The original post for this episode can be found here.
Craig Mazin: The reason I don’t like this producer is because they’re doing this thing that makes me insane, which is to elevate their personal issue to an industry-wide rule that does not exist. It is an appeal to authority they do not have, or rather, it’s an assumption of authority they do not have, and they are inviting people to just throw a wadded-up poster of Home Alone in their face. I shall do so virtually.
John August: 30 minutes earlier. Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.
John: This is Episode 735 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
What you just experienced was a flash-forward, or what we call in this podcast, a Stuart Special. They are surprisingly common in spec scripts, to a degree, they can feel cliché. Today on the show, we’ll look at what makes an effective flash-forward, when to consider them, and when to run away.
We’ll also be answering a bunch of listener questions, including some from our random advice mailbag, and in our bonus segment for premium members, how to go to Hollywood parties. Craig, if there’s one thing you and I know about, it’s how to go to parties.
Craig: I can’t wait to learn.
John: Absolutely. There are some minimums. We’re going to teach you the minimum.
Craig: We’ve been to enough.
John: We’ve been to enough.
Craig: We can fill people in who have not been to Hollywood parties on what they’re really like.
John: Yes, absolutely.
Craig: If you ever do find yourself in one, how to behave?
John: 100%. Absolutely. One of the last Hollywood parties I think I went to was premiere for second season of The Last of Us, and I did the things I think you should do at a Hollywood party. We’ll talk through those.
Craig: Great.
John: Some follow-up. Last week and the week before, we invited our listeners to participate in a ScriptNotes survey. We asked them to click a link, go through a form, and answer some questions about ScriptNotes. 333 people, Craig, answered that survey. That’s a good number.
Craig: That’s a great number.
John: About half of them were premium members. Half of them were- our regular listeners.
Craig: I’d like to say about half of them enjoyed the podcast.
John: More than half enjoyed the podcast. What would be terrible if you put the survey like, “We hate this show. Please stop doing it.”
Craig: We’re running about a 55% right now.
John: Yes, that’s what it is. Just above the minimum-
Craig: Just above.
John: We’re higher than Congress.
Craig: Yes, we’re higher than Congress.
John: That’s our goal on this podcast.
Craig: We got all those people, and what did we learn?
John: Some top-line numbers to tell you. 82% of our listeners listen to almost every episode.
Craig: Wow.
John: That’s great. Half of them have been listening for five years or longer. 40% of listeners found out about ScriptNotes through word of mouth.
Craig: That makes sense.
John: That does make sense.
Craig: We don’t really advertise.
John: We don’t advertise. The other ways people find out about it would be like Google, or it was recommended through the algorithms on Spotify, or they saw us at Austin Film Festival, that thing. Word of mouth is probably the way. I guess tell all your friends you listen to ScriptNotes. That’s probably the only way that people are going to start listening.
Craig: You at home are our Salesforce.
John: 100%.
Craig: We do offer some commission.
John: Absolutely.
Craig: 100% of 0%.
John: Yes, exactly. How old do you think our listeners are, Craig? What percentage of our listeners are college-aged? They’re between 18, 22, 23.
Craig: I would say a curiously large number. I’m going to go with 12%.
John: 3%.
Craig: Wow, okay.
John: Small?
Craig: See, I thought 12 was curiously large, so I’m not surprised that it’s not.
John: Again, this is people who filled out the survey, so there could be some of that.
Craig: A little bit of self-selection.
John: What percentage are between 35 and 54?
Craig: That’s going to be the meat there. I’m going to go with 60.
John: 65, yes, that’s 100%.
Craig: We’re an adult podcast.
John: We’re an adult podcast.
Craig: We’re a mature podcast.
John: Absolutely. What percentage of our listeners who filled out the survey have an undergraduate degree or higher? For international listeners, that’s college.
Craig: Sure. We’ll have to deduct 3% from the kids who haven’t graduated yet. I’m going to say 78%.
John: 98%.
Craig: 98?
John: 90.
Craig: Oh, 90.
John: Nine zero.
Craig: That’s rather educated.
John: Yes.
Craig: I’m not surprised.
John: If we were to have advertising, which we will never have advertising, that would be a very attractive market for them. What percentage of our listeners live in the Los Angeles area?
Craig: I’m going to go with 22%.
John: 25%.
Craig: Oh.
John: Yes, see? Craig knows this stuff. What percentage work in the entertainment industry? As writers or as anywhere else in the entertainment industry?
Craig: 34%.
John: 50%.
Craig: Oh, that’s more than I thought.
John: Yes, that’s good.
Craig: Okay, that’s quite good.
John: 67% of premium subscribers gave the premium service a 10.
Craig: Oh, that’s great.
John: 90% gave it an eight or higher, which feels great. People just seem really happy in that.
Craig: I like the people who just keep paying for it, but they’re like, it’s a three.
John: It’s a three.
Craig: It’s so mid, here’s another five bucks.
John: Absolutely. I’ll never stop subscribing. We asked about some other things that I’d be interested in. Of the recurring segments, people liked most of them. There wasn’t a-
Craig: A big favorite or a-
John: Some people don’t listen to the Three-Page Challenges. “Mike, my husband, never listens to Three-Page Challenges,” which is great.
Craig: Sure. I don’t think Melissa does either.
John: No, which is fine.
Craig: Then again, Melissa mostly listens to the podcast to fall asleep. I think I’ve said this before. It’s not an insult, because I’m not around. She likes hearing my voice. Your voice apparently does not put her to sleep. My voice gives her some comfort.
John: You are her sleepcast.
Craig: I don’t think she ever makes it to the end. Then again, she rarely makes it to the end of any media before falling asleep.
John: One finding that was interesting in terms of a new thing we could try to do more of is, we could describe it as a screenplay book club, which is basically where we just talk through a screenplay. It’s a deep dive, but if we could tell people in advance that we were doing it, that we’re all reading the same script and going through it.
Craig: That’s a great idea. I think we should do that.
John: I think we should do that too.
Craig: That would be fun.
John: What we need to figure out is are we doing something that’s already been produced or an unproduced screenplay. What is the best way to do this?
Craig: I find that people tend to like things they’re familiar with. It’s a little bit abstract, I think. Probably fewer people will be interested in reading a script of an unproduced thing. What we could do is pick a script for something that’s been made that isn’t necessarily the one people talk about.
John: 100%. That makes a lot of sense. I was also thinking if there is some screenwriter who’s really good, and just for whatever reason, this thing was never made.
Craig: Well, there is that.
John: They’re willing to share it with us.
Craig: Scott Frank wants to give us that great unmade screenplay. I’d be happy.
John: Some other suggestions from the open answer sections. Someone said they would love John and Craig to get into writing phone call scenes because I always struggle with how to best represent this type of scene on the page. We should do that.
Craig: Great topic.
John: An entire episode devoted to what we could learn from the work of Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, Jeremy O. Harris.
Craig: Oh my gosh.
John: Yes. We haven’t done a lot on playwriting overall, and it does feel like-
Craig: Sondheim alone deserves a 750-episode podcast, and I’m sure there are some out there, but what a wizard. What a wizard.
John: I would need to do some reading, and I need to get up to speed with his workflow and the fullness of the work because I know a lot of the musicals, but I don’t know the process behind them.
Craig: Very rigorous. Not surprisingly because if you look at the lyrics, they are so crafted. I do remember reading one interesting thing about a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The show initially, when it was running, it began with this song about war. It anchored the audience in a position where they were like, this isn’t a funny show because it wasn’t a funny song. Everything that happened after that was a comedy, no one laughed at. Sondheim, in a panic, wrote Comedy Tonight. What became the opener, and nothing else changed, and everybody laughed at everything. It was just anchoring people.
John: As we get into our discussion of flash-forwards, that is actually one of the main things is whatever you introduce the audience to first, it’s anchoring them. It’s setting a frame for what everything’s happening around there. A flash-forward could do that or could mislead the audience in terms of what they’re expecting. Other last things, people suggest your episode on how to write a movie is a thing people can keep coming back to. I’ve always promised I will do my own version of that. At some point, when you’re gone, I will try to do a version of that because we have similar aims but different techniques.
Craig: Different methods. I have promised people how to write a television episode. One day, I’m going to have to do that one.
John: Maybe when you’re done writing television episodes. If it will ever happen.
Craig: My God.
John: It will end. Within a year, you’ll be done writing new episodes of this series for a while.
Craig: Yes, it will end, but until it ends, “Oh, man.” It’s a lot of words.
John: It’s a lot of words.
Craig: When I look back, and I put all the episodes together, it makes large volumes like big thick books on your bookshelf of pages. Oh, man. John, can you imagine if you did that with everything you wrote? Oh, it looked like the World Book. Hey, kids, remember the World Book?
John: No reference at all.
Craig: None.
John: Our listeners are 35 to 54, so they’ll know what the World Book encyclopedia was.
Craig: The 48 to 54’s will remember the World Book.
John: That 3% who are in college right now, they have no idea what we’re talking about.
Craig: The F is a World Book. That is not fire. Cringe.
John: Cringe.
Craig: Cringe.
John: Let’s talk about flash-forwards, or as we call them on this podcast, the Stuart Special. Craig, can you remind us who Stuart Friedel is, what his role was on the podcast, and how the Stuart Special became its thing?
Craig: Stuart, I believe, is the first producer of Scriptnotes. One of Stuart’s jobs, of course, as producer, is to select Three-Page Challenges. We came to note, I think probably because it was just very au courant among people writing screenplays, that so many of them began with a flash-forward where there would be some half a page or page, and then a title would say three weeks earlier, or one month earlier, or one year earlier. We came to call that a Stuart Special because we just figured, “Oh, Stuart loves these,” which he probably doesn’t.
John: No.
Craig: No, he’s indifferent.
John: The volume of what’s coming through, these are- the ones he’s picking, and he’s not the only person who encounters them. We have a listener question from Anonymous.
Drew: “I read for The Black List website, and as with your Three-Page Challenges, I get a lot of Stuart Specials. In my opinion, the flash-forwards generally aren’t interesting enough to get the audience excited about what’s to come, or they give away too much and take some of the suspense out of the story. What makes a strong flash-forward? I’m very interested to hear your thoughts.”
Craig: Let’s say you had a story where the hero, in the end, kills himself. You probably wouldn’t want to start anything like that.
John: Well, except they did.
Craig: Except they did, and I Stuart Specialed the hell out of it.
John: Go opens with a Stuart Special.
Craig: There you go. Here’s the deal with Stuart Specials. Like everything else, if it’s interesting, it works. If it has purpose, and if it needs to be a Stuart Special, if it really does add something, then it’s of value. If it’s just, I don’t know how to begin this thing, so I’m just going to do a record scratch, and then someone’s going to say, “You’re probably wondering how I got here,” then it doesn’t work because you don’t need to do it.
For me, at least, in Chornobyl, I did not want people to eventually get to the end and go, “I wonder what happens– Oh, no, he kills himself.” I’m just like, “Let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s ask ourselves, why did this guy end up doing that?” I think the way ones that work, work.
John: We’ve talked about opening scenes many times on the show, most notably in episode 493. What we were stressing is that an opening scene needs to ask a provocative question and set a promise and an expectation for what the story is about to see. I talked about with Comedy Tonight, it is setting a frame for what the experience is going to be like. You’re starting that contract with the audience in terms of, give me your attention, and I will make it worth your while, and that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
What’s interesting about a Stuart Special is that you are essentially borrowing drama from later in the story for whatever reason. It may be because the actual chronological beginning is too quiet or too ordinary, or it doesn’t feel like where the movie’s going. That can be legitimate, but you have to really think. You are borrowing, so you’re creating a debt, and you have to make sure that you’re paying off that debt in a way that is meaningful and rewarding for the audience. Otherwise, it’s just going to feel like a cheat.
Craig: Correct. You do need to be able to tell a story moving forward that allows people to arrive at that moment again and go, “Oh, actually, now that I know what I know, I feel differently about this. I’ve learned why this was important.”
The most powerful Stuart Special I have ever witnessed is Gandhi. Gandhi begins with Gandhi being assassinated. As a kid, I was so shocked and traumatized from the jump.
Immediately, I was in a place where I felt unsafe in the best possible way, which is to say in a movie theater where you are safe, but understanding that whatever this man did, it earned him death by gunfire. What was it? In a beautiful way, you begin to forget if the story does it well, so that when you arrive there, again, you go, “Oh, no. Oh, that’s right. Oh, no. Oh, no, he’s going to die.” That’s when the Stuart Special is working well.
John: That moment where you have returned to that place that you set up in the Stuart Special, if it’s just like, “Oh, now we’re here,” that’s not so rewarding. If you’ve recontextualized that moment based on what we experienced before, now we know the characters, we know the situation, and it’s actually surprising that we got to this moment, those tend to be the ones where it really was structurally a great choice to open with that flash-forward and get us there.
We talk about the framing, Comedy Tonight, this is actually comedy, you’re supposed to be laughing. Often, a movie will get big, but if we don’t know that it’s going to be able to get big later on, those first five, 10 minutes might feel so small that it doesn’t work. I would just always urge the writer to think about, does it need to be so small to start? There may be a way to actually start with the size and scale of what the thing is going to get to in those opening moments.
Craig: Or it may be that the moment that you’re thinking of as a Stuart Special would play better if it just unfolded. Here’s an example. I love John Wick. I love that movie. It starts with a Stuart Special. I got to be honest, I’m not sure it’s necessary.
I remember seeing that Stuart Special and thinking, “Okay, well. Sure, fine.” It didn’t actually make that moment better later, and given what happens early on in the story, I don’t think I needed it. That’s really the test for me, is would this be better to just happen once or is it better if it happens twice.
John: Let’s also talk about anticipation. Because one of the things that a Stuart Special does is it creates an anticipation in the audience that we’re going to get to this moment. That can be great. It can create a sense of dread because the audience is ahead of the characters because we know that this thing is going to happen. We know the gun is going to get shot, and they don’t know they’re going to get shot.
It can also make the reader impatient because it becomes that, “When are we getting to the fireworks factory? We know that’s going to happen at some point. Come on, let’s get there now.” It can make us pay less attention to the scenes leading up to it.
Craig: Which is a good challenge for yourself as a writer, don’t let that happen. Titanic sinks. James Cameron did not let us sit there going, “Oh my God, this boat sinks. Can we just get to the sinking part?” No, he brilliantly distracted us with a lovely romance. I think that’s the challenge, right?
That’s why Stuart Specials are seductive as a writer. You’re basically saying, “I’m a magician, Penn & Teller, do this. We’re going to show you how we do this trick. Got it? Now watch us do this trick.” It’s still awesome because there’s so much sleight of hand and ingenuity that goes into it. That’s the fun challenge of a Stuart Special.
John: The last thing I’ll say about a Stuart Special is you think like, “Oh, we’re setting up the size and scale and scope of the movie,” but sometimes you’re actually just delaying the start of the movie. We’re delaying getting to know who our hero is, what their situation is because it’s all this extra [unintelligible 00:16:20] before you get there. There was a movie I watched a bit of on a plane, this was last time, with talented actors who I loved, but the opening sequence was just meant to set up the size and scale. It’s like, “I don’t care about any of these people.”
Craig: Who are these people? Why is this happening?
John: It’s not the movie I signed up for, so why are we watching this thing?
Craig: Yes. I think sometimes what happens is people make a movie, they test it, which is a horrible process. The guy who does the focus group after inevitably says, “Let’s talk about pacing. Overall, did you think the movie dragged a little bit, was pretty well paced, or moved too quickly?” No one ever says move too quickly, ever, even though many movies do. Almost always, about half the people say it was about right, and half the people say it dragged in spots because every movie will drag in a different spot for everybody. Inevitably, they will say, “It took a while for it to get going.” Correct, that’s how stories work.
Watch Star Wars, a half an hour of robots walking around in the desert. That’s how it starts, a half an hour of that and it’s slow. What do producers do? They panic, and they go, “We got to get them right away, right off the top of the bat. Take this thing, put it in the beginning, and then go three weeks earlier, and now it starts better.” No, not always. No. Sometimes, just let people, I don’t know, get there. They’ll get there.
John: They’ll get there.
Craig: They’ll get there.
John: Takeaway here, Stuart specials are not categorically bad, but if you’re going to use one, it has to really have a purpose. It has to be a purpose, not just because the start of your movie is boring. It has to be there’s a reason why you’re starting with this moment to set up the size and scale and frame of your story that is meaningful. If you’re just doing it for those things, ask yourself, could you do it with the actual present-tense start of your story? That should be your first instinct because you’re always borrowing something from later in the story, and there’s a cost to that. Sometimes the cost is 100% worth it, but so often it’s not.
Craig: It should definitely not be an excuse for you to not try to think of an awesome opening scene that would be present tense.
John: 100%. All right, let’s answer some listener questions, which is most of what we’re doing today. Do you want to start with this one about time jumps?
Craig: Yes, it feels relevant.
Drew: Michael writes, I’m writing a feature set in the late 70s that intercuts between present day 1977 and about seven months earlier. For the first roughly 40 pages, the script moves back and forth in five to 10-minute chunks, often in the same locations with the same characters. These play like different timelines more than flashbacks. My concern is clarity for the reader, especially someone skimming. The two timelines have very different tones. The present’s darker, more grounded. The earlier timeline is warmer, slightly heightened, almost nostalgic. The story really depends on tracking those shifts. What’s the cleanest, most professional way to signal these time jumps on the page?
John: That’s a common thing we run into.
Craig: That’s an extreme situation, though, because there’s so many shifts back and forth, and it’s not large jumps in time. If you go from the 1970s to the 2000s, it’ll just feel different from the way people are talking and probably what they’re doing. Seven months in time is not a lot. If it’s something really subtle like that, the choices, as far as I can tell, are– The most mundane thing is just, in your scene header, you just say what year it is. You can constantly remind people which part. I guess you’d have to go with the month if you’re just doing a seven-month shift.
John: Yes. My instinct would be, because I’ve had to do this in a couple of things, is for the things that are set further back, you put past there and don’t put present. Because the present is our present, that’d be confusing.
Craig: The present is assumed.
John: If you just put the years, I worry that you would actually– There’s two timelines, just mark one of them differently.
Craig: Seven months earlier is a weird thing to write. It’s a weird thing to write 40 times. The other big swing you could do is to just let people know right off the top of the bat, this is what’s going to happen in this script. When we’re in this timeline, it looks like a regular script. When we’re in this timeline, the font is like this.
John: Greta Gerwig does this in Little Women, and all of the past, I think, is in red.
Craig: Yes, exactly. If you can visually set it apart, then you never have to mention anything because they’ll know.
John: Because when you actually make your movie, you’re going to do things to visually distinguish those two timelines. It’s a problem of the script on the page.
Craig: This is the thing where people are, “But the rules.” I guess Greta Gerwig didn’t hear about the rules.
John: No.
Craig: You know what? There’s an interesting thing people ask, what is a common trait among successful screenwriters and as far as I could tell, the only common trait is none of us give a damn about the stupid rules. Literally none of us.
John: Related to that with Greta Gerwig, I would say that she, and this is true to every good screenwriter I know, is she actually does care about the read and she’s trying to make sure that she’s fully communicating what the movie feels like on the page.
Craig: That’s her job. That’s her job. Don’t direct on the page. Yes, do it and make sure people are feeling what you want them to feel. What you said is what she cares about is the read, not the rules.
John: Correct. Now, let’s intersperse this with some random advice. Where do you want to start with it?
Drew: Let’s start with Anais. She writes, “My oldest is going to kindergarten in the fall.”
Craig: Oh, congrats.
Drew: “Any advice for the elementary school years?”
John: By kindergarten, your kid has probably already gotten all the daycare sicknesses. Basically, they pick up all the things, which is just fine.
Craig: No one gets chickenpox anymore because of the vaccine.
John: Which is great. Listen, kindergarten is largely about learning to sit in a circle and just learning how to be around other kids and just do the things. They’ll be very basic. They’ll learn to read. They’ll learn to count and stuff. They’ll mostly just learn how to be a student and how to follow some rules and follow some structure. That should really be all your goal there.
Craig: The elementary years are the best years. This is the good news, Anais. Your child is, I assume, five or six. It’s typical kindergarten age. By the time they’re done with elementary school, they’ll be 10. Yes, some kids, especially girls around 10, will start tilting over into a different phase of life. At least five, six, seven, eight, nine, those are the best years because they’re children. They are not wrapped up in anything adolescent. They are fun and ridiculous, and they still love birthday parties. They love birthday parties. My advice to you, Anais, is, oh my God, enjoy this because, yes, man, then it gets a little crazy.
John: One luxury you have when they’re this age is that they probably get along pretty well with a lot of kids. See if you can figure out which parents you can actually stand being around because you’re going to play dates, and birthday parties, and stuff like that, where you’re going to just be around other kids’ parents a lot. If you can find friends, other parents you can stand to be around, and your kids get along, you’re happier. You’re better.
Craig: You know what? That brings to mind one last bit of advice I have for Anais. I have two kids. One is on the spectrum, one is not. Now, the thing about kids who are neurodivergent is, socially– As we know, a lot of neurodivergent people struggle socially, but children will generally struggle less socially in the elementary school years because everyone is struggling socially because they’re also young. What happens is somewhere around 11, 12, 13, what do we call the non-neurodivergent people?
John: Neurotypical.
Craig: Neurotypical kids will start to peel off and accelerate socially, and the neurodivergent kids just stay where they are, and then the gap grows, and then trouble starts. One bit of advice I have for you, Anais, is if you feel maybe your kid is neurodivergent and is struggling a little bit socially, but you’re tempted to go, “Oh, but they have friends,” keep an eye on it. Take it seriously because it’s never too early to learn skills, and it can become a significant issue for them and create a lot of stress for them and you once they hit those horrible middle school years.
John: Yes, middle school is universally bad for everybody.
Craig: Nightmare.
John: If you’re coming in there-
Craig: Absolute nightmare.
John: -with extra challenges, it’s horrible. All right, let’s go back to normal questions. Charlie in Sheffield.
Drew: “I’m very hyped for The Sheep Detectives.”
John: Congratulations on your movie, The Sheep Detectives.
Craig: Yay. In theaters.
Drew: “I noticed Craig is credited with both screenplay and screen story. What’s a screen story? Why say both? Presented like this, aren’t you just saying the same thing twice?”
Craig: It’s embarrassing. No, we’re not saying the same thing twice, but I wish we could just fold it into one thing. Here’s the brief summary. When you adapt something from source material, in this case, there is a book, Three Bags Full, written by a fantastic German author pseudonymically named Leonie Swan. I don’t even know her real name, but she’s a lovely person.
When you adapt things from source material, you get screenplay by, but if you adapt it in such a way that you create a story that is significantly different from the source material, then only through an arbitration, the Writers Guild may award the screenwriter also screen story by. The reason that’s important for us as writers is it confers separated rights, which we’ve gone through in a prior episode. If you get screenplay by and story by in an original film, they just fold it together and make it written by. Why they refuse? I’ve tried. They refuse to fold screenplay and screen story by into written by because they’re like, “Well, because written by is just for originals.” You end up with this very silly arrangement of multiple credits. I don’t like it. I apologize.
John: That’s reality. It’s one of those things which with great effort and probably a member vote, you could change. To change those credit things is elaborate and complicated. It’s a question of where do you spend your energy.
Craig: You basically have to go to the membership to get a vote, and then you have to go to the AMPTP and have them agree to make that change, also because it’s dictated by the MBA.
John: I will tell you that the AMPTP wants to say no to anything, even if it’s 100% free. It will cost them nothing.
Craig: If you offered them pizza, they would say, ” Pay us for it.”
John: Absolutely.
Craig: What, we’re buying it for you. No, their immediate answer is no. They love saying no. Everything you ask puts everything else you ask in jeopardy. Of course, if the Writers Guild had a– Many years ago, there was a mid-contract mechanism, called the Contract Adjustment Committee, which was somewhat controversial. The idea is that as little, tiny things would come up inside of the term, you could then go back and, without an official reopening of the contract, adjust some things. Now that our contract term is four years, there is perhaps some wisdom in considering the value of something like that. This is the thing you would do in that.
John: Totally.
Craig: It’s not a big money issue- it’s just a little friction point.
John: Absolutely. A related question that I think we may have answered on the podcast before, but sometimes a writer’s name will appear multiple times in the credit block because they did some writing by themselves. They also wrote with a partner, or they wrote with multiple partners on things. You see one person’s name mentioned three times in a credit block. It is weird and uncomfortable. You could imagine some scenario down the road where the mathematical credits should be a certain way, and the actual credit you see on screen could be slightly different than that.
Craig: It actually does work like that in those cases if the writers agree. If you have written by A and then end the writing team of A and B, if writer A agrees, and they should, but sometimes they don’t, it’ll just say written by A and B, but A will get more residuals because of that. That is possible, but in this case, not possible.
John: It wasn’t, yes. Weirdly, yes.
Craig: It looks like I just threw a tantrum and asked for my name to be on there twice, no. Anyway, I hope they enjoy the movie.
John: Let’s answer a listener question from Colton.
Drew: What is something that is undervalued yet offers the greatest return when it comes to health or quality of life?
Craig: Oh my gosh.
John: I will say relationships. Obviously, having a life partner is incredibly valued, but I think people know that. I would say other relationships. Relationships outside of your marriage are really important. That you have a group of people that you can-
Craig: Friends.
John: Friends, yes. Our weekly D&D game, super important. My other friends who I see independently of Mike, super important.
Craig: Yes, especially as men grow older. There’s just so much research to show that women maintain lots of friendships as they get older and men don’t, and then they just get sad and die. The answer, I would probably say there is sleep by any means necessary. People struggle with sleep, and you can get by on less than you should get. The more you get, the better off it seems you are, unless you’re depressed. If you are feeling fairly mentally healthy, getting sleep, and if you have trouble sleeping, I’m a pro-sleep aid person as well. Whatever it takes, I don’t care. Sleep. I know they’ll say, “It’s not as good of a sleep.” It’s better than not sleeping. I just think people struggle, and sleep is huge.
John: Money spent on a good mattress, a dark, quiet room, try a white noise machine. Do the things-
Craig: Yes, blackout curtains. Although we’re all trying to be energy conscious, one thing we do know is it’s hard to sleep in a hot room.
John: Air conditioning is good.
Craig: Yes.
John: Victoria has an audio question.
Victoria: I wanted to ask a question about the problematic way that unfilmable is used. I don’t think it’s a very helpful note because I almost never see it applied to visual logic issues. It’s usually something that’s directed at– The camera can’t see it, so it’s not real. I also see it frequently criticizing a screenwriter’s use of internal character narrative. I really like to use that, and I like reading it. Not a ton of it.
One of my favorite examples of this is in the first Chornobyl script, where Bryukhanov is said to envision a very likely fate for himself. An inquiry, an arrest, a trial, a bullet. I love that because I feel it. I feel it from the script. That said, I do think there is a valid note that applies to the invisible information being laid out for the reader that the viewer has no way of getting. I guess my question is, when do you decide to add detail to a character’s internal world, and when is the information on the script readable but not legible to the viewer? Thank you so much.
Craig: Thank you. That’s a good question. I’m certainly a criminal when it comes to this. I do this all the time. Victoria, to me, the big difference in what I would call a annoying and useless unfilmable and a helpful, useful unfilmable is when it informs the actor so that they can perform something because then it is filmable. Their inner thoughts, their inner feelings, and emotions come out.
Most of the time, I think good direction is not about how to say the words. It’s about how to feel or what you might want to feel here, and it comes through. It is filmable. That line, for instance, Con O’Neill made that clear in his performance. It was filmable. What I don’t particularly find useful are these omniscient, novelish narrations where a character is introduced and then the writer says, there are so-and-so who thinks they’re this and thinks that, but really they’re this or really they’re that. Well, that actually is not filmable because you’re not their writer. If it’s something the character is feeling in the moment, or thinking in the moment, then yes.
John: I would add to that, if the audience is going to experience that visually in watching the movie, then it’s not unfilmable. Sometimes you’re really portraying, if you’re talking about what this small village feels like and you’re giving description to it that may not directly match what this is, but it can be a metaphor that just helps us understand what this is going to feel like when we actually see it, and it gives information to the director-
Craig: Absolutely.
John: 100% valid.
Craig: Absolutely. It’s the [unintelligible 00:33:28] doesn’t know it is the classic, right? That’s the most cliché, horrible, unfilmable there is. So-and-so arrives, “hot but doesn’t know it.” How the hell do I know that she doesn’t know it? How is that possible that I can show that she doesn’t know she’s hot? I’m not sure. Anyone has actually ever not known they were hot anyway? Maybe some people do, but there’s only one way for me to find out. That’s for her to be shocked when somebody thinks she’s hot. Otherwise, it’s useless. It’s useless. Things like that, we avoid as best as we can, but anything that would help the actor, the production designer, the director, the costume designer, the composer making the score, anything that helps them is filmable.
John: Absolutely. I will also say there’s things you might include in an outline or a treatment that don’t make it through to the screenplay because those documents, they’re preliminary, and you can swing bigger in some of those ways because it’s not-
Craig: They’re meta.
John: They’re meta, yes. They’re talking about the scene rather than being the scene itself.
Craig: Exactly. Yes, they’re meta. Whereas the screenplay is the drama, and you can say whatever you want in an outline. You can interrupt yourself and say, “Okay, imagine this is like from Breaking Bad except blah, blah.” You can do whatever you want in an outline.
John: That would be dumb in a screenplay. It’s referencing another movie in your screenplay-
[crosstalk]
John: Yes. Final bit of random advice from Nick.
Drew: “What advice would you give to your older self?”
Craig: Didn’t we just do this?
John: We did our younger selves.
Craig: Oh, this is older self.
John: Older self, yes. I don’t know. I guess I would have to do it based on my observation of older people and things that frustrated me about them, or things I’ve seen that worked really well for them. Let’s go on the positive.
Craig: Okay.
John: Dick Zanuck, who produced Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Big Fish, and many of Tim Burton’s movies, and was just an absolute mensch, I would say, don’t retire just because it’s what’s expected to happen to you. He genuinely loved working and producing movies for Tim Burton. It gave him so much joy, and so he didn’t stop just because he was old. He was loving doing it, and so why stop? He also called his sons every day, no matter where he was, and I love that for him.
Craig: Oh, how old am I?
John: You can decide.
Craig: Well, I’m going to project forward to quite old. My advice is, don’t bother doing a whole bunch of stuff to try and live longer. You’re not going to. Just keep rolling. Just keep rolling, you’re good. You’re good. No one lives forever. No one lives forever. What are you going to do? You’re going to start going to the gym every day? No, you’re not. At 80, you’re going to decide that’s when I’m going to start?
John: People don’t fundamentally change. I think that’s an important thing to remember. When I see people say, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll change.” No, they won’t change. They never will change.
Craig: No, old dog. No new tricks required. I would advise myself to eagerly go to any lifetime achievement ceremony that might come my way- because that’s actually the good sign that you’re done. That’s when you know they don’t want you anymore. They start giving you the thank you for your service awards.
John: Let’s go to another audio question. This one’s from Robert.
Drew: This one’s also follow-up from our conversation about avoidance in episode 731.
Robert: Hi. I just listened to your episode on protagonists’ motivation being driven by their desire to avoid things. I was just wondering if you have any tips for how to differentiate between a character driven by avoidance and a character that appears to have very little agency. I’ve received notes on a story that I am currently in the middle of and about half the people respond to the character positively and can totally understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, while about the other 50% of people seem to very much think that the character doesn’t have any agency, that they’re very much just reacting to everything around them and therefore is not very likable. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.
John: Let’s recap what we were talking about before with avoidance. The thesis of that episode, 731, was that we tend to think about characters going off on a quest and wanting to do and achieve things, but often they’re just trying to avoid uncomfortable situations. In agency, we’re talking about a character’s ability to take action that moves them in a direction they want to move in, so they proactively go after a thing.
They’re related concepts, but they’re not quite the same. A prisoner has very little agency over certain aspects of their life. A person trapped in a bad domestic situation might have little agency over certain things. Yet, as an audience, we get frustrated by watching that person because we feel trapped there with them.
Craig: Yes. This is a bit different than the question of wanting something or avoiding something. This comes down to– Robert is describing what we would often call a passive character, which is a very easy character for people giving notes to pick on, and here’s why. Passive characters don’t seem to demand our attention because what we’re looking for in stories are those special moments in someone’s life where something important happens.
There are some art movies where you just sit there and watch someone stroll around through some random week of their life. I don’t like those. I like movies where stuff happens. When you have a character who doesn’t have agency, at a minimum, you have to give them a desire, a hope, some need. Even if you were to say, “Here’s a story about a prisoner, they’re never getting out, ever, and there’s no way to get out.”
Then the question is, how do they survive here? Can they find love? Can they find some spiritual peace? Can they figure out how to handle their own guilt or remorse? Can they seek amends? What is it that they want to do? They need something or are they just trying to stay alive, which would be avoiding death? Either way, what you really can’t do is just get pushed around and react without any goal.
John: Yes. I want to stick up for and defend two different groups. The groups who might say, well, there’s a whole range of cinema that is valid, which has passive heroes, passive protagonists. They’re just sure seeing their daily life. That’s absolutely valid. That’s not what we focus on on this podcast, which is movies where things happen, movies where people go on a one-time journey that is transformational, which can absolutely happen in a prison movie.
You’re right in saying that there has to be a point of view, a perspective that the movie has on this character and why we should be caring about this character and why we’d be so interested and invested. I want to defend the people giving these notes, saying, “I didn’t connect or didn’t relate because this character just wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t moving the ball forward. That was my set of expectations.”
Craig: That’s what I want.
John: Yes. As we said from the start, from Comedy Tonight, you’re setting a frame on why we’re supposed to be paying attention to this character and his situation, what the journey is going to be. Maybe that’s really the issue is you’re not properly establishing what it is we should be looking for in this movie with this character balling things forward.
Craig: Great. Great points. There is a genre that I would call person trapped in lunacy. Kafka writes these stories beautifully. Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil is insane and bananas. Jonathan Price is a cog in a massive machine who slowly starts to realize that he’s a cog in a massive machine. Then, of course, it changes him.
There’s also the after-hours/something wild type of story where an average Joe ends up in a series of wild circumstances that they weren’t expecting. They are pushed around, except inevitably they’re also in desperate need of this, and they fall in love. The point of the story is you need to live.
These are essential, I think, to traditional storytelling. Certainly, if you hand somebody a script that doesn’t have that, give them fair warning. This is not one of those scripts. If you don’t like stories where nothing happens, this one isn’t for you.
Drew: It’s fair. A question from Mare. I’ve been working on an original screenplay that features a nine-year-old girl. I’ve had a few professionals in the field read it and provide really helpful notes. One producer director argued that, in no uncertain terms, that unless I were to direct a film about a child protagonist, a film featuring a child would never be made and could never be sold. He suggested that if it was something I needed to write, that I should write this as a book instead of a screenplay. I’d appreciate your insight on this opinion. I can’t shake the story. Most of the stories I’m drawn to feature younger people coming of age.
Craig: John, what do you think about this producer and his interesting insight into Hollywood?
John: This producer can say, like, “I wouldn’t make this movie.”
Craig: Totally. Not a problem.
John: That’s true, and that’s valid. Is there somebody who would make this movie? Yes.
Craig: They’ve made movies about children, starring children, since time immemorial. Shirley Temple, for God’s sake. Not to mention Little Man Tate and Sixth Sense and the movie where Macaulay Culkin died from a bee sting. Spoiler alert. There’s been so many movies.
John: Home Alone.
Craig: Home Alone. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There’s so many movies starring, I don’t know, are they specifically nine? I don’t know. Yes. How old was Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone?
Drew: Probably nine or 10.
Craig: Let’s Google that. I’m tempted to say about this producer, what an idiot. I’m going to. What an idiot.
Drew: Macaulay Culkin was nine years old.
Craig: He was nine years old in Home Alone, one of maybe the most successful family film of all time. The reason I don’t like this producer is because they’re doing this thing that makes me insane, which is to elevate their personal issue to an industry-wide rule that does not exist. It is an appeal to authority they do not have, or rather, it’s an assumption of authority they do not have. They are inviting people to just throw a wadded-up poster of Home Alone in their face. I shall do so virtually. Ha.
John: Is it valid to say it’s harder to make a movie with a nine-year-old protagonist? Sure, but it’s hard to make any movie. Come on.
Craig: They’re all hard.
John: Every movie’s hard. The thing, Mare, you should take away from this is try to get your movie made. Also, hopefully, this script is great, and that this is a sample for you to do other stuff too. You should not avoid writing the thing you want to write because it has a child protagonist. Stand by Me.
Craig: Stand by Me, for God’s sake. I’m going to actually get angry about this. Mare, broad advice for you now for your life. Anyone who says you can never do blankety blank in Hollywood, especially when it’s something that you know you can, don’t argue. Just walk away.
John: They’re not the person for you.
Craig: Cut them out of your life. I don’t know who that producer is, but if they are successful, it’s a mistake. It’s literally a cosmic error.
John: There’s producers who would say, “Oh, you can’t make a no-budget horror film,” because it’s not a thing they don’t want to make.
Craig: Exactly. You could say, I’m not going to make it. You could definitely say it’s really hard making a movie with a nine-year-old kid as the star because the restrictions on shooting with children are very specific and very onerous.
John: Also, well-intentioned and good because–
Craig: Oh, necessary. Yes. We don’t want child labor laws to be violated. It’s tough. We have kids on our show all the time, usually in smaller parts. We just know, here’s the deal. The time they take to ride there, then the time that they’re in the makeup chair, the time it takes to take the makeup off, that plus lunch, plus their teaching time, plus their mandated rests, and they can’t work more than eight hours total anyway, including all that stuff, you end up maybe four hours shooting with them, maybe?
John: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had five kids. How challenging.
Craig: It ends up costing way more money to make the same amount of movie with a kid than it would with an adult, like you said, for good reason. Still, people do it all the time because it works all the time. I’m not saying it doesn’t fail all the time, but when I say all the time, I mean lots of the time throughout history.
John: Let’s do another audio question. This one from Sydney.
Sydney: Hey, John and Craig. My name’s Sydney. My question is craft-related. I find that in my scripts, I often describe a lot of movement in the action lines, like a character walks this way or crosses the room. I’m actually noticing I end a lot of scenes with a character leaving a room or walking away from another character if they’ve just had a confrontation. I just feel like I do that very often, especially with the ending the scenes that way. Then I don’t know how to end them.
Is it better to just end on the dialogue line or is that cutting it off too early? Sometimes it feels like that’s almost getting out too early, but maybe that’s just because I’m used to ending it with someone walking away. I’ve been looking at other scripts for movies or pilots I’ve seen just to compare what’s on the screen versus what they wrote in that scene. I did just want your guys’ input to see what you thought.
John: It’s because she’s noticing a pattern, and it’s bugging her a bit that she’s doing it. It’s valid. Listen, characters walking away in a scene, it’s a choice, but if you’re doing it in every scene, something weird.
Craig: It’s a rough choice, specifically for ending a scene. If somebody walks away with purpose, if it is shocking that they walk away, if they walk away and slam a door behind them, if they walk away and disappear into a fog, sure. If they finish an argument and then turn and walk away, you’re just watching that. Then the question is, okay, let’s imagine us in the movie theater, where are we going to put our camera? At that point, you need to really end the scene on how the person who is being left feels. That’s more important than just somebody walking away because you’re not just going to watch people walking. It’s shoe leather there at the end of a scene.
John: I would ask, Sydney, if we’re following the person who’s walking away, a good choice can often be they have the confrontation, cut, and then we find them walking away, and then we can focus on them. The reaction they don’t want to show to the other person, and what that is, that’s a chance for us to get into that space. Just look at what you’re doing there. In terms of the movement within a scene, Craig and I are both huge fans of screen geography. Let people move around, let us see where things are going.
You might worry like, oh, you’re going to box people in on the blocking, you’ll figure it out. It gives a sense of what the flow is in the space and what things are like because if it feels like two characters are just standing, talking to each other in a scene, it’s not good.
Craig: No. If you don’t know how physically it’s possible for these things to happen, you end up with directors on the day just coming up with stuff which they seem to love and which I don’t.
John: Lots of bits.
Craig: I think it’s important for the screenwriter to give everybody something real to hang onto. Then, when you get there, if it’s not quite working, you adjust. I do that to my own writing all the time when I’m directing, but at least have a basis that is set in reality. Moving people around, where are they standing, Lindsay Doran’s most important question. You say two people are standing in a bar. Where in the bar? Against the bar? By a wall? Why are they standing by a wall? Why aren’t they sitting? How did one get there so quickly from all the way across the room?
These questions are worth asking. When you end a scene, one thing that you mentioned is, okay, you can cut to the next thing. Sydney, don’t think about the ending of your scene as the ending of a scene. Think about the ending of the scene as one side of a cut. The other side of the cut tells us something about how you ended, and how you ended is going to tell us something about what you see next. If you start thinking that way, for instance, if you have somebody walking away and the next shot is somebody else walking toward us, or somebody else walking away, that’s a different person, or there’s some sort of contrast, that could be interesting.
Think about the relationship between what we call the A side of the cut and the B side of the cut.
John: If you had two walking scenes back-to-back, it could work, but it’s also going to feel weird.
Craig: It’s going to start getting a little silly, isn’t it?
John: Yes, it is. You got to think about that. What’s also good that you recognize here, Sydney, is movies are not plays. You don’t have to enter and exit characters all the time. The film does that for you, which is great.
Craig: Last bit of advice for you, I love a door.
John: Love a door.
Craig: Love a door. I am obsessed with doors. I write doors all the time. I know there are things that I do that, have you seen that Aaron Sorkin supercut where he just reuses dialogue all the time? It’s all really good. I don’t do that, I don’t think, but just giving away one of my crutches. People will have a conversation with somebody, then turn, walk away, get to a door, stop, turn back, say one last thing, and then go, and the door closes, and that’s an end of a scene. A door closing, scene’s over. I like that. It’s better than just walking.
John: We’re going to have Elaine come on the podcast shortly to talk about The Devil Wears Prada. I think I noticed in her movie, which I may not have time to bring up in our conversation, is glass doors. There’s a lot of times where people are walking– You’re able to see somebody through a glass door, but not open the door, or the decision to open a door or not open the door, and so that movement becomes really important in what they can see and what they can’t see. I love it.
Craig: Doors.
John: Doors.
Craig: Doors.
John: Helpful. Doors and windows.
Craig: Big fan of doors.
John: Let’s answer a question from Andrew.
Drew: I searched your transcripts and looked in the script notes book, but I haven’t found an instance of you two tackling best practices for cutting down your screenplay. You mentioned how vast Scott Frank’s early drafts are.
Craig: [laughs] Poor Scott.
Drew: It’s well-known to me. That’s reality.
Craig: Yes, it is. It’s quite well-documented.
Drew: My question is, how does he trim those back? Everything in my script seems so important and special. I’ve condensed many scenes, and I’ve arrived late, and I’ve left early. All right.
John: This is a great question. I think we should save it for his own marquee topic. I know you’ve written on the blog about cutting. To give you a taste of what’s to come, it’s like you can make the small changes, but ultimately, if you really need to cut a lot, you need to make big changes. You need to cut scenes and sequences rather than trying to just take all the fat out of existing scenes.
Craig: It’s definitely a topic worth its own episode, because I think if you have a lot to cut, it is either an indication of the nature of your process or a problem with the story itself and the way it was conceived in the first place, if you have a lot to cut. For some people, it is part of their process, and they are aware as they’re writing that, okay, I’m not sure if this is going to make it in or not, but I need it now. Sounds like, in this case, I like all of this. Well, okay. Then I suspect there’s actually an unseen problem here that we will dig into and diagnose at a later time.
John: At a later time. Let’s try one cool thing. My one cool thing is a blog post by somebody named Malmsbury.
Craig: Malmsbury?
John: Malmsbury. M-A-L-M-S-B-U-R-Y.
Craig: Love it.
John: What they’re doing is they’re looking back at a cookbook, Microwave Cooking for One, which is a book from the mid-1980s.
Craig: My heart just sank.
John: It garnered momentary attention on the internet as being the world’s saddest cookbook.
Craig: Honestly, most microwave cooking is for one, but that is such a profoundly sad title.
John: Well, you would think so. It’s written by Marie T. Smith, and she wrote this book, Microwave Cooking for One. What I like about this blog post is it’s going back and just resuscitating and reframing, basically, how to think about this cookbook because the author goes through and actually makes a bunch of the recipes. It’s like, this woman, Marie T. Smith, was an absolute genius. In terms of, if you take the mandate of, okay, what is the best way to cook everything on earth in a microwave oven? She just figures it out and basically, like, do this for seven seconds and this, this. She has all these techniques for browning and crisping things in a microwave.
It is basically a pay-on to the power of technology and the wonders of a microwave oven.
Craig: I get that it would be incredibly useful. It’s just the title.
John: Oh, it is.
Craig: Why did it need to be for one? You know what I mean? If she’s so good at stuff, why limit it to just– You could just say, if you’re going solo, do this. If you’re cooking for two to four, do this. I mean, for one? Oh.
John: The blog post does go into the whole, the one of it all, because also, like cooking for two, it’s more than twice as long to do it because it’s not like heating an oven or a fry pan, where you can sort of do, it’s just as quick to do it for two as for one. It actually is different. We don’t reward domestic home life optimization and stuff to where we should.
We don’t acknowledge like, oh, there’s actually, it’s like a scientific rigor applied to things you don’t normally apply it to.
Craig: Some great early life hacks.
John: Yeah, completely. It’s a person, if she had lived at the YouTube era, we would celebrate her as like, look at this woman who’s figured out how to do all this stuff.
Craig: You can’t shake the image of somebody softly crying while the little thing inside the microwave rotates and just waiting. It’s still always three minutes left. It is eternally three minutes to go.
John: Craig, I don’t know if you’ve witnessed this phenomenon where you have work crews on a site, like they’re doing stuff at your house. Sometimes they will bring a microwave oven to plug it in so that they’ll have a microwave oven on their truck, and that’ll heat up all their food, which I just find terrific and remarkable. I just love it.
Craig: Oh, a little microwave is powerful. I mean, look, we’re old enough to remember what life was like before them.
John: Absolutely. I remember our first microwave.
Craig: Yes. The first time you microwave something, you lost your mind.
John: Incredible.
Craig: I feel the same way about the air fryer. The air fryer is just incredible.
John: Yes, we don’t have an air fryer.
Craig: It is spectacular.
John: Yes, everyone knows that.
Craig: Basically, it’s like a microwave, not technologically, but practically, it’s like a microwave that takes maybe twice as long as a microwave would, but tastes 10 times better.
John: In many ways, I was reading different blog posts about technologies and what’s the earliest the technology could have been invented. The air fryer, it’s just a hairdryer mounted differently.
Craig: It’s just a massive convection air dryer thing that works so well.
John: We could have had them 30 years ago. It’s a while that it was invented.
Craig: There it is. My sister introduced me to the air fryer many years ago. We played D&D, and we had pizza. We often do. I always over-order pizza because I’m a Jew, and if you run out of food, you go to hell. We don’t even have hell, but they make hell for you. I end up freezing all these slices of pizza, and putting pizza in a microwave is sad. Putting pizza straight from the freezer, a slab, like a piece of slate, put it in an air fryer, eight minutes later, brand new pizza, like it just got made. It’s spectacular.
John: Lacking an air fryer, what we do is heat up the oven with a pan in there so the pan gets hot, and then you put it on there, 400 degrees, a few minutes, delicious. Air fryer.
Craig: Air fryer, that’s great.
John: Craig, what’s your one cool thing?
Craig: As is often the case, I have a game. Now, as everyone knows, I’m rather obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3. Because I love what Larian, the company that made Baldur’s Gate 3, did, I went back, and I played Divinity 2 and then Divinity 1, which were the prior games. Of course, I will play the upcoming Divinity, but I’m out of Larian games to play. Of course, I go on my Steam Deck like, “Let’s say you love Larian games. What’s like it?” The answer is, here’s something like it. It is. This is not at Larian level.
I appreciate what this company is doing. They’re very small, actually. It’s a company called Tactical Adventures. Do they have the polish of a Larian game? No. I think the entire company’s 35 people, or something, where Larian, I believe, employs hundreds of people. They made a game called Solasta II. They made Solasta I: Crown of the Magister. Then they made Solasta II. It is in early access right now, which is how Larian does their games, too. They don’t give you the entire game upfront. They give you a chunk of it. Then they’re using it to get feedback, debug, advanced features.
It works like Baldur’s Gate very much, what I really enjoy about it is that it is not just based on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and encyclopedia the way that Baldur’s Gate was. It is firmly, very strictly attached to 5th Edition rules. The way we play, that super crunchy way, that’s how this works. I actually find it on that level fun. I wish them great success. I believe in little companies trying things. Not everything has to be Baldur’s Gate 3.
John: Totally. You’re playing on Steam Deck. Is it just a Steam game?
Craig: I’m playing on Steam Deck. It is available for platform. I guess it’s available on PC as well. I guess everything that’s on Steam is theoretically PC-ish.
John: I’ve not been using my Steam Deck at all recently, so maybe I’ll break that and try it.
Craig: I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with the Steam Deck. I know I could sit down and play, and I will. Look, once Grand Theft Auto 6 hits, I’m not going to be on my damn Steam Deck. I’m going to be playing on the biggest screen I have on my PlayStation, going crazy.
John: Have you hooked up your PlayStation to your big screen downstairs?
Craig: No. My home used to be owned by Kevin Williamson. Kevin had set up a Sony PlayStation down there to go on the big home theater screen, but it was an older PlayStation. When I moved in, I was like, “Ahh.” It’s such a big screen. It’s overwhelming.
John: Yes, that was my worry.
Craig: Rather than feel like I’m being punished by the game I’m playing is so big, even the sound down there is great, it’s a little bit better on just a good old-fashioned, big-ass, wall-mounted. I play upstairs in a little gaming nook. It’s my gaming nook.
John: Everyone needs a gaming nook. That’s the advice we needed to–
Craig: Everyone needs a gaming nook. Doesn’t matter how big or small.
John: Whatever your game is.
Craig: Doesn’t matter.
John: Could be a puzzle nook. Could be whatever you want to do.
Craig: Whatever. You got to have one.
John: Got to have a nook. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. If you want to include an audio version of your question, go for it. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.
The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. I just saw you put through an email that we’re on another college’s curriculum. I think it was at University of Missouri, Kansas City, I think.
Craig: University of Missouri, Kansas City. Yes. Those students have to buy the book.
John: Those students have to buy the book. That’s how we do it. One by one. Apparently, the first time they’ve ever signed a book, and the book is ours.
Craig: Well, that’s great. Thank you, university.
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Craig: 80% of you really enjoy it.
John: Yes, which is fantastic.
Craig: Thank you for continuing to enjoy it.
John: I think it was more like 90%.
Craig: 90% of you enjoy it.
John: That’s a very high number. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those backup episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Hollywood parties.
Craig: Woo-hoo.
John: Craig, it’s always a Hollywood party with you.
Craig: Aw. Thank you.
John: Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Drew.
[Bonus Segment]
John: All right. The question was how to go to Hollywood parties.
Craig: Got to go to Hollywood parties.
John: I’m taking this as not to how to get invited to Hollywood parties because–
Craig: No. We can’t help you with that.
John: We can’t help you with that. We can talk about, okay, you’ve been invited to a Hollywood party. It could be a premiere party. It could be a for-your-consideration party. It could be some producers throwing a party at their house. It could be a friend of ours doing a New Year’s Eve party. You’re going to a Hollywood party. What to do? Let’s start with when do you arrive?
Craig: If it’s a premiere, you have to get there to see the movie.
John: Except the thing to point out is they always start late. You can get there and be waiting for an hour in the theater.
Craig: They will tell you that you have to be at the theater by 7:30 PM under penalty of death. Around 7:50, the biggest star arrives, starts walking the carpet, and doing interviews. I’ve been to some that have really gone late, but typically speaking, it’s actually not too bad. A typical premiere will start about 30 minutes after. Then there’s always a speech or two. They will close the doors on you, though. Better to be on time for those things, and what I like to do is, you get to a premiere, and the theater lobby will be choked with people all yip, yip, yip, yip to each other. Oh my God, me, me, me, me. Even at premieres for things I’ve done, I don’t know almost anyone there.
I’m like, “Who are all these people?” I just go into the theater, and I sit down. It’s nice and quiet in there for a while everyone’s, me, me, me, me in the lobby. If you like chit-chat and being smashed up against people, sure, the lobby.
John: The party would be after the screening, generally. Ideally, it’s at the same venue or an easy walk. I always hate it when there’s a premiere someplace and you have to drive to a second thing.
Craig: It’s pretty rare, but yes, typically, it’s a little walk. If it’s a bigger premiere, it’s almost always a little walk because you have to get to some larger venue, but they’re pretty good about keeping it close by. The party will start technically immediately after the end of the movie. It will take possibly an hour or two before it really gets going. I don’t know what happens in that hour or two. Where did everyone go? Did they just go somewhere else and then go to the party? I’m always befuddled.
John: I’m thinking of two different parties, party for the first Iron Man and the party for the second season of The Last of Us, which were the premiere was at the Chinese and the party afterwards was at the Roosevelt Hotel, which is great because it’s an easy walk to get over there. A gladiator, too. It’s also the same situation. Yes, it’s weird. You get there, and it’s empty. It’s like, why did it take–
Craig: Did I make a mistake?
John: Then it does fill up.
Craig: It fills up. What happens in part is when the movie ends, if you are involved in the production, as you’re walking out, 4,000 people stop you to tell you how wonderful you are. Some of them you actually want to talk to, and you haven’t seen for a while, and you’re so happy that they’re there. You don’t know. Some of them you’re supposed to know, and you don’t know, but you get stuck. Everybody gets bottlenecked and stuck. Of course, you also naturally want to talk to the people that you’ve made the show with.
If you’re a guest at one of these things, just be aware you’re going to have to weave your way around this thick chunk of people. If you feel like congratulating someone, congratulate someone that isn’t currently being congratulated or is being under-congratulated. The actors don’t need more. Go find the writer. Then make your way to the party and enjoy the fact that there’s not a big line for food, and you could probably get a drink pretty quickly.
John: Let’s say we’re now at the party. I want to stress that you may have some agenda. Just think about what your agenda is. At a party, generally, I want to congratulate the person who I want to congratulate. I wanted to stay at your party until I could see you and say, congratulations, Craig.
Craig: Exactly. Bye. [laughs]
John: Same to Favreau on the first Iron Man and through the second. Once I’ve done that, I can leave.
Craig: You can leave.
John: I can leave.
Craig: You can leave. It’s up to you.
John: Absolutely. I can stay. I can go. Even if it’s not a “congratulate the person” party, it’s worth thinking about who am I expecting to see there, because that way I can think, oh, I’ll look out for that person and be able to have those conversations. For example, I was at the Interstellar premiere, and I didn’t know Christopher Nolan at that point, but I did know Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan. Oh, they’re going to be there. I could look for Lisa. We actually just had a great time chatting there, which is great. It started our friendship really more there. That’s the good thing about one of these parties. It’s an excuse to hang out with people you actually wanted to hang out with.
Craig: Now, if you are somebody who is going to your first premiere and you’re not expecting to know many people at all, it’s perfectly fine to go there. Don’t go alone because that’ll get awkward. Go there with somebody you can talk to, and inevitably, you will bump into somebody who will say something, and you might meet somebody, and it’s just like any other party. Feel free to compliment people who are involved in the movie. If it’s a famous person or it’s the director or whatever, somebody you want to get a selfie with, it’s cool. It’s fine. What you don’t want to do is just talk their ear off.
They don’t want to talk to you. They don’t know you. They would much rather talk to people they know. It’s as simple as that. In the case of actors, other famous people love talking to famous people.
John: A good conversation starter is, “Did you work on this?” If you don’t know, “Did you work on this?” Great. What was your problem? I really like that part of it. Or if they didn’t work on it, it’s like, oh, then why are you here? What did you like? All that stuff. What’s fun for you?
Craig: What brought you here?
John: What brought you here? Always a safe bet.
Craig: How did you end up at this fun party? Then someone explains their connection. You explain yours. It just works like any other party. You described a different kind of party, though, which is what I would consider the Hollywood party, which isn’t an organized event by a studio. This is more like a producer, a director, an actor is having some big party at their big house. You know somebody who brings you. You’re going to your first–
John: Good plus one.
Craig: Yes. This is like a real party. Now what do you do?
John: Walking back through examples of when I’ve done that situation, it’s more just like a normal party, which you’re basically just figuring out what is the point of entry for a conversation to have with somebody around me who looks interesting, who I want to talk with. That’s just a basic skill that’s not always easy to do.
Craig: Certainly, you should have the awareness that unless you do know a lot of people there or you are, in your own way, a fascinating human being, nobody wants to talk to you. You have to earn people’s interest. Be cool and don’t push yourself on people. Certainly, allow people to mingle. Don’t monopolize anyone’s time. Just be nice about it. That’s all.
Here’s another bit of advice. Those parties always start much later than you say, so show up later. Here’s something that happened to me at a party. I want to give people, this is my, you’re allowed to leave. It was the Golden Globes or something like that, I think. There was this big party that CAA was throwing at the Chateau Marmont.
They have one of those big rooms that they open up. My agent was like, “You got to come.” I’m like, “Okay, I will.”
John: I feel a dread. Those upper rooms, the Chateau Marmont, lovely view, but come on.
Craig: It started well. I got in the elevator, and Tobey Maguire was there. I thought, “Oh, this is cool. I’m in an elevator with Tobey Maguire. He’s Spider-Man. This is awesome.” We get out of the elevator, and we walk over to the room, and the door opens. It was a joke. You know the Star Trek episode Trouble with Tribbles?
John: Yes.
Craig: Is that what they were called?
John: Yes, Tribbles, yes.
Craig: Yes, where they just fill every space. The door opened, and it was just humans. You couldn’t even go anywhere. It was the most packed nonsense I’ve ever seen.
John: Sundance parties can be that way, too.
Craig: Here’s what happened. I said, “Okay,” to myself, and this is like, it’s full of famous people. It’s full of executives, full of people I know. I’m just going to go in there, see my agent, show him that I came, and leave. I slowly make my way. It took me 15 minutes to get through this throng just to the outside area where I could breathe a little, hoping that he would be there.
I did see him, but he wasn’t there. He was on the other side of the room. I went, “No, I’m done.” I spent another 10 minutes walking out. I spent 20 minutes at the party, walking in and walking out. You are allowed to leave. I did not want to be there.
John: You know what? You sent a text like, “Hey, I couldn’t make it over to you.”
Craig: Oh, I told him. I was just like, “Bro, you know me. You know this, I will not do this.” If you are at a party in Hollywood that is jam-packed with people, go. My feeling is like nothing good can happen here. There’s going to be an earthquake or a fire. That’s how my mind works.
John: You’ve had experience with Hollywood parties, too. What are we missing?
Drew: A little bit. My question was, I’m in this weird pocket where someone will be like, “Oh, I have to introduce you to this person who’s the director or someone, and then they don’t want to talk to me.” You have this weird introduction where you’re like, “Oh, hi, and there’s supposed to be this excitement,” and it very quickly fizzles. When do I leave? Because I understand what’s happening. I also, there’s another person here who’s introduced me, and I feel like I need to keep the ball in the air.
Craig: In those situations, my advice would be when you get introduced to that person, tell them why you’re so happy to meet them. Say something about them and what they’ve done that you think is great, and shake their hand and say, “It was great meeting you.” Rather than, okay, you’re probably wondering who I am and what I’m about, because as you know, they’re not. Everybody likes being complimented.
Drew: I keep trying to make a human connection, and I’m like, “Actually, I don’t think this is the time for that.”
John: The person that’s trying to introduce the two of you, are they trying to get rid of you? Are they trying to slough you off, or did they come over to you and say, “Oh, Drew, I want you to meet this person?” They’re trying to be–
Drew: In my situation, it’s usually a friend is the director’s assistant or something like that. It’s like, “I would love for you to meet this person who I’ve been telling you about.” It’ll be people who listen to the show, and they’re like, “I know my boss listens to the show. They’ll be super excited.”
Craig: What are you going to do with that? It’s okay for you to say, “That’s cool. I’m good.” Because you can say, “Hey, I’ve had a lot of these,” and unfortunately, what happens is they’re like, “Oh, cool.” Then it’s just dead silence. I don’t want to do that.
Drew: Well, but I think early career, there’s that scarcity mindset where you’re like-
Craig: I should meet everybody.
Drew: -“I should meet everyone.” You never know, and make those connections. You want to follow through on that, but you don’t.
Craig: You know, really, it’s not a connection.
Drew: Oh, no, not at all.
Craig: If your friend, and I’m annoyed at your friend, but if your friend really wants you to meet somebody to get to know them because they think, oh, you two would really hit it off, well, why don’t they just have a fucking dinner party or something with eight people? That’s how you meet people.
Drew: That’s much better.
Craig: Not at some throngy event where 90% of the people who are there are there out of some weird social compulsion to be able to say they were there. That’s the thing about these parties that I find so dreadful, is that they’re not actually– Most people who are at these parties are not there to celebrate anything, nor are they there to commune with anyone. They are just there to be there so that they could say they were there. Nothing makes me less interested. I don’t go to a lot of parties, as you can imagine. It’s not my thing.
John: Yes, and we don’t throw a lot of bigger parties here. We’ll have friends over for game nights and stuff like that. We had a party for our house turning 100 years old.
Craig: That was nice.
John: It had a purpose, and we had fun activities. We had a scavenger hunt. Things people can do.
Craig: Melissa and I went on a scavenger hunt. We didn’t need to worry about getting stuck in a corner with somebody. That’s fine. It was like an open house-ish sort of style thing. I keep saying to myself, “Oh, I should have a party at my house.” Then I’m like, “Why? Just why?”
John: Friends of mine moved up in the ranks and basically bought a house where they need to start throwing the party. It’s their agents who need to start throwing parties at their house.
Craig: Oh, no.
John: It’s like, I would not want–
Craig: What does that mean?
John: There’s an expectation they’ve got to entertain and do these things.
Craig: Apparently, my house was quite the party house when Kevin Williamson ran the show over there. It’s a good house for a party. Maybe one day. Since I’m a guy who’s constantly trying to leave a party, our friend Derek throws a great party. I actually enjoy those because it’s sort of an annual event.
John: Absolutely. I will know 30% of the people there, which is great.
Craig: You run into the sort of people that you don’t even spend much time with, but you’ll see them at that party.
John: Let’s talk through people who are like, “Oh, I know I’ve met this person. I don’t know where.” It’s so tough. We’ll do that. It’s so good to see you. Obviously, if you have a Mike at your side, say like, “Oh, hey, I’m Mike. I’m John’s husband.” That’s helpful. I just feel like we need to give a lot of grace for like, I cannot summon who you are.
Craig: Everyone should say their name to everyone. I’m still dealing with the paranoia that when people who haven’t seen me in a while see me, they don’t know who I am, just because I shaved my beard off. I’ll say my name to you if you look like maybe you’re not sure. There is no crime in forgetting someone’s name, or forgetting their face, or forgetting that you’ve met them before. It is not a crime. Anyone who holds you accountable for that is jerk as far as I’m concerned. A jerk. It’s cool. You’re not that important. Nobody is.
John: We were talking about Kevin Williamson a lot on this episode. Kevin Williamson, when I met him 30 years ago, whatever, four times in a row, he was like, “Oh, it’s nice to meet you.” I got a little annoyed at a certain point, but then I realized like, “Oh, I know who Kevin Williamson is because he’s like an Entertainment Weekly famous person, and I’m not. He has no reinforcement of who I am, whereas I knew who he was before I met him.”
Craig: Or maybe he just forgets names and faces. Sometimes you will meet somebody, and they remind you of maybe four different people you might know. Now it’s like, I don’t know which one this is. That’s okay.
John: We’ll talk about this when it lands on the show, but one of the things that I really appreciate about our movie is that obviously from Andy’s perspective, Miranda was a huge influence on our life, and Miranda has no idea who Andy was. It’s so classic and relevant and true.
Craig: It is something that happens. As you get older, if you are in our business, if you have succeeded and hung on and achieved things, people will know who you are. You don’t always know who they are. Sometimes you should know who they are. I realize sometimes I’ll remember somebody that worked for me in some capacity, and I can’t remember their name. I think, is it dementia? No. There’s too many people.
John: There’s too many people.
Craig: There’s too many people. There’s long-term memory. There’s short-term memory, but there’s also mid-term memory. Mid-term memory is where I put the names of everybody on a crew. Five years from now, and if I’m working on something else, I won’t remember that because a new crew came to take the mid-term memory.
John: So often I find myself searching email like, I know this person exists. Who is this person? It’s not memory. It’s a lot of this.
Craig: You get the text from somebody, and you’re like, okay, it’s just a number. They’re like, “Hey, man, da, da, da,” and you have to scroll back and look for context clues. You’re like, “Oh, that’s who this is.”
Drew: On the iPhone, there’s that little company thing, and I use that like crazy just to do context.
John: Oh, nice. All right. Good hints from you.
Craig: Well, I probably have chased people away from some Hollywood parties. They can be very glamorous. It’s cool to see famous people. I like it. It’s fun.
John: Yes. We didn’t talk about clothes at all, which is good because–
Craig: Oh, clothes.
John: Clothes, whatever. Wear clothes. Here’s the one–
Craig: Wear clothes.
John: The one tip I can give you is that if it’s an annual thing, Google photos from the last year. If it’s a thing that’s being photographed for places–
Craig: So you get the sense of–
John: It’s like where the vibe, what the vibe is.
Drew: That said, I went to a premiere a couple of weeks ago that was for a fighting movie, and everyone there was in all black. Every dude, all black. Black sweatshirt, black baseball cap, that kind of thing. It just felt like that was the dress code that we were all doing. It felt like the default. I had a blue and white shirt.
Craig: And a pink hat.
Drew: I didn’t get the memo. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I don’t know.
Craig: It’s not. One of the great rules of life, no one’s thinking about you. You think everyone’s thinking about you. No one’s thinking about you. They’re only thinking about themselves.
Drew: Yes, it’s true. Thanks, guys.
Craig: Thank you. Party.
Links:
- The script for episode one of Chernobyl
- Scriptnotes episode 493: Opening Scenes
- Greta Gerwig’s Little Women screenplay
- The Sheep Detectives
- Scriptnotes episode 731: Avoidance and Other Anti-Quests
- Sorkinisms – A Supercut by Kevin T. Porter
- My journey to the microwave alternate timeline by Malmesbury
- Solasta 2
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