an example. Our second episode of season two, for which Tim is nominated for an Emmy, initially, there’s this battle that’s taking place at Jackson, and then there’s this encounter that’s happening in a ski lodge.
We go back and forth between them a few times, and what we found was once Kaitlyn Dever says to Pedro Pascal, “I know who you are, and I’m going to kill you,” we can’t leave. We really can’t leave, and so we did some restructuring there, which worked, and there’s a lot of problem-solving to that, and it’s a joy because you understand you’re doing the right thing. You have to be as open to the new possibilities as you can be, and you also have to be as respectful of what led you to that point as you can be.
If you can have both of those in balance, then you are able to steer back towards the plan when needing, and you’re able to steer away into something better when you are needing it.
Eddie: That’s great. When I saw that episode, as an editor, all that intercutting and the structuring of the battle, I could feel how hard that was because I’ve done that on many films, and so I contacted Tim on Instagram. [laughter] I gave him a massive thumbs up and said, “Dude, that episode rocked, and congratulations. Just editor to editor, I wanted to let that your hard work was seen and understood, and appreciated from another post-production expert who’s sharing your pain. When I’m watching that episode, I can feel the amount of work that went into it to balance all the plates.”
It was astonishing, it was really great. The episode that you did about giving notes to producers or producers giving notes to writers applies to editors as well, and I make careful notes. I quite often tell my assistants when they ask me about getting notes in the edit and how to respond, don’t lead with your personal pain, all that stuff you said, Craig, it’s totally valid for editorial as well. If anyone is working with editors, please have a listen to that episode. Anyway, thank you so much for your time.
John: Thank you so much for listening to all the episodes, it’s incredible.
Craig: It’s amazing.
Eddie: My pleasure.
John: Thank you.
Craig: Thank you, Eddie.
Drew: Next question is from Ruta.
Craig: I may be wrong, but I believe we have a Lithuanian in the room.
Ruta: It is true.
John: Ruta, thank you for joining us on this live show. What question could we try to answer for you?
Ruta: Thank you so much for having me as a person with a question on the show. On episode number 626, I think Craig mentioned that accents are a little bit like actor bait, and it can become a trap for them. I was wondering if you know of any production designer baits. Is there anything you’d like designers not to do when bringing your scripts to screen?
John: Oh, it’s such a good question. Man, I could go on for a long time about this. Let me talk about like great examples of production designers who just got it and ran with it. I’m like, “Oh my God, thank you so much.” On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alex McDowell and his team would e-mail me with like, “This is what we’re thinking about for the newspapers on the wall of Willy Wonka’s father’s house.” It’s like, “Great, that’s a thing that I can engage with, I can help out with that.” What you’re showing me is, oh, you really do get, like, who this person is, and that is fantastic.
Where I have had issues in the past with production designers who will take a scene they see in the script and create a whole new setting for a thing that doesn’t exist. Or there was an animated project where I delivered a script, and they were showing me scenes that did not exist in the script. That’s not helpful for me. I think you’re going too far with the world-building. You’re trying to paint way outside the lines of what this project needs to be. Craig, bait for production designers.
Craig: One thing that comes to mind, when you have a script where there is a town, oftentimes it’s a fantasy or it’s science fiction, but there’s some sort of place. What ends up happening is production designers working within the framework of the space that they have in the footprint will often over-design the street. There’s like a street of 12 things, and everybody walks the set and goes, “Oh my God, look at how great this is.” You’re like, “Yes, but what’s down the street? What’s on the next street over? Why is every scene only on the street?”
Suddenly, even if you extend it digitally, the town feels very small. Over-designing portions of a thing that you’re going to be stuck in over and over and over. When we made the Boston QZ or when we made Jackson, I was like, “Let’s not throw all of our resources onto one street.” Give me a little side streets. Give me little alleys. Give me little tiny things that we can do because we’re going to want variety more than anything. It’s more important than the one big “ooh-aah” shot variety. Spread it out a bit and let’s see what we can do.
Sounds like maybe, Ruta, you are a production designer or you work in an art department?
Ruta: That is the truth. I am a production designer, yes.
Craig: Great. You know what I’m talking about.
Ruta: Yes.
[laughter]
Craig: Generally speaking, production designers these days do a very good job of integrating with the visual effects supervisor to work hand in hand with production to make sure that they are building enough practical for the actors to be inside, but also leaving space then for visual effects to complete things beyond that. Poor Ruta knows that everybody in the creative side wants the production designer to build the world, and then somebody from the production manager’s office comes in and says, “You have 12 cents.”
The compromise is always there. That one street B, that’s what I would call it.
John: Last bit I’ll say is that really great production design, and I think the point I was trying to get to in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that it’s specific and that it feels specific to the needs of the scene and who that character is who would live in that space. That is the right instinct. The only danger is sometimes they can spend so much effort to create a character that doesn’t exist or doesn’t sort of mean anything, that you’ve wasted some time.
I would always prefer a specific place rather than a place that is just looks cool and doesn’t actually resonate, doesn’t tell me anything about who the people are who live and work in that space. Ruta, thank you so much for your question.
Craig: Great question.
Ruta: Thank you so much. I love your podcast.
Craig: Oh, thanks. Thank you.
Drew: Next up, we have Caroline.
Craig: Caroline.
****Caroline:**** Hello, long-time listener. I guess since 2020, really.
Craig: That’s a while.
Caroline: Yes, I guess I’ve been doing a lot longer. My question is a bit existential. It’s what do you think of people that leave the film industry? I’ve been working in it for almost 10 years and have found it to be quite detrimental to my mental health and with the lack of routine, low pay, long hours, high-stress environments, slimy, unprofessional producers. I work in posts. I have kept plugging away for the next gig, hoping it’ll be better, but I’m just not sure if it makes sense to keep going on the roller coaster that is having a job in film.
I’m sort of damned if I do. Have you ever had your own doubts about the longevity of having a career in this industry, and how do I work smarter and not harder in this line of work? How do you rationalize it all?
John: Oh, Caroline.
Craig: Ooh, I said brief question. The answer is no, yes, maybe three. The answer is three.
John: First off, this resonates with me because I’ve just been having this conversation so many times over the last few years with people who are like, “I don’t know whether to stay or to go, whether to, what actually makes sense.” What I like about your question is you are trying to face this honestly and look at what is best for you in this moment and what is best for you long-term. You aren’t making assumptions about how things are going to shape up and how it’s all going to be like, that you’re one job away from everything being perfect.
I love working in the film industry, but the film industry and the television industry can suck. Your job is not who you are. Your job shouldn’t be your identity. It sounds like you have other things that probably are considering, at least for what you would do if you weren’t going to do post. It’s worth taking those things seriously. We don’t know what the future is going to hold, but if you’re relatively young in this industry, you’ve been doing this for a while, it’s okay to leave if you decide you want to leave.
You don’t need my permission or Craig’s permission or anybody’s permission, but you need to be able to feel okay about going on because it doesn’t mean that you failed. It means that you recognize it wasn’t for you if that’s a choice you decide to make. Craig?
Craig: Yes, the very first question you ask is, what do you think about people that lead?
John: Hear us. Yes.
Craig: No problem. There’s no judgment whatsoever. The same way I feel about people that were in real estate and decided to make a switch, also. It’s whatever’s– This isn’t like, “Oh my God, she couldn’t hack it.” She couldn’t hack it, would be a thing if you were trying to be a Navy SEAL, I guess?
John: Yes.
Craig: No. This is a business like any other. John’s absolutely right. You can transition to something else whenever you want, as you wish, but I can tell that you– Well, I can’t tell. I suspect that you don’t want to. I suspect that you would like to stay. I suspect that you love it. I suspect that the problem you’re dealing with is the frustration of not being able to do the thing you love in a way that feels good.
We’ve been there, all of us, every single person who does this. That’s in different ways. We have all gotten it in different ways. There’s ways that the business treats you poorly because of your gender or your race. I always like to say like, and then underneath that, because you’re there. A lot of people will just treat you bad because you’re there, which is brutal.
Show business is one of the few things that people are so passionate about, they are willing to bear an enormous amount of bad behavior in order to keep going. What I think is important is that you’ve identified that you have a limit. Setting up boundaries is important. If in your mind, you’re giving yourself permission to go, you will immediately feel quite a bit freer.
See, one of the problems is when we feel trapped, that’s when we feel powerless. You’re not trapped, ever. You can get up and go. Yes, it may mean that you’re not able to do the thing that you really want to do, but you might find that just knowing you can get up and go will give you a little bit more confidence to go, “I’m good at my job. I love being here. This is my boundary.”
What the bullies know is that there are systems in place to keep them from bullying. Those are real. I think you should take advantage of those if those moments come. The difficulty of getting work, that is the cross we bear.
John: Yes, that’s the structural problem of what we’re in.
Craig: That is. I wish I could tell you that there was a moment or an event or a thing where you will wake up one day and go, “Oh, I’m in this business now forever. They’ll never let me go,” which is what happens when you’re good at what you do and you get to that place where suddenly they realize it.
The most frustrating thing is you were you all along. You’re just waiting for them to flip their own switch to get it. In your circumstance, with my guess, I would say don’t quit yet. I feel like you don’t want to. Give it a go as best you can with your boundaries firmly in place. If that doesn’t work, then you know what? There is an unfelt joy that is waiting for you in something else. I do not believe we are meant for one thing in this world.
John: Caroline, one of the things that this is reminding me of is that there’s so many books about, oh, transitioning careers, or moving from this job to that job. They are always focusing on people who show up and go to work at a normal job.
The things that we do, which is scape work and we are imposed or us as writers, piecing together a bunch of different things to create enough of a career, is just so challenging and so different. If you decide that you love this work in post, but you don’t love going gig to gig to gig, it may be worth looking for, like, what are the positions that let you do the things you love that are more like a job rather than this?
You can actually not have to stress about the next gig, the next gig, the next gig. Working at a post house or a place that is like a longer-running thing, so you’re not constantly seeking the next thing, might feel better. I think Craig’s advice, on the whole, I think is really good. Is this resonating with you? Is this helpful at all?
Caroline: Yes, it’s a bit heavier than the other questions. It’s almost quite spiritual in a way, to have to think about this like existential question and to really just be in touch with myself and know what I need.
John: Yes, and listen, there aren’t great career coaches for stuff like this. There’s not an industry for that. I think just having a structured conversation with somebody about, these are my priorities and these are what I’m setting as my boundaries might also be helpful too.
If you can find somebody like that, it could just be a friend, but it’s where you both hold each other accountable for like, these are my red lines, these are the choices I want to make, that could help you as well.
Caroline: Totally.
John: Caroline, thank you so much.
Craig: Hang in there, Caroline.
John: Drew, let’s do one more question, and then we’ll save these other questions for the bonus segment.
Drew: Sounds good. Let’s do– This next question is from Sarah.
Craig: Do you think it’s going to be Sarah with an A or an H? Quick guess– Oh, too late, it’s H. Oh, it could be either. This could be Sarah Hadelman, or it could be Sarah Adelman. I think it’s Sarah Adelman.
Sarah Adelman: You’re correct. Jew, H, you got to go do it.
Craig: Jew.
Sarah: Yes.
Craig: Jew knows Jew. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to our live show. What question can we try to answer for you today?
Sarah: Sure. I’m Sarah. I’m a stand-up comedian and writer, and I finally sent my first feature script to my lit manager, and she gave me really helpful notes. One of the biggest ones will require redeveloping the male love interest for my female lead.
I originally wrote him as a super naive, big-eyed guy from the Midwest who’s intimidated by my spunky female girl. She has suggested that I change him to be a little cooler so we can root for him, a little less pathetic, for lack of a better term. I really want to make this change, but I’ve lived with this man in my head for a year as I wrote the script.
Should I give him a new name and just totally rewrite him? How do I let go of the original person? How do I make sure that I’m not just adding new traits to someone who already existed, so it becomes like a caricature? How do I deal with that I’m going to miss him even though I want him?
John: Who gave you this note? Was it your agent, you said?
Craig: Literary manager.
John: Manager?
Craig: Yes.
Sarah: Sorry, Craig.
John: Yes.
Craig: Yes, it’s okay.
John: You know where this is going?
Sarah: I know. I love her.
John: Fire the manager.
Craig: No, you don’t have to fire her.
John: Sarah, you think this note is actually the right note for the script. You think it actually will improve the script. That’s all that matters. No matter where it came from. She thinks it’s the right choice for it.
My instinct, Craig, is she needs to rename the character because otherwise she’s going to try to be gluing things onto the existing character that she already wrote. I think she needs to create a clean space in her head for who this new character is. What’s your instinct?
Craig: There’s something about this character that matters to you. There was something about this character that made him your instinct to pair with her. There’s something about her, therefore, that is relevant here. Get to that. Figure out what that is. That something, hopefully, you can preserve. Also, you don’t need to say goodbye to this guy. You’re making a new guy. What’s this character’s name currently?
Sarah: Milo.
Craig: Milo. Let’s say you’re going to make a new character called Adam. Your female lead, her name is?
Sarah: Katerina.
Craig: Katerina goes over to Adam’s house, and he’s just got to go quickly deal with his idiot brother, Milo, who’s there, and who they can talk about and who may– You know what I’m saying? He doesn’t have to go away. If there’s value to him there, then keep it.
I guess that’s really what I’m getting to, is don’t ignore what your instincts were. They were your instincts for a reason. Follow that thread as you do, but also then really do think, hey, who is this other guy, and how can I get as attached to him and as protective of him because of the way his purpose interacts with hers?
John: My suspicion, though, is, Sarah, you will fall in love with this new guy, too. The old guy’s like, oh yes, I learned a lot from him, but this is the right guy to be in this movie relationship now. I think it’s a really smart question, though, because it shows that you’re thinking about what your intentions are, but you’re also thinking about what’s actually working.
That’s the crucial cycle that we’re going through is rewriting it’s really recognizing what worked, what didn’t work, and how to move forward, and not being too precious about the things you loved. Good luck.
Sarah: Thanks, guys.
John: You got this.
Sarah: I love you.
Craig: Thanks.
Sarah: I really love you.
Craig: We love you too.
John: Thank you. Big hugs. All right. My one cool thing is a thing that’s going to seem so obvious, but for folks who are not working in the film industry or theater, you might not know about spike tape. I want to sing the praises of spike tape. Spike tape are these little narrow colored tapes. We use them on film sets and on stage to mark where things belong on stage or on the set.
It could be actors’ marks. It could be where things are placed. You put it down, you take it up. It’s a really stiff tape. It doesn’t leave bad marks, but have some of these around the house because there are things you want to label.
We just did it for, we’re repainting and redoing a bunch of the windows. That’s the noise you hear in the background. We marked this purple tape is for the screens to go in these places. It’s just useful when you need to identify things, and you can write on it. It’s smart stuff. It’s a spike tape. It’s just delightful. You will find yourself using it all the time.
Craig: I had no idea that was– I just called it marking tape because the AC would just come with this marking tape to mark stuff.
John: I’ve always called it spike tape.
Craig: Spike tape.
John: I find it just incredibly useful. I love it.
Stuart: A store on Magnolia and Burbank that has the rainbow of every imaginable color.
John: That’s what you want. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the cheapo Amazon version. I love– God, Megan, I remember when we went to the– We had to get a special light for one of our live shows.
We had to go set up an account to get a light for one of our live shows. It was so fun to be in a place that just had like all the film stuff you could ever want. It’s so great. All the supplies.
Craig, what’s your one cool thing?
Craig: My one cool thing this week is Bridge Base Online. I don’t know if any of you play Bridge.
John: I don’t. Tell us about Bridge Base.
Craig: I’ve played Bridge in the past, and I loved it. My wife and I would play with her parents. We can’t play with them anymore because they’re dead.
John: Yes, it’s hard.
Craig: It just doesn’t work well. They were great Bridge players. They were competitive Bridge players in New York in the 60s, like ranked and everything. They were really good. Melissa and I were more like, we learned in college, and we would play. There was like a bunch of people in our little eating clubs, which is a stupid Princeton term, that we’d play Bridge.
I played easy Bridge. I learned quite a bit playing with my in-laws. Melissa and I haven’t played forever. The thing about Bridge is you need four people. It is a fantastic game. It’s a game that is very simple to understand in terms of the rules, but all the complexity and joy is in the bidding and the strategy.
There is a website called Bridge Base Online that is just this massive venue for, you can play against the computer, you can play 1,000 hands, you can do practice sessions, you can learn bidding conventions. You can also play pickup games with about 14 trillion people. The reason I started looking back at this is because Melissa’s been playing a lot herself on her phone.
Then our friend, Dave Shukan, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, puzzle master, lawyer extraordinaire, and exceptional bridge player, no surprise, had been talking to us. He’s been playing quite a bit himself. If you are interested in learning how to play Bridge, or you just feel like doing a little solo practice, bridgebase.com.
John: I love it.
Craig: Yes.
John: That is our show for this week. It’s produced, as always, by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Oh, thank you, Matthew Chilelli, right there. Matthew, for this week’s outro, pick one of your favorite ones from the past, one of the ones you’ve done, and let’s play that again.
Craig: One of yours.
John: One of yours. It has to be one of yours.
Craig: Yours.
John: If you have an outro, you can send a link, blah– See, that’s what I did.
Craig: See, that’s it.
John: Blah, blah.
Craig: That was it.
John: That’s what I did.
Craig: I’m so glad it happened.
John: It happened live. 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 like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.
You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes. We have t-shirts and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about in today’s episode. With the email, you get each week as a premium subscriber.
Oh my gosh, thank you to all our premium subscribers. We sent out the notice to them about this live show. Drew, how many questions did we get in from those?
Drew: Hundreds of questions. I woke up with hundreds in my inbox. They were all great. It was so hard to pick.
John: Yes.
Craig: Oh, at least one of them was bad.
Drew: Not a single one.
Craig: Mmm-hmm.
Drew: Mmm-hmm.
John: We’re going to be answering a few more of those live in the bonus segment for premium members. We’re also holding on to those questions because so many of them were so good, we’ll save them for future episodes.
The one coolest thing, so at least four of the coolest things are already on this Zoom right now, which are our previous Scriptnotes producers and our editor, Matthew Chilelli. Megana Rao, Megan McDonald, Stuart Friedel, Matthew Chilelli. Thank you so much for all your hard work on this.
Drew, thank you so much for your hard work every week on this show. You guys are the best. Thank you everybody who watched us live on YouTube. That’s so exciting. Bye, guys.
[Bonus Segment]
John: Let’s answer another question, if we can.
Craig: Yes.
Drew: Okay. We have Ben Adams coming up.
John: What a great name. Ben Adams.
Craig: Ben Adams.
John: It feels like a founding father, a merged founding father.
Craig: Founding father’s ne’er-do-well brother.
John: That’s what it is.
Ben Adams: That’s exactly right. Funny, because I always get picked for jury duty with that name, because I’m like a founding father’s name.
John: Yes. That’s good stuff.
Craig: I’d pick you.
John: Ben, what kind of question might we be able to answer for you today?
Ben: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m so thrilled. My question is, a little preface here, I’m going to be shooting a short film rom-com next month with some friends. My script, I feel like, is ready, but I keep hearing things about having alt lines or alternative lines on set.
I have so little experience with that, and so I want to know how many alt lines are good to have for jokes. How many is too many? I want to give my actors room to improvise, but at the same time not lose the meaning of the scene. I just am trying to figure out a good middle ground of how many to have on set.
John: That’s a great question. We had Brittany Nichols on the show a while back, and she was talking about Abbott Elementary. They do come to set with like a whole series of alt lines they’ll go after they’ve gotten through a take, and they’ll practice other things for specific stuff to replace.
I think it’s good for you to have those in your back pocket. I wouldn’t share them with your actors ahead of time. I would say really look at what’s happening in front of the lens in the moment before you change setups, and then see what feels good to explore.
That’s a chance for you to, okay, here are some things I’m thinking. Let’s see if any of these work or land, and then that opens the door for them to try some different things themselves, in the Apatow sense of, you shoot a couple clean and then you get messy. Craig, what’s been your experience with alt lines?
Craig: Never wrote them for the comedies. When I was working, like for instance, on the Hangover movies, Todd and I would write the lines we wanted to hear. Then on the day, first of all, you’re going to have funny actors, and you’re also going to feel things, right?
You may feel in the moment like, eh, it’s not quite working, is it? Then you just do a little powwow. What would be better? Or why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try that? An actor may just toss something out in the moment. You’re like, “Ooh, that was great.”
Todd and I used to have Zach Galifianakis repeatedly would come up with the best lines after we had turned around and the camera wasn’t on him, and we’re like, “Zach, got to go do this, too, when the lens is pointing at you.”
Also, a guy like Zach, it’s every take, he could have a new line that’s amazing. You find those there. There’s something that is so wonderfully spontaneous about those. If you prepare them– First of all, you’re inviting people to go, “Well, I don’t want to say this, but I will say that.” Remember also, lines interact.
John: Yes, totally.
Craig: If somebody is going to get an alt here, the response is going to be different. We would let that happen on the day.
John: Here’s what I think, going back to the Abbott Elementary example, when she has alts for things, when a person has a funny name for a thing or a funny thing they call the other person, having alts for that snipers those comments, because then, it’s not inviting a different response back on the other side.
It’s a little more clean. You can see what works. I would say on your list of priorities for what you should be thinking about going into this rom-com shoot, it’s pretty low on that list of priorities. Really think about all the other stuff and making sure that you have all the materials to make the best possible scene.
Craig: Agreed.
Ben: I have my shot list, my storyboards, my script. I have all my actors, and everyone agreed to do it for zero dollars, which is great. I have good friends. I called in all my favors. Really quickly, I invited my friend, Tom, who’s now a SAG actor. He was starring it, but he’s like, “Sorry, you got to pay me now.” I go, “Oh, do you still want to come on set and be funny?” He goes, “Sure.” He’s going to maybe help me riff. Do you recommend that? Is that cool?
John: There are people who that works out great for. Behind the scenes on a lot of the Apatow movies, they were just finding people around who just did stuff. If your friend’s helping you, great. If you’re finding it’s not actually helping and it’s slowing stuff down, you can send your friend away, or you can go grab pizza or something.
Craig: That said, ethical point of view, if he’s in the Writer’s Guild, no. If you’re a Writer’s Guild member, you can’t work for free. You can’t work for free.
Ben: Okay. Got it. Yes. As far as I know, he’s not. He just got his SAG card, and this was like– We were talking about doing it together. Then he said, “Hey, sorry, I got this feature,” and I’m like, “Oh, okay, cool. Let’s do it right.” I’m still figuring that out because I’m new. Thank you all so much. This was such a thrill. This kind of thing makes me a guest, right?
John: Yes, you’re now a guest on Scriptnotes.
Craig: Yes.
Ben: All right. Thanks, all. Appreciate you.
Drew: Two more. Next one is from Katie. Hello, Katie.
****Katie:**** Hello. Hi. Thank you guys for having me on.
John: Thank you very much for coming on and for waiting to ask your question. What can we help you with?
Katie: I was wondering, how do you guys, with your fingers in so many pies being projects at once, how do you handle working on multiple projects? Whether you have something that you’re pitching while you’re working on something being developed while you also are in production or even distribution on another project, how do you find brain space to not forget about one?
John: It’s a great question. Increasingly, I’ve had a bunch of stuff recently that I’ve had to. On a given day, I may be pitching on one project, having a meeting about a different project, and writing the other thing that I’m writing. It can be tough to switch gears, except they’re all in clean lanes.
I try to prioritize, this is the thing I’m writing, I need to block out this time to actually do productive work. The stuff that I’m pitching on or meeting on, I find in the half hour before thing, I can get my brain back up to speed on what that thing is. I’ll go back through the notes, find the stuff, and get myself there.
I’ve said this on the podcast many times, I’m sure, over the years, but with a new project, I’ll try to make myself a playlist in music for, like, these are the songs that remind me about it. Sometimes playing that will also get me back in the mood for something.
There’s times where it’ll be like two months since I’ve thought about this thing. Hearing those tracks gets me excited about it again and reminds me like, “Oh, that’s right, this is what this project feels like.” Craig, you’ve had to do this.
Craig: Sure. There are some people who really are producers at heart, and they love working on lots of things at once, because there is an entrepreneurial aspect to their character. There are other people who are a bit more monk-like, I think.
John: I think you’re monk-like, I’m more produce-y, yes.
Craig: Yes. I’m a full focus-on-a-thing guy. I do still– There are things that I help develop with other writers and filmmakers. When it comes to what I’m doing, I can write one thing at a time, really, because I put everything of myself in it, 100%, all the way tunnel vision-y. That’s just one of the ways that our mental architecture is expressed, and everybody’s is different.
If you find yourself really struggling to do that, it may just be that your brain is attuned to the narrow lane. There’s nothing wrong with that. You just follow the path of least resistance because it’s hard enough. Why make it harder by moving against? If you’re a righty, don’t throw a ball with your left hand.
John: It’s such good general advice, is so much of this is recognizing what are your patterns and not trying to label those as bad habits or something like, no, this is just how stuff works for me. The first couple of projects you’re writing, you’re still learning what actually works for you.
Sure, try some different things, see what– Maybe you write first thing in the morning, maybe you write last thing at night. Maybe you are a person who can juggle a bunch of different stuff, and you enjoy that. The cross-pollination between the things is helpful for you or it’s not. If you recognize what works for you, then you can really pursue that.
Katie: Awesome, thank you guys.
John: Katie, thank you so much for the question.
Katie: As a Tallahassee native, love it being thrown out there. Thank you, Craig.
Craig: Felt good, felt good.
John: All right, last up, we have Kathleen, yes.
Craig: With a K.
John: It is with a K. It’s very rare to see a Kathleen with a C. It’s not impossible, but I’ve seen very few.
Craig: Yes, there’s not a lot of Cathies. Kathy, you’ll see.
John: Kathy, a lot, for sure.
Craig: Yes, but no, Kathleen, I agree.
John: Hello, Kathleen with a K.
Craig: Hi, Kathleen with a K.
Kathleen: Hello from the Jersey Shore.
Craig: Hey, what part, where?
Kathleen: I’m in Ocean City right now, but–
Craig: Nice.
Kathleen: Yes.
Craig: Freehold.
Kathleen: Thank you, guys. I’m a longtime fan of the show.
John: We really appreciate you being here. Thank you for joining us.
Kathleen: Thank you for having me, John. I appreciate it. This is a question I have about options. I’m a novelist. I’m not a bestseller. I’ve had a couple of projects optioned in the past. I never expect anything to get made. I’m just happy to have interest from Hollywood. My last project was optioned in 2022 for about two years.
Then, around the same time, Netflix was developing pretty much a very similar show over the same period of time. It came out last month. It was our number one show. It’s already renewed for a second season. Then I was told by people in the industry this happens all the time.
I know ideas are not copyrightable. I’ve heard that from you guys many times, and I’m totally in agreement with that. I guess I’m wondering, do studios option projects just to kill them if they’re very similar? Is there a line that’s crossed?
Craig: Not really.
Kathleen: Is it–? Not really.
Craig: Not really.
John: No. It’s not one of those sorts of like catch and kill situations with like sexual harassment lawsuits or anything like that. It’s not like, “Oh, that’s the thing out there. Let’s take that off the market.” I genuinely believe that does not happen at all.
In your situation, I think one of the things that is exciting is that you wrote a book that’s like, “Oh yes, that should be a series.” Everyone’s like, “Yes, that should be a series.” There’s now evidence that would be a great series. It may mean that what happened was too close to this other hit series that people aren’t going to want to adapt your book.
I got to feel like it helps put you on the radar. I don’t know whether your Goodreads reviewers and folks who are enjoying your book are pointing out that this book existed before this, and it was effing great. People should read this if they want a book in the same spirit. I would take it as a win if you can find a way to take that as a win.
Kathleen: Yes, I think I’m trying. I think it’s my family and friends who are watching it and saying, “This is so close, this is pretty much your book.” Then they’re saying, “If you litigate, that costs so much money. Do you reach out and just say, what’s the deal here?” It’s always my time to sit back and do nothing, but–
Craig: Of course, we have to guard against, a sense of passivity or doormatism. We don’t want to be a doormat. I don’t know the book, and I don’t know the series. We don’t know the details. All I can tell you is that, no, Hollywood generally does not option material to not make it, or because it’s too close to something else.
They’re not worried about something that’s too close when it’s fiction in particular. There’s already been something that’s been a series like that seven years ago, and there’s going to be another one eight years from now. The similarities will occur, particularly if you’re writing in a genre space.
Yes, family and friends who love you have a focus bias because they’ve read the book carefully, and now they’re looking for comparisons, and they will find them. When you read a lot of the lawsuits that get filed, it does consist of a lot of like. “This is almost the same. All they changed was this or this,” which you can do.
I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t seek legal advice. Since you’re asking what our instinct is, our instinct is almost always no, that people are not looking to steal your book at all. Was it the same producer that optioned the book and made the show?
Kathleen: It’s the same studio, so it was under.
Craig: In particular, if it’s Netflix, they make 14 million shows. There’s probably 12 other novelists who are like, “Hey, you know, that’s not–”
John: Kathleen, I want to focus on this win you have. I bet there’s a bunch of people who’ve written books who are like, “Wait, she’s had multiple things optioned? I’ve never had anything optioned. That seems pretty great.” What have been your conversations with those producers?
I have to feel like they must feel some validation of, not only was our instinct right that this was a good thing, I want to see what her next thing is. Second question is, they optioned it, but was there ever a script? Where did it get to? Were there other writers? What happened on that front?
Craig: Yes. Was there a script?
Kathleen: There was a script. I opted not to be involved in writing the script because I don’t like to get in the way of something being adapted. I was like, if it’s going to get made, then I’ll stay out of the way. There was a script. There was a team attached to it. There was a showrunner.
John: Oh, so, Lord, they did not kill it. They spent some serious money. I’m sure those people are all heartbroken, too, that the series didn’t move forward. No, they were intending to make that show.
Craig: Yes. If, for instance, they optioned a novel for a low amount of money. Let’s say they get away with like, hey, what, we’re making a show, but there’s this other novel out there, and you said it wasn’t a bestseller.
Right off the bat, if it were a bestseller, maybe they’re like, “Oh my God, we’ve got to go get that out of the way.” Then they would have to spend a lot of money on the rights alone. For something that’s a smaller amount, why would they spend a dollar more?
John: Here’s the scenario that I feel is plausible, is that we want to make a movie in this space. They’ve read your book, and they’ve read something else, or whatever the other project was. Let’s get some R&D, basically, and do this stuff.
They’re like, “Okay, we have two things we can do. Which of these two things are we going to do? Who do we like the elements of better? Which one has more momentum?” That’s the one they picked. It sucks when it’s not yours, but you’re talking to two folks on this podcast who’ve had 60 movies not made. We can tell you that it’s par for the course.
Craig: There was a WGA writer writing a script. The WGA also is careful about chain of title. For instance, if there were some sort of co-mingling or shenanigans, then the Writers Guild, the writer of that script, based on your novel, would be like, “Excuse me, you guys took my stuff, clearly.” Then the Writers Guild would say, “Yes, you guys have co-mingled two chains of title, and now you have to deal with credit issues.”
John: The producers who are different producers would also be fighting over that. It would be a bigger mess.
Craig: Everybody would be fighting.
John: Yes, it wouldn’t just be your fight.
Craig: Yes. I think you can tell your family and friends, “Thank you, I love you, I appreciate you guys looking out for me.” It sometimes feels worse when people are trying to convince you that you’ve been done dirty.
John: Yes.
Craig: You can start to feel like a doormat. You’re not. You’re a professional. You went through a professional process. The outcome that occurred is common. You keep moving forward. Your job is to write books.
John: Yes.
Craig: Not to dwell. You keep writing books.
John: Kathleen, it’s a great question. I’m really glad we sort of had this discussion on it. It was great. Congratulations. It’s–
Craig: For real.
John: I’m not just waving it away. For any novelist to get their feelings, not just optioned, but they went and hired people and got a script, and they got a show together, that’s really far down the process and the pike, and will set you up for the next time because I think you’re on more people’s radar because that book went that far.
Kathleen: Okay. That makes me feel better. Thank you.
Craig: Good. Good.
John: Thank you all. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, everybody who listened to the live stream. This was really fun.
Craig: -and watched.
John: and watched, and watched. Drew, thank you for putting this together. This was a lot of new, first-time things for you, so thank you for doing it.
Drew: Thank you, guys.
Craig: Nailed it.
John: Nailed it. This was really fun.
Drew: Thank you.
John: Last time we tried to do this in 2020, man, it was a scramble. This felt really good.
Craig: This was great. We’ll do it in episode 1400.
John: Yes. Perfect. Established. Whoever’s taking notes–
Craig: I’ll be so withered.
John: You’ll be at Harris with a cryptkeeper.
Craig: I could theoretically do it.
John: You could totally do it. Honestly, either one of us could do it. We just need to get the wig appliance.
Craig: Actually, you can do it. I think your hair–
John: I got that base.
Drew: It would work.
Craig: Your hair grows straight.
John: Yes, it does grow straight. It’s true.
Craig: I would just get some sort of curly. It would be very Hasidic.
John: Yes. All right, guys. Thank you both. Bye.
Craig: Bye.
Links:
- Watch episode 700 on YouTube!
- Stuart Friedel, Megan McDonell, and Megana Rao
- Weapons
- The Hunting Wives on Netflix
- Vince Gilligan YouTube video
- Our Back to School collection on Weekend Read
- Play along with People, Places and Things: Woman one, woman two, man one, kid duo, oceanside, house, and city.
- Scriptnotes Episode 399: Notes on Notes
- Spike tape
- Bridge Base Online
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- Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
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