The original post for this episode can be found here.
Craig Mazin: Hello, and welcome. My name is Craig Mazin. No John? That’s okay. Don’t panic. I’m handling this stuff not alone. I’ve got intrepid helpers.
Today on the show, we’re going to be doing question-a-rama. Every now and again, we have to do a question-a-rama because questions start to pile up. At some point, we’ve got to make a dent. Today, we’re going to be going through questions, making a huge dent. I will be as entertaining as I possibly can.
Also, in our bonus segment for premium members, I’ll be talking about how to be wrong. This is something I know really well. It’s hard for people to be wrong, especially on the internet. Oh my God, it’s so hard for them to be wrong. Then the doubling down and the tripling down. We’re going to talk about how to be wrong because it’s actually a beautiful thing.
First, we have some follow-up. Meredith, I think this follow-up revolves around a One Cool Thing from last week.
Meredith Stedman: It does. This one comes from Arabella. I’ll call this one Justice for Drew.
Craig: I’m already against it.
Meredith: Dear Craig and John, you are so wrong about rhubarb. You are not cooking it right.
Craig: Oh, come on.
Meredith: I have some favorite ways of eating rhubarb.
Craig: That’s nice.
Meredith: One, lightly stewed. Poach sections of rhubarb until they are soft. Add sugar. Eat with double cream. Two, rhubarb crumble. Eat with custard. Three, rhubarb and ginger fool. Honestly, this is a flipping treasure of gorgeousness. Four, rhubarb jam. Five, and probably the best, make a rhubarb liqueur by steeping the rhubarb with sugar and a bottle of vodka for a few months. P.S. Use your taste buds. It’s amazing.
Craig: This is obviously somebody who wrote in from the Rhubarb Council.
Meredith: Multiple people from the Rhubarb Council wrote in.
Craig: Now, let me point something out. This is what the suggestion is. You’re not cooking it right. What we should do, oh, and this is so simple, is we take rhubarb, a disgusting vegetable, and we, let’s see, add sugar and cream or custard or ginger fool, or we make jam, which is more sugar, or we put it in a bottle with vodka. Why don’t we do all those things and just skip the rhubarb? All those things are awesome. I don’t need a crunchy piece of gross celery in the middle of it. Rhubarb Council, you need to slow down and back up. It’s not going to work. Not one of these was like, just take a piece of rhubarb, grill it, add a little salt, and it’ll be– no, everybody knows you can’t do that. It’s disgusting. Well, they tried.
Meredith: There will be a lot more rhubarb follow-up.
Craig: Oh, God. What is going on? We’ve gotten ourselves into quite a rhubarb. Listen, this may tie into how to be wrong. One day, I may say I was wrong about rhubarb. That said, I made it to 55. My opinion has stayed solid. Well, we’ve also got some things from the listener survey, apparently.
Meredith: Yes, that’s right. There was a survey. We got 316 responses, all anonymous. Here’s just a few from that bunch for suggestions for thought starters on what you guys should be talking about. Here’s one. How do you find the tone of something? Personally, I need to draft something once or twice until the drama of the pilot or film follows the character logic and main thrust of the dramatic arcs. Then, I can go in and actually write with any enjoyment or flair and make it funny or scary or stylish. Is that the same for everyone? Are there some people sitting down and writing with that confidence of execution right off the bat?
Craig: Well, that feels like a topic that– I feel like we’ve done tone at some point, but maybe we could talk a little bit. This is probably a good topic for me and John to address at some point, which is this final bit. Are some people sitting down and writing with that confidence of execution right off the bat? The answer is yes. The real question then is, why do you care? We have different approaches. I think there’s a good topic here of how to deal with Grass is Greener Syndrome as a writer because I think we all have it.
Meredith: Flagging that for a future episode. What is it like rewriting scripts often daily on the set of TV, film, or stage projects?
Craig: Again, these are meant to be topics at some point, or should we answer these questions?
Meredith: You can answer them as questions. I feel like this one would be a good one for you.
Craig: This is a good one. What is it like? Well, rewriting on the set is actually a joy because it means you’ve figured out a problem and you have to solve it. There was something in a scene we were shooting recently, and I could just tell that once it was mounted and things were happening, two more lines, there was like a little exchange, and it was like, “Oh, we just need one more rule of three.” I had to figure out what it was. I just walked off into a corner, and I made everyone stop, and everyone stood there, hundreds of people waiting for me to pick up something, which I did. A little nerve-wracking, but fun. It’s sort of romantic. It’s like, “Ah, the writer.”
Most of the time, writing is not romantic. It’s tragic. That’s quite fun, actually, as long as you can do it. The one thing you have to know about rewriting on the set is that you are holding everything up, and time matters. Thinking quick is important, and always having your tool with you, which would be your laptop, probably. There is something about a daily rewriting that I find suspicious. I think it may be that some writers really do like to just keep that way. I think comedy sometimes can be like that. Ideally, when you show up on the day, the stuff you’ve written is close enough, but it can be fun.
Meredith: In that instance, when you had to walk to the corner and think of something, how long did it take you?
Craig: It seemed like it took me 19 hours, but I believe it was 10 minutes. 10 minutes, oh my God, if I told you what 10 minutes of every shooting day costs on our show, you’d vomit. It is what it is. It made the scene better. What can I do?
Meredith: This is another one that I think would be really good for you in this period of time. Any tips for navigating life when working on set in another city away from home for a week or months at a time?
Craig: That’s the thing. I wish it weren’t so much of a thing. Obviously, there were always things where you needed to travel because you were shooting stuff that took place in Venice or something. Nowadays, and for decades now, we get displaced because of economics. We go to Canada, we go to Europe, we go to the UK, we go to Australia, New Zealand, Malta. They’ll send you anywhere to save a dollar. Even if you stay within the United States, they’re always shipping you out to somewhere. First things first, you need to make it a home. It’s a tough one. You can live out of a suitcase, you shouldn’t. You can live out of a hotel room, you shouldn’t. I’ve done that before. It makes you feel like you don’t really belong there, like you’re not really there. You need to actually put some roots down, find a long-term rental, unpack everything, put it in your closets, and live there. It’s easier now than it used to be because we can Zoom with each other. We’re all closer together than we used to be. Hopefully, your loved ones will come visit you. You know what? I’m coming up on my 30th wedding anniversary. Can you believe it?
Meredith: Congrats.
Craig: 30th. Thank you. One of the secrets, I think, to making it to 30 years is sometimes you just go away for a year. You know what? The other person gets a break from you, you get a break from them. It’s nice. You don’t have to be together every damn day. It was much more difficult when our kids were young. That was rough. It was rough on Melissa. It was rough on me. If you’re out there living on set in another city, live there is my advice.
Meredith: Good advice. This listener writes, “I have a frustrating tendency to underwrite. I’ll set rough page count benchmarks, but find myself struggling to figure out what to expand on. How do you know how long a specific scene should be? How do you know where to add more detail to a scene?”
Craig: Sometimes, questions themselves are indicative of a problem. I think this question is indicative of a problem. Rough page count benchmarks, I don’t know why. I’m not really sure what the point of that is exactly. I’m not even sure what underwriting means. Does that mean it’s too short?
Meredith: Yes, I think so.
Craig: Then it’s the length it should be. Take Widow’s Bay, for example, the show everybody should be watching. We had Katie Dippold recently. That show is in my mind, it’s like an hour-long drama. We have the half-hour comedies, we have the hour dramas. That’s how streaming works, roughly, except… it’s like dramedy but more tilted towards drama. It’s shot like a drama. Last week’s episode was 30 minutes because that’s how long it was supposed to be. We can do that now. Movies are a little trickier. You can’t show up with a 60-minute feature film. It’s got to be, I think, 82 minutes or something, per German law. Part of this is like, hey, maybe your frustrating tendency to underwrite is your correct tendency to write the length that it’s supposed to be. How long a specific scene should be, it should last as long as it should last. A scene has a point. Sometimes the point is somebody walks in a room, punches someone in the face, and walks out. That’s the scene. Sometimes it’s two people looking at each other talking for eight minutes, and that’s the scene. There’s no way to say how long a specific scene should be. To this person, I would say, you’re worrying about the wrong things. You are trying to exert control through math. This is not math. If you feel like you’re running out of stuff to say in a scene, maybe that scene and another scene are supposed to be smushed together into one scene. Maybe you just write short scenes. I’ll tell you what, there’s no substitute for believing in the work. You’re like, “Hey, this is a muscular 28-page thing.” Show it. See where it goes.
Meredith: Since you mentioned Widow’s Bay, I’m going to bounce around here, actually, and come up with a Widow’s Bay-specific question. This question comes with a picture, actually. The question asker sent in a couple of photos, stills from Widow’s Bay, and then they wrote, “In Widow’s Bay, they put a lot of effort and props that are not directly tied to the plot.” I’ll show you the picture. “Typically, who comes up with that kind of stuff? Is it the writer, the props team, someone else?” The photos are of a board game in the second episode of Widow’s Bay, a game called Daddy’s
Home, and another game–
Craig: There’s also Teeth.
Meredith: Teeth.
Craig: My favorite.
Meredith: When he opens Teeth, it’s just a pair of pliers. Exactly.
Craig: That’s the thing I use to get people to watch the show, by the way. Daddy’s Home is incredible. We’ll include this somehow in our links. Teeth and Daddy’s Home both look like these retro-style 1960s Parker Brothers board games, except they’re off. Daddy’s Home, it’s like a family that’s like, yay, except that Daddy is clearly a drunken savage and everyone’s terrified of him. For situations like this, the writer almost always is coming up with the idea. Someone like Katie or one of her terrific staff will say, “Okay, we all want to do these weird board games. What if one of them was called Daddy’s Home, but it’s a drunk guy? What if one of them is called Teeth and inside it’s just a pair of pliers?” From that point, you can describe as a writer as much detail as possible. Knowing me, I would probably try to describe the game as best I could. For something like that, then, that is made in a bespoke fashion, the art department will work with the props department. The art department is generally responsible for anything that is illustrative. Artists will come up with the illustration. The props department will create the box, the size, obviously the pliers. They will work together hand in hand. Then, weirdly, after the art department and the props department work together, then the set deck department they’re the ones who place it in position and move it around. If you’re like, “Oh, I actually want teeth over there,” that’s a third department that comes in. You wonder why our crew’s rather large. Everybody works together. There’s a show and tell where you get to look at the prop box, and something like that, you would really want to dig into deliciously because it’s awesome.
Meredith: So good. This one comes from Ash in London. “When, why, and how to kill?”
Craig: The worst person to ask this.
Meredith: I love that.
Craig: Yes. When, why, and how to kill? Obviously, I’m going to answer. Episode two. Killing characters happens. In movies, it happens for a very permanent reason. Killing characters typically creates the impetus for the journey to begin, or it changes the trajectory of the hero so that they finally begin to confront what they must need to confront. There is also a third kind of death in movies near the end, which is inevitable sacrifice. The old man disappears. In television, for many years, the primary reason that you would kill somebody is because they were asking for too much money. This is notorious. Either they were asking for too much money, this is on serialized dramas, or they were a pain in the ass, or they needed to be killed because they wanted to go do other things, and the show didn’t necessarily need them. There was an infamous example of this. We had David Kelly on the show recently, and he was a writer on L.A. Law, which was a legal drama that aired in the ’80s. It was procedural and had these characters who would repeat.
One of them, and I don’t know why the decision was made that she should die, but it was like an end-of-the-season moment where they’re in the offices, and she says, “Well, I’ll see you on Tuesday.” The elevator door opens, and she steps into the elevator, except the elevator’s not there. She plummets down an elevator shaft. Everybody went, “What?” I still don’t know why they did that. It’s an incredible death. I’m still talking about it. It’s insane. It’s actually insane.
Ideally, when people are dying on shows, it’s for the reason they die. For instance, on our show, it is meaningful. It is always planned. It is always intentional, and it is there to disrupt the course of the hero’s path. If a hero is relying on someone, they must have that person. That person is the one who makes them feel safe, the one who gives them their confidence, the one who is teaching them, the one who is parenting them. That person likely must die. Otherwise, our character’s too safe. Drama is echoing life. I think at this point, I could probably do spoilers on The Sheep movie. One of the characters dies, obviously, in addition to poor Hugh Jackman, who dies relatively quickly. I think everybody knows that. He dies in part to force another character to confront the reality of death through his noble actions. Death must be meaningful to the hero, to the protagonist. If it’s not, it’s just death. Then once you know, okay, this is a meaningful death, the question of when should be clear to you. The how, I believe they asked how?
Meredith: Yes. They asked how?
Craig: Now you got a lever that you can set in many positions. There are grotesque deaths. There are clean deaths. There are off-screen deaths. That becomes a real question of tone and what you want the audience to feel, and what you want a hero to feel, and the nature of the hero. For somebody like Ellie in The Last of Us, who’s grown up in a violent world who has seen her friends die violently. She’s seen people kill themselves. She’s seen all sorts of manners of horrors. Witnessing Joel’s death had to be meaningful to her, not only emotionally, but viscerally, literally viscerally. It had to be a horrible thing, worse than these other ones.
For something like The Sheep Detectives, these innocent sheep live on a farm. One day, their shepherd is found dead. He is lying peacefully in the grass. You do not see his face. He’s just quietly asleep. There is no blood. There is no trauma, nor should there be. There does not need to be. The fact that he is dead alone is the thing that is startling to them. In the novel, interestingly, he is found with a spade, like a shovel, buried in his chest, which is a much more violent death. We thought that’s probably one of those things that deserves a little bit of an adaptation massage for general audiences.
In the end, Leonie Swann, the novelist, understood correctly this guy had to die. When you get to the end of that, her version of the mystery, which is quite different, it all makes sense in the end, and brilliantly so, but for us, totally. You have to ask, what does the audience require? What would they tolerate? What would upset them? How do you want them to feel? How do you want the main character to feel? Because blood and guts and all that is a tonal choice.
Meredith: Ash in London has a little bit of a footnote on that, too, which I think might be interesting since you mentioned death being meaningful in these different options. They wrote, “In reality, the biggest losses in life come out of nowhere and don’t have any poetic justice attached. I’ve seen this work in films like Hereditary, where one of the characters dies, and the shock of how random it is makes it even more powerful. Whenever I write, the death of my character feels perfunctory and purely there to serve the story. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.”
Craig: That is correct. Random, shocking deaths do mirror the way life often works. The truth is, most of the time when people die, we understand they’re going to die. They have a chronic illness, or they’re very old. Maybe there’s hospice. We understand. Every now and again, somebody just drops dead. Somebody’s just shot. Somebody gets run over. It just happens, and it is startling. It can be very startling when you do it in a dramatic context because you are making the audience also feel unsafe. We certainly– I think, startled a lot of people when Joel died, especially because of the fact that it was episode two. I wanted to do it as early as I could in the season without doing it in the first episode, which I felt was way too, ah.
The problem I think this particular person is having is that they’re saying that these deaths feel perfunctory because they’re just there to serve the story. There’s the issue. Death should not serve the story. We talk a lot on the show about relationship, and we talk about how characters have these main relationships that teach them over the course of a movie how to go from thinking one thing to thinking another thing. The death has to impact that person’s relationship to the point of the movie, to the way they think and feel about things, not the plot. The plot is a function of all of that.
Sometimes people do these things because the plot says there’s a conspiracy, and now I figured out that you’re the killer because this person died, which is math, and that’s fine, but there needs to be something about the relationship between the hero and the victim that matters. That’s the part that makes it feel not perfunctory. As we say in The Sheep movie, the victim is the most important clue, which is a line, by the way, that I stole from a conversation I had with the great Scott Frank when Scott Frank and I were talking about The Sheep Detective way back in the day, which he was a big fan of the book. For a while, he was actually going to direct it, and then it just didn’t get made for a long time, so he moved on. I recall it was Scott who said the victim is the most important clue, and Scott is obsessed with film noir and mystery, and I thought, “Oh, that’s gorgeous.” We might as well say the relationship is the most important plot point. Everything comes down to that. Maybe this person needs to either kill somebody else or ask the question, how will this death change the hero internally?
Meredith: That’s good. There’s a lot of questions about mystery, so I feel like there’d be a good topic coming up.
Craig: Fun.
Meredith: Switching gears entirely, here’s one from anonymous. “I’ve been trying to get a low-budget horror going for about a year with myself as director and writer. Recently, I was introduced to a producer in LA who’s been very gung-ho and has reached out to her network, et cetera. Luckily, several of those people have shown interest and requested the screenplay. However, it turns out they’re not reading it themselves, but getting script coverage from an AI service called Greenlight Coverage. The producer sent me one of those coverages, and while it was positive in its assessment of the script, the content was nonsense. It completely misunderstood the nuances of the story. It had casting suggestions that were entirely unrealistic or misplaced. For instance, I have a 19-year-old Southeast Asian character, and it suggested multiple famous actors who are in their mid-40s, and even if they were right for the part, they would expect the entire budget of the film as their salary. This brings me to my question, is this becoming commonplace? If someone shows genuine interest and puts their money where their mouth is, will they actually ever read the script?”
Craig: I cannot say how prevalent this is. What I can say is that since the beginning of Hollywood, there has always been an exurb around the industry of charlatans, or let me be a little more charitable, schlockmeisters. People who exist to spend $12 to make $15, guaranteed, and everything is about simple formulas to guarantee small amounts of money, they are not really in the business. First of all, I love that they acknowledge this. They’re like, we don’t even read these
scripts. We just have AI barf out something that tells us yes or no, meaning they have no taste or no belief in their taste, nor do they even read what the computer barfed out, because if they had read it, they would have also understood. This just doesn’t make any sense. They’re not reading anything, actually. Then the question is, okay, so the people who would be financing this don’t care what’s in it at all, and there is a grand tradition of this. Again, it goes back to the beginning of Hollywood. I don’t know if you guys have seen Ed Wood. Have you seen the film Ed Wood?
Meredith: Yes.
Craig: Incredible. There’s this great bit where he’s trying to sell this movie to a guy who’s just like, “I just need boobs,” and that’s it, boobs. That was the business for a while, where it was just like, I need explosions, I need boobs, I need this type of star, I need explosions, whatever it is, and then that’s enough for me to shove on a poster and get paid my guaranteed 120% of the 100% of money I put in. That’s it. That’s what I do. It’s all about the poster. This isn’t new.
The fact that they’re using AI is just this new tool for idiots. They don’t care about your script if they do this. They simply care about whatever the small issues are that they know they could check off and say, “I can make money off of this.” Right now, I think, given the success of certain movies, Backrooms and Obsession, lots of people are going to try and do this, but they’re useless. If somebody takes your script and gives it to AI, they’re useless. You can give your script to AI. What do you need that person for? Do they have money? Usually not. They’re middlemen talking to middlemen talking to middlemen talking to somebody. The bad news here is, anonymous, you are currently walking through a bad neighborhood getting offered things by people on the street, like brand new Rolexes for $800. Caveat scriptor, be careful. It doesn’t mean that this can’t work out for you. What it does mean is you’re in a bad neighborhood. The best possible thing would be for somebody who is a little bit closer to the inside of the business, to the legitimate business, which is also a horror show, by the way, somebody more in the legitimate business, sees what you wrote, actually reads it, actually understands it, does the minimum basic work that a producer should do instead of this, which is ridiculous. It’s a sign. When people show you who they are, believe them. Poor anonymous.
Meredith: Poor anonymous.
Craig: I know. Stupid AI. So dumb. I can’t believe people are still like, “Oh, yes, we’ll just give it to AI.” Well, it’s obviously not working. They just keep doing it. It’s not working.
Meredith: That was not the only person that wrote in about that specific service, too. We got a couple.
Craig: It’s called what?
Meredith: Greenlight Coverage.
Craig: Greenlight coverage. Well, I’ve not used Greenlight Coverage, obviously. I can’t speak to the veracity of the claims here. What I can say is if Greenlight Coverage is the best possible AI coverage ever, it still makes me ask the question, then why do I need the person who gives it to them? Why can’t I just give it to them? What do I need this middle person for? They’re useless. Looking at Greenlight Coverage, I personally don’t get it. I don’t understand why people would pay for this. I wouldn’t. I would recommend against it. They’re not doing anything illegal, as far as I can tell. They’re just doing something that I consider to be commercially useless. Again, that’s Hollywood. It’s been going on forever. Before this stuff, before AI, and they’re still out there, script consultants. Script consultants, what is this? Useless. Just sucking up money from people, taking people’s money, and giving them nothing of value back except confidence. Just like when you drive down the street, and you see palm reading, it’s useless. This is palm reading, in my humble opinion.
Meredith: Well, this may dovetail into another question someone asked, which is: how to know if a producer is or isn’t worth his or her salt?
Craig: Well, it would be nice if there were some sort of Yelp rating. All we really have to go on with producers are their credits and their relationships with others. That said, the credits are often misleading as hell. I know from having been on the inside of a lot of things that there are people who walk around saying, “Well, I was a producer on blah, blah, blah,” and I’ve never met that person. I don’t even know them. They did nothing. Maybe they have their name on it for some reason or another. Credits can be deceiving. Relationships are a little more indicative. If you know that they are friends with so-and-so or they have a good working relationship with this one or that, then it’s relevant. If they are in a business that has financing attached to it, that’s always a sign. Always be cautious. Many producers have a singular skill for self-promotion. That is their skill. They are producers because they’ve convinced people that they’re producers. They are essential because they have convinced people that they are essential. They’re the ones who rise to a certain spot because they’ve convinced everybody else that the other people that could have risen into that spot were no good and should be fired. That is a talent. It’s the talent of surviving. Is it a creative talent? No. Is it, in fact, essential? No. There are very few producers who I would consider to be essential to things who are extremely legitimate, who add value, not just because they know people, but because they have insight and taste, and experience. As you enter the business, you’re going to have to mill around. You’ve been to Vegas.
Meredith: Yes.
Craig: There’s Vegas. the Strip is like, ooh, there’s really cool parts of the Strip. Then there’s a slightly dicey part of the Strip. Then you go to downtown. That’s rough around the edges, but okay, fun. Then you go further out to one of those desert casinos. That’s Hollywood. When you start, you’re in a weird border town desert casino where everyone’s just chain-smoking, and they’re telling you their slots pay out the best, and there’s a prime rib dinner, the best in town. You’re like, “Okay.” You got to work your way to Fremont Street, and then to Dicey Strip, and then Good Strip. The more you go and the further you go, the more likely it is, shock of all shocks, that you will encounter legitimate producers. When you are on the edges, it’s going to be a lot of Greenlight Whatever-the-hell.
Meredith: Jeremiah writes, “How long should I research a subject for my story? Is a month of just researching enough or not quite? Is it just purely research, or should I do it along the course of writing a screenplay the whole time?”
Craig: Well, this falls under the general heading of, tell me how many chews I should do of this food before I swallow it. I don’t know. It depends on the project. There is no clarity. There’s no right answer. If it is something that you feel requires good amount of research, do the research. It will only help you. Do that early. If you’re writing a story about the Donner Pass and the people that ate each other, read some books. Go ahead and read some books. Go a little deeper than that. Try and hoover up everything you can that it’s at least close to your hands. While you’re reading it, read it like a writer. Do research like a writer. When I say that, I mean I don’t just sit there and read through books about how nuclear reactors work. When I’m reading, my radar is up, attuned to moments that I think would be interesting to dramatize, that would be fascinating to imbue characters with. Little tiny anecdotes. In your mind, you can suddenly expand that to be something pretty incredible. If you are attuned and looking for story material as you do your research, it will be of great benefit to you. You don’t want to fall in the trap of just researching all year because you don’t want to write stuff. Sometimes I think people do that. Dig in. Dig in and read it like a writer.
Meredith: This one’s actually maybe just, maybe think about this, and maybe you and John should come together on it. Someone wrote in, “I want cool stories about the late ’90s film business.” How do you feel about that?
Craig: So specific. The late ’90s film business. Oh my God. I remember it well. Well, yes, I suppose John and I could talk about it. The late ’90s were actually weird. There was a sense of everybody felt a little bulletproof because of the home video business. Seemingly, you couldn’t lose money. If you made a movie, even if it bombed, there were blockbusters everywhere. Netflix in 1998 was mailing DVDs to your house. That was their service. It’s funny how Netflix, the company that seems to abhor theatrical distribution, was founded on the backs of things that were theatrically distributed. That aside, everything seemed to make money. A lot of movies got made. So many movies got made. Because so many movies were getting made, so many people came into the business. There were, I think, more opportunities certainly in film than there are now, way more opportunities. In television, my guess is there were probably fewer opportunities because we hadn’t yet gone to the explosion that we have from streaming. The network still ruled the day. There was a lot of basic cable stuff that was a little less than. Still, I think it was an easier time for writers. Then things started to turn. I think as the internet began to grow, and then by 2007, also financially, the world fell apart. 2001, there were quite a few convulsions that occurred. The late ’90s, to me, maybe John has some good stories, everybody was pitching all the time. I was going on meetings all the time, pitching all the time. Everybody had open writing assignments. There were so many open writing assignments. There was just a lot to do and a lot of producers. It is interesting how that is a base of a pyramid that, as the years go on, all those people just start to fall away until you get like there are still people left from the late ’90s. I’m one of them, but there are a lot of people that are gone. Weird time, late ’90s. Oh, man. Good movies in the ’90s, though. Great movies in the ’90s because of this. They were making everything with a lot of junk, but, man, the ’90s for movies, maybe my favorite decade. It’s incredible.
Meredith: “How do you deal with notes when you have no leverage?” Again, this is from Anonymous.
Craig: I think the concept of leverage is a little overstated here. None of us really have leverage over the truth. Some notes are just good. Some notes are bad. Our jobs, and we’ve talked quite a bit about notes, our jobs are to put ourselves aside and look just at the honesty of things. If someone has given you a note that is profoundly bad, part of my strategy has always been to ask them questions about it to get underneath what that might be and to see if there’s just a fundamental difference between what I think this is and what they think it is. It’s also, I think, incumbent upon the professional writer who is getting paid to be responsive and to try. You can try. It’s extra work, but then again, you’re getting paid. Ideally, you can go back to them and say, “I tried, it just didn’t work, but here’s what I think is working
better.” Or you can go back to them and even say, “I’m going to show you these two things. Here’s, okay, it doesn’t work, but this one would.” When these people give you these notes, they really are either trying to make it better or more commercial, or they’re just trying to make somebody above them happy. The worst thing for them is for somebody to go, “I don’t want to, or I’m not better.” Just try. I do feel like when a writer comes back and says, “I tried,” you actually don’t want to do this. I am giving you good advice here. Think of me like a doctor. I’m telling you, you actually do not want to do this cosmetic surgery, but let’s take a look at this and this and this. They feel heard. The leverage aspect of it never really changes. HBO has suggestions for me, and I guess I could say, “I’m not doing it, but I don’t,” why? Even if I did, I just think somebody above the person telling me– Eventually, I would get a call from Casey Bloys, who runs HBO, and he would yell at me. You know what I mean? There is no leverage. Good is leverage. That’s really the only leverage you have.
Meredith: Do you have a technique for dealing with perfectionism?
Craig: No. No, I struggle. I struggle with it sometimes. The need to obsessively go through little things. I think of it sometimes as just, it’s neither a bug nor a feature. It’s just part of it. None of us are perfectly efficient machines. We all come with something. I think people who have the ability to write shamelessly can write much faster than I can. They can write more than I can. Then, though, it may take them longer to get to what they would consider to be good. Fewer of their things may get to the point that other people say. There’s these pluses and minuses, whereas I can take too long, I can obsess, I can make myself crazy in my head, takes longer, but then when I hand it over, it is further along because I’ve obsessed over it and I’ve taken more time. I feel like we just have to go with the rhythms we have and accept that this is part of the deal. I do think as time goes on, the experience of struggling with myself teaches me how to struggle with myself a little less. You start to accept your flaws, and as you accept your flaws, you get ironically closer to drifting away from your flaws towards something that’s better. Even then, the perfectionist must be aware that they are trying to perfect not being a perfectionist. It’s a horrible trap. It really is. What can you do?
Meredith: Do you have something along the lines of surprisingly good advice? Is there something that you didn’t believe or advice that you resisted when you first heard it, but it’s proved to be helpful?
Craig: The weirdest advice I ever give people is to learn to type. I think the faster you can type, the quicker your mind turns to words on the screen. You remove a barrier. There’s something about the slowing down process that I think can diminish the clarity of what’s happening in your own head. It can make the things on the page feel artificial because you had a thought that was legitimate and honest, and authentic. Then you have to rebuild it a little slowly. Learn to type. It goes faster. It just flows.
I don’t think there’s any advice anyone gave me early– oh, well, actually, there’s one bit of advice I always loved. It was an actor who told me this. He said, “Sooner or later, you’re going to get fired. Do not let that define you.” It’s true. In our business, sooner or later, you’re going to get fired off of something somehow. I think for a lot of people, it’s an almost unrecoverable incident because it is like an ego death involved, and because we think of being fired as like, “Oh my God,” you failed. The process is designed in such a way that sooner or later, you’re going to be fired regardless of success or failure. They’re just these circumstances that occur. You have to learn whatever lesson you can learn, if there are any to learn, and then immediately get back on the horse. Oh, that’s another bit of interesting advice.
This won’t apply to everybody, but I hope that one day it applies to you. Someone, and I can’t remember who, said, if you are lucky enough in your career to do something where you win major awards for it, you get public acclaim, immediately get back to work on something else. Do not fall in the trap of going, “Okay, now I am an Oscar award winner. I’m an Emmy award winner. I have a this, I have a that.” The next thing must be also worthy of an award. No, just get to work because a lot of great filmmakers and artists got paralyzed by these big wins, and suddenly five years go by because they’re just hunting for the thing that’s worthy. Get back on the horse. Keep going.
Meredith: This one is addressed personally to you.
Craig: Oh, boy.
Meredith: In very early episodes, Craig was adamant that he would retire early. Wondering what his thoughts are on that now.
Craig: Well, that’s going to flow beautifully into our bonus segment. How to be wrong. I am not retiring early. I don’t think I’m going to retire on time. I’m not sure I’ll ever retire. As long as my brain is working and as crazy as this makes me, it’s who I am. It’s what I do. I don’t know what else to do. I like it. I hate it. I’m compelled to do it. No retirement anytime soon. To do what? I’m sure Melissa has a long list of things. I’m like, yes, or make another show.
Meredith: That’s a perfect question to segue into One Cool Thing.
Craig: One Cool Thing. This week, rather than me doing a One Cool Thing because I’ve done them a lot of times, we’re going to have a guest come and do a One Cool Thing for us. There must always be an August doing a One Cool Thing. This week, we have Amy August.
Amy August: Hi, guys.
Craig: We’ve been promising a special episode of Scriptnotes that’s just you and my daughter Jessie, which I think still needs to happen. It would be amazing.
Amy: It does. We’re both very busy.
Craig: I know you guys are busy, but then John and I are busy.
Amy: It’s different. I’m going to say it’s different.
Craig: Fair.
Amy: I think we’re less busy than you guys are.
Craig: You could fit an hour in somewhere.
Amy: Yes, we could.
Craig: Before that happens, we get to have you here to give us a One Cool Thing. What’s your One Cool Thing this week, Amy?
Amy: I changed my One Cool Thing from what I initially thought it would be. My One Cool Thing is background shows.
Craig: Tell me about background shows.
Amy: Maybe this is just my Gen Z brain, which always needs to have multiple sources of simulation. My absolute favorite thing to do is do one thing and then having a background show on.
Craig: Oh, now I understand. The second screen.
Amy: The second screen.
Craig: Great.
Amy: Not to dig on scripted television.
Craig: Dig on it all you want.
Amy: I’m a reality TV girl. I almost solely watch reality television. Currently, I’m watching Vanderpump Rules, the great mess of a show that is. I will almost always, when I’m doing something, have a second screen onto the side playing Vanderpump Rules.
Craig: Does it get in? Does it sneak into your head?
Amy: No, it absolutely does. To be fair, I can’t really do it when I’m doing important things, but it’s just so nice to have because I feel like my brain is always in two separate places at once, and then half of my brain could be occupied with some
bullshit happening on the side. I don’t know if I’m allowed to swear on this show.
Craig: I ask this question literally every time I do it, and I don’t work here. Apparently, the answer is yes.
Amy: I’ll have some bullshit off to the side, and then I can actually lock in and focus on what I’m trying to do.
Craig: Jessie can do this, too. You guys are the same age, I think, and she will have the second screen going all the time. She does watch some reality, but her thing mostly is watching old series or all of Friends or all of Criminal Minds, and it’s just running back there on the side. I don’t know how you guys do it. I have a question for you. I’ve noticed this with a lot of people who are Gen Z. Do you turn the subtitles on?
Amy: If I’m actually trying to pay attention to it, yes.
Craig: Wow. That’s amazing to me. I hear this a lot. People who are Gen Z are like, you watch something with them, you show them a movie, and they’re like, “I just had trouble following the dialogue,” because they like the subtitles. Whereas when I was a kid, subtitles were only in French movies that you didn’t see. What’s going on there?
Amy: I don’t know. This has been more of a recent thing for me, I think. Because in high school, I was anti-subtitles. I thought that they were annoying, and they took up too much of the screen. Now, I like them. I think I’m just more used to reading things instead of just watching them. Even TikToks usually have subtitles a lot of the time. Now, I’m just used to seeing something there.
Craig: You get used to it. Hey, look, it’s reading. At least we got that going for us.
Amy: Hey, I read books. Yes. Every once in a while.
Craig: You read books.
Amy: Yes. Not as much as my dad does, but yes.
Craig: Do you read your dad’s books?
Amy: I’ve read most of them.
Craig: Have you read the latest one?
Amy: The latest one? Yes, I have read that. Very quick read, very good. Very good. Recommend it to my friends.
Craig: Yes, it’s terrific. Well, thank you, Amy. Enlightening. Welcome to the show, by the way.
Amy: Oh, thank you. My first-ever Scriptnotes cameo.
Craig: You have debuted.
Amy: It’s almost like I’ve been doing this most of my life.
Craig: We indeed have been doing it almost– When were you born?
Amy: 2005.
Craig: Yes, I think when you were six. I’ve been doing this since you were six. You’re an adult.
Amy: I know. I’m almost allowed to drink.
Craig: You’re almost allowed to drink.
Amy: Yes, I’ve never had a drink before, so it’s almost my time.
Craig: Well, since your dad’s not here, I’m not going to get into alcohol and how to drink responsibly. I’ll let him handle that parenting.
Amy: He’s pretty good at it, I’d say.
Craig: Well, welcome to the show, Amy. We’ll see if you are a busy person now, and Jessie’s a bit of a busy person.
Amy: Yes, unfortunately, I do have a 9-to-5. It’s crazy.
Craig: You’ve got a job, which is awesome.
Amy: Real adult life is hard. No one talks about this.
Craig: I think we try.
Amy: Feeding yourself three times a day is really hard.
Craig: There’s more. There’s bills and health insurance.
Amy: Hey, I’m on that till I’m 26. I’m not going anywhere. I’m getting that WGA health insurance that my dad fought for because he will not stop talking about it.
Craig: That’s the only reason you use it because he will not stop talking about it. No, it is awesome. Take advantage of that. Well, thank you, Amy. Thank you for coming on the show.
Amy: Of course.
Craig: Hopefully, we’ll get you and Jessie on together.
Amy: Thank you for letting me take up your time.
Craig: Oh, it’s fun. That’s our show. Scriptnotes is now produced by Meredith Stedman. It is edited, as always, by Matthew Chilelli. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg.
The outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That is also a place where you can send questions, like the many questions we answered today. You will find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with the sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing.
The Scriptnotes book, a beautiful orange rectangle, is available wherever you buy books. You can find clips and other helpful videos on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll also find us at Instagram. We are @scriptnotespodcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies, and drinkware. I love that we have drinkware. There you go, for your one glass of wine a night. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau because when you think drinkware, you think cotton. You can find show notes with the links for all the things we talked about today, and there were many of them, in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Cheaper, probably than greenlight.net whatever.
Thank you to all of our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you can get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we are about to record on How to be Wrong. Thank you, Meredith. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Amy.
Meredith: Thank you, Amy.
[music]
Craig: Meredith, How to be Wrong, especially on the internet. People really struggle with this. I understand why. Being wrong is unpleasant. I think for many people, being wrong almost feels like a self-betrayal to admit that this other person, who is obnoxiously telling you you’re wrong, stupid, incorrect, uneducated, that that person might be right about facts, is hard because in our brains, we think they’re right about us. Being wrong doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Being wrong doesn’t mean you’re uneducated. Being wrong doesn’t mean you’re a fool. It just means you are wrong, like everyone is, all the time. All the time. Do you get into fights on the internet?
Meredith: What do you think? I don’t.
Craig: No. I felt like it was going to be a hard no.
Meredith: I try not to engage.
Craig: Yes. Fighting on the internet is generally bad. It’s generally bad because if you’re right, it doesn’t seem to work. It doesn’t change anyone’s mind. If you’re wrong, it’s hard to admit it or change your mind because it’s coming with such personal vitriol. I do think a lot of somewhat famous people or very famous people who have become radicalized internet figures because it all started with a simple, small argument and they were wrong and they can’t deal with that and the doubling down, the quadrupling down, and so on and so forth until suddenly they are some fiery crusader in a corner they never thought they would be, thinking of someone in particular.
Meredith: Me too.
Craig: Yes. It’s probably the same person. Let’s talk about how to be wrong in life, in your home, in your relationships, on the internet, God forbid. I think about this a lot because I have to make, I don’t know, 100 decisions every day while we’re making our show. Some of them are easy. Some of them are difficult. Some of them, my answer is always, “Here’s my theory. I have a hypothesis. I believe this will go this way. Let’s try doing it like this.” I always say, “I’d like to hold space for being wrong.”
It’s important to acknowledge before you start making an argument that you could be wrong so that other people don’t feel uncomfortable telling you, especially if you’re in a position of authority, that you’re wrong. They’re there for my benefit. They’re trying to make things better with their expertise. I want that. I certainly don’t want people to go, “Well, he’s wrong, but no one can tell him.” I want people to tell me. Many times, I will, after doing something, say, “Well, I was wrong. That was not the way to do it. Let’s do it the way you suggested. I was wrong.” There’s no shame in it.
First thing is just leave room for it at the start. You don’t have to come at everything with 100% confidence. You can say something that you believe is true and also recognize the possibility that you might be wrong. It’s okay. On the other hand, don’t presume you’re wrong all the time. It’s okay to have a good gut feeling. “Okay, I think this is correct. I think this is true.” Just acknowledge there’s a chance. Being wrong is an opportunity. Being wrong means you’re about to be right because you realized you were wrong. You’re going to get to right one way or the other. It’s fine.
Certainly, consistency is not the goal. You can change your mind. We’re allowed to do it. It’s fine. There is no shame in it, although we are told there is. The reason that keeps a lot of people from just saying, “I’m wrong,” shame. They feel shame. If you say you’re wrong, particularly on the internet, you’re going to get slapped around. People are snotty on the internet. I’ve been thinking about what the tone is when we think about the bad internet. It’s just snottiness. It’s just snotty people making snotty little comments. It can be infuriating. It can be really infuriating when you say you
were wrong, and they just pile on, like, “Good, let us now tear you apart. You’ve shown your weakness.” None of that is real.
What’s real is you changed your mind for hopefully the better. I think you should be grateful when you’re wrong. Be grateful that you have seen the error that you had made, and be grateful that you have this new truth. Relish that. It is a wonderful feeling to me. Certainly, forgive yourself for being wrong because everyone is all the time. I personally like to thank the person that changed my mind, even if they were obnoxious, because I don’t think I’m rewarding the obnoxiousness. I think, if anything, I’m helping them be less obnoxious because they will realize they didn’t need the obnoxiousness to convince me. They just needed the facts. Explain to them how they changed your mind. It will certainly not be, “Well, you yelled really loud.”
Then, of course, leave space, and this is where it gets tricky, for the possibility that you weren’t wrong at all. After you change your mind, you are allowed to go back again. You may believe something. You may go, “Oh, that’s wrong. I’ve changed my mind.” Then later, you may go, “No, actually, that’s wrong. I was right in the first place.” That’s allowable. You don’t have to be a windsock blowing around whichever way. You’re allowed to have a backbone. You’re allowed to have a spine. What do you use as your North Star? Your own curiosity and your own interest in truth. That is what matters. Your ego does not. Being able to say, “I was right all along,” useless. Being able to say, “I told you so,” useless.
Being able to say, “I am incredibly consistent on this and always have been,” useless. Growing and changing is part of what we ought to be doing, and the only way to grow and change is to know that you were wrong. I would say love being wrong as long as you know you’re wrong. Thoughts?
Meredith: 10 out of 10. Being wrong, love it.
Craig: What if I’m wrong now?
Meredith: I don’t know.
Craig: I could be wrong about all that. I could be.
Meredith: You could be.
Craig: You know what? I just presented a theory. I’m holding space. If you think I’m wrong, please write in and tell me.
Meredith: As they did about the rhubarb.
Craig: Yes. Well, now what I’m right about.
Meredith: What about characters being wrong?
Craig: Essential. All characters that matter are wrong about something. They must be, or else they’re just going to be themselves again at the end. There’s no change. Therefore, there’s no purpose for the story whatsoever. They must be wrong. Not only are they wrong, either they don’t know they’re wrong, or they think they’re right for sure, or they know they’re wrong but can’t admit it. That is essential. Why? Because it’s the most human of things. Strange, especially for writers who traffic in characters who are wrong, to sometimes struggle with the idea that they’re wrong. We all do. It hurts a bit. I don’t know why. This is an interesting question. Why we have shame when we’re wrong? We don’t have guilt. We have shame as if making a mistake or missing something, or not seeing something, is self-negating. I don’t quite, because I feel it. I just don’t know why.
Meredith: Maybe pack mentality, like you’re going to be alone over there.
Craig: Maybe so.
Meredith: Everyone else will be on this camp.
Craig: You will appear weak or foolish. There is something embarrassing about insisting on something strongly and then waking up the next day and going, “Oh, no, I was actually wrong.” Then there’s an impulse to just deny it. We are so all in on avoiding shame that we will, that’s where the doubling down comes and the denials and all of that, because we just can’t, it’s like anything. Isn’t it admirable when somebody says they’re wrong and changes their mind? It’s the most admirable thing they can do. Nobody, I don’t think anybody goes, “Oh my God,” you were wrong
once. Yes. You struggle with it, though.
Meredith: Yes, it’s admirable.
Craig: It’s an admirable quality. Also, saying I don’t know is really important, but that’s a separate topic. I’m a big fan of I don’t know because I have to ask questions of people all the time. A lot of times, I’ll say, “By the way, I don’t know is a perfectly good answer.” You don’t need to tap dance and invent something for me that isn’t true just because you think that there’s no way to just say I don’t know. Totally say I don’t know. Then go find out. Being wrong is unavoidable, so we might as well find the upside in it. That’s the bonus topic for this week.
Meredith: That’s great.
Craig: Go out there and be wrong, everybody.