The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
Craig Mazin: No, no, no, no. My name is Craig Mazin.
John: This is episode 742 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we welcome the writer-director of one of my favorite films of the summer, which has become a surprise blockbuster and the subject of countless articles.
Craig: A few think pieces here and there.
John: Yes, positing, what does this mean for the future of Hollywood? No pressure here.
Craig: No pressure at all. [chuckles]
John: The film is Obsession. The writer-director is Curry Barker. Welcome, Curry Barker.
Curry Barker: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Craig: So nice to have you here. I’m going to go a little further than you. Maybe it’s my favorite movie of the year so far.
John: Wow, that’s crazy.
Craig: It’s not that long of a year. I don’t know. It’s not that–
John: No, absolutely.
Craig: It’s really good. It’s really, really good. I just loved it.
Curry: Thank you.
Craig: Loved it.
Curry: That’s so awesome to hear that.
John: We want to talk about the movie. We want to talk about the process of getting it, but really kind of focused on the crafty things. As we said in terms of the warm-up, I’m sure you’re sick of answering a thousand questions about the blockbuster of it all. The blockbuster is wonderful, but if this movie had made $5, it’s still a really good movie that people should check out. In our bonus segment for our premium members, I want to focus on one of the most crucial things that no one is talking about in Hollywood.
Craig: Thank God.
John: It’s not IMAX, it’s not 3D, but it’s a fundamental part of the cinematic experience these days, which is the popcorn bucket.
Craig: The popcorn bucket.
John: The novelty popcorn bucket.
Craig: I saw it happening in your brain before you said it. You know why? Because we’re close.
John: Yes, that’s what it is. We’ve done this for a few years.
Craig: Very close.
John: We have a sense.
Craig: Yes, ever since the Dune popcorn bucket, it’s just been a thing.
John: Yes, it’s a thing now.
Craig: It’s a thing.
John: We will focus in on what we want for our popcorn buckets for our films. Also, going back in time, if we could create a popcorn bucket.
Curry: The potential of the popcorn bucket back in the day.
John: Absolutely.
Curry: What was the Jaws’ popcorn bucket?
Craig: How could it have been bad? What could have gone horribly wrong with a– I could definitely see an exorcist popcorn bucket where she’s barfing the– There’s so many ways to go.
John: In our bonus segment for premium members, we will dive deep into–
Craig: We’ll get there. That’s the last free popcorn bucket people get.
John: We will pick the last kernel out of that popcorn bucket.
Curry: Okay.
John: First, we have some follow-up that I will actually, I promise, tie into our discussion with Curry here. In episode 740, we talked about competence. It was a really good conversation. We were centered around this blog post by Iris Meredith, and there was a word in there which you and I had never heard of, ultracrepidarian.
Craig: Ultracrepidarian.
John: We didn’t spend enough time on that, I think. You are a person who loves words.
Craig: I do.
John: Try to figure out ultracrepidarian, what that might come from. It’s Latin.
Craig: Obviously, ultra would mean beyond or above.
John: Crepeda. Do you have any sense of crepeda?
Craig: Crepeda. I’m trying to think of other words that have– It’s C-R-E-P. There’s crepuscule, which is a red blood cell. I don’t know if that’s connected.
John: It’s not, no.
Craig: Maybe that’s Greek.
John: I don’t think we’ll get there. It’s sandal.
Craig: Oh, sure. I would not have gotten there.
John: It’s beyond the sandal, which seems really strange. Iris actually wrote in. She listened to the episode, and she wrote in, just to tell us where the origin of that is. Apparently, it comes from this painter named Apelles of Kos, who was getting criticism of how he painted sandals in his depictions of people from sandal makers. Sandal-makers are like, “You painted that wrong.” He’s like, “Okay, I’ll fix how I paint the sandals.” Then he started making notes about the legs and other things. He’s like, “No, no, no, you can focus on the sandals, but not above, beyond the sandals.”
Craig: Beyond the sandals. This is it. There’s a comic book artist — is it Rob Liefeld? — who’s infamously bad at drawing feet? Or maybe he’s really good at drawing feet. I can’t remember. There’s somebody who’s notoriously bad at feet.
Curry: It’s like my characters always have shoes.
Craig: Why?
Curry: It’s like it’s in my contract. They have to have shoes.
Craig: Even in the shower, the shoes. Ultracrepidarian.
John: Ultracrepidarian. That’s the origin of that word. The segue I want to make to is with the success of Obsession, I feel like there’s a lot of ultracrepidarians weighing in here on sort of like, they’re not just talking about the little bit of knowledge that they actually understand, but they’re trying to apply much more broadly to things beyond their actual scope of expertise. It’s nice to have the person who’s actually the expert on making the film Obsession to talk about Obsession itself. There you go.
Craig: This is better than a million think pieces about, “Everyone’s got a hot take.”
John: Everyone’s got a hot take.
Craig: You know what? I will say that one of the things that I really loved about the work is that there is an elegance to it. The idea is not complicated. In fact, almost nothing about it is complicated. It’s so simple and elegant, but it’s so interestingly done that I think the reason– I’ll do a think piece on think pieces, the reason there are 5 million think pieces is because it provokes an enormous amount of thought. It gives you space, as somebody watching, to theorize and more importantly, put yourself in the shoes of the people that are involved. I found myself being both of them.
Curry: I think I gravitate towards simple stories anyway. To me, people that would say, “Oh, this is such an idea that we’ve seen before or whatever, to me, when I got excited about this idea three years ago, I wasn’t excited about a wish-gone-wrong movie. I was excited about the version that you saw. I was like, “Oh my God, I have this idea about this crazy movie.” Even if you were just to read the logline, you’d be like, “Oh, what? We’ve seen this a million times.”
I love stories that are simple because there’s so much room. Sometimes simple is just better. It’s kind of like a magic trick. Obviously, the movie’s been out for a while, so spoiler alert, but like Megan’s death scene, right? Crazy. If that happened four times in the movie, then it’s a slasher and it doesn’t really work anymore. Because it’s all leading up to this moment, why I say it’s like a magic trick is it’s like, got you, it’s like this movie is going there. In a way that a movie that does it a bunch of times, you would watch it and be like, “The kills in this movie were just as crazy, so why was this one more effective? It’s just because it’s more simple.
Craig: You can’t kill that character more than once because it’s too good and important of a character. The more you kill people, the less important they are, and the more they are functionaries of plot. It was wonderful how under the skin we got with everyone in the film.
John: I do want to focus a lot on the storytelling, but I want to give some sense of your storytelling here because I feel like a lot of our listeners can picture themselves in you in the sense of a kid who grows up outside of Los Angeles, outside of New York, outside of the industry, moves here, and figures out how to do stuff. Give us a sense of where you come from. It’s Mobile, Alabama.
Curry: Yes, I’m from a small town in Mobile. Grew up, went to high school there at Baker. I was really involved. I didn’t make good grades, but I was really involved. I was in there–
Craig: Loved extracurriculars.
Curry: I was in the acting program. I was in the marching band. I was in BH1, which was our news where we actually got a lot of editing skills in BH1. I went to acting competitions out in the States. I was constantly doing things. I even started my own film club in school.
John: Classically, you did a lot of the things you could do as a high school student, but it wasn’t like there was a giant film community in Alabama. We made Big Fish in Montgomery. We had to hire everybody from every place else to get up there.
Curry: It was non-existent, really. There is community theater out there. It’s actually kind of a Baker thing. If I wanted to act in film, I had to make it myself. I started really even editing and putting things together at a pretty young age. I think what I really got a sense for is my instincts of storytelling started growing at an earlier age that I think has really given me an advantage. I think there’s a lot of instinct with storytelling sometimes, right?
Craig: No question. There is talent, and a lot of it is connected to that. What is interesting about somebody like you, especially now, as people are coming to their own in their 20s and 30s, is that you do grow up with all the tools to make things, whereas we did not have those. A lot of times what started for us was writing. The first interaction you have with a professional writing is you read a screenplay, and you’re like, “This is what it looks like? Okay.” Can you talk about that aspect of it? There isn’t a lot of practical instruction or do-it-yourself-ishness to that.
Curry: Right. What’s really funny is I never would have saw myself as a writer. If a 12-year-old me were to look up and be like– to see me now and see that I’m a professional writer, and I did air quotes for people that are just listening.
[laughter]
Craig: They were implied in the way you said–
Curry: Yes, right. My 12-year-old self would just not believe. Would be like, “No, you’re not. You’re not good at English class, and you don’t understand grammar too well.” It just didn’t seem like it was in the cards for me to be a professional writer. It’s really about storytelling and the human raw– My bread and butter is conversation and how it can get uncomfortable. Also, I learned a lot from– I did the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. That was a big thing for me.
Craig: Finally a MasterClass paid off. I’ve been waiting for one of these Masterclasses to pay off. Aaron Sorkin, we salute you.
John: Tell me about the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. This is an online class where it’s several lesson.
Craig: By the way, this podcast is brought to you by the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. We’re not getting paid anything. This is outrageous.
John: Tell us about that.
Curry: This thing called MasterClass came out. It’s like this app you can download. There’s a director MasterClass. There’s all these MasterClass. I think when I moved out here, someone suggested, maybe it was even my dad, was like, “You should do the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass,” or something. I just started taking it. I learned so many rules about storytelling.
I took it to heart in a way that probably really enhanced the way that I– the rules are so important. You can’t introduce something in the first act and then not pay it off in the third act. You can’t have something magically appear in the third act that you didn’t introduce in the first or second act. You can’t have all the answers to the equation in the third act. All these things that are pretty important to make sure that you’re either paying everything off or not, that I could really give credit to the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass.
John: It’s great. It feels like, at some point, someone needs to sit you down and tell you these fundamental things or at least point them out in ways that maybe you could have discovered over the course of years. It’s nice to have someone do that.
Curry: Totally.
Craig: The great mystery and magic of it all is that you can– A lot of people have taken the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. I always feel like, even with our podcast, we’re really broadcasting to some group of people that we’ll be able to convert, which is not everyone. You found it one way or the other. You found what you needed, understood it almost immediately. It was like right into your bones and then, boom, out came something great.
Curry: It’s an instinct thing, really. It’s like you understand that if something doesn’t feel right, it’s probably because it wasn’t paid off correctly. Or if something doesn’t feel satisfying or– What is it that you want to feel fully satisfied at the end, but then also the art of knowing what doesn’t need–
John: To be paid off.
Curry: What doesn’t need to– That’s really hard. Sometimes I just want to ask other people. If I’m writing something, I’m like, “Does this matter to you?”
Craig: Do you?
Curry: Right
John: Did you ask people?
Craig: Is that part of your process?
Curry: Yes. The thing I learned is that you’ll never get an answer.
Craig: There is no answer.
Curry: Yes, that’s the problem.
John: Here’s another thing that’s actually different about how you learned versus how we learned is that you were making things constantly. Talk to us about when you first post– You’ve shot something and you’ve put online for strangers to look at.
Curry: I think the first time I ever– when I first moved out here, we were doing this show called Roommates. It was just about–
John: Who was the we?
Curry: Me and Cooper Tomlinson.
John: Who is one of the co-stars of the movie?
Curry: Yes. He’s my writing partner in crime. We do our sketch comedy show together and everything. He’s great. I’m talking week one. We met in school and we were already doing this thing called Roommates. We were just like, “Let’s make something.” We just had the bug. That was interesting. That was getting 200 views, 500 views, small things. Then the first thing that really hit it off for me, like, “Oh my God, I’m a director,” was The Chair. It was a short film I made for $2,000, which is funny enough, even more expensive than my Milk & Serial movie.
I made it for $2,000. Most of that went to the DP. I remember writing it. I had this small friend group where we would write short films, or even some of our friends were writing features. I wasn’t at that level yet, but some of our friends were. We would all gather and do these little table reads. When I had this chair script, I was like, “I’m going to order some food and I’m going to get everybody together and we’re going to do a table read of this.” People didn’t like it that much. I was like, “No, you don’t understand. It’s going to be weird.” I honestly felt a naive amount of confidence because I was like, “No, I’ve got an idea for this.” People were like, “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense.”
Craig: There is, and this is the burden that we share as writers of things that are supposed to be filmed. It’s different. In and of itself, there is a bit of a craft in trying to take something on the page and add a little bit of extra that maybe sometimes is not even necessary to help get them where you want it to be. Sometimes there are things that just need to be made that you won’t get it any other way.
John: That’s a real benefit, I think, your generation had is that you got the chance to experiment a lot. I’ve seen a lot of sketches you did with Cooper, and many of them are great, but I also suspect there were ones that probably weren’t great that you just didn’t [unintelligible]. It is also a luxury because when you’re making something in an afternoon, if it’s great, fantastic, it’s great. If it sucks, you don’t have to show it to the world.
Craig: I can’t take any of my shit down.
John: Whereas as opposed to a movie, the stakes are so much higher, you have to release that movie at some point.
Curry: Right. Totally. That’s so, so true. The experimental phase for me is over. It’s a scary thing. Even if I were to do a short film-
John: The spotlight will be on.
Curry: -the spotlight would be on it. It would be like, “What?”
Craig: And yet?
John: Yet the stakes are actually lower than you think.
Craig: It will all be an experiment from here on out anyway. It’s just that everyone’s staring at you now in the lab.
John: Craig and I both, I think, wish you the most successful failure at some point.
Craig: Fail out loud just as much as you’ve succeeded out loud. You have no option now anyway. Take big swings.
John: I want to point out that we’ve had smart guests who’ve come on the show who would strongly underline what you’re saying. Courtney Kemp was on recently and she was talking about how if she were starting today, she would get together with a group of friends and just shoot a bunch of stuff and learn how to do it because that’s how you do things now. Mike Birbiglia has been on the show and talking about getting a pizza and getting all his friends around to read drafts of things. That’s smart. What I think is crucial about this is it’s finding a group of people you like and you trust who are trying to do the same things. It sounds like moving from Alabama to Los Angeles was how you got that process started.
Curry: Yes. I got lucky, too. I don’t think it’s always going to happen that way to find a group of people. Going to film school, you hopefully will find people that have similar interests. I think, to me, that’s the most important part of film school is meeting people out. First of all, it gets you out here. I’m from a small town. It was an excuse to leave. It felt like–
Craig: Which film school?
Curry: It was the New York Film Academy.
Craig: New York Film Academy.
Curry: It was in Los Angeles. It got me out here. It didn’t feel like I was just on my own. It felt like at least I had something. I was going to school. I had an immediate schedule.
Craig: You had a structure.
Curry: Right. The thing I got from it the most was just the people that I met along the way. I was there for like a year.
Craig: When you decided to come out, whether it’s film school or not, I think you made a choice that a lot of people struggle with. We do advise this all the time. I feel bad sometimes because people will ask, “I live,” fill in the blank, “Billings, Montana. I really want to make it, do I have to move to LA?” No. It gets easier. Then I sometimes, I think we feel a little worried that we’re luring a lot of people who have no chance. Then I think, “But wait, we also have to lure the people who do have a chance.”
Curry: Right. I think you don’t have to worry because the people that don’t have a chance– I hate to say it like that.
Craig: There are people that don’t have a chance.
Curry: Right, but those people will weed themselves out anyway. The people that have a chance are the people that won’t give up. In that case, at least they got to see a cool city and be here for a little bit. Also, you’re right in that you probably do have to move here because it just keeps you dreaming. You have to keep dreaming. If I was at home, I would probably feel like this stuff was so far away that I would just be like, after two years, I would have given up. Being here and seeing Warner Brothers and wanting to be on the other side of that fence so bad.
John: Because when you’re in front of the cameras, it’s right by Warner Brothers. It’s across from Universal.
Craig: Right there.
Curry: I’m like, “There it is. That’s where I want to–”
Craig: Your group of friends, they’re doing stuff. It’s not like you can sit around and go, “It’s impossible.” Then a week later, three of your friends are like, “Hey, come on over and watch the thing I just did.” Now you feel like a lazy piece of shit.
Curry: Right. Exactly. It keeps you —
Craig: The culture is one of making things.
Curry: It really is.
John: Give us a sense of that first year or two in Los Angeles. You’re going to this program, you’re making a bunch of stuff. Are you also working? What was the hustle? What was the grind?
Curry: First I was in school, didn’t do anything. Then I had a job at a burger joint, and then I had a very small-time editing job, which to me felt like such a cool thing. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” It was editing these little commercials for local things, like a local little kids’ soccer team. I was getting hired to edit these things. Then I worked at Starbucks for a year-and-a-half.
Craig: Got yourself some health insurance.
Curry: Yes, right. At one point, I was working on a show called This Is Us for two years. First, I was a COVID monitor during COVID.
John: I remember that. Yes, I remember.
Craig: Hold up.
Curry: I was the person that everyone hated it. I handed the masks.
Craig: You were the COVID monitor. Everyone hated– The COVID monitor. That’s the worst job.
Curry: It was the worst.
Craig: No one likes you.
John: You were on sets.
Curry: Everyone was so nice on This Is Us. I guess I was a very ballsy guy because I would just go up to Milo or Yasu, who’s a DP, and just talk and talk and ask them questions. They were nice. They were nice enough to even give me their phone– I was sending them short films, and so crazy that they were nice enough to talk to the COVID monitor.
Craig: You know, the thing is, if you’re not crazy and you’re not boring, it’s wonderful to talk to anybody on a set. It’s cool. Every now and then you do get somebody who’s a little boring and/or crazy. People actually do want to encourage the next generation to come on up and come along, I think, in general.
John: What I’m hearing through all these anecdotes is that you just have a lot of agency. You take a lot of agency. You’re sort of like, “This is the thing I want.” You’re not asking permission. In a very kind of an appropriate way, you’re saying you’re not waiting for someone to invite you in. You’re just saying like, “Hey, can I talk to you about this thing?”
Curry: Yes, I guess so. It’s just so funny because I never would have considered myself that type of person. I’m very chill. I did have that attitude of just, “I’m doing what you’re doing. I want to–”
Craig: Maybe this is why the writing in your story rings so true because everybody who is one thing is also the other thing, I think. Here we have Bear is the most timid, diffident, don’t-take-chances, terrified, so terrified of success or even trying. I don’t think you can occupy that as honestly as you did unless it’s there. We are reactions to ourselves sometimes. It’s like, “Don’t be that guy. Go be this guy and do that.”
Curry: Oh, that’s an interesting observation.
Craig: Do you know what I mean?
Curry: Yes.
Craig: I don’t think you could write that character that well if you’re just effortlessly alpha. Do you know what I mean?
Curry: Totally.
Craig: There’s this aspect of it. I’m curious, in your writing process, you do something so beautifully in the movie. To me, it’s very writerly. You are able to occupy two people in a scene with two people, and those two people are so wildly different. They don’t know what’s going on in the other person’s mind. They don’t even understand, really, the truth of what the other person’s saying. We watch them, and we want to be like, “Oh my God, can I do therapy for the two of you?” Not hearing each other or seeing each other.
Curry: I love it.
Craig: How do you get to that when it, because it’s just you?
Curry: I love writing dialogue where two people misunderstand each other, which is exactly what you just described. When you start from a place of wanting that, which is, by the way, just already a captivating way to write any scene, honestly, is like one person wants one thing, and the other person wants a different thing. I wanted every single character in this movie to have different perspectives.
It’s so interesting to have Sarah saying, “Nikki is taking advantage of you. She’s using her opportunity of her dad dying to latch onto you, and that’s not healthy.” It was just so crazy from what’s actually happening. What a fun thing to write, that one person has this crazy perspective, but you know as the audience that– Also, I really, really like to write from one perspective, which is Bear. You can hear what Sarah and Ian are saying, but you don’t follow them home and see their story. You stay with Bear.
John: You have a limited point of view, but we actually understand that the characters are locked to the point of view on him, which makes sense. It reminds me of Jon Favreau in Swingers. This character who we appreciate, we adore, he’s making bad choices, and we’re with him while he’s making bad choices. You set up a character in Bear who feels like he is in a romantic comedy, and yet the genre of the movie isn’t letting him be in a romantic comedy.
Curry: That’s great.
Craig: The voice message seen in Swingers is like the comedy version of Obsession.
John: It’s cringe because-
Craig: It’s cringe.
John: -we were so embarrassed on his behalf, and yet it just keeps going worse and worse. That is what’s happened with Bear up until he cracks the willow.
Curry: Yes.
Craig: Again, credit to the way you approach things because I think you never villainized anyone, really. Even what he does in and of itself, it’s not an act of crime. He’s just going, “Ah, I wish.” If it’s a crime, it’s a crime of cowardice, but there was no expectation.
Curry: Absolutely not, which is so funny, because I see people make these videos of like, “If Bear would have worded his wish differently.” Like, “I wish that I–”
Craig: Oh, [unintelligible].
Curry: I’m like–
Craig: That’s not what this is about? If only he were a lawyer, this would have worked out great.
Curry: Yes.
John: Yes.
Craig: No.
Curry: Or like, “I wish I had the confidence to–” which I get that, like, saying the correct thing, but it was a toy.
Craig: A toy.
Curry: He didn’t know it was going to work. That’s the whole point.
Craig: That’s the whole point. It was just this goofy set. It was almost like when he does it, it’s like, “This is how much I suck. I’m doing this.” What I appreciated was how I understood how he felt. I felt that way. I think actually everyone in the world at some point or another has experienced obsession or– what’s the wo– limerence? Is that the word that people use a lot? of wanting another person and feeling helpless.
It’s not even that you think they would want you back, you’re just scared to ask. You know they don’t. You’re lost, but you can’t seem to get out of it. Everyone’s had this feeling. It’s incredibly relatable. Also, I think maybe not everybody, but almost everybody’s had the feeling of understanding, “I think that person wants me. Eh, it’s not going to happen. How do I deal with that?” I was both of them the whole time.
John: One thing that’s so important to note here is that Bear is making a choice and Bear is kicking off the action of the movie. He’s protagonating the way you want him to start the story. Yet, you as the filmmaker are still doing the thing we always urge our writers to do is you are torturing your hero. You are making things awful for your hero. You’re building this moral staircase where he keeps making choices that are reasonable in the moment that are actually worse overall for him and for everyone else around him. To your credit, it works. We can feel your hands doing that. We’re delighted because that is also the genre. It’s the nature of the kind of story we sat down to see, which is fun.
Curry: It’s interesting to talk about it at such a high emotionally intelligent level at this point because when I first was writing it was just raw. You know what I mean?
John: Tell us about those early drafts. Tell us about what you thought the movie was as you were sitting down to start writing it.
Curry: I knew that I wanted to do some crazy things with Nikki. In The Chair short film that I did, there was this girl character who would flip from different emotions. I was like, “I want to do a movie where that’s the whole gimmick.” Then this came to me. I was like, “Oh my God, I can do that chair thing that I really liked with the girl. This can be that movie.” Something that’s really cool about this movie is that it lends itself well to being in the horror genre in a way that other ideas I have don’t, where I’m like, “Oh, where’s the scary angle?” This idea, just the obsession of something, it’s scary. It’s scary to have someone feel so strongly about you. In real life, it really is.
Craig: It was really, I thought, so smart. Even though Bear’s the protagonist, he’s the character we’re following, and so much of it is through his perspective, we do feel through Nikki like we can see, and you give her moments where she gets to come back, where we understand she’s like those people that have locked-in syndrome, which is the most terrifying thing. Now I’m with her. Now I’m just imagining the terror of what this must feel like.
On both sides of it, the desire to love someone that doesn’t love you, we all know the power of that feeling. The feeling of not being in control of yourself, we also know that feeling. If I were to write a think piece about why this movie works, it just comes down to it is a hyper-presentation of stuff we have all felt. We must feel it because it goes to what love and desire is, which are beneath our forebrains. That is where the scary stuff is.
Curry: Right. Wow, that’s interesting.
John: As you were working on this, in the writing, in the directing, and in the editing, where did you find a line between, we are in a horror space and this is a comedy? Because so much of what you’re setting up is essentially a comedy press, where this girl is so obsessed with you. That’s a comedy.
Craig: There is a Jim Carrey version of this movie.
John: Totally, yes. Where did you find moments where you had to pivot between those two?
Curry: The funny thing is that it just hums naturally for me because I’m not– When I was, I think, 17, I was still in high school, and I saw JJ Abrams say on a podcast or something, “The most successful people in life don’t take themselves too seriously.” I don’t know what it is about that statement that just stuck with me. It was like, “Whoa.” It just freed me up because I was like, “So I don’t have to take this seriously?” I know that sounds like, “You don’t take it seriously,” whatever, but don’t take the art too seriously because there’s something freeing about– You watch these horror movies that are so brute and like, “This is serious. We need to figure this out.” It’s like, but what if that was real? Then you would probably be– You would talk different. You would say–
Craig: What if that were real? I cannot tell you how often I will say some version of the following thing. “Okay, but what would really happen?” When I read somebody’s script and I’m like, “This moment is a very interesting moment, but everything that happens after that.” We do this with our– How would an actual human being respond in this circumstance?
Curry: Exactly, man. Yes.
Craig: It’s a good thing that JJ said that, and I love that you come from a comedy background, and there is something about comedy and horror that just they’re like twin siblings.
John: They both revel in being uncomfortable and just sitting in a really uncomfortable place and not letting it resolve.
Craig: Getting to squishy stuff underneath without taking itself– it shouldn’t take itself so seriously.
Curry: Here’s an example. People would think, “Oh, this is a comedy scene,” but the morning after when Bear wakes up, he’s checking his hair in the mirror. He goes up to her, and he’s like, “Let’s not do that anymore.” That’s funny, and people think it’s funny, but it’s also honest. In every horror movie, crazy things happen, and then the next day, the characters just ignore it. They’re like, “Dude, you just saw some crazy shit. Let’s talk about it out loud because that’s what you would do.”
Craig: What would you do in this circumstance?
Curry: Exactly, yes.
Craig: There are kinds of stories where everything just feels a bit elevated because of the nature of it, if it’s a fantasy or something like this. We understand that in Lord of the Rings– I always think it’s funny, when people die in a movie like Lord of the Rings, everyone should just stop and vomit. Do you know what I mean? They don’t because that’s the world they live in, and I get it. It’s fine.
Curry: Maybe you can accept in a world where war is every day and people die left and right. It’s like, “Fine.”
Craig: Yes, fine. In a story like this where I’m basically a kid and I work at a music shop and I really like this girl, even blood, anything-
John: Literally.
Craig: -is enough to shatter you. If nothing else happened except that one night, he would be in therapy about it for a while anyway. I love that you go right to that question, like, what would really happen?
Curry: It’s almost like when you ask that one question, it opens up so many genres. Now you can think about, “Oh, but what’s the version of this movie that we’ve seen 100 times? What’s the version of it where it happened in real life?” It just kind of excites you. That’s why a simple idea doesn’t scare me off. It excites me because I can think about, “Oh, but what if it’s raw and real and the reactions are–”
Craig: The more real you’re going to be, the simpler you want the idea to be. The more complicated and large the concept, I think then almost the characters start to have to drift away from grounded.
Curry: Because there’s no way to push the plot forward without them doing– You would go to the hospital. Okay, well, that’s boring. Now the rest of the movie takes place at the hospital. There’s so many things that do drag– Even this ghost movie that me and Cooper just wrote, so many times we were like, we want to do the absolute most bonkers crazy thing. It’s like, “Oh, what if we killed off this character right here? It’d be crazy.” It’s like, “Yes, but there’s con artists. They would just give up and go home and be sad.” They wouldn’t carry out the rest of the– We’re constantly thinking about that. Also, not wanting to answer anything is such a challenging way to write. Because when you’re saying to me, we understand that she’s popping into her body at this point in the movie. I never had a scene where Bear’s going to Ian and saying, “I think she’s popping back into her body.” [laughter] You just understand it. When you write that way–
John: You have to talk to people and be like, “Did you understand like this?”
Craig: For this particular movie, was there a process where after you make the movie and you cut it together, did you, for lack of a better phrase, test screen?
Curry: Oh, yes. We did a test screening with– I had just gotten with UTA, and they let us use their screening room. Hayley, the producer, put on Instagram, free movie, because we didn’t want to get friends and family. We wanted to get random people.
Craig: [unintelligible]
Curry: It was just us doing it. It wasn’t some super–
Craig: NRG or any of those research companies.
Curry: Yes, it wasn’t. It was just us. We got as random as we could of people, and we all gave them papers and made them write down things. The number one thing that people said is they were frustrated with Bear and that they didn’t understand why he wasn’t making more effort to fix it. By the way, you’ve seen the movie as it is. You haven’t seen the movie before the reshoot.
John: Talk to us about that.
Craig: There you go. You learned something.
Curry: I did learn something. What’s really interesting is that I did the thing that you hear about in stories where I didn’t take the note. I took the note behind the note, which is everybody wanted me to fix Bear and make him go to that crystal shop sooner to find the One Wish Willow and try to fix it sooner. I was like, “Okay, I get it now.” The problem is that I haven’t done a good enough job of telling people that Bear wants this to work.
Craig: Exactly. He’s not ready to undo it yet.
Curry: Yes. That scene that I was just talking about with the haircut, and he comes and he explains that to her, that was a reshoot. Before, we had this other scene where he’s like, “Where were you?” She’s like, “I was in the room.” The twist is that she was on the ceiling. It was cool, but then I was able to come up with an idea of a scene where he’s trying to say, “Please don’t do that anymore because it freaks me out.” Then she says, “I promise you I won’t.” He goes, “Good.”
Craig: She gives him permission to keep going. Here we have one of our favorite and most horrifying things in writing, which is logic. It is remarkable how people need it. They need logic because–
Curry: Even if they don’t know.
Craig: That’s right. We will trade on this concept of, what would people really do? We will get very far with it until we forget that maybe also people would really do this or this. We forgot to do that. Boy, they go right to it, don’t they? That’s amazing.
John: Two examples I can think of on terms of, what would people really do? I just rewatched Get Out, which we should do a deep dive on Get Out. It’s so spectacular. You are right there with your hero in terms of something is really messed up here, and I’m going to leave. I’m going to leave. We’re going to go right now. He tries to leave at the right, appropriate moments, and there’s the social pressures to continue to stay, but he doesn’t. Also, Blair Witch Project, in terms of these are characters who are encountering these weird things, and they’re responding the ways– They’re freaking out in the ways that they should freak out. A lesson we tend to forget in genre is that people don’t know they’re in a genre. They’re just experiencing life.
Craig: Therefore, it does become corny when they don’t appear to be behaving the way we do. Then you get the classic movie theater moment of, why are you going in there? Get out.
John: Why are you going into the house?
Craig: I think it’s great that you had that experience. It speaks to why I think– Anybody who is going to do this for a long time, right off the bat, you’ve said two things that are very important. One is, okay, I don’t take myself so seriously. I take the work seriously. I don’t take myself seriously, which means I leave room to be wrong. I’m not wrong because they say they don’t like something. I’m wrong if I say, oh, wait, I know why they don’t like something. I did something wrong. I see what it is. Let me fix it. That’s a big deal.
Curry: Thank you. I appreciate it. It comes from that JJ Abrams quote from a long time. I’m just like, “Dang, it is that.” I see people that do take themselves too seriously, and it paralyzes themselves. I went to a film school where friends would have these short films, and they would spend years on this one short film because they just wanted to get it right. It’s like, “Bro, release it.”
Craig: There is no right.
Curry: Yes. “Work on the next one.”
Craig: Work on the next one. There’s a paralysis, I think, that happens. Somebody did a statistical study once of Oscar award-winning directors, and the time in between movies after someone wins an Oscar is twice as long as the normal time between movies because they become paralyzed and start to think, “Now I’m an Oscar award-winning director. My next film must be Oscar worthy of my greatness,” and they just stop.
Curry: I mean, honestly, I know I didn’t win an Oscar, but I’m feeling that pressure now. All these awards are breaking. Like, “Better than E.T.” came out. “Beat Beat Blair Witch…” I’m almost like, “Stop. Stop.” I’m like, “Slow down, slow down. I didn’t ask for this.” It’s just a crazy amount of success that that movie is having.
John: One of the advantages you have here is that you already shot this next movie. If you were prepping another movie right now, or that was–
Craig: Or you didn’t know what you were going to do next.
John: Or, here’s this $100 billion thing that you’re going to do… We would turn off the cameras and we would caution you to stop you from doing this. I do think the fact that you have another movie that you already know is going to happen, you’re actually already editing, is a good step.
Craig: It’s in your mind now, right? Partly, you just have to now go through the miserable exercise of forcing yourself to stop thinking about it and to not put what you do now in the perspective of what just happened because it can be terrifying. By the way, it’s okay if the best thing you ever did is– Something has to be the best thing you ever did. It may be that this is not. I’m fully rooting for you that there’s something bigger and better. You just have to forget about it.
John: One thing, you do tend to look to other people and say, “Oh, what did they do?” This may be a good moment to look at other folks who were in similar circumstances and learn from them in terms of what filmmakers you loved who followed up a big hit with another thing that was really great and interesting. That’s the track to follow and not look at the negative examples of the people who just then spun around for years and years because we know them. It’s tough.
Craig: It’s hard. You’re in it now. It’s impossible to see when you’re inside of it. When you look back 20 years later, you may say, “Oh, this is crazy,” because there are filmmakers like this who their first six movies out of the gate are massive and awesome. Then there’s 10 more movies that nobody wants or likes. There are filmmakers who go on, off, on, off, on, off. There are ones who come in clumps. There are ones who just ride along on a B- the whole time. You don’t know. All you can do is what you do in the moment as best you can do it and not repeat yourself. Just trying to not repeat yourself.
Curry: That’s scary. That’s hard.
Craig: It is. It’s scary.
Curry: Harder to say because I want to repeat whatever happened with–
Craig: Of course.
Curry: You’re comparing, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, what worked with this? Why was it resonating with people? Is my next idea, is it deep enough? Am I known as the deep guy now?” All these things that I’m just trying, trust me, and I am. I’m trying to push them out.
Craig: You can’t completely. Listen, I went on many long walks, talking to myself, trying to figure out which disaster would be the best disaster for me to make a television show about after I made a show about a disaster. Okay, well, that’s what I do now.
Curry: I’m a disaster guy now.
John: There was no Chernobyl Two.
Craig: I would be insane to not keep doing the disasters now. Then I would just have to repeatedly hit myself in the face and say, “Do not.” You have to almost forgive yourself for all of the instincts to be afraid. By the way, if you do repeat yourself, you repeat yourself. That’s okay too because, God knows how many sequels I did in my life. I was being paid. It’s all in service of something, all of it.
John: I love this is the most niche advice we can give to a person. After your giant hit, here’s how to follow up the giant hit.
Craig: We’ve had them. We might as well talk about it.
John: Something that would be very practical for a lot of our listeners is, how do you make that first movie? Because you’ve made a ton of shorts. You made sketches. You know how to shoot stuff, but now you have a script, and you actually have to go try to film a thing. What was your process? You mentioned a producer. Ultimately, you mentioned UTA, but how did that all come together?
Curry: I’d already made Milk & Serial, but nobody had seen it.
John: Milk & Serial is found footage.
Curry: It’s a found footage, 60-minute movie. It’s almost considered a short film, but it’s just long enough to be considered a feature.
Craig: It’s a long short.
Curry: Yes, it’s a very long short, which the first cut was an hour 20, which there’s no doubt that it’s a feature. I’d done that, and I’d done The Chair and I did one more horror film, but this producer, James Harris, reached out and said, “Hey, listen, I have this program where I find a filmmaker, and I give them X amount of money and give them basically a shot. If you have an idea– I liked your Chair, are you doing a feature of The Chair, or is that something?” At the time, I had actually written a feature for The Chair. I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes, I have The Chair.” My manager was like, “Well, The Chair could be a cool IP,” which by the way, we’re doing nothing with now.
At the time, it was like, “You’d already written The Chair, why don’t you see if there’s something else for it? Maybe we could have a bigger budget for The Chair, and we could save that, and maybe there’s a different idea.” I was like, “Well, I have this obsession idea.” I’d written the short film of it. I’d had the idea. This was after The Simpsons episode. I was excited about this. I told him, I was like, “Okay, I’ll do Obsession.” I pitched Obsession to James. His response was basically, “I like this idea, but why don’t you write the script?” [crosstalk]
John: What you pitched him was a lot of what we saw in the movie, the four characters that set up.
Curry: I pitched him that it was a movie about a guy that makes a wish that this girl becomes obsessed with him, and she becomes– and I pitched it as a Possession movie, but it was a love story, Possession movie, gone wrong thing.
John: Possession, yes.
Curry: He dug it, but he was also like, “Yes, it’s been done before, but I dig it. Why don’t you write it?” I started, “Oh my God, this is a huge opportunity for me,” which you know what? Looking back, that gives me some hope or makes me feel better that I was still under pressure then, or just a different type of pressure. As a matter of fact, maybe it was even more pressure because it was like, “This has to be good.”
Craig: Oh, yes.
Curry: I never thought about that. I never thought like, “This just has to be good.” I always just was like, [hums], just stream of consciousness.
Craig: When nothing’s happened yet, you are about as free as you’ll ever be. In a way, trying to shut everything out to be that free again is part of the challenge.
John: When I wrote Go, there was no expectation that it had to be a thing. I was writing the movie I wanted to write.
Craig: Yes. Sometimes you just have to turn all– You do, you have to turn all of it off. Everybody out there will drown you. Even their love will drown you. Their hatred will drown you, the love will drown you, the think pieces, the criticism, the awards, all that, which is designed to celebrate what you’ve done, in a way is corrosive because what you’ve done, you did. We’re always dreaming.
Curry: It’s so crazy, humans. I think about this. I’m like, “I’m having the biggest hit ever right now, and I’m thinking about what’s my next movie.” I can’t even for one second-
John: Enjoy.
Curry: -enjoy this. I’m already thinking about what’s my next one, next one, and even next one.
Craig: Okay, so good news, bad news. Bad news is you will never enjoy it. Good news, this is the best, most striking sign that you will continue to succeed. That is the thing that keeps people going. Because the people who were motivated by success, when they get it, they don’t realize it, but they just got fed. They’re not hungry anymore. If that’s not what you’re hungry for, if what you’re hungry for is the next dream thing–
Curry: It’s crazy how it means nothing to me. It drives me nuts, actually.
Craig: I’m really sorry, and I get it.
Curry: It’s like, “This should mean so much to me.” This is so crazy, but I’m like, “Nahh.” It almost just makes me angry. It doesn’t make me excited. I’m jealous of myself. How is that even possible?
Craig: Jealous of yourself, disappointed in yourself for not being enlightened enough to enjoy it. Jealous of the guy who did that thing because you don’t know how he did that, really. Sometimes you’re like, “Did I even do it?” [laughter] It’s terrifying, and then you do it again. This is your personal heaven, hell. I think the people who do what we do, and who do it at length, and who have– everything’s not always a success, but repeated success, this is part of it, is this feeling. I’m suspicious of people who are, “You know what, for the next four months, I’m just going to enjoy this moment.” What?
Curry: What.
[laughter]
Craig: What?
Curry: How are you not thinking, “Oh my God, I got to do that again, and how am I going to do it?”
Craig: If I get to not terrified, that’s a huge day for me. I love hearing this. This means we’re going to get a lot more movies out of you. This is great.
Curry: That’s a thing. I’m trying to figure out what my pace is because some of my heroes, like Ari Aster, even Zack Cregger, even Jordan Peele, they don’t come out with movies every year.
John: I think Zach Cregger’s working pretty hard.
Curry: Yes, he is.
John: Jordan Peele’s taking it at a slower pace.
Craig: Your heroes are not you. Your pace is your pace.
John: Is your pace.
Curry: If I’m not doing something, I would go crazy.
Craig: Then your pace is your pace. There are people who put out a movie a year, some of them famously, and no one who puts out a movie a year makes all good movies. They make a lot of movies. Luca Guadagnino is out there making a movie every 60 days.
Curry: Soderbergh.
Craig: Soderbergh, who retired 20 years ago, makes a movie every month. They just keep coming. That’s the pace. Your pace is your pace. You don’t have to worry about that.
John: Quick questions before we move into one cool thing. You wrote the script. You gave it to the producer. The producer said thumbs up. You shot a ton of shorts. You shot a bunch of sketches. What, from your YouTube experience, applied and what didn’t apply? What things did you have to figure out is different?
Craig: That’s a good question.
John: Because you’re working with a professional set. You’re working with probably a much bigger team than you’re used to.
Curry: Oh, yes, definitely. I’ve said this a lot on other platforms, but the YouTube comments have taught me a lot about that people are really smart, which is not always the thing you learn online.
Craig: You don’t hear that about YouTube comments.
Curry: It’s just people are picking up on things. You know that thing we talked about that was like, when you don’t give any answers, you almost have to ask people, “Are you getting this? Do you understand?” The answer is yes. As long as you’re telling it through subtext enough, people are getting it, and learning that through YouTube has given me the confidence to treat my audience like they’re smart in a way that maybe I wouldn’t have learned. I like to give credit to that.
Also, now I’ve actually learned that comments are very bad for me. Someone said recently, and I was like, “Oh, my God, I love that.” That comments are like food that you put it in your body, and you’re choosing to digest that. If you just don’t eat it, then you don’t have to– you can eat an entire thing of chocolate cake, or you can just not eat that chocolate cake.
John: What’s the difference between YouTube comments and reviews? Are you reading reviews?
Curry: Reviews are the new modern YouTube comment.
John: It’s just the same thing.
Craig: It’s just long-form YouTube comments.
Curry: It’s so funny because people were like, “What’s it like going into a medium where there were comments and now there’s not?” I was like, “There are. There are comments.”
Craig: I’ve struggled with this my whole life, or at least my whole professional life. Where I landed was, I think that it’s me as my most childlike, trying to get what I should have gotten and didn’t, which is some sort of perfect, beautiful, unconditional love and acceptance. You look for that, and you will get it from some of that stuff. It will mean nothing, and then the punches come, and you will feel those so much more.
Curry: I know.
Craig: 200 I love yous and 1 punch, and all you think about all day is the punch-
Curry: Is the punch.
Craig: -because it was not a healthy exercise in the first place, because you’re looking for something that ultimately you don’t actually need or even want. You just have to sit with your own awareness that you didn’t make something perfect. You are trying to get better. There is a corrosive aspect to it, and there is almost an indulgence. It’s almost like a suicidal indulgence, like, “Kill me.”
Curry: It is. You literally are like, “I hope the next one’s not negative,” but you’re still scrolling. Stop doing it.
Craig: You’re waiting for it. It’s like people who don’t stop gambling until they’ve lost everything.
John: It is the emotional slot machine.
Craig: It’s emotional slot machine. It’s bad for you.
John: Let me try to distinguish between there’s the comments you get on the thing that’s still in process. Someone who you want to read an early draft of your script to see, are they getting it, or people who are seeing this at the UTA, the test screening to see, “Oh, is this working?” At a certain point, when the thing is finished, you just have to be finished with it and stop reading.
Curry: Because there’s nothing to be-
Craig: You can’t do anything.
Curry: There’s no such thing about constructive criticism, because there’s no construction.
Craig: There’s no construction anymore. Construction completed. You just don’t like it, and it is me. You don’t like me. You rejected me, and you can see how intense that feeling is. In your movie, the feeling of being rejected and unwanted is baked into the movie. I would strongly urge you. It’s hard. It requires an enormous amount of ego strength. I’m going to deny myself the cheap thrill of fake love to protect myself from–
Curry: It’s so true.
Craig: It’s hard, though. It’s hard.
Curry: The difference is videos and stuff, because I know you asked what’s the difference between YouTube stuff versus the more traditional stuff. Nobody makes video essays about— People did about Milk & Serial and stuff. Arguably, that was a feature film. It’s really cool to see the videos of people talking about it. That just feels so much more different than– Because you can read the comments of that, and that’s a bad thing.
Craig: Don’t read that.
Curry: The videos–
John: Where someone’s actually taken the time to look at, pull apart, to contextualize things, sure, I can see that being helpful.
Curry: I’m just also really lucky that it’s been mostly positive for Obsession as far as people having opinions about it.
John: You may still need to stop watching those.
Curry: I know. I will, and I should. [laughs]
Craig: You can have somebody in your life who curates a little bit for you. You can say, “Listen, if you see something that it’s not just somebody going, best thing ever, or it sucked,” but somebody who goes, “Okay, I’m going to make a 10-minute video about the use of perspective in Obsession, that is some thoughtful analytical thing that isn’t about praise or condemnation, just an exploration of something that we do out of respect. Maybe somebody in your life can say, “Hey, this one’s safe for you.”
Curry: Check it out.
Craig: Check this one out.
John: We have curation on the Scriptnotes book reviews.
Craig: Oh, we do?
John: Yes. On the good reviews.
Craig: I’ve not looked at them.
John: I think I sent one thing through to you, which was this essay that I couldn’t believe how long it was. It was actually really smartly done. The fact that this person had spent all this time really looking at what we did on the Scriptnotes book was actually meaningful. It’s like, “Oh, that connected.”
Craig: Well, they spent time on it.
John: They spent time on it.
Craig: It mattered to them. It wasn’t just some barf. So much of it out there is just somebody going, “Blah, blah, blah, next.”
John: They don’t even think about how it could affect somebody at all.
Craig: They don’t think about what they just wrote within a millisecond after they hit send. It’s gone.
Curry: That the funny thing, they may even change their mind the next day.
John: Yes, but they’re not going to go back and change their comment.
Curry: You’re just stuck with the comment. Forever.
John: Forever.
Curry: Forever.
John: All right. Let’s do our one cool thing. My one cool thing. This was a study that was done. I want to pose it to you so you can tell us what you think the results were. If you have a bunch of people, schoolchildren even, just in an empty space and just tell them to wander around for 10 minutes, which direction are they going to turn? Are they going to individually turn clockwise or counterclockwise?
Craig: They have to turn. Straight ahead is not an answer.
John: They can move straight ahead, but an empty field, and so eventually they’re going to start turning around. They’re not going to just wander off forever.
Craig: My gut is that most people are right-handed. They’re going to go towards their dominant hand, and I’m going to say to the right.
Curry: I also thought it was this way.
Craig: Yes. Clockwise.
John: Clockwise.
Craig: Yes.
John: It’s counterclockwise.
Craig: What is wrong with us?
John: Universally around the world, and they can’t figure out why. They’ve done all–
Craig: Even in upside-down places like Australia?
John: Yes. I’ll put a link to The New York Times article about this. It’s written by Rachel Nuwer. If you look at the comments on that, everyone says, “Oh, but they should do it in the southern hemisphere because of the Coriolis effect.” That’s not true.
Craig: There’s no magnets.
John: That’s not real.
Craig: Can I tell you something weird? I don’t know if you’ve had this experience. In fact, I know you haven’t. No one else has except for me. This is far beyond random probability at this point. When I write something, I try and be very visual about the space, and I imagine the moments happening. I’m going to say 90% of the time when the production designer comes and shows me, or somebody does a previs or an illustration or a storyboard, they’ve put everybody in the other direction.
Curry: It drives me crazy. Oh, yes.
Craig: I go, okay, “Well, I imagined them the other way.” Everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s weird. We all imagined it like this,” and I can’t explain it. I’m backwards in my head from everybody, and I don’t know why it’s actually terrifying.
Curry: I know what you’re saying because anytime, if I didn’t explain exactly where the couch was supposed to go, then it’s always in the wrong spot.
Craig: Okay, so what’s going on?
Curry: In my head, it’s so clear-
Craig: So clear.
Curry: -that the couch is right here.
Craig: Is it like how our retinas have an upside down image that gets flipped back into our brain? What is happening?
John: As far as this study goes, they’ve a bunch of different theories and none of them pan out. They really have no idea. Scientists, it’s an active area of exploration. It could just be like we are biologically inclined to turn to the left, and they’re not sure why. If you blindfold people, it doesn’t-
Craig: It doesn’t work.
John: -work the same. If you blindfold people and tell them to move straight, I think that bias isn’t there, but it’s just a natural tendency to move.
Craig: It’s all a simulation, obviously.
John: Handedness doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Craig: It’s so weird.
Curry: But we both said right.
Craig: We both said right.
John: I was like, “I’m going to go there.”
Craig: Because I imagined in my mind, and I think maybe this is the problem, is that whatever my brain does spatially, I can see it clearly, and then when I put it, however it comes out on the other end, people are getting the flipped image. It’s so weird. It’s so weird.
John: I would say in probably 80% of scenes where I’m picturing a character entering into a space, I picture them entering in through the left. I picture them moving left to right across the screen. I’m sure statistically if you actually look at the movies I’ve made and things, that’s not the case, but I’m almost always picturing them entering into the frame from the left side of the frame.
Curry: You read from left to right. That’s part of it.
Craig: Then do people who read Arabic or Hebrew go the other way?
John: It’s wild.
Curry: I just learned that books– I don’t know if it’s in Japan or China or just Asia in general, but books are flipped.
John: I didn’t know that. There’s a lot of different cultures where what we consider the back of the book is actually the front of the book, and you’re going the other way through.
Curry: I don’t understand.
John: Manga comics, I think, are back to front.
Craig: You’re reading left to right, but you’re flipping progressively this way?
John: There’s different ways it can work-
Craig: Oh, I see.
John: -in different languages.
Curry: Manga comics is exactly what I’m talking about because I just got one. I was like, “This looks like the back of the book. I had to flip it.” I’m like, “Wait, this feels so weird.”
John: It does feel so weird.
Craig: Now that I think about it, when I went to Hebrew school, where I learned zero Hebrew except the Hebrew phrase for shut up, which every kid who goes to Hebrew school, [Hebrew language] that’s all I remember is the teacher telling me to shut up. This is great education. The books were– the cover was like this, except you would read right to left as you were turning pages this way, which is very weird. It’s all backwards. You should make a movie about that. I don’t know how many of you get that now. This is being weird. We should make a movie about that.
John: We should make a movie about that.
Craig: This is weird. Something happened that’s vaguely and boringly weird to me.
John: Crazy. One cool thing?
Craig: I do. It’s a little bit of a throwback to an old one, I’m pretty sure. It’s a game, but it’s fairly newly released on iOS. I think a long time ago, I did a one cool thing for a game called Curse of the Golden Idol, which was available on Steam. It’s this very strange game. It’s very surreal. The artwork is– sometimes there’s art styles that are aggressively, purposefully ugly. This is that. Grotesque somewhat. It’s a logic deduction game. You get a scene, you find these clues, and you have to piece together what’s actually going on. The scenes become progressively more and more difficult to figure out.
It’s all logic. You become a little bit of a Sherlock Holmes as you go through it. I liked it, but interface-wise, it was a little difficult. As it turns out, it was always supposed to be on iOS or some touch-based because it’s so simple now. It’s so easy. They’ve released two additional DLC things for it. Underneath all of it is this very weird, occult story that begins to unfold of a secret society doing some weird shit. The story’s fun, but mostly, it’s just this really interesting exercise in being very logical and observant. There’s no time limit on it. Games that put a clock on me, I start to freak out.
John: Curse of the Golden Idol?
Craig: Case of the Golden Idol. I’ve been saying Curse of the Golden Idol the whole time. It’s Case of the Golden Idol. I think the people who make it, they have their company name, which we’ll dig up here. It’s like a Pantone or a hex code for a color, I think, which I thought you would enjoy. Yes, Color Gray Games. Their logo for Color Gray Games is like the hex code Pantone. Anyway, the Case of The Golden Idol.
John: The Case of the Golden Idol. I heard you have one cool thing to share with us.
Curry: My dad, for Christmas last year, got me the Scriptnotes book.
Craig: You weren’t a little insulted? Like, “Dad, I know how to do this.” [laughs]
Curry: No, because I’m always trying to learn. I still feel like I know nothing about writing. Every day I’m like, “Oh, how do I learn more? What’s the answer?” I’m constantly chasing. I want the Aaron Sorkin Master Class again. What else can I learn? I’m studying Save the Cat. I’m studying Hero’s Journey and trying to figure out what works better for me and also trying to throw it away at the same time. You know what I mean?
Craig: You’ll find one day you will be teaching a master class where you have digested, synthesized all of it, mushed it with the things that are uniquely you, and you will then give something.
Curry: Three-act structure is important, and that’s what I’ve figured out, I think.
Craig: So far, so good for you, I would have to say. Yes, I wouldn’t dig too– By the way, here’s the one cool thing. You’re wearing a Members Only jacket, and that is the actual– is that like a vintage Members Only jacket?
Curry: No, they still have them.
Craig: That’s like a new version of the old Members Only jacket?
Curry: Yes, but it’s the same exact thing.
Craig: It’s the exact one.
John: [crosstalk] in high school. Oh, that’s cool.
Craig: I had that in 1985, I think. Members Only in whatever the early ’80s was the coolest thing ever, and then one day later, the least cool thing ever. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a middle ground. It was like everyone had one, and then suddenly, “Oh, my God–
John: If you’re wearing one, you’re lame.
Craig: -are you wearing a Members Only jacket, you loser?” I’m like, “It was cool yesterday. What?”
John: Wow, that’s crazy. I didn’t even know that.
Craig: It’s all–
John: Yes, so I assumed it was ironically cool, but it’s just genuinely cool. That’s the generational split.
Craig: I think now it’s all the way just cool.
John: Everything my daughter wears is found at vintage stores and thrifted.
Craig: My daughter as well. They could go thrifting together. She loves it.
John: It’s reminding me, your daughter is in a similar situation with Curry. She’s just making stuff herself, and she’s making music herself rather than making films herself, but she just was able to do the thing that she wanted to do and didn’t have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
Craig: She didn’t have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. They just met her there, which is really– it’s cool, and it’s exciting, but she goes through these same things too. Not everybody survives the withering gaze of the world. It is slightly monkey’s paw. To be ironic, you get what you wish for, and then you’re like, “Oh, no.”
John: Craig Barker, we wish you all the success and luck. We wish all these things for you. It’s going to happen.
Curry: By the way, because I don’t want this to come out a year later, and you’re like, “Wait a second,” you might see more Members Only jackets from me.
Craig: Oh.
John: Oh, nice.
Curry: In a weird way that I won’t say, but you’re going to see it in less than a year, and you’re going to be like, “What? We were there at the birth.”
Craig: We were there at the birth, or the midlife.
Curry: It’s not as random as you think.
Craig: Okay.
Curry: A little teaser there at the end.
Craig: A little Chekhov’s Members Only jacket.
John: Scriptnotes is produced by Meredith Stedman. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg. Our outro is by Matthew Chilelli. If you have an outro, we could use more outros. Please send links to those to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we often answer on the show. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Scriptnotes Book is available wherever you buy books, just like Curry’s dad did.
Craig: Yes, cool guy.
Curry: Cool guy.
John: You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram @ScriptnotesPodcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau.
Craig: I got to get some drinkware, by the way.
John: Yes, drinkware.
Craig: I need some. Why not have the drinkware?
Curry: I don’t know.
John: I’m going to get some.
Curry: Get the drinkware.
John: Drinkware.
Craig: Yes, drinkware.
John: You’ll find show notes with the links to things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers. They’re the best.
Craig: They make this all possible.
John: You’re going to be getting a notice soon, premium subscribers. We’re also going to email you about special things. You’re going to get a special little email soon.
Craig: Possibly a Scriptnotes themed Members Only jacket. Because my understanding is that stuff’s about to go.
John: Can you imagine an orange Members Only jacket?
Craig: We screw them over. We just salt the earth. The members are like, “Oh my God, it’s so overdone.”
John: Absolutely.
Curry: Yes, I don’t want the Members Only to be done before the thing.
Craig: No, we won’t do that, too. We promise.
Curry: I want them to come back when they’re supposed to come back, which is coming soon.
John: Curry Barker, attempting to time culture, which I love.
Craig: So far, so good. So far, so good.
John: You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Popcorn Buckets.
Craig: Popcorn Bucket.
John: Curry Barker, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a delight.
Curry: Thanks for having me. This has been so fun.
Craig: Oh, excellent.
John: Yay.
[music]
John: Craig, all right, you had a movie on theaters this summer, you had Sheep Detectives. Was there a special collectible popcorn bucket for Sheep Detectives?
Craig: I didn’t know. Sheep Detectives snuck on into the movie theaters all meek, like a sheep.
John: Meek. Like a sheep.
Craig: It stuck around for a while. Look, I was trying to punch above its weight there. Had Obsession out there.
John: Yes, sorry.
Craig: No, listen, man. Honestly, the fact that our movie got a theatrical–
John: Were you the same weekend?
Craig: No. What weekend did you guys open?
John: It was June 15th.
Craig: We were before that. No, I don’t even know what we were opening.
John: It wasn’t May 15th.
Craig: I think we were like a week before that.
John: Sorry, it was May 15th. Yes, it’s all a blur.
Craig: The movie, which, look, for 10 years, it just sat on a desk at a studio.
John: They weren’t doing popcorn bonanzas.
Craig: No, and then suddenly it got made, and it happened, and we were very–
John: Dude, that movie got praise.
Curry: It got praise, yes.
John: So much praise. It’s like–
Craig: No one saw that. Everyone was like, “Well, that’s going to be dumb.” By the way, advice, make a movie that looks like it’s going to be stupid that would not be stupid. I used to make movies that looked like they would be stupid and they were stupid, but I realized the trick is–
John: The trick is to make them good.
Craig: No, so there was no— We barely got a standee in theaters. Certainly no popcorn bucket.
John: No, the popcorn bucket we can find for Obsession, but only online. I don’t think there were–
Curry: No, it was at the AMC.
John: It was at the AMC?
Curry: Yes.
Craig: What was the popcorn bucket for that?
Curry: It’s funny because I was also aware that this popcorn bucket thing was happening. One of the first things I asked people when the bidding war was happening, I was like, “Well, are you going to do a popcorn bucket?” They were like, “Yes, we were.” The popcorn bucket, it looks like a One Wish Willow–
Curry: Oh, great.
Craig: Makes a lot of sense.
John: Not like the box–
Craig: It’s like a triangular box in the movie. Yes, but it more looks like the container that would hold the triangular boxes.
Curry: Oh, for sure.
Craig: Oh, like for the group sale stuff. Those things, yes.
Curry: Right, but it holds the popcorn, and it’s made of tin, so it’s metal. It feels high quality. I have three of them, but they sold out very quickly at the AMC all around the world. They’re gone. You can’t get them anymore, which is something cool about that. I also am like, “Should have made a little more of them.”
John: Aline had a similar situation with a Devil Wears Prada. It was like–
Craig: What was hers?
John: It was a shoe. It was like–
Craig: Makes total sense.
John: They’re really constrained supplies. That’s partly the design.
Craig: Yes, there’s not really– It makes sense. Yes, because you don’t want to drench the earth in those things. The popcorn bucket, I was not aware of the popcorn bucket even existing as a thing until the infamous-
John: The Dune.
Craig: -Dune popcorn bucket, which–
John: Looks like a sex toy.
Craig: It was a butthole. It just was. It was a butthole and it’s awesome. I think that after that, everyone was like, “Guess this is what we’re doing now.”
Curry: We missed out on the Jaws popcorn bucket, but did you have the Jaws toy, Craig? Were you trying to get the things–
Craig: Of course.
Curry: Yes, trying to get the hook, the thing out of Jaws’ mouth?
Craig: You had to fish the thing out of Jaw’s mouth, and there was a little piece of plastic, and if you caught the piece of plastic, then the–
Curry: Snapshot, yes.
John: What?
Curry: Oh, yes. It’s amazing.
John: They handed that out at theaters?
Curry: No. This is a toy you bought.
Craig: No, you had to bother your parents to let you buy this plastic piece of crap. Milton Bradley probably made it.
Curry: I’m sure. Absolutely.
Craig: It was a real piece of crap, and it would break fast.
John: What’s so fascinating is that was a toy, but we can totally imagine the popcorn bucket version of it, and these essentially are toys. I was looking at the ones for Masters of the Universe, which was a castle gray skull, and the drawbridge opened, and there was all the powers.
Craig: That makes sense, because it was a toy.
John: It was a toy, but I can’t even imagine being the theater employee who has to put all those things together, or just like, where are you storing them at the theaters?
Craig: I don’t know. I do think now I don’t even know what, for the sheep movie, what would it have been like? Just, “Oh, hold the top of a sheep’s head up so that they’ll reach inside and eat its brain?”
John: It could be his trailer.
Craig: Oh, I guess. Who cares?
John: Who cares?
Craig: Yes. That movie shouldn’t have a popcorn bucket. You need to be, I don’t know– The Sheep Detectives is not a cool movie. It’s quaint. It’s throwback. It’s cozy.
John: If you can’t come up with a good popcorn bucket, there’s an argument for should the movie even exist. No, I’m kidding. Oh, my God. Dang it. That’s a joke.
Craig: That’s a total joke.
John: It’s all about the popcorn bucket.
Craig: It’s all about the popcorn bucket.
John: It’s not about the story.
Craig: The bucket.
John: We had Joakim Truer on the show talking about sentimental value. I should have asked about the popcorn bucket–
Craig: The popcorn bucket for sentimental value.
John: I felt like that was really a missed opportunity.
Craig: Yes, because there’s probably somebody that does have a site where it’s like they make modern popcorn buckets for old films.
John: If not, then right now, that should be the thing.
Craig: I would love if somebody is doing that, but all of them were just slightly off, like the doing popcorn bucket, like E.T.’s finger, and it’s just obviously a dick.
John: Yes, I love that.
Craig: Everything’s wrong.
John: It’s like every popcorn bucket should be like, why does it look like that? That would be really funny. I tend to be sort of anti-junk, and so I want to be against it, but I truly am not against it because let people have things that they love, and if they really love a movie and they want that collectible thing, go for it.
Craig: At this point, anything that makes people happy about going to a movie theater is a wonderful thing.
John: It is. You were part of this giant summer. Independent of your movie, it’s been just like a hugely wonderful, I guess really started before that with Project Hail Mary, but it’s just been great.
Craig: This year’s been a big year for movies. It really has.
John: It’s so cool to be even a part of that at all, because I want to keep going to the theater so much, but people keep asking me as if I’m some sort of representative of Gen Z going to the movie theater, but they keep asking me like, why is it that you think your generation goes to the theater more than, by the way, any generation right now? It’s just a statistic. I think it’s because we’re tired of the phones. We’re wanting to grasp onto any reason to get out of the house nowadays, and the movie theater is a place where there’s no social expectation. You’re expected to put away your phone. You’re encouraged to shut up, not talk, and watch the film. I think people really want that, or are craving that more than ever.
Craig: I also think that Gen Z had a chance. They were the first generation since the first generation where movies happened where they could go. We are now going to discover the joy of going to movies because they’d been robbed of it. They were robbed of it by video, and then COVID, and it just wasn’t as big of a thing. Whereas for us, you turn six, you’re getting dragged out to the movie theater. I think Gen Z got to say, “We’re choosing.”
John: Craig, did you have summer movie programs? Was there a thing where local theaters would, for kids over the summer, they would have basically a film series for kids where they’d buy a pass for the whole thing?
Craig: I grew up on Staten Island. Everything was, “Screw you, buy a ticket.”
[laughter]
John: I remember the Basemark Theater in Boulder, and it was Tuesdays and Thursdays, afternoons, and so parents would just drop us off. You basically pre-bought for the whole summer.
Craig: No, we didn’t have that.
John: That’s where I saw Herbie the Lovebug.
Craig: I went on my very first date, which wasn’t really a date. It was me and my friend took two of the girls from our class, and we were all 10. We went by ourselves to see 9 to 5.
John: Wait, let’s share an experience. It was an inappropriate movie for us to see at a young age? Love it.
Craig: Almost every movie back then was inappropriate for us.
John: I learned so much.
Craig: I learned so much.
John: They’re smoking pot in the movie.
Craig: They’re smoking pot. There’s S&M gear at one point.
John: I feel like that’s coming back. Just more movies being inappropriate. Obsession is rated R, by the way. You know what I mean? To make as much money as it’s making, rated R. I don’t know. I just feel like that’s crazy.
Craig: Rated R movies, there was a moment when I think it was, I guess, in the 2000s where maybe it’s American Pie, where just suddenly almost everything had to be rated. There’s a weird cycle that occurs where then suddenly everything has to be. The Sheep Detective says PG, a rating that no one has anymore. It’s either you’re G or you’re PG-13. Nobody wants to be PG. We’re like, “Mm.”
John: I feel like that happened on accident, right? I can’t speak for–
Craig: We weren’t trying one way or the other.
John: You get the rating that you get because the movie–
Craig: Exactly. If you’re trying to get PG-13, there’s a whole process you go through to get out of the R into the PG-13.
John: Or if you’re trying to get from PG up to PG-13, you add one word.
Craig: From PG to PG-13, you add a word.
John: Really, people do that. People try to go up.
Craig: It becomes like, where are you going to use your one use of the F word here?
John: What is the context?
Craig: What is the context? Exactly.
John: All right. Thanks for this discussion of popcorn buckets and the success of films.
Curry: Of course. Thanks for having me.
John: This has been so fun.
Curry: Thanks.