John August

QandA

What script should you write?

Episode - 47

Go to Archive

QandA, Scriptnotes, Three Page Challenge, Transcribed

Craig and John tackle a question screenwriters ask themselves at every stage in their careers: of all things I *could* write, which thing *should* I write?

For working screenwriters, these questions are complicated by rights and money and personalities. But for the aspiring screenwriter, the choice is just as daunting. A screenplay is a huge undertaking, involving months or years of work. Each script carries an opportunity cost: choosing to write this project means not writing something else, or at the very least pushing it further back.

While the variables are different in every case, John and Craig offer some framework for answering the question.

Also this week, John discusses the death of Richard Zanuck, who produced three of his movies. From listener questions, we look at pitch-fests, illegal acts, and shows about your buddies.

And in cool things, Craig talks e-cigarettes while John has mixed opinions on the Nexus 7.

LINKS:

* [Richard Zanuck, 1934 – 2012](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/14/local/la-me-richard-zanuck-20120714), Los Angeles Times obit
* [Joyetech 510](http://www.joyetech.com/product/510.php)
* [Johnson Creek](http://www.johnsoncreeksmokejuice.com/) Smoke Juice
* Google’s [Nexus 7](http://www.google.com/nexus/#/7) tablet
* INTRO: [Classic 1960’s Dr. Pepper commercial](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1gZkf_-UyI&feature=related)
* OUTRO: [Cigarettes, Whiskey, and Wild Wild Women](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEcj83zljOY) by Jim Croce

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_47.m4a).

**UPDATE** 7-26-12: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/scriptnotes-ep-47-what-script-should-you-write-transcript).

Mistakes development executives make

Challenge, Film Industry, QandA, Scriptnotes, Transcribed

Craig and John skip Comic-Con so they can discuss annoying and unproductive habits of development executives, along with advice for working with screenwriters.

The back half of the podcast is devoted to the first-ever three page challenge, in which we critique listeners’ samples and offer suggestions. If you have a chance to **read the samples** before listening to the podcast — they’re in the links below — you’ll get more out of it, but we try to summarize things so that it’s useful even without the text.

Let us know what you thought of this experiment (on Twitter [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin)) so we’ll know whether to do a round two. We received more than 200 entries for the challenge — more than enough, so please don’t send any more. If we do another pass, we’ll pull from what we have.

Our thanks to everyone who wrote in, and especially to Ajay, J. Nicholas and Bryan for letting us talk about their stuff online.

Also discussed this week: standing desks, music theory, laptop speakers and inflated podcast numbers.

LINKS:

* Anthro Cart [Adjusta desk](http://www.anthro.com/computer-furniture.aspx?desk=fit-adjusta)
* Three pages by [Ajay Bhai](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/ajay_bhai_3pages.pdf)
* Three pages by [J. Nicholas Smith](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/jn_smith_3pages.pdf)
* Three pages by [Bryan DeGuire](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/deguire_3pages.pdf)
* [Hooktheory](http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hooktheory/id533715898?mt=11&ign-mpt=uo%3D4) for iBooks
* [Hooktheory](http://www.hooktheory.com/) site
* [Audio Essentials](http://www.srslabs.com/store/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=51)
* INTRO: [Quincy, M.E.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXf4tV_aeDc) opening titles
* OUTRO: [Forrest Gump](http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/forrest-gump/id541953504?i=541953615) by Frank Ocean

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_46.m4a).

**UPDATE** 7-19-12: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/scriptnotes-ep-46-mistakes-development-executives-make-transcript).

Getting less for your 10%

Film Industry

Gavin Palone looks at why why so many more writers (and directors and actors) in Hollywood are paying the [extra money for a manager](http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/polone-why-everyone-pays-more-for-a-manager.html):

> The reason for this change can be found in the news reports written about talent agencies these days, most of which involve a cycle of mergers between agencies and the subsequent firings of suddenly superfluous agents.

The big agencies have gotten bigger — but also smaller, because every time they merge, they lay off a lot of agents. Now cut loose, these agents often become managers, performing many of the same functions for many of the same clients.

That helps the bottom line of the agencies (they still get their 10%), but it means screenwriters are paying out another big chunk of their income.

> As the owner of a restaurant, I would love to save money by firing the dishwasher and dumping all of the equipment necessary to keep plates and utensils clean; then the unemployed dishwashers could stand outside the restaurant and rent clean plates to customers for a separate fee. I could then still charge the same prices and increase my net profit, while the dishwashers would probably make more than the minimum wage they are getting now. Unfortunately, there is too much competition and customers would just go elsewhere for meals where the plates are provided for free.

> The talent agents are lucky in that they have rolled up so many of the agencies into two giants [CAA, WME] and two medium-size companies [UTA, ICM] that there isn’t real competition and they can get away with their machinations with little or no blowback.

It would be interesting to see the agent/client ratio of the agencies, and how it’s changed over time.

In the 15 years I’ve been working, technology has made some aspects of an agent’s job much faster and easier. Emails let you avoid phone tag. PDFs don’t need messengers. Information about jobs can be centralized.

But maintaining relationships with clients simply takes time. The more clients a single agent is trying to service, the less likely each individual client is going to feel satisfied. Thus, managers.

For the record, I’ve never had a manager, nor felt I’ve needed one. But I came into the industry at a different time. Last year, Justin Marks laid out his reasons why [most screenwriters should have managers](http://johnaugust.com/2011/get-a-manager), and I can’t argue with his logic, other than (pointlessly) wishing that things were more like they used to be.

Writing big movies for little screens

Television

Stephen Harrigan reflects on his career writing [TV movies of the week](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/07/made_for_tv_movies_my_career_writing_the_o_j_simpson_story_take_me_home_the_john_denver_story_and_more_.single.html):

> As a writer of what I call colon movies (such as *Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder*, or *Take Me Home: The John Denver Story*), the ’90s were my golden decade. I was an A-list writer of B-list productions.

MOWs have largely gone away, but as a profession it is very much like feature writing — only with tighter deadlines and smaller budgets.

The format does come with its own bag of tropes and clichés:

> After I had been in the business for awhile, I started to grow aware of the word “turns,” and the more aware of it I grew the more determined I became to outmaneuver it. It’s the default word for the end of almost every scene: “He turns”; “She turns”; “She hesitates for a moment at the door, then turns back to face him”; “He looks away, and when he turns back to her she notices there are tears in his eyes.“ It became my personal challenge to write an entire script without anybody turning, like that guy in the 1930s who once wrote a whole novel without ever using the letter “E.” But after a while I gave up. It was too hard, maybe even impossible. People in my scripts just naturally needed to turn to each other to button up a scene, to give it a proper note of finality. Trying to write a screenplay without using “turns” was like trying to write a pop song without using “baby.”

I love Harrigan’s observation that subtlety is too much like vagueness, and in a script nothing vague can survive:

> You had to search and search until you found a story’s irreducible thread: a man on the run from a killer, a young girl growing into a woman, a victim seeking revenge. If the movie was about one thing, it could be about many things. But if you started out determined to make it about many things, it would be about nothing.

It’s a [long read](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/07/made_for_tv_movies_my_career_writing_the_o_j_simpson_story_take_me_home_the_john_denver_story_and_more_.single.html), but thoroughly worthwhile.