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The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, it’s John. So today’s episode was recorded on Friday when it looked very likely that writers would be leaving their agents this week. But then a twist. Just hours before the agreement was set to expire the deadline was pushed back to this Friday and negotiations are continuing. So, now you’re all caught up, and on with the show.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 395 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to be discussing a different kind of movie template where you don’t have one hero, you have a group of heroes, and the movie needs to follow multiple points of view which can be exciting and challenging.

Then we’ll be answering listener questions on a bunch of topics including things Craig tweets.

Craig: Well, I don’t know what could possibly be interesting about that. What do I tweet? Recipes? Recipes mostly.

John: Yeah. It’s mostly recipes. Mostly things you saw in the world that you enjoyed.

Craig: And definitely not at all things that made me upset.

John: Yeah. Craig’s Twitter feed is basically just Instagram but with words.

Craig: It’s Insta-Rage.

John: It is Insta-Rage. It’s often Insta-Ragey. We are recording this on Friday afternoon. Unless something surprising happened during the weekend Craig and I now share a characteristic with many aspiring screenwriters out there. We don’t have agents representing us at the moment.

Craig: What do we do? How do I get an agent? [laughs]

John: We’ll have to answer that question. Back at Episode 1, Episode 5, early on in the show we answered the question how do I get an agent.

Craig: Should probably go listen to that now.

John: Yeah. As we are recording this there are a few agencies we could sign with. My plan is not to sign with any of those agencies at the moment. Craig, next week are you spending your time hunting down an agent?

Craig: No. Next week I’m spending my time mixing the final episode of Chernobyl and doing my job. And I will not be looking for agents. You know what? I’m going to tell you my outlook. I have a generally optimistic outlook that something will work out and we’ll all go back to the way it was. Or, that’s it for agents and writers. And which point I’m just like, OK, you know, let me calculate what 10% was of what I made. I think an answering service would cost less. So it won’t be as good, but at the very least somebody will have somewhere to call. Beyond that, I’m not really sure what else to do.

John: No. I mean, before we started recording we were talking about a thing where you were going to reach out to some folks, and you know what, you can just reach out to them directly. It’s one of those weird things where you realize like, oh, I could actually do this myself.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, look, there is a great utility to agents.

John: 100%

Craig: I mean, I have enjoyed my relationship with my agents and they’ve done great things for me and they’ve put me in positions where I was able to succeed that I don’t think I would have had an opportunity to be in without them. So I don’t want this to end this way. I want to continue on the way things have been continuing on. But, if they can’t, life will go on.

John: Yeah. It will go on. And we will be covering the life as it goes on, on this podcast and we’ll see where we’re at.

Craig: Forever.

John: Forever. An ongoing study of how life goes on. If you want to go back to those very back episodes I am here to point out that we have a Listener’s Guide, a Scriptnotes Listener’s Guide, and that was designed when we hit Episode 300 because people would come into the show late and say like, oh my gosh, there’s 300 episodes. Which ones do I listen to first? And so we crowd-sourced for our listeners from our listeners which episodes people liked the most. And so that is available for the first 300 episodes.

But now we’re on Episode 395, so pretty soon we’re going to have to do the 400-episode Listener Guide.

Craig: Oh my god, 400.

John: So people, be thinking about which of the episodes between Episode 300 and 400 are the really notable ones. I thought last week’s with Mari Heller was phenomenal.

Craig: That was great.

John: So that would be a recent vote. But you know what, I have that recency bias. So, please reach back over the past two years and tell us which of those episodes need to be on that list.

Craig: So, John, I feel like when we hit 500 there should be some sort of Diamond Jubilee banquet.

John: Yep. There has to be something. So, a little over two years away.

Craig: Banquet.

John: Banquet.

Craig: You know what? We should ask our agents to plan this.

John: [laughs] Indeed. So, they have to negotiate an agreement that deals with conflicts of interest and plan for our 500th episode.

Craig: Diamond Jubilee.

John: So good. Is 500 the Diamond Jubilee? Is that normally how it works?

Craig: I don’t think 500 is a thing.

John: Nothing goes to 500.

Craig: No, nothing goes to 500. So, I’m just going to say it’s our Diamond Jubilee. I feel that that’s fair. And you know what? I want there to be a Deyas. I want there to be a DJ. I want it to be like a Bar Mitzvah kind of.

John: That would be so good. So this last week was my daughter’s 5,000th day of life. And so my husband got her–

Craig: It’s her Diamond Jubilee.

John: It is her Diamond Jubilee, or like Double Diamond Jubilee. There’s some sort of gem stone that is appropriate for it. But got her a little special card and we turned off the explicit music restrictions on her iTunes account.

Craig: Yes. I had that discussion with my daughter the other day as well. They had already been off. And then I guess I got her a new thing and I turned them on the new thing and she came to me and said, “Why did you put this restriction on?” And I said, I don’t know, I mean, do you need to have the explicit lyrics? And she looked at me like I had stabbed her in the heart. I mean, it was a look of just shock and betrayal. Like yes I do. The look was so powerful, she didn’t even have to say anything. I just said, oh, all right, just give me the phone. Fine, here you go.

John: So people without kids may be asking well why would you turn on those restrictions at all. And here is the secret at least from my perspective is not that you don’t want them hearing those words, it’s that you don’t want them saying those words. You don’t want them singing aloud to the songs and saying those words. That is the reason why we have kept the explicit lyrics off for so long, just so they don’t inadvertently become sung aloud.

Craig: But then the thing is of course they are.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They’re doing it. They’re doing it wherever they go. My daughter sang me something the other day where I was just like you can’t – I can’t hear that out of your face. And we were just laughing. We were laughing at how outrageous it was that she said it in front of me.

John: And was she playing the ukulele while she sang it?

Craig: No, no. No. No. This is not a ukulele song.

John: With my daughter I get a ukulele accompanied by those words.

Craig: Oh, that’s nice. You know, Jessie plays the ukulele as well.

John: Oh my god, a concert. Concert series.

Craig: I feel it coming on.

John: For the 500th episode a concert jubilee.

Craig: Oh, for sure.

John: Nice. My last bit of news is that on my Arlo Finch book tour this coming week I will be signing books at The Briar Patch in Bangor, Maine. There will also be a little event there. The Briar Patch, for people who listened to the Launch podcast, is this little bookstore in Bangor, Maine where they’ve sold more Arlo Finches than any place else on earth. And so I’m going there to greet the people who have read Arlo Finch and made it the talk in Bangor, Maine.

Craig: Now, what do you think is going on there?

John: It’s really one bookseller named Gibran who is a huge fan of the books and just basically puts it in everyone’s hands who comes in. He does a very good sales pitch for it.

Craig: That’s spectacular. Great.

John: So Thursday, April 11 at 5pm is that event if you want to come see me in Bangor, Maine. And, you know what? I bet we have some listeners in Bangor, Maine, because we have listeners all over the world.

Craig: It seems like it.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

John: So our main topic this week came up because yesterday I did a roundtable on a project and this project we were working on had not one hero but a big group of heroes. Or, not a big group, but four people who were sort of the central heroes of the story. And that wasn’t a mistake. That really was how the movie needed to work.

And it got me thinking that we so often talk about movies being a journey that happens to one character only once, and we always talk about sort of that hero and that hero protagonates over the course of the story and sort of those things. Even though we are not big fans of those classic templates and sort of everything has to match the three-act structure that tends to be the experience of movies is that you’re following a character on a journey. But there are a lot of movies that have these groups of heroes in them and I thought we’d spend some time talking about movies that have groups and the unique challenges of movies that have groups as their central heroes.

Craig: Smart topic because I think it’s quickly becoming the norm actually as everybody in the studio world tries to universe-ize everything. You end up, even if you start with movies with the traditional independent protagonist, sooner or later you’re going to be smooshing everybody together in some sort of team up. So it’s inevitable.

John: We’ve talked before about two-handers where you have two main characters who are doing most of the work in the movie. And sometimes it’s a classic protagonist/antagonist situation. So movies like Big Fish, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Romancing the Stone, Chicago, while there are other characters there’s two central characters you’re following and you could say either one of them is the main character of the story.

But what you’re describing in terms of there’s a big group of characters is more on the order of Charlie’s Angels, The Breakfast Club, X-Men, Avengers, Scooby Doo, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Lord of the Rings, Goonies, Go, all The Fast and Furious movies. These are movies where characters need to have journeys and make progress over the course of the story but they’re a part of a much larger team. And we really haven’t done a lot of talking about how those teams of characters work in movies.

Craig: Yeah. I actually wasn’t really a team movie writer until I guess The Hangovers, because those three guys kind of operated as a team. And then when you throw Mr. Chow in there it’s a team of four. It’s a crew. Now you’ve got a crew.

John: You’ve got a crew.

Craig: You got a crew.

John: We’re putting together a crew.

Craig: And you got to figure out how that crew works, because it is very different than just – even like a typical two-hander like Identity Thief. I mean, there are other characters but it’s just the two of them on a road trip. That’s pretty traditional stuff.

John: The movie is about their relationship. And so I’m sure people can argue that one is the protagonist and one is the antagonist. And, great, but really it’s about the two of them and how they are changing each other. Wicked is a two-hander.

Craig: Right. When you say, OK, now it’s really about three, or four, or five, or in Fast and Furious there’s like 12 of them at this point now, you kind of have to present them as this team. It’s a team sport now. So writing for a team requires a very different kind of thinking I think than writing for a traditional protagonist and let’s call them a sub-protagonist or something like that.

John: Yeah. So if you think about them as a group, if you think about them as one entity this should still be a one-time transformational event for this group of characters, for this team of characters, for whatever this party is that is going through this journey that has to be transformational to them as a group.

But within that bigger story there’s probably individual stories. And in those individual stories those characters are probably the protagonist of that subplot or at least that sub-story. So they’re all going to have relationships with each other, with the greater question, the greater theme, the greater plot of the movie, and it’s making sure that each of those characters feels adequately served by what the needs are. Bigger characters are going to have more screen time and probably take bigger arcs. Minor characters are at least going to enter into a place and exit a place that they hopefully have contributed to the overall success or failure of not just the plot that the characters are wrestling with but the thematic issues that the movie is trying to bring up and tackle.

Craig: Yeah. There’s a kind of a Robert Altman-y trick where you take an event and he would do this a lot in very good Robert Altman movies, but we see it in all sorts of movies, where there’s an event. And the event is so big it encompasses everyone. And so we kind of – we play a little bit of the soap opera game. So soap operas traditionally would have about three or four plots going at once. You would see a little bit of one, then it would switch over to the next one. And you’d have to wait to get back to the one you liked. At least that was my experience when I was home sick with grandma.

So in say a movie like Independence Day there are multiple stories. There is a president. There is his wife. There’s an adviser to the president who has an ex-wife. There’s his dad. There’s Will Smith. There’s a bunch of stories going on. And each one of them gets a little slice of the story pie, but ultimately it’s all viewed through the prism of this event. And in the end everybody kind of comes together in some sort of unifying act which in Magnolia was a frog rain.

John: Yes. Yes.

Craig: And we see that in fact as different as all these stories were everyone was connected and kind of working as a team. So individuals are the heroes of their mini-stories. And that’s in fact how those movies tell the story of the big story through mini-stories.

John: Yeah. Now, in some of these stories the characters enter in as some kind of family. They have a pre-existing relationship. In other movies they are thrown together by circumstances and therefore have to sort of figure out what the relationships are between them. In either situation you want those relationships to have changed by the end of the story. So just like as in a two-hander, their relationship needs to have changed by the end. In a team story the relationships need to have changed by the end and you need to see the impact they’ve had on each other over the course of this. So independent of a villain, independent of outside plot, the choices that they individually made impacted the people around them.

Craig: And that’s the matrix of relevance. So in a traditional movie it is about me. I have a problem. And I go through a course of action and at the end of the movie my problem is solved. In this kind of story the group has a problem. And what we’re rooting for is the group to survive. And in that sense very much it is a family. And we know that about the Fast and Furious, because they’re always telling us.

John: [laughs] It’s family.

Craig: They always tell us. This is a family. But it is. And so the hero of those movies is the joined relationship of them all in the family. And what the problem is in the beginning of the story is not a problem with one individual. It is a problem of family dynamic. And that is what needs to be figured out by the end of the movie.

John: Yeah. So let’s talk about the real pitfalls and challenges of doing a story with a team protagonist or with a big group at its center. The first and most obvious one is that sometimes certain characters just end up being purely functional. You see what their role is within this group and what their role is within this plot, but their character isn’t actually interesting in and of itself at all. And sometimes if it’s a minor character, OK, but if it’s a character who we’re putting some emotional weight in that we actually want to see their journey at all, they have to be more than purely functional.

The challenge is the more you – in a normal movie you can say like, oh OK, well I need to build in some back story for this character. I need to see them interact with other people and get a better sense of who this person is and what they’re trying to do, but you can’t do that for every character because the movie would just keep starting again and again. It would never get anywhere. So, finding ways that one character’s progress is impacting another character, which is sending the next thing forward. The jigsaw puzzle aspect of getting all those characters’ changes to happen over the course of the story can be really difficult.

Craig: It can be. Because, you know, the movie starts to turn into a stop-and-start. Action, quiet talk, backstory, my inner feelings. Action, quiet talk, backstory, your inner feelings. And it’s one of the reasons by the way these movies are so long. They are so long because everybody needs a story. It’s hard to justify why you have seven characters when only three really have lives and inner worlds and the other four are standing around doing stuff.

John: Yep.

Craig: So everybody has to have it. And they can get really long. You know, it wouldn’t kill these people to maybe, you know, kill one of them. If it’s not going well we’ll just kill them. No big deal.

John: I’m going to argue without a lot of supporting evidence that Alien is essentially one of these kind of group movies, and a lot of horror movies are those kind of group movie, and they winnow down the characters so that one person is left standing. But you couldn’t necessarily say that that person was the protagonist at the very start of the story.

Aliens is not really kind of what we’re talking about with the team movie. Even though there’s a team of great people in it, it is Ripley’s movie and it is her journey. You can clearly see her protagonist arc over the course of it. So, that’s a distinction. Even within the same franchise those are two different kind of setups. I would say – I’m arguing that the first Alien movie is kind of what we’re describing in this episode whereas Aliens is much more a classic, here is one character on a one-time journey.

Craig: Yeah. Don’t be afraid, if you need to write fodder characters you write fodder characters.

John: Oh, go for it.

Craig: I mean, people need to die. Somebody has to be the red shirt. But when you think about – Star Trek is a pretty good example I think of a kind of team story. All their movies feel like team stories to me. And in part it’s because, I mean, take away the science fiction aspect, they’re just sailors on a boat. And so we’re rooting for the boat to survive. That means everybody on the boat is important. However, if something blows up, a few people on the boat can die and we won’t miss them. It’s the people that we have invested in emotionally. Those need to be justifiable to us. They all need to be important. They’re all doing jobs that are really important. I don’t care about the janitor on USS Enterprise. They do have an important job. Really important. But not during your crisis.

John: Absolutely. And we should distinguish between, in television shows by their nature tend to have big casts with a lot of people doing stuff, so Star Trek as a TV show you say, oh well of course, there’s a big cast, there’s a team. But the Star Trek movies which I also love, that is what we’re talking about here because it’s a family. It is a group of characters, the five or six key people. They are the ones that we care about. And we don’t care about the red shirts. We want to see them come through this and survive and change and interact with each other. That’s why we’re buying our ticket for these movies.

Craig: You know what? I just had an idea.

John: Yes?

Craig: You know, so occasionally we do a deep dive into a movie. And I do like the idea of surprising people. I don’t think we’ve necessarily been particularly surprising in our choices. They’ve all been kind of classics. But you know what’s a really, really, really well-written movie?

John: Wrath of Khan?

Craig: It is. But that’s not the one I’m thinking of.

John: Tell me.

Craig: Star Trek: First Contact.

John: Oh great.

Craig: First Contact is a brilliantly written script. It is a gorgeous story where everything clicks and works together in the most lovely way.

John: Nice.

Craig: I would deep dive that. I’d deep dive the hell out of it.

John: It’s on the list. Nice.

Craig: Put it on the list. Put it on the list.

John: Put it on the list. Getting back to this idea that there’s sort of a jigsaw puzzle, there’s a lot of things happening at once, you and I have both worked on Charlie’s Angels films. I found that to be some of the most difficult writing I ever had to do because you have three protagonists, three angels, who each need their own storylines. They need to be interacting with each other a lot. They have to have a pretty complicated A-plot generally. So every scene ends up having to do work on more than just one of those aspects. If it’s just talking plot then you’re missing opportunity to do Angel B-story stuff, but you can’t do two or three Angel B-story scenes back to back because then you’ve lost the A-plot. They’re challenging movies for those reasons. And more challenging than you might guess from an outsider’s perspective.

Craig: Well, you’re spinning plates, right?

John: Yeah.

Craig: You watch them when they’re actually spinning plates. They spin the plate and then they move over and they keep this plate. This plate is slowing down, spin that one faster. The one you were just spinning, it’s in middle. That one over there is slowing down, get to that one. It’s the same thing. You kind of service these things in waves. When you feel like you’ve had a good satisfying amount of this person, leave them and move onto another side story or another aspect of this group. That person can hang for a while.

If you have left somebody for a while when you come back to them it’s got to be really good.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You’ve got to go, oh, you know what, it wasn’t like we were away from that person because there was nothing for them to do. We were away from them because they have a bomb to drop on us. And so that works, too. But just think of it as just servicing plates. Spinning plates and looking for the ones that have kind of been a little bit neglected for a little too long. Because you can’t do them all at once. It’s not possible.

John: Yeah. And so this, we talk about art and craft a lot. Some of that is just craft. It’s recognizing having built a bunch of cabinets you recognize like, OK, this is what I need to do to make these cabinet doors work properly. And I can’t, if I don’t measure this carefully those cabinet doors are going to bump into each other and you’re not going to be able to open them. It’s a design aspect that’s kind of hard to learn how to do until you’ve just done it a bunch. And recognizing the ins and outs of scenes and how long it’s been since we’ve seen this careful. What are we expecting to happen next?

And while doing all of that remembering like, OK, what is it thematically these storylines are all about. What is the bigger picture that these can all – how are we going to get everybody to the same place not just physically but emotionally for this moment.

Craig: Yeah. You find as you do these things that you can get away with almost nothing. I think early on you think, well, it’s been a little while and this person hasn’t said anything, but whatever, it’s fine. These scenes are good. And then you give it to people and they go, “So why is this dead weight hanging around here? That was weird.” And you go, well, you can’t actually get away with anything.

John: Yeah. We talked before about how a character who doesn’t talk in a scene can be a challenge, especially if they haven’t talked – if they’re just hanging in the background of a scene for a long time and haven’t said anything that becomes a problem. But if a character has been offstage for too long and then they come back it has to be meaningful when they come back and you have to remember who they are. There’s not a clear formula or math, but sometimes you will actually just do a list of scenes and recognize like, wow, I have not seen this character for so long that I won’t remember who they are. And so I’m going to have to remind people who they are when they come back. It’s challenging. And you’re trying to do this all at script stage, but then of course you shoot a movie and then you’re seeing it and you’re like, oh man, we dropped that scene and now this doesn’t make sense. That’s the jigsaw puzzle of it all.

Craig: Yeah. It’s why writers should be in charge of movies.

John: Yeah. I think so.

Craig: Just telling it like it is.

John: Well, we go back to the sort of writer-plus that you’re always pitching which is that aspect of writers sort of functioning as showrunners for films is especially important for these really complicated narratives where there’s just a lot of plate-spinning to be done.

Craig: Yeah. I think television has proven this. Really it’s empirical at this point. The other thing I wanted to mention, one last pitfall, when you’re dealing with a group dynamic and you’re writing for a family you have to make sure that no one person – no one person’s personal stakes outweigh the group stakes. We want to be rooting for this whole team to survive. And they’re working together. But if you tell me also that one of their little mini-stories is that they’ve discovered the cure for cancer now I just mostly care about that person. That person has to get out of the burning building. Everybody else should just light themselves on fire so that person can get out.

So you just want to make sure that no one person’s stakes overshadow or obliterate the other ones in the group. And really the biggest stake of all which is us staying together.

John: Yep. 100%. So some takeaways. I would say if you’re approaching a story that you think is going to be a team story I would stop and ask yourself is it really a team story or is it more Aliens where it’s one character’s story and there’s a bunch of other characters as well? Because if it is one character’s story that’s most movies and that is actually a good thing. So always ask yourself is there really one central character and everyone else is supporting that one central character? If that’s not the case and you really do genuinely have a family, a group, a series of characters who are addressing the same thing you’ve made your life more difficult but god bless you. That could be a great script. But recognize the challenges you’re going to have ahead for yourself and be thinking about how do you make this group feel like the protagonist so you feel like there has been a transformation of this group by the end of the movie.

Craig: Yeah. I think that’s exactly right. And I do believe that after this episode people should be able to do this. All of them.

John: Oh, all of them. Easy-peasy. Nothing hard to do there.

Craig: I mean, what else do you people want? We’ve almost done 400 of these.

John: Wow.

Craig: They should all be at the top of their game. There should be 400 Oscars a year for screenplay as far as I’m concerned.

John: Let’s see if there’s any questions. Craig, do you want to open up the mailbag?

Craig: Sure. Ben in Los Angeles asks, “I keep getting the note that my protagonist is ‘plot-transactional.’ The way I am interpreting this is that she is reactionary as opposed to making choices throughout my feature script. Do you guys have ways to avoid this? How do well-drawn characters drive the story from scene-to-scene? I feel like I don’t know how to approach a rewrite because I think she makes a lot of choices.”

John, what do you think this is about, “plot-transactional?”

John: I’ve never actually seen that exact phrasing of plot-transactional, but I think I get what these readers are talking about is that it feels like she is there to service the plot rather than drive the plot. That is she is a way for this plot to happen rather than the person who is in charge of this plot happening. And so, Ben, it’s good that you feel like your character is making choices. It may come down to dialogue and sort of what’s actually happening in the scenes. That it feels like she’s driving those scenes, that she’s asking the questions that lead her to the next thing. That she’s not just following a set of steps that a screenwriter has laid out for her.

Craig: Yeah. I think sometimes we get a little too wrapped up in plot. We think that our unique plot is the thing through which we should thread a character. I think that’s ultimately backwards. I don’t think the plot matters at all. I don’t think the plot is as important as what the characters need. And then when you think about it, Ben, this person that you’ve created she needs something. She needs to go through something. Your job is to create this perfect miserable torture for her so that the plot is directly relevant to her character. It is a challenge to who she is at her core rather than just a thing to go through.

That’s why when I watch Ocean’s 11 it’s a wonderful heist movie, and it’s brilliantly plotted, but the plotting is there to challenge a character who needs to do something. It’s not really just there because we like the mechanics of a heist.

John: Yeah. So I want to underline something Craig said there because it’s easy to mistake it. Saying you’re setting up these obstacles, you’re setting up these difficulties for the character, it’s to make sure it doesn’t feel like you have set up these difficulties and obstacles for the character, because that could be a situation where it feels like the plot is driving her or forcing her to make certain choices.

Craig: Yeah. That would be bad.

John: Again, you want to give the illusion that the character really has control over what she’s doing at every moment. And that she’s making the choices that have led to this outcome. And that’s hard to do with some plots, with some storylines, but that’s the struggle you’re facing as a screenwriter.

Craig: It’s essentially what writing is man. Sorry. That’s kind of the nitty-gritty of it. You have to just kind of figure this part out. And write in a way where the plot is only meaningful within the context of character. People only care about a character. They only care. They will tell you they care about other stuff. They only care about a character.

John: Yep. Oh, also we should say, you’ve said often people care about relationships.

Craig: Yes.

John: So that can be an aspect, too. So look at–is there a relationship? Does that character have a relationship that’s meaningful? If that character does not that may be your problem.

Craig: Agreed.

John: Darcy from Toronto asks, “I’m approaching the 50-page mark in my screenplay and the story is approaching the end of the runway. I’ve listed out all the scenes I have left to write and I can maybe stretch it out 20 more pages. I know this isn’t a pilot for a web series. It has to be a movie. So, what do you do? How can I make an appropriate length piece of entertainment at this stage?

Yeah, you’ve got a problem. You don’t have enough story. That happens, man. You need to stop right now and you need to look at what you’ve done and then reassess like, OK, well what is the movie version because I didn’t write the movie version. I wrote a pilot.

Craig: Yeah. Unfortunately Darcy there’s no Hamburger Helper here, you know. Somebody asked you to build a limousine and you have completed the construction of a two-door coupe. That’s it. It’s the wrong thing. And you can’t just go, well, I’m just going to make the trunk of it bigger. It doesn’t work that way. It’s the wrong thing. You have to start over unfortunately. There’s no way to easily do this. You listed out all the scenes that you have to write now, but I’m suspecting that you didn’t do that ahead of time. If you sort of tear it back and you think about why it needs to be a movie, and you say it has to be a movie. I know this has to be a movie. Then you need to think about that movie, watch that movie in your head, and let it feel the rhythm of the feature version of this.

Because there’s something about the way you’re writing it that is not either feeling that rhythm or is missing things that would be fascinating, enlightening, and fun to watch. If none of that works, then maybe it isn’t a movie.

John: Yeah. So what is a movie? As we say often, a movie is a one-time journey that a character, or in the case of teams, characters can take. So if that’s why you truly believe it is a movie, great, it’s a movie, but you need to step way back and do Craig’s work there. What I will say, if this is at all comforting, is that this part gets easier with experience. Because after you’ve done a few of these you have a kind of innate sense of like, OK, that’s enough story for a movie, or uh-uh-uh that’s way too much story for a movie. You get a really good sense of how much fabric you need to cover the couch and that comes with experience.

Craig: It’s actually astonishing how consistent I am. Just after all this time when I plan out a story it inevitably ends up around 115 pages. It’s like down to the page. It’s the weirdest thing.

John: And I don’t have that experience in books and that’s why I have no idea how long my books are or how long they’re going to take. I had a sense of this is how much story I have, especially for book two it’s like oh wow I have a lot more story and that’s why book two is significantly longer. I don’t have that same way of sort of pacing myself because I don’t have the experience. I bet if I wrote ten more books I would have a very good sense of exactly how much story I have and how many pages it would take.

Craig: Well, you know, J.K. Rowling’s books got longer and longer as she did her series.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I mean, your first Arlo Finch book was 14 pages which I thought was not long enough.

John: Yeah. It was barely a pamphlet but then the second one is, you know, 400. So.

Craig: 400 pages. Good lord. Nicole asks, “I had a general meeting at one of the big animation studios and they ended up loving one of my ideas and they went so far as to say that it was exactly the kind of thing they are currently looking for. They asked,” here we go, “that I write out a treatment. It’s an idea that I love, too. It would have been my script anyway, but since the meeting went so well I’ve been working on the treatment instead of jumping into my normal writing process. When I finish I really want to show them, but I’m weary of leaving my work behind.” I think she means wary. “Is there something I can do to keep their interest without just handing it over? Do I request a second meeting to talk through it in person and then leave with it? My fear is that if I don’t hand it in the conversation will be over with them. What would you do in my position?”

You are the perfect person to ask this question. John August, go.

John: Yeah. So, we have this campaign in the WGA, No Work Left Behind, reminding writers that when they go into pitch on a pitch on a project, when they go in for those meetings they might have notes for themselves. Don’t leave those notes behind. It hurts you. It hurts every other writer.

But Nicole’s situation is not quite that situation. So let’s talk through the distinction. Nicole has an original idea. She ended up sort of half-pitching this original idea at this animation company. And now she’s wondering, oh, I’m going to write up this whole treatment. Nicole, you own that treatment. You own everything. You own 100% of this concept. So if you feel like writing this up as a treatment or a full script, you can, you may. You own every little piece of it.

Now, is the best choice for you to show them that treatment or to go in and pitch it to them in person? I don’t know. Animation does have a lot of stuff that ends up being written out. And that’s fine and good so maybe that is. But, I want to just distinguish in a general sense you own this fully and that is not the kind of problem we’re trying to solve. The problem we’re trying to solve with No Work Left Behind is when they’ve called you in for a project that they own and they’re asking you to write up some stuff and leave it behind. That’s the real danger here.

Craig, what do you think?

Craig: Well, another thing to point out, one of the big animation studios equals not WGA. It is either going to be an Animation Guild shop or it’s going to be a non-union shop. So, the Writers Guild can’t help you here. I think that the problem I’m having, Nicole, is that they asked you to do this. That to me feels like kind of a weird one. They love your idea, so they say, and they have asked you to write a treatment. You have written a treatment. John is correct. You own that treatment meaning you own the unique expression in fixed form there. You don’t own the idea, because people can’t own an idea. So you may very well, if you consider your idea to be unique, you may find that they’re developing something with the same idea a year from now. These things happen.

But I am also wary of you leaving this work behind for sure. Because you haven’t been paid for it and you should be paid as a writer to write. I think pitching it might be the way to go. I think you could give them a tease. You can say, look, I can show you a little bit and then there’s much more. But let’s formalize it and let me come work here and write this script.

It costs them nothing to ask you to do this. And it costs you time and energy and talent to do it. So just keep that in mind. Their request has cost them nothing. They have no skin in the game.

John: This is where I jump in to remind everybody that just because most animation is not covered by WGA does not mean that all animation is not covered by WGA. So, increasingly there are shops, there are places where you can get WGA deals. So just don’t take it as a default assumption that you will get a non-WGA deal at a place. If Nicole has not worked any place and doesn’t know it’s more likely than not it’s a non-WGA shop, but don’t assume that it has to be a non-WGA situation.

Either way, I think what we’re coming down to is this is your idea. You own copyright on it independent of anything else. If you feel like sharing it you can share it, you know, that’s totally your choice. Maybe they’ll look at that as a writing assignment they want to hire you in to work on some stuff for them. OK. But I’m also with Craig in the sense that they’re asking you kind of to do something for free even though you own it fully, so just always be aware of that.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Cool. Ashley asks, “I recently inadvertently discovered that a spec I’ve been writing on and off for over eight years bears a very striking resemblance to a feature that is about to go into production this spring in a neighboring country.”

Craig: Of course it does.

John: “They share the exact same title and they seem to share a similar world, characters, and themes, but this film is set in the ‘90s and mine is contemporary. My question is what does the existence of the forthcoming film mean for my own spec? Should I change the title or consider dramatic alterations? Will industry bogs consider this spec an attempted rip off? Given its relatively small nature should I not worry about this other project?”

Craig, what should Ashley do?

Craig: Change the title. I think that’s reasonable just because this movie is about to go into production. And then that’s it. Just change the title.

John: Yep.

Craig: Listen, this is constant. This is never not the case. And I will say that everything always seems much more similar to us when we’re writing something than the rest of the world, even when, you know, you end up with two volcano movies at the same time or two talking ant movies at the same time. We can all look at it and go, yeah, but they’re different. And the people writing them are like, no, my god, I thought I was the only one.

So don’t panic. Don’t worry about it. Change the title. It will probably serve you well. And otherwise just rock on with your bad self.

John: The first script I ever completed was a romantic tragedy called Now and Then. And a year later there was a Demi Moore movie called Now and Then, so I changed the title to Here and Now. And people read it as a sample. It was great. But I think it was the right choice to change the title just so it wasn’t confused with the movie that had just come out. So, that was a studio movie so more people had heard of it. This other one maybe no one will have heard of it, but still good to have a title that’s not going to confuse people.

Craig: Agreed. Jake from Texas writes, “I wrote an original pilot that uses celebrities as characters, specifically country music stars as over-the-top action heroes in a parody. I want to enter it into the Austin Film Festival Competition as an example of my writing. Am I facing any liability in this situation? Clear parody. I’ve been conscious of not trying to negatively portray anyone. Should I just enter something else?”

John: Jake from Texas you should enter in your parody with country music stars. You’re fine. Just do it. If it’s good and it’s funny that’s all that matters. You’re not trying to make anything. You’re showing your writing. If the South Park guys stopped themselves at this stage they would not be the South Park guys. Do it.

Craig: Yeah. And they can’t stop you anyway. Parody is part of fair use. It’s literally specified as part of fair use. And frankly you don’t even have to worry about negatively portraying anyone either. Larry Flynt, god bless him, went to the Supreme Court to preserve your right to negatively portray people who are public figures in parody. So, just yeah, go on buddy. You’re fine.

John: Do it. Steve asks, “I also want to applaud the guild for taking the first step in breaking down the barriers that prohibit writers like myself who have always operated on the fringes from getting material in front of showrunners with the implementation of the Staffing Submission System. I’m curious as to what happens once I submit material to a show as many of your other listeners are I’m sure. Can you walk us through the process for showrunners? Is it up to them to log in to see if any writers have submitted? I just want to make sure I’m not wasting my time on something showrunners don’t intend to use.”

So, we talked about this last week. Craig mentioned wouldn’t it be great and I said it actually exists. So people seem to like it. Here’s what I hear from showrunners who are using it is that there’s one login per show. And so the showrunner has a login but so do their assistants. The assistants who would be gathering in scripts anyway go on the system. They see who has submitted. And it is useful to them as another way of getting some new scripts in.

So, I would say it is worthwhile to submit yourself for shows that you feel that you are appropriate for. That’s why we limited it to three. Pick the shows where you feel like you are the best fit. And it does seem like people are using it right now.

Craig: Also, Steve, I’m not quite sure what you mean by I just want to make sure I’m not wasting my time. Uh, click, right? Isn’t that it? Just a click? How much time does it take? [laughs]

John: I think you put a little statement there to explain sort of why you’re applying for the show and you’re updating your profile. But yeah.

Craig: That’s five minutes? Ten minutes?

John: Do it.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t really see a time-waster there.

John: Nope.

Craig: Michael in LA asks, oh, here we go, here we go. So this is in response to a tweet I made about straight white men. And the context was that I was having a conversation with Monica Beletsky, a fantastic writer, about this thing where straight white men in Hollywood are starting to complain that they cannot get hired. That no one will hire them. No one is allowed to hire them. No one will read them. No one is allowed to read them. All their agents are telling them you cannot work in this town. It is simply – it is off limits for straight white men. So, this is what Michael writes.

John: Do you want me to be Michael just because I feel like it might be better if I play Michael and you can play Craig Mazin?

Craig: Yeah. I think that’s a great idea. You be Michael. I don’t want to be Michael. You be Michael.

John: “I’m a working writer and have two indie movies produced and been staffed on two cable shows. Like many people in this industry I’m a straight white dude and as a young straight white dude I couldn’t have picked a worst time to break into the biz. You and Craig are in the privileged position of breaking into the industry when you did and it is exactly because the upper ranks are filled with people like you and Craig that young white writers and I are having such a hard time right now.

“For Craig to completely dismiss how difficult it is to be a young white man right now simply because it wasn’t his experience when he was coming up is disrespectful and hurtful. I’m a good writer. I would say that I’m a great writer. But I can’t even get read for staff or story editor positions.

“In the past we had to hear things like, ‘You won’t even get read because you’re white,’ mainly from our reps, but now thanks to the WGA’s new staffing system we can see it written right there in the notes. Almost all the shows that are staffing say that they are ‘looking primarily for diversity and women.’ It’s one thing to hear this from an agent. It’s another to hear it from a showrunner and have it directed at all prospective writers looking to staff. What is a young white male writer supposed to do when all the showrunners are telling you that essentially you can’t even apply to write for their show?

“I understand there’s a correction going on to a broken system, but the dismissal being levied at young white males right now by people like Craig who were lucky enough to have gotten their foot in the door when they did is insulting. I’d love to see how he would have fared if he graduated from college in 2012 rather than 1992.”

Craig Mazin, take it away.

Craig: Well, I’ll tell you how I would have fared. I’d be crushing it. Sorry Michael. Here’s the thing man. Look, there’s luck involved in how this all starts. No question. Now, when John and I started we were in the middle of a recession. That wasn’t any fun. And the spec marketplace was essentially crumbling around everybody. That wasn’t any fun. But no question that the current situation in Hollywood which continues to favor straight white males really favored straight white males back then. I was a straight white male. John was a white male. And, yeah, so we had certain semblances of luck there.

Luck doesn’t keep you in this business. I can assure you of that. And it may take a little bit longer, just like it probably took a little bit longer for writers of color. But then they get there, right? And so that’s what we’re trying to fix.

Yes, I’m sure that it is discouraging to you to hear this all the time. The people that are saying this to you are essentially lying. They’re lying. Now, yes, you will see things like “looking primarily for diversity and women.” The reason that you see that is because people are having a hard time finding diversity and women. They are looking for writers who represent different kinds of people and different perspectives. And our system has done such a poor job of nurturing those writers that there isn’t the rich farm system there should be.

I’d like to think that there will be now going forward. But, yes, everybody is looking for that because people are putting a priority on it. Looking primarily for diversity and women doesn’t mean we’re looking for a room that is primarily diversity and women. It means we are primarily and looking for diversity and women, probably because most of what we keep getting are white guys. And you would be one of them.

And so I don’t think that that means don’t apply. OK. I don’t think that when agents say, “Oh don’t bother. You can’t because you’re a straight white guy.” My response would be why are you my agent? Why are you my manager? Do you have other white male clients? Why? Are you stupid?

So I want to read you something, Michael. This is a statistic. Because when I read your question I thought of the Black List. Not the service the Black List but the annual voted on Black List. And so this is features, not television, but it’s the features that all the assistants and development people in Hollywood vote as the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. And I asked Franklin Leonard to do a quick tally of the percentage of the writers that were named to the Black List who were white males. And the answer was 67%.

Now, Michael, do you know – you’re not here. You can’t answer. I’ll answer for you. The percentage of Americans that are white males is 31%. So, that’s more than double representation. I know it feels weird to have anyone say I would prefer to hire fewer white men, but please put it in the context it needs to be in which is that there are way more white men than there should be.

I am not dismissive of your position. I am dismissive of people that say that stuff to you. I would ask you to really think about it and maybe investigate why people that choose to represent you are telling you that you are unrepresentable in the marketplace. And then I would just council patience. Patience. Because where I go and the rooms I’m going into and the people I’m seeing there are a lot of white faces and there are a lot of male faces. There are more than 31%. And maybe what you’re experiencing now is just the way it ought to have always been. And that means if you’re great it might take just a little longer.

John: Yeah. So let’s wind the clock back to ’92 when you and I were getting started. And it was even whiter then. And so as white people going into it did we have even more advantages back then? Maybe? Just because, I mean, the competition was different. It was a different universe and a different world. But the fact that he is facing less advantages that he did before doesn’t mean that he’s really disadvantaged.

I mean, it’s hard math to do. When you are used to having things have the dice roll in your favor and they start rolling more fairly it feels like something has gone wrong. But I don’t think that’s an actual accurate portrayal. I don’t think you are disadvantaged below other writers honestly.

Craig: Yeah. And I would really caution you, Michael, to not use – everyone wants to wrap themselves in the cloak of whatever woke language will give them the most moral authority in their argument. I would caution you to not do this. Because it’s easy and it’s a little cheap. There’s really no reason to suggest that John and I are in a privileged position when your thesis here is that you are a straight white man. Let’s dispense with that. We don’t need to get into the privilege wars.

We’re all white guys in America. So let’s just go with that. OK? We’re all white guys in America. One of us is gay. One of us is a Jew. We’ve all got our things. Well, maybe you don’t. I don’t know. But there’s no reason to look at it that way. I think the way you should look at it is there are white people, there are white men being staffed right now. There are. And they’re new. And they’re coming up. They’re being hired as writing assistants and then they’re getting jobs as writers. They are selling scripts. They are being employed. They’re everywhere.

So, if you’re not in the seat, work harder, try more, be patient. You may have to wait a little bit longer than John and I did, but if you are a great writer, and you claim to be, it’s inevitable Michael. It’s inevitable.

John: All right. It has come time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a great tweet by Rachel Wenitsky. It’s in the tradition of Natalie Walker’s great tweets where she does a character and she sort of explodes a stereotype of who this character is in film and entertainment. In this case Rachel Wenitsky is doing “The Hot Character Who Everyone Thinks Had It Easy But Finally Reveals Their Painful Backstory.” It is just a terrific monologue that I encourage everyone to watch because you will see it and you’ll realize, oh yeah, that. I can’t ever do that again.

And so it’s such a third act kind of monologue where that character explains how rough she had it and that people are misjudging her. So, I just highly recommend it and I want people to keep doing these trope-busting monologues.

Craig: Love it.

John: Let’s take a listen.

Rachel Wenitsky: You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You think I don’t know what I look like? What I represent? But you have no idea what I come from. I was born on top of a moving bus. When I was eight my dad evaporated right in front of me. My mom was never the same. She started collecting bones that she found in the woods and building a bone house. And then she made us all live inside the bone house. I had to go to school at a 7-11 because we couldn’t afford light-up sneakers. And when all the other kids were out becoming chefs I was home, giving our dog a deep tissue massage. Didn’t go to college. I went to a school of rock. So don’t you dare tell me that I don’t belong here because I have worked my ass off to be here and now I may not have an ass but I am lawyer. I am a goddamn good lawyer. And I object to you.

Craig: Ha! That is hysterical. Rachel Wenitsky, you’re funny. God, that was really good. You know, people are getting really good at writing bad dialogue. It’s like becoming its own cottage industry which I kind of appreciate.

Well, my One Cool Thing is somewhat similar actually. Also a parody of a sort. Very different sort. I don’t know if you saw this, John. This was a review in the LA Times, it wasn’t really a review, it was one of those lifestyle pieces. And the title – it’s by Lucas Kwan Peterson – and he’s a food columnist. And the title is “For Cramped New York, An Expanding Dining Scene.” Have you seen this?

John: I did because Julie Turner tweeted it and you retweeted it. And I thought it was amazing.

Craig: So basically what Lucas has done is written a think piece about New York in the same condescending, ignorant style that the New York Times uses constantly to talk about Los Angeles. And it is amazing. I mean, just a brief quote here. “My first culinary encounter was with pizza, a mysterious kind of baked tlayuda, covered in macerated tomatoes and milk coagulation, and occasionally smothered with a type of thinly sliced lap cheong called pepperoni. The odd dish, sometimes referred to as a pie, washed ashore from Naples some years ago. While the taste takes some getting used to, pizza can be enchanting when done properly.” [laughs]

It’s so great.

John: Yeah. It was just pitch perfect. Loved it.

Craig: It’s so good.

“The Jewish-style delicatessen I am well familiar with — Los Angeles has the strongest deli scene in the country, after all — but I’d somehow never had a bagel before, a dense version of a baozi that’s boiled, then baked. With a vaguely alkali exterior and a chewy but pliant center, the bagel was puzzling but nevertheless a treat. And that hole in the middle? Apparently, it’s supposed to be there.”

Yeah. You know, as a New Yorker who loves Los Angeles this couldn’t have been better pitched and more deserving. I mean, it’s just, yeah. I mean, New York, clueless when it comes to Los Angeles. Truly amazing.

John: It’s great. That is our show for this week. As always our show is produced Megana Rao, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by David John Banks. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today.

On Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. We love to answer little short questions there.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a review or a comment. Those help.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We get them up usually the week after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. Or at store.johnaugust.com where we sell blocks of 50-episode seasons.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John. Almost there. Almost to 400.

John: Almost to 400. Cool.

Links:

• Accepting recommendations for updating the Listener’s Guide
• Arlo Finch Book Tour – Meet and Greet at The Briar Patch in Bangor, Maine on Thursday, April 11 at 5pm
• Rachel Wenitsky’s “The Hot Character Who Everyone Thinks Had It Easy Finally Reveals Their Painful Backstory”
• For cramped New York, an expanding dining scene in the LA Times
• Submit to the Pitch Session here
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Find past episodes
• Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Outro by David Jon Banks (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 392 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast it’s another round of How Would This Be a Movie where we take a look at three stories in the news and discuss how they might be adapted to the big screen, or the small screen. We’ll also look at the final moment in movies, what they do and why they change so often.

Craig, it’s just you and me. We’re just two guys back talking on Skype.

Craig: Could we call this a classic Scriptnotes?

John: This is a classic Scriptnotes.

Craig: It’s the old original flavor.

John: It is. Yeah. So some new offices, some new equipment setups, but it’s still the basic Scriptnotes.

Craig: As long as it’s you and me, you know. As long as it’s you and me, I could foresee a day where – let’s say one of us were incapacitated?

John: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: If it’s me, the podcast goes on with someone else. If it’s you, not only does the podcast end, but I probably never say the word podcast again.

John: That would be really sad.

Craig: No, no. I mean, no. The part about you being incapacitated, don’t get me wrong, that’s tragic.

John: That’s tragic.

Craig: That’s tragic. And careful listeners will remember I believe we did broadcast our episode of Fiasco, is that correct?

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: With Kelly Marcel in which your character was incapacitated cruelly by the two of us I think. So, there’s a tradition of that. And it would be very, very sad.

John: It would be. I feel like I should put together a living will just for that scenario just to make sure that everyone understood my wishes if I were to become incapacitated.

Craig: That’s a great idea. Because otherwise this all collapses.

John: Do you think Jack Thorne could take over my place?

Craig: You know what? I wish he would. [laughs] That’s what like, you know, you say to your spouse after – how many years have you guys been married by the way?

John: Only married for–

Craig: Well, but together. Let’s call it effectively married.

John: 19 years.

Craig: 19 years. OK, so Melissa and I are at 22 or 23, something like that. Very similar. Your spouse turns to you and says, “You know, what if you had to be married to so-and-so?” And you’re like, “Let’s do it.” [laughs] “It sounds great, let’s go.” And then, of course, your fantasy turns to horror. Because here’s the thing. Jack Thorne is amazing, but you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.

John: Mm. That could be a lyric.

Craig: It should be. It should be the lyric of many things. I can just imagine myself just thinking, oh wow, look at me, stepping out on John August. Cheating with some other guy.

John: Yeah. The thing is you’re already cheating. You already have a whole second podcast recorded. I know about it. And you’re going to be dropping it week by week.

Craig: That is true. We haven’t announced that though, so we can’t talk about that. [laughs]

John: But this last week something was announced. A much anticipated trailer dropped showing how governmental corruption and arrogance led to massive destruction when a dangerous power source was accidentally unleashed. I’m talking of course about Aladdin.

Craig: Aladdin.

John: Which comes out May 24. So the trailer finally came out for Aladdin.

Craig: Yeah. Well, the big trailer. You had a teaser.

John: Yes.

Craig: And now this is the big trailer.

John: This is finally the good trailer. So I wrote the screenplay three years ago and I’ve really had almost nothing to do with it since. But correct me if I’m wrong, you also had some trailer out this week as well?

Craig: I had a teaser, a little 45-second teaser that weirdly was also about how governmental corruption and arrogance led to massive destruction when a dangerous power source was accidentally unleashed. Not quite as fun as Aladdin. It doesn’t have that pizzazz. But it is the 45-second teaser trailer for Chernobyl, the miniseries forthcoming to HBO. It arrives on May 6. We can now say that. May 6, the first episode airs. Or cables? It transmits on May 6.

John: It goes out into the world on May 6. And so because it’s a week by week thing it will start before Aladdin and it will be running still after Aladdin.

Craig: Well, they are a great pairing.

John: They are. Really.

Craig: You’re going to need the break, trust me. If you’re watching Chernobyl, by the time Aladdin rolls around you’re going to be like can I please just get a break?

John: I don’t know that my original screenplay for Aladdin will ever be seen in the world, but I would say there actually were more parallels to Chernobyl in my original screenplay than in the final movie.

Craig: Well, you know what? I’m interested to see – I’m fascinated by these Disney adaptations that are sort of auto adaptations in a sense, like self-adaptations, and how they do it, and how close it is. I mean, the trailer, you could see the trailer partly was sort of proudly saying, “Look, look, it’s the same.”

John: It’s the same movie but with real people.

Craig: It’s exactly the same. Right. Which I think is fascinating. But then you could also tell, I mean, it can’t possibly be entirely exactly the same. So I’m just fascinated by those aspects of auto-adaptation and how they work. And so after Aladdin happens and I see it I’m going to want to read your script. I’m fascinated by these things and how they evolve as it were.

John: Maybe someday they can make an animated version of Chernobyl.

Craig: You know, we’re working on that.

John: Complete the cycle. [laughs]

Craig: That would be, you know, yeah, no.

John: Follow up. So, in previous episodes we’ve talked about the WGA negotiations with the talent agencies about the future of the agency agreement. There have been some big meetings in the past, but there are some big meetings coming up. So those three meetings coming up are Tuesday March 26 at the Beverly Hilton, 7:30pm, Wednesday March 27 at the Sheraton Universal, also 7:30pm, and Saturday March 31 at the Writers Guild Theater, 10:30am. There will also be meetings on the east coast. I don’t have those details but you can look those up. Those will be talking to members about what’s going on, what’s in store. There will be a membership vote coming up so that’ll be why you’ll want to go to these meetings to learn all of that information.

Craig: And would it be acceptable for me to say that – seems to me reported widely – that at the very least now the guild and the talent agencies appear to be talking?

John: Indeed. So this past week I was in two negotiation sessions and, yeah, there’s chatting. It’s doing the things you do in a negotiation.

Craig: Good.

John: So that’s what we want.

Craig: That is an improvement over what was there prior, which is nothing. So, and certainly not the fault of the Writers Guild I should add.

John: Cool. Our big marquee topic I want to get into today is the final moment in movies, or I guess episodes of TV, but I’m really thinking more in movies. And this came to mind this morning because there was an article talking about the end of Captain Marvel. This is not even a spoiler, but at the end of the original version of Captain Marvel she flew off into space and they changed it so she flew off into space with some other characters. And it was an important change and sort of giving you a sense of where the character was headed next.

And it got me thinking that in pretty much every movie I’ve written that last moment, that last beat, has changed from the pitch to the screenplay to the movie. And I sort of want to focus on why that moment is so important and also why it tends to change so much.

Craig: Interesting. And it’s funny because for me because I’m obsessed with that moment it actually rarely doesn’t change – it doesn’t change much for me.

John: OK.

Craig: But that’s in a sense because I think I weirdly start with it. I don’t know.

John: I start with it, too. And so as I was thinking back to Aladdin, my pitch for it had a very specific runner that had a very definite end beat. And so when I pitched it to Disney and also I just pitched it casually to Dana Fox, it made Dana Fox cry that last line, the last image of that last moment. It’s not in the movie at all. It totally changed in ways that things change.

But I would say even the movies like Big Fish and other things which have been very much, you know, we shot the script, those last moments and sometimes the last image really does change because it’s based on the experience of sitting through the whole movie and sort of where it’s deliberated to.

So let’s talk about that last moment as a way of organizing your thoughts when you’re first thinking about the story and then what it looks like at all the different stages.

Craig: Well, to start with, we have to ask what the purpose is. You know, I think sometimes people think of the last shot in cinematic terms. Somebody rides off into the sunset. So the last shot really is about sunsets. But of course it’s not.

For me the final moment, the final shot, that last image contains the purpose of the entire thing. Everything comes down to that. If your movie was about the love between two people, then that is that final moment. We’ve talked about Lindsay Doran’s Ted Talk where she talks about how movies are really about relationships. And she would cite how sometimes she would ask people well what was the last image of some movie, The Karate Kid, and a lot of people don’t remember it is Mr. Miyagi’s face. Proud. It’s Daniel and then Mr. Miyagi looking at each other and there’s pride.

So, figuring out the purpose of that last shot is kind of your step one of determining what it’s supposed to be. And you can’t get there unless you kind of know what the hell your whole movie is about in the first place.

John: Yeah. I mean, movies are generally about a character taking a journey. A character leaving home and getting to some place. But it’s also about the movie itself starting at a place and getting to a place. And that destination is generally that last beat, that last moment, that last image. And so of course you’re going to be thinking about that early on in the process of where do you want to end up. And way back in Episode 100 there was a listener question and someone asked us I have a couple different ideas for movies and I’m not sure which one I should start writing. And my answer was you should pick the one with the best ending because that’s the one you’ll actually finish.

Craig: Right.

John: And if you start writing without having a clear sense of where you’re going to you’re very likely to either stop writing it or get really off track and having to sort of strip away a lot of what you’ve done. So, having a clear sense of this is where I think the movie lands is crucial. It’s like the plane is going to land on this runway tells you, OK, I can do a bunch of different stuff but ultimately I have to make sure that I’m headed to that place. You may not be signaling that even to the reader, to the audience, so that they’re not ahead of you, but you yourself have to know where this is going.

Craig: John, when you were in grade school and you had some sort of arts and crafts assignment and the teacher said you need to draw a circle, and you just have to draw a circle. You don’t have a thing to trace. Were you a good circle drawer?

John: I was a fair circle drawer. I know it’s a very classic artistic lesson is how to trust your hand to do the movements and how to think about what a circle is. Were you a good circle drawer?

Craig: No. Absolutely horrendous. If you ask me to draw a circle you would end up with some sort of unclosed cucumber. And the reason I bring this up is because to me the classic narrative is a circle. We begin in a place and we end in that same place. There is a full return. Of course we are changed, but the ending reflects the beginning. The beginning reflects the ending. There is a circle.

If you don’t know your ending and you don’t know how the circle finishes it’s quite probable that you won’t know how to start the circle either. That you will end up with an unclosed cucumber, like nine-year-old Craig Mazin attempting to draw someone’s head. This is how things go off. This is where, I think, people can easily get lost as they’re writing their script because they realize that the story has developed in such a way that it wants to end somewhere but it has really not a strong click connection to the beginning.

One of my favorite albums is Pink Floyd’s The Wall, I think it’s Pink Floyd The Wall. And Pink Floyd The Wall, they play little games, the Pink Floyd folks did, and one of the games they play in Pink Floyd The Wall is very low volume at the very beginning. You hear this tiny little song and then someone says, “We came in.” And then at the very end, the very end, they’re playing the song and it finishes and then you hear someone say, “Isn’t this where?” And that’s exactly the kind of thing that blows a 15-year-old boy’s life, but it also was satisfying. You felt things were connected and they chose to make the very last moment some sort of indication that the beginning is relevant.

It’s the way frankly Watchmen ends. It’s the same thing. There’s this beautiful come around with that last final look.

John: Now, because we’re talking about narrative circles I need to acknowledge that Dan Harmon has this whole structure thing that’s based on a circle where there’s a circle and there’s these little lines across it that characters go on this journey. That’s absolutely a valid approach if you want to think about story that way.

That’s not quite what we’re talking about.

Craig: No.

John: We’re talking about how in general a character leaves from a place and gets to a place, but in both cases they’re either finding a new home or returning to a previous home changed. And so just a character walking around in a circle isn’t a story. A character being profoundly changed and coming to this environment with a new understanding that is a change. And sometimes it won’t be that one character. Sometimes it’s the narrative question you’ve asked at the beginning of the story has gone through all these permutations and landed you back at a place that lets you look at that question from a new way.

So it’s either answering the question or reframing the question in a way that is more meaningful. So that’s what we’re talking about, the narrative comes full circle. There’s a place that you were headed and that place that you were headed reflects where you began.

Craig: No question. And it’s really clear to us how someone has changed when we put them back where they were when we met them. It’s just one of those things where you can say, oh, here’s the variable. Where we begin is the control. Our character is the variable. Start at the beginning, get me to the end, and let me see the difference. And sometimes it’s very profound.

You know, we start and end in the same place in Finding Nemo, but we can see how different it is in the same place because the variable has changed and that’s your character.

John: So, I’m finishing the third Arlo Finch book right now which is the end of the trilogy, and so each of the books has had that sense of like, OK, reflecting where the book began and where the book ended and there is a completion there. But it’s been fun to actually see the whole trilogy. And it’s like, OK, this is the journey that we went on over the course of this year of Arlo Finch’s life. And yes he’s physically in the same space but he’s a completely different character in that same space and has a different appreciation for what’s happened.

And so being able to go back to previous locations where things have happened you see that his relationship to them is completely different because he’s a different character having been changed by what’s gone on. That’s what we’re really talking about with that last beat and how the last beat has to reflect where the character started and what has happened to the character over the course of the journey.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, you would not – reading Arlo Finch you would never expect that he would end up a savage murderer, but he does.

John: [laughs] It’s really shocking for middle grade fiction.

Craig: Well it is. But then when you look back you go, oh yeah, you know what, he was laying the groundwork for that all along. It actually makes sense. He’s a nightmare. Then there’s the Dark Finch trilogy that comes next. Oh, you know what? Dark Finch trilogy is not a bad idea.

John: Dark Finch sounds pretty good.

Craig: You should do it.

John: I think it’s going to be a crossover with Derek Haas’s books about his assassin.

Craig: Oh yeah. Silver Bear.

John: Silver Bear.

Craig: Silver Bear. Dark Finch. That sounds like a Sondheim lyric. I love it.

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: I love it. So, you know, when I’m thinking about these last images, everybody has a different way of thinking about this. But what I try and do really is actually think about it in terms of a last emotion. What is it that I want to feel? Do I want to feel comfort? Do I want to feel pride? Do I want to feel love? Do I want to feel hope? The movie that I worked on with Lindsay Doran, which is I think my favorite feature script, and so of course it hasn’t been made. They make the other ones, not those. The last shot to me was always an expression of the kind of bittersweet salute to the people who are gone. You know, it’s a coming of age story and the last shot when I just thought about the emotion at the end, the emotion at the end was the kind of sad thankfulness for having known someone who is no longer with you.

And I go, OK, I can wrap myself in that. That feels like a good emotion. And I know how that is reflected by the beginning. How you then express it that can change.

John: For sure.

Craig: And often changes frequently. But this is an area where I think movies sometimes fail because the system of movies is designed to separate the writer and her intention from the actual outcome, so a writer will have an intention like I want my movie to end with the bittersweet thankfulness for those who are no longer with us. That is my emotional intention. And here is how I would execute it.

Nobody else sees the intention underneath, or they don’t understand it, and they just go, “Well you know what? We don’t like necessarily the way they’re executing that. Let’s make a new execution. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. Let’s make it noisy. Let’s make it loud. Let’s make it funny.” And the intention is gone. And then you get to the movie and you show it and people go, “Well, the ending.” And you’re like, yeah, the ending, and that writer never really nailed the ending.

John: Ha.

Craig: You see how it goes? It’s just freaking brutal.

John: Yeah. That’s never happened to me once in my career. Let’s talk about what that ending looks like in the different stages. So, in the pitch version of it, you know, obviously we talked about in pitches that I would describe it as you’re trying to convince your best friend to see this movie that you’ve seen that they’ve not seen. So you’re really talking a lot about the characters and how it starts. And you may simplify and summarize some things, especially in the second and third act about stuff. But you will tend to describe out that last moment, that last beat, because you’re really talking about what is the takeaway experience going to be for a person who has watched this movie that you’re hopefully going to be writing.

So, in a pitch you’re going to have a description of what that last moment is because that’s really important. It’s the reason why someone should say yes to reading your script, to buying your script, to hiring you to write that script. So that last moment is almost always going to be there in the pitch, even if it’s not fully fleshed out, to give you a sense of what you want the audience and the readers to take away from reading the script.

Craig: What I’m thinking about in a room where I’m relaying something to somebody is ultimately how do I want them to – I want to give them a fuzzy at the end. I want to give them some sort of fuzzy feeling. I don’t want to give them plot. If I finish off with plot, so for instance, let’s say I’m in a room and I’m pitching Star Wars.

What I don’t want to do is get to the end and say, “And in our last shot our hero receives a medal which he deserved.” What I want to talk about is how a kid – I would bring it back to the beginning and say this farm boy who didn’t know about this world beyond him, didn’t know about the Force, who didn’t know about the fate of his father or the way he can maybe save the world, he is the one who saved the galaxy. And at last he knows who he is.

See, some sort of sense of connected feeling to the beginning. If you’re selling plot at the end then what you’re really selling is what Lindsay Doran calls the end that people think is the end but not the actual end.

John: Well, let’s take your example of Star Wars because you might pitch it that way, but then when it comes to writing the script you actually have to write this scene that gets you to that moment. And so as you’re writing that scene at the last moment you’re looking at what is the medal ceremony like, who is there, what is said, but most importantly what is the emotional connection between those characters who are up there. Actually painting out the world so we can see like, OK, this is why it’s going to feel this way. This is clearly the intention behind this scene but also I’m giving you the actual things you need to give us that feeling at the end.

And so in the script stage what was sort of a nebulous description of like this is what it’s going to feel like has to actually deliver on that promise.

Craig: Yeah. I always wondered – I hate being the guy who’s like would it be better if a movie that everybody loved ended like this – but the last shot of Star Wars is the medal ceremony, right. And then you have them looking at each other, and so the emotion is the relationships between them. But I always wondered what would happen if the last-last shot of Star Wars was Luke Skywalker returning back to Tatooine a different man and kind of starting a new beginning, a new hope. You know, that vibe of returning. I always wondered if I would feel more at the end if I saw him return.

John: I think it’s worth exploring. I think if you were to try to do that though it would just feel like one more beat. It would feel like the movie was over when he got the medal and you had this swell. Whether the journey was this is a kid who is all on his own who forms a new family, so like going back to where his dead family was wouldn’t feel like the kind of victory.

Craig: Dead family.

John: Dead family. So I think you want to see his joy and excitement rather than sort of the – I would just imagine the music would be very different if he had gone back to Tatooine at the end. It wouldn’t feel like a triumph.

Craig: Yeah, no, you’re right. And I guess then the payload for that final bit is really the looks between Leia and Luke and Han and Luke. That it’s we’re a family, we’re friends, we did it. We went through something nobody else understands.

John: So let’s say you’ve written the script, you’ve gone into production, and 100 days of production there’s finally a cut and you see that last moment in the film and it’s different, or it doesn’t work, or the way you had it written on the page doesn’t work. In my experience it’s generally because the movie sort of got – the actual movie that you watched isn’t quite the movie that’s on the page just naturally. And as people are embodying those characters things just feel different. Obviously some scenes get cut, things get moved around. And where you kind of thought you were headed is not really where you’ve ended up. And so you have to make some sort of change there.

In some cases it’s reshoots. In some cases you’re really shooting a new last scene. You realize this was not the moment that we thought we wanted to get to at the end. But in some cases it is just a matter of this shot versus that shot. Whose close-up are we ending on? You talk about Mr. Miyagi. I bet they tried it a bunch of different ways and it would make more sense to end on Daniel rather than Mr. Miyagi, but ultimately Mr. Miyagi was the right choice.

They’re thinking about what does the music feel at this moment. How are we emotionally landing, the payload here. And the music is going to be a big factor. So, there’s going to be a lot of things conspiring to get that last image, that last moment of the movie. And you may not have been able to anticipate that on the page.

Craig: No question. And this is why it’s really important for you to understand your intention because it may work out that your intention didn’t carry through in the plan. But if we know the intention and we have married the beginning to the end then the beginning has set up this inexorable domino effect. You have landed at the end. You require a feeling. Let’s see if we can make that feeling editorially a different way. And if we can’t, OK, let’s go back and reconsider what it’s supposed to be.

In rare circumstances you do get to a place where you realize, oh my god, having gone through this movie it’s really about this. It turns out we care more about this than this. This relationship matters more than this relationship. OK. So, now we have to think of the beginning, let’s recontextualize what our beginning means and then let’s go ahead and fix an ending.

But the ending can never be just – do you know what? “It just needs to be more exciting.” That’s nonsense.

John: The danger is a lot of times in test screenings they’ll see like, OK, the numbers are a little bit low here and people dipped at the end, so let’s add some more razzmatazz to this last little beat, or like an extra thing. And generally people don’t want more. They don’t want bigger or more, they just want to actually exit the movie at the right time with the right emotion. And that’s the challenge.

Craig: Right. How do you leave them feeling is the biggest.

John: So sometimes though the opposite holds true. Just this last week I was watching a rough cut of a friend’s film. And he has this really remarkable last shot and these two characters and their relationship has changed profoundly. But as I watched it I was like oh that’s a really great last shot/last moment for kind of a different movie than I saw. But when I looked at the movie I had seen before that I was like, oh yeah, you could actually do some reconfiguring to get you to that moment and actually have it make sense. So it was really talking about this is where we get to at the end. I think you’re not starting at the right place. And so therefore you may want to take a look at those first scenes and really change our expectations and change what we’re following over the course of the movie because doing that you could land at that place and it would feel really meaningful.

Craig: Again, the beginning is the end is the beginning. Right? If something is not working in that where your circle is supposed to connect up and you ended up with an open cucumber, then either the ending is wrong, or the beginning is wrong, or they’re both wrong.

John: Ha.

Craig: But it’s usually one or the other. And it is I think tempting at times to say, “Well, since the ending is the last thing, everything else is the pyramid and this this thing sits atop the pyramid, this is the easiest thing to fix.” And, John, you’re absolutely right. Sometimes the easiest thing to fix is the beginning.

John: Yeah. Change the expectations of the audience as they go into it and you can get them there.

Craig: Match them to where they’re going to arrive.

John: All right. That is our discussion of that final moment. Now let’s talk about the very, very beginning where we think about what these movies could even be. So in previous examples of How Would This Be a Movie we talked about articles from the news. Many of those cases those things have become movies. And so at least they’ve been optioned as movies.

Craig: We’ve been making people money left and right.

John: We really have been. I mean, I think if anyone deserves a packaging fee it is–

Craig: Man.

John: [laughs] Craig Mazin and John August of Scriptnotes fame.

Craig: I mean, you’re joking, but literally we’ve done more in those situations than a number of agencies have in certain packaging situations.

John: Indeed. So, obviously the story that we couldn’t escape this past week was operation Varsity Blues. This was – so this is not going to be a big thing we’re going to talk about – but this is the story of the college admissions scandals that ensnared Felicity Huffman, Lori Laughlin, a bunch of other VC folks. It was all anyone could talk about in Hollywood. And I will say while I can’t describe what happened in the negotiating room, I will say that every moment that we weren’t actually talking about the negotiations was completely talking about this whole scandal. I almost wanted to have a five-minute free period where we could all just talk about – it’s crazy, right?

Craig: Get it out of your system.

John: This is nuts.

Craig: Yeah. There’s a current feeding frenzy, you and I are both aware of this, that many, many, many people are attempting to get the rights to. I guess one of the main articles – the main article, you know, that’s one of those stories where I think life rights actually is really useful because some of the people within the story if they granted life rights you’d get more information. Obviously the perpetrators aren’t going to be granting anything anytime soon.

But so that one will be a movie. So probably not a good idea for us to go on the record as to how, or show, or something. That’s inevitable.

John: The story broke Tuesday morning. My first email about it from a producer came at 12:38pm, so just three, four hours after the story broke I already got my first like, “Hey, would you ever consider writing this thing?”

Craig: It was on Wednesday?

John: Tuesday.

Craig: Oh, Tuesday, OK, yeah, so I didn’t get one until Wednesday. [laughs]

John: All right, well, I mean–

Craig: Same thing.

John: I don’t want to say it, yeah, but, yeah.

Craig: No, of course, you’re one day better than me. Or, or, you’re one day better than me. There’s really no alternative.

John: In this segment though rather than talk about specific articles or specific incidents, I want to talk about three big story areas. And so we’ll have links to some articles that talk about that story area and in some cases one of those articles might be useful. But really I want to talk about what is the kind of movie that we do in this space.

And so the first, there’s two articles we’ll link to. One is about an unvaccinated boy who got tetanus and tetanus is a disease that shouldn’t exist anymore. But if you don’t vaccinate your kids they can get it. He was in the hospital for 57 days, $800,000 worth of medical expenses. Another story that could be helpful here is about a kid who defied his parents and got vaccinated against their wishes. I think he ended up testifying to Congress about why he did that.

So, Craig, I mean, talk to me about vaccines.

Craig: Well, I think I’ve gone on record a number of times as stating that not only am I violently pro-vaccine, but I’m violently anti-anti-vaccine. Of all the things I can tolerate in other people I think anti-vax is probably the lowest on the list. I mean, I’m literally telling you if I had a choice between sitting in a room with a Neo-Nazi or an Anti-Vaxer, I think I would go with the Neo-Nazi. I think at the very least I could say let’s – I’m just going to talk to you as a Jewish person and let’s see how this goes. [laughs] You know? We’ll sit in the room together. But an Anti-Vaxer, no, they’re dead to me. They’re dead to me. Their minds are not only not functioning in any way I can even approximate respecting, but they are through their smugness and arrogance, they don’t even have the common decency to be hateful people. They’re just aggressively stupid and they are killing other people with their outrageous, smug stupidity.

John: So now that you’ve stated your position on this–

Craig: My carefully–

John: Carefully nuanced position.

Craig: Carefully nuanced position.

John: Let’s think about how a vaccine story could work. And so there’s a couple different templates which come to mind. First is sort of the classic huge disease outbreak situation. So we have movies like Contagion, Crisis in the Hot Zone – I guess Crisis in the Hot Zone was never a movie. It was always supposed to be a movie. I read a zillion scripts on it, but I don’t think it ever became a movie.

Craig: Yeah. There’s–

John: Outbreak.

Craig: Outbreak. And Contagion. There were quite a few.

John: And so that’s the thing where a superbug gets out and suddenly half the world is decimated. I mean, World War Z is in some ways the same kind of thing where everything spirals beyond control.

Craig: Someone eats the wrong bit of monkey mean and there it goes. We’re off and running.

John: Something goes amuck. That doesn’t feel like the most, I mean, you can keep making those movies as long as you want to. That doesn’t feel like quite what we’re talking about here.

Craig: No.

John: I think that sense of an individual choice, an individual story is probably more compelling. Talk to me about Ethan Lindenberger from Norwalk, Ohio. He’s one of the kids in this article who does sort of defy his parents and gets vaccinated by himself. I mean, he’s an interesting character because it gives you a way in because you can both love your parents and love your family and yet feel like you have to do this thing that is in opposition to their wishes which is a classic kind of heroic framework.

Craig: Well we typically will see this kind of story told in the context of religion. Someone grows up in a cult or even in a – let’s just call it extreme end of a mainstream religion. And they love their parents but have to get out. Eventually they realize it’s not correct and they have to get out. Although in some cases clearly they don’t love their parents. Their parents are abusive and they have to get out.

And that’s exactly what this reminded me of. Essentially he says, listen, that his mother loves him but she was “steeped in online conspiracies that made him and his siblings vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases like ongoing measles outbreaks. I grew up under my mother’s beliefs that vaccines are dangerous. He’d show her scientific studies but said she instead turned to illegitimate sources that instill fear into the public.” Essentially his mother was a cultist.

And, by the way, that’s what Anti-Vax is. It is a flat-out cult. It is a cult based in fear and instead of worshipping a central person character what they worship is a central theory, a charismatic theory if you will.

So, there is a natural kind of narrative structure for a story where someone has to get out. And what you’re doing is retelling it in the context of science, and medical science, which I think is kind of an interesting angle on it. If it were me, I think I’d be going – because I’ve thought about this. You know, I’ve thought about doing a limited series on the rise of anti-vaccination which has always been with us by the way. I mean we say it’s a rise. There’s always been fear of vaccines. And the fear of vaccines is directly connected I think to the fear of people who are smarter than us.

I think there’s a direct line. It’s the same thing when we look at fear of elitism, fear of expertise, fear of those smart people, fear of the scientists, and then a direct line to fear of vaccines. It’s always been there but the current story that begins with the charlatan Andrew Wakefield and continues to this day to me is deserving of a – there’s a good exploration there. I’ve thought about it.

John: Now, the counter narrative is also an easy thing to see. So, the opposite movie which is basically that vaccines were a conspiracy. That secretly they always knew they were doing harm. That story we’ve seen a bunch, too. So, it feels like there’s going to be an upcoming one at some point about the opioid crisis and how big pharma was–

Craig: Oh there is. Steve Zaillian is working on it right now. It’s going to be brilliant.

John: Yeah. So we always have that kind of thing where like there is a secret government cabal hiding information about the real truth of these things. I agree with you that I think the cultist template or basically escaping from the cult template or the – I hate coming to realize, but the character who discovers that what they thought was true was not true is a meaningful way to think about it. The Matrix is essentially that, too. That sense that the world is not the way you thought it would be.

And I think what’s interesting about the vaccine situation is because the enemies are invisible and kind of ancient. Because no one has any experience with measles we think that measles doesn’t really exist. And it’s almost like one of those like don’t do that or you’ll attract the dragons. Like no one has seen dragons for 500 years. I’m not sure they ever really were there. As these diseases break out you realize like, oh wow, measles is terrible. Tetanus can kill you. These are things that are real issues.

Craig: Yeah. In a very real way Chernobyl is a story about what happens when people decide that because something hasn’t happened it can’t happen. And it won’t happen. It’s just inherent to the human condition. We pretend because we don’t know these things.

And, yes, there’s a weird line because you don’t want to end up as the person who is walking around saying, “Don’t you understand? Just because you haven’t seen ghosts doesn’t mean that ghosts aren’t there.” No, there’s an absolutely wonderful reason to presume that ghosts aren’t there. This is different. We know that vaccines work and we know that there are diseases that kill people. And the fact that we have eliminated polio because of vaccination doesn’t mean now that we don’t need to vaccinate because polio is not a thing. It’s a thing.

Mitch McConnell had polio. Which he seems to have forgotten, mind you. No, it’s a thing.

So, for me I keep thinking about this story in terms of the villains. Because I find the villains fascinating and horrifying. And there’s a danger in feeling like your axe-grinding if what you’re doing is building a narrative around a hero who is just yelling all the time, “Don’t you understand?”

John: The Jeff Goldblum character.

Craig: “Vaccines are great.” No, the Jeff Goldblum character is amazing as a kind of like background, “Do you know, uh, maybe we shouldn’t, uh, do this.” But in a show like this what you could end up seeming is just facile if your show is built around a CDC scientist or medical doctor.

John: Totally.

Craig: At Harvard Med who is saying, “Don’t you understand? You’re killing people.” Yes, we understand. And then you’re just going to repeat over and over? I want – it’s the villains that fascinate me. I want to expose them with the hope that some people would see themselves in it and think twice.

John: Yeah. That’s the goal. So, it feels like the characters we’re going to be looking for is who is the one who has a journey, well it’s probably somebody who starts in that world and leaves that world and recognizes that world for what it actually truly was. That feels like the classic thing.

The villain, it could be a quack. It could be a person who is profiting off that fear. But it probably is more that even kind of accidentally charismatic cult leader. Basically people start to believe him or her and that creates a sense of self-esteem and then they can’t have their self-esteem challenged by science or reality. And that becomes a fascinating loop there.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, you can see a story about parents who – let’s say the mother convinces the father that vaccines are terrible. And so they don’t vaccinate their child and then eventually their child dies. And these two people have to come to grips with it and they can’t. And there are ways – by the way, this is one of the most fascinating areas because this is one of the few areas where it’s more likely that women will be the villain. It’s fascinating just demographically. For whatever reason, this seems to be more prevalent among women than men.

So, and that already fascinates me because then I can get out of the usual thing as well. Because we’ve seen a billion male cult leaders. Haven’t seen too many female cult leaders. That’s exciting.

John: Yeah. It’s good. All right, our next story area is the Boeing air crashes. And so this is of a relatively recent Boeing redesign of planes. Two of these planes have crashed. A bunch of other countries grounded the planes saying there’s something fundamentally wrong here. The US stalled for a bit and has now grounded those planes. So let’s talk about this situation, this area, and figure out what are the interesting stories in there.

So, our friend John Gatins wrote the movie Flight. So Flight was a great movie about a plane crash or plane near crash and a remarkable pilot.

Craig: It was a crash.

John: Oh, it was a crash. It was a crash that wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Craig: Right.

John: And there have been other movies about plane crashes. Where are the story areas in this Boeing situation?

Craig: Well, we’ve got a few potentials. Sort of the obvious one is the – we’ll call it the big political story. Why are these planes still flying around in the United States while other people cancel them? The problem is that the United States grounded the planes quickly thereafter. So that story gets a little short-circuited. That feels like a little bit of a footnote.

Then there’s the investigation angle, you know, how did this plane crash. And then I think connected to that one is where I would probably start, which is why is this plane this way to begin with? That is fascinating actually. I don’t know if you’ve read about why they think this has happened and what led to it, but quick summary is that they continually need to update these planes to appear as if they’re selling something new and something that is more advanced. And advanced means saves money. That means more fuel-efficient. That means you can fly longer with less fuel, less drag, all that.

And Airbus is Boeing’s main competitor. Airbus is rolling out their new planes. Boeing freaks out. We’ve got to rollout our new planes. We don’t have new planes. Let’s take the planes we have and make them fly cheaper by making the following modifications. And they do. Because technology progresses.

But what they find is in making those modifications – and they’re so slight, right, they’re shaving things off here and there – that in certain circumstances the engines themselves are creating a little bit extra lift. So, if the plane is pointing up a little bit too much then it could theoretically start pointing up a lot too much. So, they just go ahead and build a thing into the system that automatically will lower it back down if that happens. They don’t tell anyone. Or they do, but they bury it in manuals. And the presumption, current presumption, may be proven wrong, is that in both cases of Ethiopian Airlines crash and the Lion Air crash, which look almost identical, that this system engaged incorrectly and the pilots didn’t understand what was happening. And so they started correcting for the system that was correcting and there was a feedback loop and the whole thing came down.

John: Yep.

Craig: And so you trace it all the way back to the same story we’ll hear about airlines where they say, my god, we just saved American Airlines $14 million a year by removing one olive from our salad. That’s kind of the same thing that’s going on here, except it’s leading to death apparently.

John: Yeah. So I think the challenge of that kind of a story is figuring out how you put characters in there that are compelling. And so you can have the investigator character who is going through and figuring all this out. You could do a more Chernobyl kind of situation where there’s a group of people that we’re following or we’re looking over the course of time. We’re figuring out how we got to this place or we’re moving back and forth to do it.

I don’t know that it’s going to feel especially compelling. I mean, it’s totally possible that we’re going to find that there’s some moment in there that really is groundbreaking and blows it all open, but I do worry that it’s not a movie. It’s really more of a good documentary than a narrative film. The actual just reporting of the facts may be more compelling than – just because unlike Chernobyl we’re not going to have great visuals. We’re not going to have great things to see. We could theoretically have two plane crashes, but there aren’t going to be cinematic moments. Does that make sense?

Craig: It does. And since I’ve seen Chernobyl I know that – I’ll just spoil it. The explosion happens very early on, really early. This is a kind of a one-incident plot, right? Plane crashes. What I find fascinating about complex disasters is not the thing that begins it but rather this terrible dragon’s tail that extends behind it that gets worse and worse and worse and worse.

So it never stops in a sense. With something like this you’re absolutely right. And it reminds me a little bit of the Sully movie. Was it called Sully? Was that what it was called? Sully?

John: Yeah. Which I never saw. Did you see it?

Craig: I saw it. And, you know, well first of all it was fairly apparent to me that they had just created a lot of drama that wasn’t true. The government inquiry board suddenly got very evil. Yeah, I mean, ultimately I just thought this doesn’t need to be here.

John: No.

Craig: I mean, very good filmmakers. Excellent filmmakers. Great actors. Great people involved. I just ultimately it didn’t feel like it rose to the test for me at least of I didn’t learn anything great other than Sully is a hell of a pilot.

John: Yep. Well let’s talk about this story area then. So rather than specifically these crashes or these Boeing planes there’s that sense of what you’re describing if this is really what caused these planes to crash was the kind of algorithm, this kind of automation that people weren’t aware of that had a good intention but went awry. So, you can very much envision as our Teslas start being able to drive themselves more, one bug could result in huge catastrophic problems. And so that sense of unintended consequences of automation, or these things which we rely on to keep stuff functioning properly goes wrong.

So, if for example what if it weren’t that there was one specific problem and this one specific design, but there was something more fundamental and we had to ground all the planes like what happened after 9-11. That is the kind of impact that you see that really does change how we live our daily life.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, air travel is essential to everything. And interestingly in the days following the second Boeing 737 Max crash, Max-8 crash, a number of people started asking American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the two US carriers that use those planes, “I don’t want to fly on that plane. Can I get my money back? Or is there another plane?” And both airlines essentially said the same thing which was we’ve flown tens of thousands of flights with these with no incident. And that’s true.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s still the safest form of travel there is. And this is one of those areas where like radiation I’ve discovered, there’s certain things that we find to be dread. Certain diseases. We dread certain diseases when we should really be dreading other ones because they’re the ones that are way more likely to kill us. Like we’re terrified of rabies but we don’t seem to be particularly worried about, I don’t know–

John: Heart disease.

Craig: Heart disease. Exactly. We’re still eating our pastrami sandwich while we’re talking about how terrible rabies is. And really very few people get rabies. Radiation, dying from radiation, I watch people refuse to put their phones up to the heads, but meanwhile the banana they’re eating has more radiation than the phone. By the way, so does flying. People are terrified of flying, but cars are constantly smashing into things. 35,000 people a year I think die on the road. Cars are bursting into flames. We have no problem with it. I was thinking about this in the context of they’re starting to talk about using drones now to move people around. Air cars essentially. And, you know, sooner or later an air car is going to crash. And someone is going to die. And everyone is going to lose their minds.

But that day 15 other people in Southern California alone will die in auto accidents. And no one will even care.

John: Yeah.

Craig: We struggle with this.

John: We discount the things that happen every day and focus on those rare things because they’re just so spectacular.

Craig: Exactly. They’re spectacular. And ultimately we know, well, if I get into a car accident I could survive that. If I get into a plane accident, no. And that’s what terrifies us. We’re not in control of the plane. Something else is.

In the case of this story I think there is something fascinating about the notion of how we put things in the hands of computers and then we’re terrified that the computers will let us down. But almost every single time, in fact, sorry, every single time when the computer lets us down is because a human has let us down. The computers aren’t writing their own code.

John: They will someday, but not yet.

Craig: Not yet.

John: Not yet.

Craig: [laughs] Not yet. So, what happened here was something akin to when a doctor gives you a pill to solve a problem, it does except it creates a new problem, so he gives you a pill to solve that problem. And you get pill on top of pill. And in this case it seems like they’re solving one problem that creates another problem, to they make a new thing to solve that problem, but it creates a new problem. This is a human thing. It’s about money.

John: Yep. All right. Something else we can’t control is the weather and this winter has been–

Craig: I can.

John: I always forget you have weather control. You and Storm from X-Men are our weather controllers. This winter has had some spectacular extreme events in weather across the US. We’ll link to two articles, one about the historic number of avalanches in Colorado. Another one about the Bomb Cyclone which is what they’re calling this huge winter–

Craig: Bomb Cyclone.

John: Bomb Cyclone!

Craig: Bomb Cyclone!

John: This huge winter storm complex that has sort of parked in places of the US. So let’s talk about extreme winter and what kinds of movies we can find in what’s happening in this big winter not-wonderland. Horrorland.

Craig: Weather is tough, right? I mean, because it’s slow and what we generally end up with are movies like The Day After Tomorrow where it’s cataclysmic, supernaturally cataclysmic weather where we’re taking it and speeding it up so it’s happening at a geo-storm. You know? And so it’s science-fiction essentially. Because what we don’t know really how to do is make a story out of a two-degree increase in average temperature in an area.

John: Yeah. Let’s try to separate that out because I think it’s hard to make the climate change movie because it’s just hard to sort of see the actual thing. We can talk about that another time, but like showing that is really hard to do even though it’s probably much more important than any given storm.

But we do have templates for survival stories in extreme weather.

Craig: Right.

John: The good thing about weather is it’s a disruption of ordinary daily life which is fertile ground for narrative. Because it breaks characters out of their usual routines and being broken out of their usual routine we can see them do things and take chances and go on journeys they wouldn’t otherwise take.

Craig: Yeah. Human versus nature is a classic. And there’s this inner sense we have when we watch those narratives that what we’re seeing is the human finally understanding who they are and the depths of what they can do because they’ve been pitted against nature. It speaks to an innate human desire to master nature. Right? I will beat you. I will defeat you. And you won’t beat me.

And we like those stories. We like them but they often are very similar. You just see – you find ways in where, OK, what makes The Perfect Storm better than, you know, this movie about the river overflowing. And you find the differences, but there is a real formula to it. Doesn’t mean bad. I like a good formula movie. But in this case I wonder if out of this new round of stuff the most story valuable thing that has come out is just the phrase Bomb Cyclone because, I mean, how is Bomb Cyclone already not a movie on – which channel makes Sharknado?

John: I think it’s Sci-Fi Channel, yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Like it just seems like Bomb Cyclone is terrifying.

John: Well, some of what’s happening in this last round is that we’re having snow storms in places that are not used to snow, and that can be fun, you can do a comedy where it’s like this snow day in Atlanta. Like they just don’t have – completely out of context for what they’re sort of used to.

Craig: That’s a good idea. Good idea. Stop there. That’s a great idea. To me, somebody should make that movie. That’s funny. Snow Day in Atlanta. I love that.

John: That sense of everyone is knocked off their normal routine. No one knows how to deal with this thing. So it’s a fish out of water story in some ways, too.

Craig: It’s a fish out of water story, but then it gets people to do stuff. And then things that maybe you wouldn’t have dealt with you deal with. It’s classic comedy stuff. And somebody falls in love. And there’s a snowman. There’s a snow fight. But it’s fun.

John: It’s fun.

Craig: It’s fun.

John: It’s fun.

Craig: I love it.

John: Classic other template for this is trapped, basically where you have characters stuck together in a place where they have to deal with a thing. For some reason we are fascinated with storms trapping characters at motels. I can think of so many examples of that. Where characters are forced to interact in ways they would not otherwise be interacting. Drama. Thriller. Those are sort of the classic ways to get into this. But I guess what’s important is in all these situations the weather is an inciting incident. It’s a reason why these characters are in this situation. But it’s rarely the actual villain. Because the weather is not personified in a way. It’s not a dragon you can defeat.

Craig: That’s exactly right.

John: You just get through it.

Craig: Yeah. Apparently everyone on planet earth saw Bird Box on Netflix.

John: I never saw it.

Craig: I’ve seen some of it. I won’t spoil anything. The bad guy, the monsters, whatever you are, you don’t even see them. That’s the point. You don’t see them. So they might as well be the weather. The plot is if you look at them then you go crazy and want to kill yourself. So you can’t look at them, so what you end up with is people trapped together in a house with this bad weather/alien presence outside. And the personified villain – so Eric Heisserer who wrote that script clearly understood exactly what you just said in a way that Shyamalan did not when he made The Happening. Because he thought the wind will be scary enough, or plants. They will not be.

And so what Eric Heisserer very smartly figured out early on in his writing process – I haven’t talked to him, I just know this is what happened – he said, oh my god, the weather isn’t personally scary. So he essentially created two tiers of effects. This is a very screenwriter solution but it works. Most people who look at this thing will go crazy and kill themselves. Some people will go crazy but basically go and evangelize and try and get other people to look at the thing.

John: Ah.

Craig: And therein you have your personified villain. It’s essential for a movie about the weather/aliens.

John: Another good example I can think of is Stephen King’s The Fog. And so you have a bunch of characters trapped in a supermarket, surrounded by this supernatural fog. And it’s the dynamics of those characters within that space and them jockeying for power is really what you’re following. The same can be said for The Walking Dead where the zombies are weather.

Craig: They’re weather. Exactly. We have seen the enemy and it is us. So, Stephen King does the exact same thing in The Dome. You know, OK, let me trap you. You’re facing a common enemy. And let me watch you rip yourselves to shreds instead.

John: Yep. So, I think if we’re going to do a movie about the Bomb Cyclone or any of this extreme weather it’s probably going to fall into either the snow day in Atlanta template or here is an ensemble drama about characters trapped in a situation. Those feel like the natural ways to do it. Because I don’t think we want another Goldblum situation where someone is explaining the weather. That doesn’t feel like–

Craig: [laughs] Goldblum situation.

John: But honestly you could stick Jeff Goldblum in all three of these movies that we’ve pitched today. So, you can definitely see him being the plan expert who is telling you I warned them not to do this but they did it anyway.

Craig: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Where do the Madea movies take place, by the way?

John: Oh, I don’t know.

Craig: I mean, I think he shoots them all around Atlanta and Georgia.

John: It feels like they should be in Atlanta.

Craig: So Madea’s Snow Day just feels like–

John: Done.

Craig: How is Tyler Perry not already writing that?

John: The poster, just make the poster and the movie follows.

Craig: Madea’s Snow Day. I would actually see that.

John: [laughs] I would see Madea’s Snow Day, too.

Craig: I would. I would see Madea’s Snow Day. I have no problem with that. None.

John: All right. If you have ideas for other How Would This Be a Movie do send them our way because we do gather those up together and Megana will put them in a nice little package and we’ll look at them again. I think it’s always fun to look at these areas because honestly that’s what Craig and I kind of do all day. Just random things are thrown in our general direction and we have to say like, oh, what kind of movie is this. And that’s what kind of movie it is.

Craig: If you become a writer in Hollywood, and I think a lot of you would like to be, those of you who are not already, this is what you do a lot of the time. This is it. So, if you hate the idea of doing this, hmm, mm. That’s all I got to say.

John: Yep. To bring this all back together I would say that in any of these movies that we’re sort of half-pitching here it’s going to come down to what is that final moment. What is the takeaway from this thing? Because if it’s just like a bunch of weather happens or a plane crashes that’s not a movie. It has to be about what is the last thing you’re taking from this thing that made it worthwhile to be listening to this pitch, to be reading this script, to be watching this movie.

Craig: 100%. These two things are not unrelated.

John: Great. It’s time for our One Cool Things. I have a Kickstarter for my One Cool Thing. It is the Humblewood Campaign Setting for the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. So you and I have both encountered these things that are Kickstarters that do a special new little world for within the DND universe. Humblewood is absolutely adorable.

Craig: It is.

John: So, I first came across these because Leesha Hannigan who is an artist who did some work for us for One Hit Kill, she has some of her characters in this. They are these adorable foxes with swords and rabbits and mice. And it looks absolutely incredible. So, just encourage you to check out the Humblewood Campaign Setting for Dungeons and Dragons.

If you don’t play DND you’re not going to get a tremendous amount out of this, but it’s worth looking at the artwork because it’s just really incredible.

Craig: And it does seem like if you are introducing your kids–

John: Oh my god, it would be perfect.

Craig: Yeah. Particularly, you know, not every kid likes the kind of classic monster stuff, and blood and guts, and brains with sharp teeth sticking out of them and all that stuff. This is definitely more kid-friendly. It’s softer but it’s cuddly. But it’s still DND so you still get to kill stuff. I mean, come on. But you’re doing it with an adorable mice character named Jerbeen, or sorry that’s his race. He’s a Jerbeen, which means he’s a mouse person. It’s adorable. Adorable.

John: And Aline Brosh McKenna will of course love the owl knight, a Strig, and Aline loves owls. But, I mean, come on.

Craig: She loves owls. And then there’s Corvum – looks like sort of Necromancy/Crow guy. Very good. If you love birds, and you love DND. No, it is. It’s adorable. It’s absolutely adorable. Don’t worry about the it not happening. Their goal was $20,000 and they’re currently at $127,000.

And here’s a thought. Make some stuff for DND. People like it.

John: They do like it.

Craig: Yeah. I love it. My One Cool Thing is an article from NewScientist.com. We will include a link in the show notes of course. And it’s fascinating. I did not know this. Here’s the headline: Humans couldn’t pronounce “f” and “v” sounds before farming developed. Like how many F sounds are in that sentence itself?

So essentially a group of linguists have determined that our jaws before agriculture were aligned in a certain way where it was all about chewing hard food. And because our jaws were aligned in a certain way we couldn’t actually align things so that the bottom teeth could touch the top lift to make “f” or “v.” It just didn’t work.

John: It’s top teeth and bottom lip, right?

Craig: Sorry, did I say bottom teeth and top lip? I meant bottom lip and top teeth. You’re absolutely right. What if I was like, oh, is that how you say it?

John: I tried to picture like an orc doing it.

Craig: Exactly. But what happened with agriculture once we started to farm our food became easier to chew. And it led to changes in human jaws and teeth. And thus with the jawbone not having to do as much work it doesn’t grow to be so large and now you can make F and V sounds.

John: That’s nice.

Craig: I love stuff like this.

John: I love evolutionary biology. I love how stuff all fits together. And sometimes it can be magical thinking, like oh it must be this way. And who knows maybe they’ll find that this isn’t quite accurate for some reason. But it does track and make sense and also reminds me that humans have been around for a long time. There used to be many different species of humans in our sort of giant family. We ended up doing different things because of where we ended up. It’s cool.

Craig: I love it. I love anything that reminds me of how much animalistic meat blobs we all are.

John: Yeah. That we’re mammals.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, we’re special mammals but we’re mammals. We’re mammals. We’re meat.

John: We’ve got big brains and we’ve got really nimble hands and that got us a lot.

Craig: Thank god for soft food. It’s my favorite food.

John: Soft food is so, so good.

Craig: The best.

John: That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Jim Launch and Jim Bond. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher and wherever you listen to podcasts. If you’re there leave us a review. That helps people find the show.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. We’ll have links to the articles we talked about. You’ll also find transcripts there. They go up within the week of the episode coming out.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It’s two bucks a month to listen to those back episodes.

Craig: $2 a month. Come on.

John: Come on. We also sell packs of 50 episodes if you just want to buy those. They are at store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, lovely talking about all these things with you.

Craig: John, another great episode of Scriptnotes.

John: And I’ll talk to you next week.

Craig: Bye.

John: Bye.

• Aladdin in theaters May 24th!
• Chernobyl first episode on HBO May 6th.
• Unvaccinated Boy Got Tetanus, and Ohio teen defies parents and gets vaccine.
• Trump grounds Boeing 737 planes
• Extreme Avalanches in Colorado and Bomb Cyclone Storm
• Humblewood Campaign Setting for DND kickstarter
• Why Humans started saying “f” and “v”
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