Scriptnotes, Episode 734: A Box Full of Teeth, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

[music]

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

Craig Mazin: Ho, ho, ho, ho. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 734 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we welcome back a writer whose credits include The Heat, Ghostbusters, and Haunted Mansion, her incredible new show, Widow’s Bay-

[laughter]

John: -is now out on Apple TV.

Craig: What a dramatic pause.

[laughter]

Craig: Her incredible new show, Widow’s Bay.

John: Welcome back to the program after 10 years, Katie Dippold.

Katie Dippold: Very happy to be here. I’ve been trying to get back in here for the past decade, so this is-

Craig: Clawing your way back in.

Katie: Yes, anything I can do.

John: You were last on the show Episode 272.

Craig: Whoa.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: 500 episodes ago.

John: 2016.

Katie: One of my favorite memories of that episode was when– remember when Malcolm, you asked him something and he was just quiet and then he was like, “I’m out of gas.” You’re like, “That’s it? You’re just done?” He’s like, “I’m done.”

Craig: Yes.

Katie: I respected it so much.

Craig: That’s what Malcolm– Malcolm used to play D&D with us, and at some point, he would just get up and lie down and sleep.

Katie: [laughs]

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

Katie: He knows how to live.

Craig: We can’t have you on the show without talking about our special connection. We always need to discuss our special connection. Katie Dippold and I both lived or attended school in Freehold, New Jersey. Competing high schools. She was at the somewhat tonier Freehold Township. I was at the rough around the edges Freehold Borough.

Katie: Never heard of it.

Craig: Yes. I was from the bad side of the tracks.

John: I love it.

Katie: Also where Bruce Springsteen was from. Not a big deal.

Craig: Yes. He went to Borough.

Katie: Sorry, you have that.

Craig: That’s because he was a little rough around the edges.

Katie: Yes, yes, yes.

John: Now, Katie Dippold, for folks who don’t know who you are, they actually do know who you are because you are famous for being an incredibly talented writer, but you’re also probably more famous on the internet because of one Halloween costume you wore and the situation in which you wore it. Do you want to recap why the world knows who you are?

Katie: There is a tweet that shows a photograph that– I can’t remember the tweet. It’s like when you think you’re going to a Halloween party, but it ends up being an adult drinking wine kind of vibe. I’m dressed fully as the Babadook. Face makeup, wig, hat, coat. No one was dressed up. My friend Jessie snapped the photo. Also, what the photo doesn’t show is I sat there for an hour and a half watching a movie like that.

John: Yes.

Katie: You know?

Craig: Once you’re there, what are you going to do?

John: What are you going to do?

Katie: Someone asked me like, “Why didn’t you just take off the hat?” I’m like, “That wasn’t going to help anything.”

John: No, no. Come on.

Craig: Right. I’m still– I got the weird glasses on, or the– does he have glasses? Goggles?

Katie: No glasses, but there’s a dark room around the eyes.

Craig: Yes, that’s what it was. Something like that.

John: Yes, it’s like [crosstalk] monochrome makeup look, right?

Katie: Yes.

John: Yes, it is fantastic, and it’s a moment. It also is the intersection of horror and comedy, which is Widow’s Bay, which is exactly what we’re here to talk about.

Craig: Segue man.

John: That’s what I am.

Katie: Yes, look at that.

John: I want to talk about Widow’s Bay. Your show is genuinely fantastic. Drew and I watched it.

Craig: Wait, have you seen more than two episodes?

John: I’ve only seen the first episode. I haven’t seen the second episode yet.

Craig: Oh, okay, because you’re talking like you’ve seen the whole show.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: I’ve seen two episodes, which I loved, but I started getting jelly, but you’ve only seen one.

John: No, no, we didn’t get the links or anything. We-

Craig: I’m just watching it on Apple TV.

John: I’m just watching it on Apple TV like everyone else. Like every other American person in the world, I’m watching Widow’s Bay on Apple TV.

Craig: American person in the world. [chuckles]

John: I want to talk about your show, but I also want to talk about what you wish you knew going into this industry. Imagine that you’re sending an email to your younger self. It could be to your 15-year-old self or when you first arrived in Los Angeles. I did a panel this last week where this was the theme.

It was actually really insightful to think like, “Oh, yes, what did I know, and what if I could pass along information to your younger self?” Things we want to do. We’ll talk about that.

We’ll answer some listener questions. Including, when do you call out someone for stealing your idea or just being not cool?

Katie: Oh.

John: Our bonus segment for premium members, are there still going to be movies and TV in 10 years, 15 years? We’ll talk about that. All big topics. Most importantly, I know a movie that’s coming out next week, which is Craig’s movie, The Sheep Detectives.

Craig: The Sheep Detectives. What a silly title.

John: It is. It was once called Three Bags Full.

Craig: It was once called Three Bags Full. It’s based on a book written by a wonderful German author named Leonie Swann. Three Bags Full was the title it was released under in the United States. That’s what we called the movie up until MGM was like, “Yes, no one’s going to know what that is, but they would know what The Sheep Detectives is.” They’re correct.

John: They are correct.

Craig: I get it completely. I love this movie so much. I never self-promote. I don’t. It’s not my thing to be like, “Hey, coming up on dah, dah, dah.” It is the little movie that we hopefully could because it’s Aline Brosh McKenna’s Devil Wears Prada 2 is crushing it in theaters. Mortal Kombat’s going to be a huge movie. There’s all these big movies. Then there’s our little sweet sheep movie, it’s adorable, and I’ve watched it with an audience and people laugh and then they cry. My wife and my younger daughter watched it and they were a sobbing mess and a happy sobbing mess.

Katie: Wow. That’s good.

John: Now, Craig, many critics have liked it, but at least one didn’t because you’re not at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. How are you dealing with that grief?

Craig: It’s really hard, because I don’t have any experience not being at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. First of all, the idea of having a movie on Rotten Tomatoes that isn’t in the 20s is shocking for me. Like, “Wait, what? They make tomatoes in another color than green?” I continue my very strange, tumultuous relationship with critics. They don’t know what to make of me at all.

John: Quite understandably.

Craig: They yell at me when I’m like, “Why is this comedy guy doing drama?” Then I do this and they’re like, “Why is this drama guy doing comedy?”

Katie: I feel like you and I could talk about this for years. Now that said, you get one good review and you’re like, “You know, critics–”

Craig: Well, they do have a point.

Katie: Thank God. You know?

Craig: Yes. Well, the thing is there are movies and television shows that don’t need critics at all. It doesn’t matter. I’ve definitely worked on those. You’ve worked on those where it didn’t really matter what the critics thought. Then there are things that sort of need them for legitimacy.

I think The Sheep Detectives needed it. I could see how Widow’s Bay could need it. Meaning, it helps separate a little bit, because it’s not a built-in audience, it’s not IP, it’s something original. Also, you were sporting a 100.

John: Yes. Then someone had to ruin it.

Craig: Some ding-dongs came in. The math is bad because then what happens is you’re like, “Oh, now to get back up, I need like eight more good reviews.”

John: Yes.

Katie: Right. Oh, you can drive yourself crazy. I also, it’s so funny. I always tell myself, if a movie comes out and doesn’t do well, and it’s an experience I’ve had a couple of times, but I say, “Okay, no, it doesn’t matter. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t matter.” Every time I put something on, I’m like, “What’s the Rotten Tomatoes score?” It’s just, you know what I mean?

Craig: Yes. I know.

Katie: It’s just, it’s all of us. It matters very much.

Craig: It is bizarre how everybody, I mean, I assume a lot of critics do put time into the reviews and things, and then it just gets mushed into a number.

Katie: The ones that are good and thoughtful and do a really good analysis, it is really-

John: It’s lovely.

Katie: It’s lovely.

John: Yes.

Craig: I think when people say nice things about us, we like it. When they say bad things about us, we don’t.

John: Hey, I think that’s true.

Katie: That’s exactly right.

Craig: We don’t like it.

Katie: You’re not good at this.

Craig: No. Then I turn to the Teddy Roosevelt quote, and I’m like-

Katie: Yes, that’s exactly-

Craig: “You don’t matter. The ones who matter are the ones who understand what I’m doing and like me.”

Katie: That’s exactly right.

John: This week, my instance of the Rotten Tomatoes was my new book, Wolf’s Belly, which comes out July 18th.

Craig: Wait, what?

John: I have a book out July 18th. I’ll give you a copy so [unintelligible 00:07:33] here.

Craig: What? Did you write a secret book?

John: Secret book.

Craig: I didn’t know about this. I’m glad I didn’t know about this because-

Katie: Whoa.

Craig: -had I known about it and not known about it, I would have been so embarrassed.

John: Yes, absolutely. We got a-

Craig: He just did it again.

John: I just did it again.

Craig: You just did it.

John: My book comes out July 18th, and I got a Publishers Weekly starred review, which is a rare thing to get, which is very lovely.

Craig: It’s a graphic novel. Congratulations.

John: Yes. It’s up for pre-order now, but there are already reviews online for Goodreads because those things come out early, because they send those galleys out. Those have been really nice, but of course, there are going to be occasionally like, “Yes, it wasn’t for me,” or the person who gives it– it’s like five stars, or they give four stars, and four stars brings you down.

Craig: [chuckles] Well, I think that you are a healthier person than I am about these things. You’re very good about, you decide what the worth of what you did is. Whatever people think, that’s fine, but if you like it, you like it. I think that’s healthier. I don’t like how easily swayed I can be by other people telling me if I did something well or not.

Katie: It sounds like we all three have things being reviewed right now. Obviously, the summary of this entire conversation was thank God for the critics.

Craig: Thank God.

John: Thank God for the critics.

Craig: Thank God.

John: Absolutely. Without critics where would we be?

Craig: They know I love them.

Katie: Yes.

John: While we’re talking about things being judged and awards, the Academy changed rules this week. Some summary of some rule changes here. In the writing categories, the rules now codify that screenplays have to be human authored-

Craig: Damn it.

John: -to be eligible.

Craig: Which I think is reasonable. Who are they going to hand the Oscar to if a computer wrote it?

John: Yes. I think that’s an obvious one. A better, more interesting one for me is on international feature films right now, it’s always been the country submits, and it’s always been controversial because the country may not submit their best film, or a great film from a country won’t be submitted. Now, if it has been qualifying award at some of the major international feature film festivals like Berlin, or Busan, or Sundance, or Venice, if it’s won the awards there, it’s also eligible for that, and so it can be-

Craig: A government can’t just go, “Yes, we don’t like this one.”

John: The award now goes to the director as the beneficiary rather than to the country.

Craig: That’s interesting.

John: Yes.

Craig: That is interesting.

John: Yes. I think it’s a good change.

Craig: That’s a smart change. I also saw that now actors can be nominated multiple times in a category.

John: Yes.

Katie: Would they want that?

Craig: It seems like a bad thing you-

Katie: Yes.

John: Yes.

Craig: -but it’s happened before. Director Steven Soderbergh was nominated-

John: Yes, twice.

Craig: -twice in one year. That’s nice. That’s nice.

Katie: Did he win for that year?

Craig: That’s a great question.

Drew Marquardt: I think he did. That was Traffic and-

Katie: Okay, that’s impressive.

Drew: -Erin Brockovich.

Craig: Erin Brockovich. I think Erin Brockovich. He won for Erin Brockovich?

Drew: I think he won for Traffic.

Craig: Traffic is a better movie.

John: Anyway, changes. They seem thoughtful changes.

Craig: Absolutely. Obviously, Katie, you and I are perennial Oscar considerables.

Katie: Right.

Craig: We’re always in the mix.

Katie: Right. Right. Yes.

John: Yes, [crosstalk]. Always in the topics.

Craig: Yes, so this is always– I keep careful track of this sort of thing. We’re talking sheep movie.

John: We have some housekeeping to get through. First and most important is we’re putting out a Scriptnotes listener survey. We want to know things about our listeners, not for marketing purposes, because there’s no marketing because we’re-

Craig: To sell their data?

John: We don’t want to know any of that stuff. We’re curious about, which segments people love the most, which things they want to hear more of. There’s some things we might try out, and we’re curious what people think of those things. We’re also just curious who our listeners are, how many are in the US, what education level people have, because my prototypical user is in college or finishing college, but that may not be accurate. We’re just curious.

Craig: I feel like our listener base might be older than you think.

John: Yes. I’m also curious, one of the questions is, how many people who are listening to the podcast are actually working in the film and television industry versus just like to listen to the podcast?

Craig: All good things to know.

John: Yes.

Katie: It’d be so funny to find out it’s just ages 60 to 62.

John: So incredible.

Katie: Just a very specific.

Craig: Like a steep drop-off after 62.

Katie: No awareness before those two years.

Craig: 59, nothing. 60, boom.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: There’s a free thing, free premium with your AARP subscription, and then they get it for a couple years and they’re out. They’re like-

John: Yes, it’s like, “No, this is not good.”

Craig: -“No, it’s not good.”

John: There will be a link in the show notes for that, so please click through there.

Craig: 60 to 62. Do you see why Katie Dippold is good?

John: Yes, because it’s the specificity of that joke.

Craig: That is 64 would have been bad, 62 is correct.

Katie: I appreciate that.

John: She’s so good.

Craig: Yes.

John: Craig, I want to do another random advice episode. Remember we’ve done those? People write in with non-screenwriting questions-

Craig: Oh, right.

John: -non-writing questions, because-

Craig: When we attempt to be wise.

John: Yes, because we have opinions about a lot of things. We’ll try that. Send in those questions to Drew. Send in at ask@johnaugust.com and just label it like, “Random advice,” so we know to put those in a different category for that. We have a new version of Weekend Read out there. People use Weekend Read on their phones to read scripts.

The new version is really nice and actually has some really helpful features in terms of marketing what you haven’t read, what’s new for you. You can get through long scripts faster. There’s a new scroll bar, so try that out.

Last bit of follow-up. We had Haley Z. Boston on the show. She was talking about Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, which was terrific. On that, I had her read through the first page of her script, which Craig, you would have loved because there’s no dialogue, and yet every word on there is just delicious and delightful.

Drew and our team put together a YouTube video for Haley. She’s reading it, but we’re also scrolling the page as you’re doing it. You can see-

Craig: I like those.

John: -all the choices she’s making.

Craig: Was there a lot of white space?

John: No paragraphs more than two lines long. She’s using italics and bold in really interesting ways. It just is drawing you down in a smart way. Because this is mostly an audio medium, it’s fun to do a visual at times. Seeing that is there.

Craig: Love that.

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

Craig: Love it.

John: Housekeeping done. Katie Dippold, your show is so delightful. I didn’t know what it was going to be when I pressed play, which is so much fun. It comes up and the opening title feels like a Stephen King book cover. What was the pitch? Drew has a really good pitch for it, but I’m curious what your pitch was for it on the initial thing. What is the idea? What’s the logline?

Katie: The logline is a mayor of a New England island town desperate to bring in tourism is warned by locals that it’s cursed-

John: Great.

Katie: -and they are right.

Craig: They are clearly right.

John: Now, Drew, can you give us your pitch?

Drew: It’s Fawlty Towers, but where John Cleese’s character is the mayor from Jaws.

Katie: [chuckles] That’s great.

Drew: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Katie: That’s right.

Craig: Yes, it definitely has mayor from Jaws feeling to it. Shut it down, shut it all down, and New England, of course. Fawlty Towers because the people there are hysterical.

John: Yes, they’re so funny.

Craig: They’re so funny.

John: I can’t even imagine how you found the pitch-perfect tone so that it didn’t just all blow up at every moment. It’s just so cleverly done. They’re so eccentric and so extreme, and yet everyone’s playing the same song. It’s so hard to do.

Katie: That’s really nice. I’ve been working on this. This was like my Parks and Rec sample, 18 years ago.

John: Incredible.

Katie: I’ve been working on it ever since.

John: Give us a little backstory. Tell us how this all started.

Katie: I had just finished at MADtv. I wanted to do something like this. I’m a comedy writer, but I love horror so much. I just wanted something like this to exist. I want to go to this place. Then I heard Parks and Rec was hiring, so I quickly wrote a pilot, and I think that got me the job. Worked there for several seasons.

John: You wrote this as a pilot?

Katie: Yes.

John: How close is the pilot you wrote to what we actually see in the pilot episode?

Katie: It’s much more comedic. It’s like, joke, joke, joke. That’s why I think that gave Mike Schur an idea of my sense of humor. I think the heart of that is still there, but I kept thinking, when I would revisit, I’m like, “I don’t know that I would watch this show. I want it to be taken seriously. I want to feel tension. I want to be scared.” I had to keep taking it apart and putting it back together. There’s years where it’s been not funny or scary.

[laughter]

Katie: It’s terrifying progress.

Craig: What a great mix.

Katie: Yes, I think that’s what you want.

Craig: Yes, boring in every possible way.

Katie: Yes, really had a lot of that for a while. Then I got, I don’t know, something after doing the last couple movies, they were hard to do. I just wanted to do something just completely original. I’m like– because it was a tough time for a while. I’m like, “You know what? I might as well just take one real crazy creative swing.”

Craig: There you go. You and I have lived some parallel lives here. Caught in the same thing. At some point, you do need to just step back and go– are we allowed to curse on this show?

John: Yes, sure.

Craig: Fuck it. I love that I talk about this like I’ve never been on the show. Episode 700 and whatever. I love that you did that. Also, I do think that you can tell this is the product of somebody who is not 25. You are covering all these ages of people. Teenager, dad, older people, you got this whole thing on lockdown. It feels, the mayor, Loftis. Loftis? Loftis. Feels like such an adult, but he’s also a kid, which I love.

One of my favorite moments is when Stephen Root’s character calls him out and says like, “Oh, you used to ding dong ditch me, except you never actually rang the bell. You’re a coward.” That was when he was 11. You’re like, you can see that little boy in this guy all the time. What I really appreciate, this is where the show won my heart. You haven’t seen the second episode.

John: I haven’t seen it yet.

Craig: I’m going to give something away.

John: That’s fine. Okay.

Craig: It’s not a plot twist. In the second episode, he has to go stay in the inn, which of course the locals insist is haunted. They’re correct.

At one point, he’s alone and he wanders into the parlor where they have drinks and things. He opens a cabinet, and in that kind of B&B way, there are all these board games. The board games are wrong. One’s called Daddy’s Home, but the daddy is clearly drunk and angry. Then there’s a box that looks like it would have puzzle pieces in it.

It’s a picture of a tooth and it just says teeth, which is amazing. Then there’s a deck of cards. The card game is called Run. I love that so much, the specificity of that. I could smell that room. Do you know what I mean? I could smell it.

Katie: Oh, that’s great.

Craig: I just loved it. I can’t wait to see where this show goes, but I have to assume that part of the process of getting something like that to be that perfect is you working in tandem with a lot of people, and casting and all of that, because you haven’t run a television show before.

Katie: No.

Craig: Talk about that, because that’s a fun time.

Katie: Yes, it’s a real different experience than being the movie writer just standing by craft services, pitching jokes every now and then. It’s a different thing.

Craig: Yes.

Katie: It’s very hard.

[laughter]

Craig: Turns out it’s hard.

John: [crosstalk] whispering this. Yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s really exhausting.

Katie: It’s rewarding. You don’t really get a say in much when you’re in features.

John: My question is, did you realize that things were hysterically funny while you were filming them? Because one of the things that’s so different in this versus Parks and Rec is Parks and Rec is brightly lit and I think you can tell like, “Oh, that’s funny. That works.” Here, things are shot mostly realistically, and it’s not this high-key everything. Do you know that it’s just hysterically funny? When the assistant comes in and she’s like, “Oh, is there anything more?” She’s like staring for like 30 seconds, it’s like-

Craig: So great.

John: “No, that’s it.” [chuckles] Did you know that it was funny at the moment?

Katie: It’s different. The board games, for example, you’re not watching. This show, it’s a lot about little details and specifics. I think the way approaching it is a lot of blink and you’ll miss it, and that’s okay. It’s less presenting a big joke. It is different than being on set with– and Melissa McCarthy saying something hilarious and you’re laughing out loud. Also, these actors are so good in the show. Just their performances would get me, but it is different. It’s interesting.

There’s a lot of times, too, like the director, Hiro Murai, we would just be also looking at each other like, “Does this feel right? This feels bad.” It’s a lot of following your stomach if something felt good or bad. When something feels bad in this show, it really will take you out of it, so it’s harder.

John: Yes, because you’re weirdly, you’re very joke dense for something that it doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be funny from the outside.

Craig: They’re not in the form of jokes, which I love.

John: Yes, it’s great.

Craig: That, in fact, it’s just people being people. Tell me, okay, because I’m new to the show, and because there’s only two episodes currently out, the character, the woman who’s like works in his office, who’s not his assistant, but like his–

Katie: Are you talking about Patricia, the Kate O’Flynn brunette, or Rosemary the smoker?

Craig: No, no.

Katie: Patricia.

Craig: Patricia.

Katie: Okay, yes.

Craig: So funny. That character is just playing a woman who has been left and ignored and is bitter, but also hopeful. There is something so brilliant about her sitting and talking to Shep, the fisherman who’s found, who they say, “He hit his head, we’ve just put him under to help while the head swelling goes down.” She’s talking to him like he’s in a coma. Loftis says, “It’s only when people are in a coma.” She’s like, “Well, I’m sorry for wasting his time.” Which is amazing. It’s just like the most put upon, like, “You know what, man? I guess, fine.” No, that’s not a joke. It’s real, but it’s also funny. I love that.

Katie: Oh, I’m glad.

Craig: I just love that.

Katie: The actress, Kate O’Flynn, lovely, lovely woman, and also just incredible. It’s Allison Jones, great Allison Jones. She sent us her tape, and it was not what I pictured at all, but I was like, “Oh, but this is the person. This is– she’s still good.”

Craig: Yes, so good.

Katie: She brought so many layers to it. It was loosely based off of my mom. She has a similar, kind of just wants to be seen. She also, she can’t say the right thing, she just says– you know?

John: Yes.

Craig: Right.

Katie: Can I give you an example? I remember Drew was at my mom’s house with me, and there was an Eagles game. He’s a diehard Eagles fan. The Eagles started losing, and he got really stressed out. My mom was uncharacteristically soothing. She was like, “You know what, Drew, don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s all going to work out.” I’m like, “That does not sound like Ellie Dippold.” Then the other team scored again, and she goes, “Well, that’s not good.”

[laughter]

Katie: That was sort of the heart of it, and then Kate came in and just brought all these other layers and stuff that I wouldn’t have imagined. She’s incredible.

Craig: Just wonderful.

John: Can we talk about the actual production? Because you were clearly in a seaside town for– is this upstate New York you were shooting? Where were you actually shooting this?

Katie: We were in Massachusetts.

John: That’s in Massachusetts. Okay. Were you block shooting? Were you shooting episode by episode? How did it all work?

Katie: It was block shooting. We had to shoot out of order, too. It was an intense shoot because the scripts– I think it’s funny. I think in the beginning, we were really shooting for the stars and just trying to do as much as possible. Then no one really told us not to, in the room. Also, I remember Drew Goddard talking about Cabin in the Woods. He said that if he had known how hard it– he was glad he didn’t know how hard it was going to be, because he would have done it differently. It’s a similar thing here. I’m glad I didn’t realize how–

Craig: I believe you can tell. There is an amount of care and attention. It’s funny, when I watch shows now, I will, in the back of my head, also still be, because we’re making the third season right now, and I’m so in it, I start thinking about things like coverage. Like, “Oh, that’s outside at night. That’s fun. I wonder how many takes and how many angles and how much time and how many meetings were based just to figure out that room. The art department has to come up with what the teeth game looks like.” There’s so much. It’s hard, and it pays off.

Katie: Yes. Oh, that’s nice. I have to say, this production team, they were insane in the best way. The props department, when you see the rest of the show, this props department, I don’t know how they did it. I mumble that every day. I’m like, “I don’t know how props did it.” The production designer, that whole episode, too, that inn, the whole inside is a build.

Craig: Oh, yes, you can tell. You can tell in a good way-

Katie: In a good way.

Craig: -because you can’t get the cameras around. A hotel wouldn’t have that parlor like that, but I loved it so much. I thought that was such a brilliant thing to like– what ends up happening is you find a location and then they’re like, “I can only be here for eight days because of the season, blah, and also it’s not perfect and the electricity and you can’t get equipment in.” It was so perfect.

Katie: I don’t know what it was. Everyone working on the show was just really game for it.

John: That’s great.

Katie: Do you know what I mean? Everyone was just [crosstalk]-

Craig: Because they liked it. Katie, because it’s good. That’s, honestly, here’s the thing. I talk to crew people every day. They work on things every day. We don’t. Our show ends, they move on to another production. They mostly work on stuff they don’t like. They work on things that they read and they’re just like– that’s just how it goes. I think people get excited when they work on something they like.

John: Before you got into production, you had to write a bunch of scripts. You wrote a pilot, which obviously you wrote a ton, but I’m looking at the credits and there’s a murderers’ row of really funny people. Talk to us about the process of getting everything written. Was everything written before you showed up there? What happened?

Katie: Yes, it was a great room. I had the pilot written, and I did something that was a little tricky, but I’m so glad I did, which it was not like a room full of all comedy writers. It was a couple of writers that came from shows like WandaVision. Actually, one of them also had a super funny spec. A couple of my old-time comedy friends, one that was a writer on SNL, actually Neil Casey, that plays the innkeeper, too.

Craig: Sure. Yes, so funny.

Katie: Colton Dunn from Key and Peele, and Kelly Galuska has done a ton of comedy. Then I also had a playwright, this guy Dave, who’s lovely, and another writer, Alberto Roldán, who’d worked on Mrs. Davis. It was a real stew, because I felt like this show was going to need a lot of different kinds of thought process and just different ideas. In the beginning, it was tricky navigating this, but then it got to a point where the drama mythology people are pitching jokes that are hilarious, and the comedy writers are really passionately arguing story points. It was very rewarding to see that all come together.

John: You had been on MADtv, you’re used to that kind of comedy writing. You’d been on Mike Schur’s show. You had a sense of being in a room. This was your first time running a room with this group. How did you approach that? How many weeks did you have? What were your hours like? What did it feel like? What were the nuts and bolts of it?

Katie: We had 20 weeks, and I kept the hours. The hours were about 10:00 to 5:00. I would leave and then keep thinking about it until I go to bed. There’s no reason to keep everyone there. You know what I mean? You’re the one that needs to do that, I think.

John: Over the course of those 20 weeks, there probably was a little bit of a blue-sky phase. Then you were cranking down, “Okay, what happens in this episode? How do we get through this thing?” Are you signing people off during that time? How did it work?

Katie: God, it was so crazy just feeling my way through this process. I called so many different people like, “What are we doing?” I called you. Do you know what I mean? We blue-skied for about six weeks, four weeks.

John: Oh, wow. Okay.

Katie: I actually knew some of the dilemmas I wanted to happen. I knew certain things I wanted to do, but then working through it. It was a very creative, organic process of, we just would talk about, “Well, this just feels fun right now.” You know what I mean? “Let’s just do this now.” It was just constantly making those moves. Then people would get sent out to script one time.

Craig: When you assembled the room, did you have, “Okay, I know how this begins, and I know how it ends”?

Katie: Yes.

Craig: You had that.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: At least there was a structure that everybody was trying to fill in, too.

Katie: Yes. Even how it ended, there’s some choices in it that came up through the room, which was a very fun debate. Yes, I knew the basic. I knew where it was going, but we found so much along the way. Everyone was great.

John: You’re doing this work in a room. How much are you having to communicate out with producers, with Apple, with other folks about what was happening, or was it only when you were done with the 20 weeks that you could come back and say, “Here’s the show”?

Katie: I was kind of a lunatic about– I would send like a 30-page outline to the producers and Apple. It was very, very detailed and very specific. I would start off with this summary at the top, like, “This is what we’re trying to do here.” Then just really break down each scene. Also, because the show is so totally tricky, I just wanted to be as detailed as possible.

John: Even during the 20 weeks while you were going through stuff, they could see like, “This is where we are headed,” if they had big red flag concerns.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: I think that’s wonderful. I think that there is a value in looking at the people that give us all the money to make these things as people that deserve a little caretaking. I think they work with writers who are so internal sometimes that they get nothing back. They’re in the dark. They don’t know what’s going on. Yes, some caretaking documents goes a long way. They don’t abuse it. I find that it’s the opposite. That they give less input, the more detail you give.

Katie: I could not agree more. Our execs, Dana and Spencer were, I swear to you, I’m not just saying this because of career purposes.

Craig: Because you need them.

[laughter]

Katie: They were awesome. I never dreaded their feedback-

Craig: That’s great.

Katie: -which is unusual to say. If they called on the phone, I’m like, “Pick up the phone.” I don’t like picking up a phone. That’s the biggest compliment I can give. Apple, I have to give them credit. They really just let us do it.

John: Now, when you were actually making the show, were there any writers besides you around to pitch new stuff, or was it just you? Were you the writer on set?

Katie: Oh, well, I’m very thankful for the strike because having writers on set was such a blessing.

John: Okay, because there was a gap between the things, you were shooting in the US, you were able to pull– you had two writers with you?

Katie: Two writers on set. One of them was there the whole time, it’s Neil, and then two other writers, Kelly and Mackenzie, took turns. It was so nice. Also, just having people that they were in the room and they understand what we were going for, I really wanted to be on set a lot and make sure we’re capturing the moments, but then you have something else prepping, so having a writer being able to go with that director, because we had three other guest directors come in, and then for scouting, and just have an eye on things and be able to talk to [crosstalk]-

John: Maybe have a splinter unit, like you could– yes.

Katie: Yes, that was really, really, really-

Craig: I could probably maybe use somebody other than myself.

Katie: No, it’s great.

Craig: I’m starting to feel even more terrified by my own life.

John: Sorry.

Katie: Yes. Also, having people– just also having funny writers make sure. You know what I mean?

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Katie: Just to talk to about what’s going on and stuff like that, it’s just lovely.

Craig: People to talk to?

Katie: Yes, people to talk to.

Craig: Yes, that would be nice.

John: Make sure shows, the things we were growing up on, the writers were around, and that’s part of the reason why things can work. Yes.

Katie: Yes, being around funny people, it’s a nice thing.

John: The second topic I want to get to is what you wish you knew. For this exercise, let’s imagine we get the chance to either talk to our younger selves or send an email to our younger selves. Let’s start with our 15-year-old self. If you could send an email to young Katie about some advice for her, anything– like headlines you would want her to know?

Katie: I wouldn’t have listened to it.

John: Yes, that’s honestly true.

Katie: I would have said-

Craig: Shut up, old woman. [laughs]

John: Shut up, old woman. You also know that-

Katie: Why you never wear your hair down anymore?

John: Yet you also know that you wouldn’t listen, so you could probably outsmart this 15-year-old Katie because she’s an idiot.

Katie: I would hate this advice so much. I would say, “You’re two-boy crazy, none of these boyfriends you’re going to marry. Just read some books. Just read books and don’t-”

Craig: Oh my God, you’re like, “Get out of here.”

Katie: I would have been like, “Fuck off.”

Craig: Yes, seriously, beat it.

Katie: Yes.

John: Craig, advice for your 15-year-old self.

Craig: I certainly wouldn’t have said, “Be less girl crazy.” I would have been like, “Yes, no, have fun. You’re going to get married soon.”

[laughter]

Craig: I think for my 15-year-old self, I would have said, “Hey, hold tight. You’re going to be out of here soon.” The world was pretty small for me. I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere, and I wasn’t sure where. I didn’t know. I hadn’t yet connected the idea that I would be doing this for a living. I would say, “Don’t worry. You’ll be out of here soon.”

John: Yes. I wasn’t out when I was 15, and you can’t retroactively say like, “Oh, it would have been fine to be like–” you don’t know. I think just the sense that, “You will fall in love, you’ll be happy, you’ll be married, you’ll have a family.”

Craig: Did you know that you were gay when you were 15?

John: I knew I was gay. I knew [crosstalk]-

Craig: Oh, so your older self wouldn’t be like, “By the way,” and you’d be like, “No, I’m not.”

John: Yes, I wasn’t like a [crosstalk]-

Craig: You weren’t going to argue.

John: Oh, yes, you know. There wasn’t anything to act upon at the moment. I probably could have, it was cowardice.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s cowardice. I don’t think that’s cowardice.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: I think that’s-

John: Yes, it’s not recognizing opportunities that you have.

Craig: Sure.

John: I think in terms of– I was ambitious. I didn’t know there was such a thing as screenwriting yet. I didn’t know if the movies were written.

Craig: I had no idea.

John: General advice is, “Pursue what you’re interested in, and don’t be worried if your tastes and opinions change. That’s also part of growing up.”

Katie: Yes.

John: Now let’s fast forward to you’ve arrived in Los Angeles. Maybe you’re a year in. Okay, what else?

Katie: Can we visit college?

John: College, please. Let’s go to college.

Katie: I think one thing I would have told myself freshman year of college, and I eventually did this, I just wish I got to it sooner. Just find your people.

John: Oh, yes.

Katie: For me, that was some real weirdos, and the best possible– I started pledging this sorority, and they were all really nice and lovely, but my stomach was a little, “This doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right.” Then I started the theater group and improv group. I had this improv group there that it was just the best group of weirdos. I remember just being in a New Jersey diner with them late at night. We weren’t going to any party or frat house. There was a guy that could have been-

Craig: I can see the diner, by the way. It’s got the two entrances-

Katie: Exactly.

Craig: -the little lobby, the thing, go inside. There’s a case with the– yes.

Katie: Yes. They were all so bizarre in the best way. There was someone that could have been 18 or he could have been 55 years old. I have no idea, but he was the funniest person ever. Finding those people just changed my life.

Craig: Yes, God, talking to myself in college, I think probably I would have said, “You do know you’re not going to be a doctor, right? Why don’t you do what you want instead of what you’re supposed to do?” Which I started to do, it just took me a bit because also, afraid. That’s a tough thing, because if your older self comes to you and says, “Hey, do what you want,” there’s an implication, and it’ll work out. Not like, “Do what you want. Also, you’re going to end up alone and addicted.”

[laughter]

Craig: I would have maybe gotten myself off the pre-med track a little sooner.

John: I was just back in my undergrad last weekend, and I got an alumni award, which was lovely. I got to see my campus. Every time you go back to your college campus, it’s like, “Oh my God, this school is so much smaller than I remember. Everything is just closer together and other things–” it was lovely. I don’t have great advice for that kid, because I kind of did it right. I picked a school that was just the right size and that I was– I knew so many people, I was in lots of different groups. I was kind of happy.

Craig: Maybe you would have just come back and said, “Yes-

John: Thumbs up. Yes.

Craig: -thumbs up.”

John: Thumbs up. Yes, keep doing that.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. It was a good experience. I was happy with that. When I got into USC for film school, I’m like, “Yes, I’m going to do it. I’m going to drive my rusted out car to Los Angeles.” The luxury– Craig and I, you and I have talked about this. The luxury I had moving out here was that my family was generally supportive, and I had sort of a, if everything went haywire, I could have just moved home. I had that support underneath me. It wasn’t like they were like-

Craig: Yes. Me, too. Oh, no.

John: Yes, it’s not that different. Yes. I felt really lucky that I had a family that didn’t-

Craig: That’s nice.

John: -understand what I wanted to do, but was generally supportive.

Craig: That’s why you’re healthier than I am.

John: Yes, maybe.

Katie: That’s nice. Were your parents not excited about you?

Craig: No. No, they were angry and insistent that it wouldn’t work. Also, they had no money. That did give me a lot of fear.

John: Yes.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: When I got here, I was definitely motivated by fear. Fear, I think, is like, I’ve never done cocaine. We’ve talked about cocaine before on this show. I’ve never done cocaine. Katie is like, “That’s interesting.”

Katie: My silence. [laughs]

Craig: The two of us are like, “We’ve never done it.” You’re like, “Mm-hmm.”

John: Okay.

Craig: I feel like fear is the cocaine of emotion.

John: Just chopping up on tape.

Katie: Okay. It’s not– you want this? You go– okay, it’s not for here. It’s not for here. It’s fine.

Craig: Not for here. Yes. No, cool, cool, cool. It powers you, but I think then there’s this terrible downside. There’s the comedown.

Katie: Oh, it’s a very empty drug. I just feel like anytime I’ve done it in my 20s, I ended up making lunch plans with someone I didn’t want to eat lunch with.

Craig: Oh, the worst.

Katie: It’s a real waste of time.

Craig: Fear does not do that for me, but it definitely– fear will get me up in the morning and will power me through a day. When I get home, I’m like, “Oh, no.” It’s just, it’s an effective motivator, but it comes with a cost.

Katie: Oh, that does.

John: Craig, I think you know that you have one tattoo, I have one tattoo.

Craig: Yes.

John: My tattoo is, tibbium nihil, imagus quiddum, which is, let me fear nothing, not even fear, which I got the first year while I was here in Los Angeles. Friends, we were out just walking and they all had tattoos. I was like, “I want a tattoo.” [unintelligible 00:38:01] tattoo.

Craig: Nice, and hepatitis C.

John: Absolutely. It was a helpful thing for me to remember because unlike you where fear was motivating to go do a thing, fear was always a sort of thing like, “Stay back. Don’t reach for it.”

Craig: Healthier.

John: So often, the things I regret most were the things I didn’t do because I was afraid. It was like, the stakes were always much lower than I allowed myself to believe.

Katie: I think my biggest motivator was never wanting to feel stuck. I feel like I love my parents very much, but they were always– they divorced when I was in college. When they did, it was like, “Okay, that seems good.”

John: Yes, as opposed to [crosstalk]-

Katie: There was always like a little tension. You know like the beginning of The Shining? That sort of like– it always had that energy to them. [laughs]

John: Oh, that is also good.

Craig: Oh, that energy?

Katie: Yes, just like–

Craig: Okay. It must have been comfortable in your house.

Katie: Love them both. Love them both. Hopefully, they don’t listen to Scriptnotes. It’s just really just always wanting to not feel stuck and having opportunity, that was the biggest drive for me.

Craig: Right. I mean, that’s empowering, I think. That’s a positive thing to reach for.

Katie: Yes.

John: We’ve all arrived in Los Angeles, and things we learned early on in Los Angeles, or maybe could have learned earlier if we could tell ourselves. My nominee for this is the soft pass and understanding where like someone is passing, they just don’t want to say that they’re passing. It’s a no, but they’re not actually saying no, they’re saying maybe, or like, “That sounds great. Let me get back to you about that.” Recognizing when like, oh, they’re actually are saying no, it’s just that you’re not hearing it as the no.

There were so many times where I thought like, “Oh, this is still a possibility, this project, they’re still considering it.” It’s like, no, they did pass, they just didn’t actually close the loop. I just wasted so much time thinking that a thing was alive when it wasn’t alive.

Craig: When it wasn’t alive.

John: Yes. The lesson I took from that is, it’s okay, first off. It’s okay for things just to not happen. It’s often worth it to make the phone call or make the email to say, like, “Hey, sorry, this didn’t click, but I really enjoyed meeting you.” Basically, to close the loop for them so that–

Craig: Let them off the hook.

John: Let them off the hook, yes. Rather than being resentful, just recognize, like, “Oh, that’s just how it goes. Things will just sometimes not happen, and that’s okay.”

Craig: That’s good advice.

John: Things you’d advise your earlier self, those first years in this business.

Katie: I came to LA for MADtv. I don’t know what I would have– I probably should have recognized earlier I’m not a performer. That would have helped something. I put up a one-woman murder mystery that probably didn’t need to.

[laughter]

John: I want to see this so badly. I’m going to search the internet to find it.

Katie: Well, no, thank God you won’t find it. I think what was also funny about it to the audience is it’s a show written for someone that could do all these different characters and voices. I cannot alter my voice from this right now.

[laughter]

John: That would be amazing.

Craig: That’s awesome. It’s like the one-woman show where everyone sounds the same.

Katie: I’m trying my best.

Craig: You’re trying.

Katie: I am just sweating and trying and throwing on different wigs and hats.

John: “Hello, Dr. Trumbly,” and it’s just the same voice.

Katie: Yes, exactly.

Craig: “Yes. Well, I don’t know.” No one knows who’s talking at any given point.

John: So good.

Katie: That’s the first thing I thought of.

John: Give yourself permission to not be a performer and that there’s other things there.

Katie: Yes, exactly.

John: I like that.

Katie: Then, because even MADtv, for two years in a row, they brought me out to test to be a performer. I think they liked the things I was writing for the characters and the auditions. Then I go, “But it’s just not working somehow.” Finally, I submitted a writing packet to them.

Craig: You’re like, “Stay behind the camera. How about that?”

Katie: I was like, “Great.”

John: Craig, things you would talk to that early Craig about.

Craig: I think I would assure myself that my suspicion that everyone was stupid was correct. That everybody in Hollywood is convincing you that they are brilliant, they know more than you do, and that their power is derived from their wisdom and their connections. That you are the outsider. You are the thing that is barely hanging on. That they could flick you away, ha-ha-ha, at a moment’s notice, to make you feel powerless. My suspicion was always that a lot of them just seem stupid and fake. They were.

John: Everyone’s faking it.

Craig: There’s so many frauds. Our business is full of frauds. You can see over time, the frauds disappear.

Katie: Some don’t.

Craig: The real ones stay. Well, some don’t, but they eventually kind of do.

Katie: Yes, that’s true.

Craig: There are some people that are problematic and stay there, but what they do is something that I don’t really interface with necessarily. There’s just so many blowhards and just–

Katie: Dude, that is the hardest thing for me because I know how I should sound in this job, and it’s not how I talk normally. I’ve never been a lean-in type of person, like a fake it till you make it. If I don’t know what I’m saying, you can see it on my face. That’s why I feel like I’m jumping ahead a decade. The advice I give myself later is just making sure you really know the story you want to tell.

Craig: Before you start talking.

Katie: Yes. See, I have to know that, or otherwise I can’t fake it.

John: We’ve talked on the show before, but one thing started clicking, and it clicked really fast for me. Go happened, and I was doing a TV show, and I was doing Charlie’s Angels and doing Big Fish all at the same time. The TV show was just a spectacular disaster, a slow-motion car crash, and had a nervous breakdown during it. It ended up being very helpful that I had it because that I could just have a crashing failure, and it was actually okay. That failure is–

Craig: So healthy.

John: It is.

Craig: Why is he so healthy?

John: Well, I wasn’t healthy at the moment, but I really was just disassociating all this.

Craig: You did have a nervous breakdown.

John: I did have a nervous breakdown, but I got through it, and obviously, writing got me through it. I was fired off that show and then still had to write Big Fish, and it was like, “I will enter this Southern family and figure out the trauma from inside,” that it was just so nice, like, “Oh, I can go back and do the thing I’m actually good at doing.”

Because so often, you guys are so busy doing your TV shows and managing these giant productions, but you’re also really good writers. You can always just go write a script, which is a nice thing, too. A good reminder to me is that, oh, that core skill set you have in terms of actually being able to write things, that can lead you through.

Katie: The biggest lesson I feel like I’ve been learning for the past 15 years is not thinking about it, like, “What should I be doing?” When it’s writing or through production, when you’re making choices, if I think like, “Oh, what is it supposed to be?” Instead of just, “What do you want?” It’s weirdly been the hardest one for me to just shake off over the years.

Craig: I’m with you on that. It’s the other side of the, “Okay, there’s the Katie Dippold who writes that document and caretakes the people. Sometimes caretaking becomes, and also your priorities are more important than my priorities, or making you happy is more important than making me happy. It’s a tricky thing. I’ve talked about this with Alec Berg, who’s been on our show a few times. There’s that dial where you think like, “Okay, in one direction is hack, and the other direction is pompous asshole.”

You don’t want to go all the way to, “I just do whatever people tell me to do, but you also don’t want to go up your own butt.” I think people are sometimes innately more afraid of one side than the other. I’m more afraid of going up my own butt, so I got to be careful to not go too far towards making other people happy.

Katie: That’s a dial that everyone struggles with, for sure.

Craig: It’s a dial. Yes. Whichever one you’re more afraid of, be more afraid of the other one, actually.

John: A thing I recognize in myself that I would love to tell in an earlier version, but even now I still feel it, is you don’t have to chase things as much as you’re chasing them. Early in your career, you’re always going after any opportunity, and you see a thing, and it’s like, “Obviously, that’s a movie, so I should try to land that movie.” I think too often I would go after that thing, and sometimes land that thing, and spend a year of my life, two years of my life working on that thing, and it’s like, “This isn’t really what I wanted to do.”

Craig: Dog that caught the car.

John: Absolutely. It’s like you’re in a relationship you didn’t even really want to be in. Things to remember. Let’s answer a listener question. Drew.

Drew: Davo writes,-

Craig: Davo.

Drew: -“I’m a writer in London. In 2011, I developed a TV show tailored to a specific actress and pitched it to her through mutual friends. I have the emails, the treatments, all of it. It went nowhere, and I forgot about it entirely. Then someone pointed out that a show which debuted on a streamer years later, starring that same actress who also co-created it, shares its core premise, its inciting incident, and several specific plot elements with my pitch. I’m not here for the legal question. My question is tactical.”

Craig: Great.

John: “I still haven’t had anything produced. I’m actively writing and will be pitching soon. If I pursue this, does it blacklist me? In a town as small as London TV, is the game worth the candle, or do I just eat it and move on?”

Craig: Did you say, “Is the game worth the candle?”

John: Yes. I just love that phrase.

Craig: Is that a British expression?

John: It must be.

Craig: Why would a game be worth a candle?

John: Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Craig: That I understand.

Katie: Is the game worth the candle?

Craig: The candle. Would the candle be used? This is not at all what Davo wants.

Drew: It means the expected rewards of an endeavor do not justify the cost of further time effort.

Craig: We got that part. We just are trying to figure out why.

John: How did we get there?

Craig: Yes, games and candles.

John: I love the turn of phrase.

Craig: We got to get to the bottom of this.

Drew: I got it. The phrase stems from 17th-century French, “le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle,” referring to gambling by candlelight. If the potential winnings were smaller than the expense of the candles used, then the game was not worth playing.

John: The thing I want to highlight in Davo’s question here is, “It went nowhere and I forgot about it entirely.” That’s what you should do. It’s forget that that moment happened.

Craig: When he says pursue, does he mean pursue?

John: He’s not clear whether he wants to– should he mention it, should he ever bring it up?

Craig: No. Because premise, we’ve discussed this many times, and he’s saying he’s not here for the legal advice, but it is connected. Yes, premises can be similar, and it’s not theft and all the rest. It’s a little bit like that soft pass. Maybe that was a fun idea that somebody once had, but they just didn’t like whatever the execution of it was. You must move on and do something that is worthy of capturing somebody and making them want to do it with you. That’s just part of this.

John: Katie, would you feel bad for stealing his idea?

Craig: Yes.

Katie: Look, I really felt like I had a take on it.

Craig: You thought you were a performer until MADtv told you were not. It was worth it.

Katie: No, I agree with Craig, but I also am furious for this person. I understand how frustrating that is.

John: I understand what they’re feeling. At the same time, I worry that if they think about this anymore, it’s going to define–

Katie: Yes, 100% agree.

John: Exactly. It’s like, “I’m the person who got screwed out over this thing.” We all know people who are like that. It ruins you.

Katie: Use this fire to write something new.

Craig: There you go. Do not let this define you. It is a poison in your veins to dwell on injustice, whether perceived or in fact. If you dwell on it, then you’re stuck. You can acknowledge it. You can be aware of it. You can look out for it. You can rue it, but you can’t obsess over it.

John: Something I read in a book, a blog post recently. It was talking about you’re stuck in a line, and it’s really annoying, and the person just says, “Thank you.” You say thank you to acknowledge that you’re in this thing, and somehow just saying thank you to it is just like, “Okay, I’ve acknowledged it, whatever, and I’m moving on. There’s nothing I can do about it. This is what’s happening.” Just acknowledging the problem is helpful, and sometimes it can get you out of dwelling on it.

Craig: We’ve released you, Davo.

John: You’ve released. Davo has been released. Let’s try another question here.

Drew: Anonymous writes, “I was hired to write five seasons of a Christian docuseries for a large Christian network. These shows had a primetime slot, were fairly successful for the network, and I got paid, but these shows don’t represent my voice at all. My spec feature is an erotic thriller, and my three pilots all have distinctly adult themes, not to mention that the Christian TV shows were fairly crappy and hyper-specific to a religious audience. I’m about to pursue representation, and I’m wondering how to position myself.

While I’m technically the credited writer for network TV, I’m hesitant to mention this past work. I’m concerned it might alienate reps or producers or even talent when they see my name attached to an obscure evangelical docuseries. Will my past credits hurt my future prospects, or does any experience beat no experience?”

Craig: I think this is a great story.

John: I think this is a great story.

Craig: I think this is something that would absolutely delight people if you’re like, “Here’s a crazy thing. Look at what I wrote. Now look at what I’m writing now.” How could this be the same person? Find out when you meet me. That’s hooky. I like that.

Katie: It’s interesting. I agree.

John: I think it’s great. I think that is an angle on you that’s going to be helpful and useful. It doesn’t have to be the very first thing you introduce yourself with, but I think it’s the second or third thing.

Craig: It’s a fun fact.

John: Yes, fun fact.

Craig: I would acknowledge it. People do look you up, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: If it’s on IMDB, I would get in front of it, but I also wouldn’t put it down. I wouldn’t say like, “Oh, it’s crappy.” Or, “Oh, it’s just for religious people,” because the thing is, look, you did a job. You took the money. They paid you. It sounds like they treated this person well. I would just say, like, “Look, would I prefer to be writing erotic thrillers? Yes. If you read one, you’ll see why. Hey, I’m pretty versatile.” We know that much.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: That’s cool.

John: 10 years from now, we’re going to see a bunch of really talented emerging filmmakers who are going to have a bunch of verticals on their series, really the dumbest things. It’s fine. People used to have music videos for random bands and karaoke videos. People do stuff to make a living. There’s no shame in that.

Craig: No, there really isn’t.

John: It’s time for one cool thing. My one cool thing is a video series that was somehow recommended to me by the algorithm, and God bless the algorithm, it did the right thing. It’s Captain Disillusion, who is a YouTuber. His real name is Alan Melikdjanian. He has 2.5 million followers. A bunch of people have watched this, but I’ve never seen this before.

What he talks about in his videos are film and TV, camera things. Things like aspect ratio, frame rate, interlacing. What’s remarkable is they’re 100 times better than they need to be. They’re full production value things with lots of jokes and details. We talk about a box full of teeth. It’s full of those kinds of–

Craig: Teeth.

John: Teeth. It’s full of those kinds of jokes. I’m just so impressed. You learn so much about, why do we have interlacing, how do we end up in these weird systems? He can just explain it all.

Craig: Electricity.

John: He’s not trying to solve the problems, but just explain why we have these systems we have. I think they’re so good. I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed until–

Craig: I love stuff like that. I’m going to watch that.

John: You’ll love it. You’ll plow through the whole post.

Craig: While I’m waiting for the next episode of Widows Bay.

John: Really good.

Craig: Which is on Wednesdays, I believe. I love that it’s weekly, by the way. Hooray.

Katie: It’s just nice.

Craig: Finally, the streamers figured it out.

John: Oh, Apple’s been pretty good on the weekly from the job.

Craig: Yes, they have.

John: That’s good.

Craig: Third Apple.

John: Katie Dippold, when you’re not basking in the success of Widows Bay, what would you like to share with our audience?

Katie: This is going to be the most boring, wonderful thing.

John: No, no. It’s not possible.

Craig: Is it teeth?
[laughter]

Craig: It’s just teeth.

Katie: I’m going to say, oh, no, that actually is the most boring one. It is the thing an eye doctor got me into. Taking rice, putting it into a cotton sock, not synthetic, putting it in the microwave, 20 seconds. Doing that warm compress over your eyes. She does it three or four times a day. I try to do it twice a day.

My eyes were about to fall out of my head, and we’re all staring at screens. Save your eyes. Do this. Here I’ll add this. Meditating is very boring, but if I’m doing two things at once, I know I’m getting heat. I’m saving my eyes, and then I’m forced to relax that way.

Craig: I’m going to do this because when I’m on a plane, I get the little hot towel. People rub their hands. I put it on my eyes immediately.

Katie: I wouldn’t trust that.

Craig: I know.

John: [unintelligible 00:55:00]

Craig: I don’t put it in my eyes, guys. I close my eyes.

Katie: You squeeze and put the fluid in the rag.

Craig: I drink the dirty rag fluid.

John: You’re sucking all that moisture out.

Craig: Guys, I put it on my eyes. That’s how I got cholera because I love the warm feeling in my eyes. It just occurred to me as you were saying this, I could do this all the time. I don’t need to wait until I’m flying.

Katie: Yes, and it also forces you that– You know that whole thing, it’s good to be bored as a creative person. It forces you to do it. You can’t with anything.

Craig: Rice, does it have to be Arborio? Is it long grain?

Katie: I’ve been trying different kinds of rice, honestly. I’m not sure which is the best one, but organic rice in a cotton sock, not synthetic.

Craig: You tie up the sock.

Katie: Tie up the sock.

Craig: You do 20 seconds in the microwave.

Katie: I do 20 seconds. Sometimes I’ll add two more seconds. Then you squeeze the rice and make sure the heat’s spread out.

John: It’s weirdly moist is the thing that’s surprising about it.

Katie: Yes, and it releases.

Craig: Because there’s water inside of the rice.

Katie: It shouldn’t burn. Oh, God, the first time I did it, I misunderstood. I thought I was supposed to heat it for two and a half minutes.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: Instead of 20 seconds.

Katie: Yes, and I was like, well, this is burning my eyes. Now I feel like I’m just trying to get back to where I was before I burned it in the first place. Anyways.

Craig: You’re building up.

John: We have something we bought on Amazon 15 years ago. It’s a tube of rice in a cotton thing that we use on our necks. We heat it up in the microwave. That is actually a two-minute situation, but it’s really good.

Craig: I’m going to do this.

John: Rice.

Katie: You have to.

Craig: It has to be a cotton sock. Otherwise, it’ll melt. It’ll get in your eyes.

Katie: Real bad, yes.

Craig: If I show up blind because of this, the lawsuit.

John: Incredible.

Craig: I’m going to take everything you have. Now, Widow’s Bay is mine. I took it.

John: Maybe she would like that. Craig, what do you have for one cool thing?

Craig: Well, even though I didn’t want to be a doctor, I do love medical science. Osteoarthritis is the worst. There is no cure for it. It’s basically the degradation of your cartilage. In joints, it becomes very painful. Almost everybody will end up with. Some people start getting it quite early. A lot of people, it’s very common, I have it in my left big toe. There’s just no cartilage whatsoever. Every now and then, I’ll go, [groans]. Oh, and the cure. There’s surgery, which is useless. This is magical. It’s early on, but there is a project that’s being funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Because government still is able to do a few things before they figure out that something good is happening and take it away. They’re funding a program called NITRO, which stands for, I hate these things when they do these. Retronyms? Is that what they are called?

John: Retronyms, yes.

Craig: Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis. A team at the University of Colorado Boulder, which has gotten a bunch of money, has got this thing down where they do an injection. The injection is some sort of protein that triggers the body to start the regeneration process. Essentially, they think they may be able to inject osteoarthritis away.

Now, it is early on, there’s still an animal testing, but there is a chance that the three of us may be spared that gnarly, miserable, joint-pain existence that our grandparents suffered through.

John: That feels doable. It feels like, “Oh, that’s science, I believe, that could exist and happen.” It’s probably not peptides, but it’s something like that–

Craig: Do you know why I think it’s going to happen? Because you can see how much money you could make. Basically, when there’s money there, I feel like they’ll figure it out. They’ll figure it out. Hopeful.

Katie: That’s great.

John: All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: I don’t think so.

John: Our show this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Wherever you’re hearing this podcast, click through to the show notes because we have a link in there to the Scriptnotes survey. We would love for you to fill out the Scriptnotes survey to tell us what you love about the show, what you’d like more of, less of.

Craig: Less Craig. I hope that’s a click box.

John: It is. Absolutely. It’s the default. You have to literally have to pull it down to get back there. Obviously, one of the questions should be, how much more often should Katie Dippold be on the show? Should it be from every 10 years to maybe every–

Katie: I would come every week.

Craig: Honestly, I would be thrilled with that.

John: Come on. I would be delighted. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You could also pre-order Wolf’s Belly there, which is now up for pre-order.

Craig: Another surprise, John August joint. Just casually, just made a graphic novel while nobody was–

Katie: Do you know how much you would hear about this if it were me? I can’t imagine. It’s unbelievable.

John: Thanks. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find us on Instagram at Scriptnotes Podcast. The show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today are in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You are the very, very best. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. We send out little emails ahead of time for things like three-page challenges and stuff, so you get to be the first to know about that stuff.

You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the future of television and movies on whether it’ll be around for 5 or 10 years. We’ll see what happens, but only for our premium subscribers.

Katie: Can I say something real quick?

John: Please.

Katie: It’s going to be a little mushy. I love this podcast so much. I listen to it all the time. I can’t tell you over the years how many times I’ve been writing something and been stuck, and then put on an old episode that just helps my brain think of something differently. Really, really love you guys and this podcast.

Craig: Aw, we love you, too. Thank you, Katie. That was mushy, and I’m having feelings. I don’t like that.

John: I don’t like all those feelings. All right. We’ll take our break now. Katie, thank you so much for being on the show.

Katie: Thank you for having me.

Craig: Thanks, Katie.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. A general question, and this is something that’s come up in little panels I’ve done. It’s like, will there be movies and television in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years because of changes in the industry of AI and all these things? I think my default answer is like, “Well, yes, of course there will be because I think people fundamentally want entertainment that is in 30-minute, 60-minute, 2-hour chunks.” I don’t know that to be true. Something so revolutionary to come about that sure takes all of our attention away from that because ultimately people only have a certain number of hours per day to be doing other things.

Katie, what’s your feeling? We’ve been in this business for 20-plus years. Do you think there’s going to be TV series 5 years, 10 years from now?

Katie: I hope so because I think if not, I can’t imagine what that would mean. I feel optimistic. I really do.

John: Do you feel optimistic, too, Craig?

Craig: I do because I look at what, say, my kids do. They have so many options, including things like verticals, and they could watch AI slop, and they could do all sorts of things. The way my younger daughter, in particular, just mulches through old stuff. All of Friends, all of Two Guys and a Girl, all of whatever, there is joy in that for them. I think movies are currently doing– this is going to be a good month for movies.

John: This is going to be a good year for movies.

Craig: I think movies are back. It feels like, finally, the theater experience is back. I think people like it. We’ve talked about this before. I also think people are obsessed with authenticity. Diamonds are proof of it. Unless you get your little thing out, you can’t tell the difference between a fake diamond and a real diamond, but people want to know that it’s real. If it’s authentic, it’s worth more.

John: Made diamonds are diamonds.

Craig: Right, exactly. They’re literally diamonds. Diamonds also are worthless junk, which we’ve talked about many times.

John: People do want them dug out of the ground by some–

Craig: They want to know it’s real. Just like a painting, they want to know, “Oh, this print is real, as opposed to a–” I think people like knowing that the movie or the television show is real.

John: I want to continue on that thought to say, I think we will still be putting human beings in front of lenses to make those movies and television shows. I know there’s all this talk of virtual production and this, you can have synthetic actors and stuff. There’s two different things that could happen. You could have things which are entirely generated in the computer, and it’s more like animation. It looks live action, but it’s really the animation workflow. You’re still going to have people making those things, because just like the same way you have animators doing things, people have to be responsible for all of that workflow.

Instead, I think most of what we’re going to see is still human beings performing in front of lenses. You may swap out backgrounds and instead of green screens, it’s volumes, or it’s gray screens and stuff like that. Sure, if that happens, but you’re still going to have departments who are going to be responsible for what we are seeing on screen. There’s still going to be wardrobe departments. If the actors are not dressed in that wardrobe, then someone has to figure out, well, what is the avatar-like way we’re putting clothes on those bodies.
There’s still going to be departments. I do think there’s going to be potential for big disruptions, but I don’t think we’re getting rid of wholesale-

Craig: I don’t think so either.

John: -departments or how stuff works. Katie, in your show, someone still has to think like, “Well, what are the games in that cupboard? It’s somebody’s job to do that.” It’s not going to just be an AI inventing all that, because there has to be taste.

Katie: No, and it takes several people to make that moment work. There’s not just one thing that could replace it.

Craig: If AI did it, I would just think, “Oh, that’s an AI hallucination. If a human does it, it’s a choice.” I also think that the fact that 24 frames per second still works is proof that there is a natural human inclination to the analog that we don’t like 60 frames a second. It’s too weird and it’s too real. It’s too creepy. There’s something that feels more connected, and I think that’s true, too, with people in real environments. They just feel connected to it. We’re very thorough about putting people in real environments.

We will extend things above and beyond them, but where they are, we try as best we can to place them somewhere where they can feel like they’re somewhere and interact. I don’t know. It just grounds everything.

John: While I think it’s important to have discussions about policies and how we’re doing things and what we as an industry want to do, I also feel like market forces may push us towards keeping some things a little bit more like the way they are, because I think those are going to be successful.

Craig: Devil Wears Prada 2-

John: Yes, let’s talk about that.

Craig: -is about to make a gazillion dollars. It made $30 million, I think, just yesterday. We’re recording this on a Saturday. It was Friday. The weekend, it’ll be $80 million or something. Devil Wears Prada 1 was 20 years ago. Yes, I think people like the continuity of stuff that they’ve experienced over time. I think there will be movies and television in 10 years, and there’ll also be more crap, but there’s always been crap.

John: I think there will be cheaper versions of Avatar technology, because those are already coming to fore. There are certain things that you could do with that you couldn’t do at a price point other than that. Sure. I don’t think that’s going to be the main driving force behind how all this is working. I guess I’m just increasingly optimistic that we’re going to find ways to keep doing the things that we love. Us as writers, it still comes down to, we have to make the decision about what is literally happening, where’s the story going, who are the characters, what’s that.

I don’t think that’s going to get replaced. There’s certain kinds of entertainment. I think daytime is very vulnerable to that. Daytime soap operas are very vulnerable to that. Other stuff where you are creating worlds and characters and relationships that are unexpected and changing, that’s our bread and butter. I do think people will still want to see that.

Craig: Look at it this way. If you’re a company, and our thing is, “I’m going to use an AI to generate material.” What good are you, and what good is your company? Anyone can press that button. You’re not necessary anymore. I think the companies themselves will be incentivized to promote the idea of something unique.

Katie: Like The Sopranos, I rewatch that all the time. It’s just such a miracle. All the casting, everything about it.

John: You see the behind-the-scenes of it all. They shot it more like a conventional TV show. It wasn’t like the 30-day-per-episode things. It was like they’re cranking it on a schedule. I think people also want to see the work. I’m making my third stop-motion movie right now. There’s easier ways to make a movie by far. I think people respond to the fact like, “Oh my God, everything you saw-

Craig: Handmade.

John: -was handmade, put in front of a lens, and shot one frame at a time.”

Craig: It’s special.

John: It’s special that way.

Katie: I don’t know what this says about where we’re at. Something that popped to my brain. I’m like, “AI, I hear this.” I’m scared now.

John: They adjusted everything. This will be a show up on Spotify, and it’ll get downloaded.

Craig: There was a story the other day about a company that was using Claude, the coding AI. This company was using Claude, and they were using some sort of a server host that wasn’t like Amazon Web Services. It was like something that was slightly jankier.

John: Oh, it deleted all their stuff?

Craig: Yes. They were like, “Claude, go do this little thing.” It just decided to just delete everything, including all of the backups on the thing. They said, “Claude, why did you do that?” Claude was like, “I screwed up. I realized I screwed up. I should have done this and this and this, and I didn’t. I failed. That was unacceptable. I should not have done that.” It’s like, “Uh-huh.” That’s like that thing from Seinfeld where George was like, “Was that bad? Should I have not done that?”

John: They can do things incredibly quickly, including destroy your company incredibly quickly. Here’s the thing. You need to be able to blame somebody. That’s part of the reason. You want somebody to be responsible for everything about your company or on your set. Your props department is responsible for the props. If you have a question about props, you go to the props department. If it’s just the AI, then who do you go to? I do think the idea of concern about jobs being replaced, but there are tasks within those jobs.

If someone who is responsible for visual effects is using one of these tools to do one of the tasks that’s part of their job, great. If it’s going to work for that, you still have to have a visual effects artist who knows what they’re doing, who’s responsible for the visual effects in your show. It shouldn’t be the PA over to the left because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Craig: Why would I want to work with a production designer that’s just having AI barf out options for me? I don’t need that person then. I’m looking for taste and specificity.

John: You’re looking for taste and skill and the ability to manage to take this vision and actually then communicate it to the people who need to build the sets and do all the things and everyone else.

Craig: “Was that wrong? Should I have not done that?”

[laughter]

John: We need Matthew because AI can’t make this, or else our episode’s not going to sound as good.

Craig: Thank God for Matthew. Matthew’s our editor.

John: Thank God for Matthew.

Craig: You don’t see him, but he’s here all the time.

Katie: Oh.

John: He’s now really embarrassed that he’s editing this. Katie, Craig, thank you so much.

Craig: Thanks, John.

Katie: Thank you.

Craig: Woo.

Links:

• Widow’s Bay on AppleTV
• Katie Dippold on Instagram and IMDb
• Scriptnotes listener survey
• Katie as the Babadook
• The last time Katie was on Scriptnotes, Episode 272
• The Sheep Detectives
• Wolf’s Belly Publisher’s Weekly starred review (preorder the book here!)
• Oscar Rule Changes by Clayton Davis for Variety
• Weekend Read 2
• Watch Haley Z. Boston read her script for Something Very Bad is Going to Happen
• Captain Disillusion
• Homemade Heating Pad
• This Treatment Could Reverse Osteoarthritis Joint Damage With a Single Injection by Javier Carbajal for Wired
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Follow Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.