John August

Go

Tying Things Up

Episode - 366

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Books, Film Industry, Follow Up, Go, News, Random Advice, Rights and Copyright, Scriptnotes, Story and Plot, Videogames, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig cover endings, both for craft and for business. First they articulate the importance of the denouement and the social contract it fulfills with the audience. Then they discuss what happens to a writer’s work after their death.

We also follow up on pitching, and introduce a new segment: Change Craig’s Mind. This week: Ventriloquists!

Links:

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

UPDATE 9-12-18: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Old Projects

Big Fish, Dead Projects, Go, Projects, Television

Maybe I’m hyper-aware because yesterday was the 15th anniversary of Go, but I’m encountering all sorts of references to past projects this week.

In THR’s interview with Susanne Daniels, she cites my first series:

There was this very good pilot that Dick Wolf did for me when I was at WB, which was called D.C. I distinctly remember he called me after he had sent me the pilot and asked me what I thought of it. The very first thing I said was, “Why didn’t you shoot this one particular scene that was in the script that I loved?”

Fourteen years later, my heart still flutters to learn she thought it was very good!

People and projects circle back into your life. I’m not crazy about the idea of power rankings, but The Wire’s recap on the cast of Go illustrates just how special that group continues to be. I keep up with a surprising number of those actors, and write them into everything I possibly can.

Yesterday in the halls at Disney, I bumped into Ricky Strauss, who was integral to getting both Go and Big Fish happening at Columbia. He told a colleague, “John wrote Fantasy Island for us.”

Wait, of everything I wrote, you single out Fantasy Island?

In every screenwriter’s career, there are so many scripts that never become part of your filmography. But they still matter. People remember them.

And some projects never die. A few weeks ago, I got a call about a rewrite on a project. As I spoke with the executive, I dug through my hard drive to find my notes from the last time I pitched on the movie.

My notes were dated October 6, 1996.

They are still trying to make the movie.

Lessons from God

Go, Projects, Video

Over the weekend, I revamped my YouTube channel and uploaded a bunch of videos, including my 1998 short film God, starring a young Melissa McCarthy:


Melissa’s amazing, and always was. I’ve loved watching someone so talented and so deserving become a star.

We shot this film after Go, but it was actually finished first.

I wrote the part for Melissa, who absolutely killed her single scene in Go. Over the next few years, I’d cast her in anything I could. She played a recurring character in my WB series D.C., and had cameos in both Charlie’s Angels. I wrote a part for her in Big Fish, but her role on Gilmore Girls kept her in Los Angeles.

Nine years later, Melissa would play her character from God again in The Nines opposite Ryan Reynolds.1 Her husband Ben Falcone has a small part in the movie as well, and starred in another pilot I did called The Remnants.

God was shot on leftover 35mm from Go, using a lot of the same crew. That’s my old apartment, my old couch, my old answering machine.

I had no particular career goal in making it; it just seemed like fun. We never submitted it to festivals. Rather, it got passed around a lot on VHS, and would often be brought up in meetings. (Casting directors in particular loved it.)

Although I had already directed second unit on Go, this was my first real directing experience beyond crappy Super-8 films in school. I learned a lot, including:

  • Using metaphors to explain what you want. I told my DP that I wanted the light to feel like a breath mint. I told the hair stylist that I wanted Hot-Topic Wiccan.
  • The challenges of late-90s opticals. That “god” title in the opening shot, which would be three seconds of work today, took about a week of back-and-forth approvals at a lab.
  • How expensive music is. The rights to “Walking on Sunshine” cost more than the rest of the budget combined.
  • How much of a homebody I am. God started a trend of my writing movies that take place in my house.

Some of the best things that came from this short were relationships with people I keep working with: Melissa, producer Dan Etheridge, composer Alex Wurman, cinematographer Giovanni Lampassi, and editor Doug Crise. They’re all still part of my life and career, which is a remarkable gift.

  1. The short is a bonus feature on the US DVD. ↩

Go, while you can get it

Charlie's Angels, Go, News

The deal between Starz and Netflix expires March 1st, so if you have any titles you’re eager to watch online, get cracking before they disappear.

You can see a list of what’s going to be lost here.

Among my movies, that includes Go and the first Charlie’s Angels. The Nines and Titan A.E. will still be available.

When might Go come back to Netflix? Or for that matter, Corpse Bride? I have no idea. Filmmakers get no advance warning, so if you see a film of mine suddenly become available, let me know.