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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/what-were-up-to)

**Craig Mazin:** Hi folks. All of you I presume are listening at home, which means that children are about. Unfortunately for them this episode does contain some strong language, so put in those ear buds, put in those headphones. Keep those children safe.

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

**Craig:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 443 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we’re going to be talking about working from home, a subject Craig and I know very well. We’ll talk about what works for us and what might work for you if you find yourself in this situation. Then we’ll be hearing from some of our favorite guests about what they’ve been up to during this period of uncertainty. Not surprisingly they’ve had a range of experiences and some surprises.

And in our bonus segment for Premium members we’re going to talk about math. What we remember from school and what we actually use.

**Craig:** Woo-hoo!

**John:** Woo-hoo! Craig, this is not any different from our normal recording situation. We are usually on Skype. We are back on Skype. It’s just nothing is different.

**Craig:** Yeah. You and I have been social distancing from each other since the very beginning. And so I’m at home, so the microphone is not quite as professional but hopefully is holding up OK. And, I mean, technically my office is safe because I’ve sent my employees home. Bo is working from home and Jack is working from home. But I don’t think technically I’m supposed to be going there now because we have this full shutdown other than essential workers and people that are staffing stores with essential supplies.

**John:** Exactly. So, Megana is also home. She’s going to be getting this episode together. Matthew is cutting this at home as he usually does. So it’s all going to work out. It’s just some differences and changes along the edges. But this is not unusual for us and we can share our experiences and some tips for folks at home.

But first and most importantly we should talk about what did happen this past week, because actually a bunch of stuff did go down. Last Saturday I was texting with you, Craig, about this Go Fund Me that Liz Alper was setting up. Liz Alper is the woman behind #PayUpHollywood and that whole movement.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So as we started talking about assistant stuff she started talking about assistant stuff. We did a town hall together. She was trying to raise $100,000 for assistants, readers, and other support staff laid off because of COVID-19. I proposed to you that maybe you and I could each agree to match the first $25,000 that were raised. So together we raised $50,000. Hopefully we could get the rest of the industry to kick in $50,000. And it went really well.

**Craig:** It did. So we reached out to all of our friends that we thought that were of the sorts of means that could make significant contributions. And pretty much they all came through and did, which was amazing. Currently we’re looking at over a half a million dollars that we raised in basically a week to distribute to the assistants and I think readers and support staff as you said who have been laid off.

Now, that’s amazing. And congrats to us and everything. But there is a message I’d like to send out to the world through our podcast which is simply this. You and I and our friends are after all employees in Hollywood. And the companies that employ us have enormous resources, billions of dollars of resources. Now I’m not suggesting that they can deplete all of their money. I don’t really know how money works. I’m going to be totally honest. They can’t just dump it all out there. But it does seem to me that they could be doing more. And at the very least they could be contributing to funds like this one, or creating their own for that matter.

So I am calling upon Warner Bros and Universal and Paramount and Sony and Disney/Fox and all their associated businesses to put some money toward this and if you can’t keep people on the payroll at least help support them during this time, because this is going to go on for a while. And you’re going to want those people back when it’s over.

**John:** Yeah. So when Craig says put some money towards this we don’t mean towards this Go Fund Me. No, we mean actually continuing to pay the people who had been working for you. And when at all possible to not lay them off. So, in this Go Fund Me it was really structured around those workers in Hollywood who are not kind of full time employees. Those people who are like between jobs, those folks who were hired on to work on a production and then production just went away because everything got closed down. Or folks who had been laid off.

And so this was really targeting the most vulnerable population and trying to get some money into their hands as quickly as possible. So, again, support staff, PAs, folks who are really vulnerable for this. But Craig and me, our job is to remind people listening to this podcast who do employ others, find a way to keep them employed. Find a way to keep them protected because we will need these people when we come out of this situation.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And the fact of the matter is for a lot of folks there is a way to actually keep these people working, like I’m keeping my staff working. Now, it’s a little easier for folks like you and me, John, because we’re writers. And we can do a lot of our work without lots of people around us. It’s a little more difficult when you’re carrying a lot of folks that are specifically connected to something that cannot happen, that cannot continue to go on. But do your best. Argue with your employers to hold as many of those folks on the payroll as possible for as long as possible.

This business has made a lot of money off of a lot of people. And it would be nice in a moment like this if they could give some back. Just give some back. That would be really good for a moment if maybe profit wasn’t the most important thing. Just give a little bit back.

**John:** Absolutely. One of the things I want to stress as well is that over the past few years we’ve been trying to make more and more efforts on equity and inclusion, making sure that we have people working in this business who better represent the wholeness of America. And that includes people who don’t have the economic background to be able to weather this storm without outside help.

As we do these surveys for the situation with assistants before all this started everyone was living paycheck to paycheck. So these people are the most vulnerable. If we don’t step in right now and tide them over through the storm a bunch of them are going to move back to wherever they came from. They’re going to leave. And we’re going to lose out on a generation of talent who should be here. The people who are going to be winning Oscars in 2035, well right now they are PAs. So the next Shonda Rhimes, she is probably a script coordinator on some show who might have to move back to Texas. We need to make sure that we are protecting them at this time.

**Craig:** And when this is all over I think there’s going to be a long discussion, a very long discussion, about why people have been living paycheck to paycheck in a business that generates so much money and has generated so much money so consistently for so long. And I’d like to point out that while a ton of other businesses and industries in our nation are shut down, you can still rent or buy just about every single movie or television show that has ever been made.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** It doesn’t stop. Right? The production has stopped momentarily, but as someone once said to me, “If you want to make money in Hollywood have a big library of stuff and don’t make new stuff.” So it’s all money coming in now and very little going out. So it would be really great if these corporations rose to this moment and did something good for people. It would be great.

**John:** Now I would say what we were able to do this last week was the best I’ve felt since this whole thing began. And so as we were able to hit those numbers and we saw over a thousand donors chip in money on this campaign it was phenomenal and it was the best I’ve felt throughout this whole experience.

The next steps for this is getting the money out the door. So we’ve hired on a production accountant to sort of go through and make sure we’re rigorous in sort of how we’re tracking the money that comes in, the money that goes out. But the goal is to start getting money out the door by the time this episode drops so people can actually know that they’ll be able to make their rent or get through this next week or two of troubles.

So, that’s the goal. I want to thank everybody who chipped in. It was sort of weird that we couldn’t – we didn’t have time to get an episode out to sort of encourage people to do the Go Fund Me. So, enough people followed us on Twitter and other places, so thank you to all our listeners who chipped in. It was a good thing.

**Craig:** And of course a huge thank you to all of the writers that we know who stepped up and made these very significant contributions. And we should probably say all of their names, but I don’t have the list in front of me, do I?

**John:** I don’t have the list in front of me, either. And there’s a few more who might still be coming in. So, maybe next week we’ll do it.

**Craig:** Next week we will do the honor roll. For sure.

**John:** Great. All right. We still have some trappings of a normal show. So this will be the follow up segment. Mitch from Marvel, Tennessee wrote in, “In the recent How to Listen episode I heard John say Appalachian. This is certainly an acceptable pronunciation but I wanted to point out for your possible future usage that most who live in this region tend to pronounce it Appal-ah-chian. There are those around here who will argue the other way is correct and they’re not flat out wrong, but I moved to East Tennessee 30 years ago and have noticed over the years that most people I know who are native Appal-ah-chians pronounce it the latter way. That’s also what you’ll hear on local TV news outlets who pronounce it.”

**Craig:** That is true.

**John:** So, Appal-ah-chian.

**Craig:** Appal-ah-chia. Appal-ah-chian. Yeah. That’s how they do it.

**John:** Great. And so that’s kind of the distinction that is really hard to make in a script. You generally wouldn’t make it in the script. And so it got me thinking back to when we were doing Big Fish and Big Fish is set in Alabama. The past elements of it are sort of a storybook Alabama. And we had to make decisions about how all these actors, most of the British actors, what accent we were going to do. And so we brought in a dialect coach who was working with each of them. And I had to work with her about sort of are we pronouncing Rs. Like did Edward Bloom go fight in a wah or in a war? And the rhotic R was important. So we had to sort of get everyone on the same page.

Generally in the script you won’t do that. You might get a sense of like the rhythm of speech, but you won’t get down to the details of Appalachian versus Appal-ah-chian. So, it would generally be a dialect coach or someone else who is working with production in preproduction to figure out exactly what the accent is going to be for everyone who is speaking.

**Craig:** Yeah. Really the only time I draw any attention to specific pronunciation is if it’s part of the moment. That it’s important for people to know that the character – for instance it’s very common for people to mispronounce the word Nevada. They will say Ne-vah-da. But in Nevada, Nevadans call it Nevada. They don’t like it when you call it Ne-vah-da. OK.

So if somebody is going to say Ne-vah-da that way you might have to say they pronounce Ne-vah-da as opposed to the way – and everybody stares. That kind of thing.

**John:** Exactly. So if it is an important story point then you do call it out in the script. Generally you won’t call it out in the script. Those kind of regional pronunciation differences.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Cool. All right, now to our marquee topic – working from home. Something I’ve been doing for 20 years or so. In thinking about this segment an article I read this last week actually laid out a lot of really good points. So I’m going to start with this article by Alice Goldfuss about working from home.

Some of the points she makes are to recreate your rhythm, to get dressed, to separate your desk from your sleeping space. To keep your stuff tidy. To think about social spaces. Think about not just working from home but the degree to which when you are working in an office there’s a social component there, so not to neglect that social component. And most importantly to put some boundaries on things. Recognize a time when you stop working and actually to start living your life because that can be one of the toughest things, especially if you’re dealing with people overseas is that there’s no boundary between being at work and being at home.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, listen, it is hard. When I first started working at home I think I was, yeah, 23 years ago maybe. And there is an adjustment period. And one of the things about working from home that’s tricky if you haven’t it before is you don’t quite know if you’re doing it well. Meaning, am I working too much? Am I working not enough? There’s a little bit of a sense that you had when you were first off to college and suddenly there were no report cards and no parents over your shoulder. Am I studying enough? Too much?

There’s going to be an adjustment period. Give yourself a little bit of a break because you’re not going to know for a while how you’re doing.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think when I first started working at home it was just me in my studio apartment. And I could – as a writer I could write all night. I could sleep all day. That was sort of the life I was in. But most people’s jobs now do involve some interaction with people. And so you’re going to have to find something approaching a work day to make, OK, this is the time at which I can actually get this people to email me back or sort of get word back on sort of the projects I’m working on. That becomes an aspect that wasn’t true when it was just me as bachelor guy writing.

I think my working at home also changed a lot when I moved in with Mike, when we had a kid. Things got much more routinized because I couldn’t stay up all night suddenly because then I couldn’t actually be a responsible father. So, you find yourself getting into a rhythm that actually makes sense for your current life situation. And given the pandemic everyone’s current life situation is just understandably confusing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And by the way I don’t know about you, I’m scared to ask you this question. But I don’t have necessarily any more or less time per day to do the writing that I’m supposed to do. These last couple of weeks, it’s been hard. Really hard. I mean, I’ve done work. I’ve written. I’ve moved the ball forward. I’m not like falling terribly behind or anything. But it seems so much harder. And I wonder if that’s true for you. And then I also wonder by extension if it’s true for everybody, no matter what their job is, because we’re all upset.

**John:** Yeah. We’re going to hear from a bunch of our previous guests and I think that’s a common refrain. It’s been difficult to sort of get the work done. Even though the format of the work changes, the actual getting writing done has been more difficult. I fall back on my writing sprints a lot, which is just I’m blocking out an hour of time in chunks and I’m only going to write during that time. And doing that has gotten me back into a place where I can head down focus on the thing I’m writing. But the chaos of every day has been a big factor.

Having my daughter home from school is a big factor. So it feels like we’re on a spring break or a summer vacation, but there’s no sort of relaxation/enjoyment quality to it all. It’s all just a big stirred up.

**Craig:** Yeah. And this is also probably a particularly difficult time for extroverts. There are people who need – I know this is going to sound weird, but just hear me out, John. There are people that need to be around people. Like they need it. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I feel bad for them.

**John:** Absolutely. And you know if you’ve worked in an office, you know who those people are. They’re the people who will come over and sort of linger by your desk. And those people who linger by your desk that is just sort of how they’re wired. And so how they linger by your desk if they can’t do that? And so those people probably need to recognize that in themselves and plan to take some walks. Even though you can’t actually hang out with – you should maintain that six-feet distance between people, you need to see some other people. You need to sense you’re in the world or you feel like just too floaty and disconnected. That’s definitely something I’ve been noticing.

I mean, I haven’t left the house in a week and there is a weird unreality that does set in. I remember I was reading this new D&D book that I got which is great. And I had this strange moment where I realized, wait, am I actually married with a kid and living in a pandemic? Or am I some other person? And just for a moment it did all sort of – this seems very unlikely. It seems strange that this is who I am and this is where I am. So, yes, acknowledging that this is a strange moment is important. And yet even within this strange moment there are some basic principles we can remind you of.

So, when I was living in France for the year we moved into this apartment and it was so hot. It was like 100 degrees. I was writing the first Arlo Finch which is all a winter book. And we didn’t have our desks. We didn’t have any place. But I knew I needed to get those hours of writing in. So what I would do is I would put on my headphones, I would play this ambient track from YouTube of like winter storm sounds. And I would just sit there and listen and I would sort of psychologically make myself cold. And then I could just write.

And there was something really calming about just being able to do the work. And so I would say that even though this is a stressful time and you should forgive yourself if it’s hard to get work done, I would say do try to do some work because you may find rather than it being frustrating it’s actually sort of calming to get back into a place where you can focus on something that is not the outside world.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a good idea. We are going to need to kind of astral project a little bit.

Yeah, especially if you live in a neighborhood where it’s going to be tough. I happen to live in the relative sticks of Los Angeles County. So, you know, I took the dog for a walk today. I saw some people from a distance. But, you know, mostly I could just be alone and not worry about being on top of people. That’s not going to be true if you’re in a really tight urban environment. So, yeah, you’re just going to have to astral project.

**John:** So, one thing that’s been different in this experience is Zoom. So this was my first week using Zoom. I had two directors meetings and a meeting on a different project. And it all actually went really well. And it made me realize that when this is all over I think there’s a bunch of meetings that I’m going to ask to take place online versus going in person. Because if I never have to go to a five o’clock meeting on the west side again, hooray. Because some of what I was willing to put up with in terms of getting face time in a room with people just it wasn’t worth it. And these two directors meetings I had on Zoom, they were productive. And we got through stuff. And these people were on different continents and it was a pretty good experience.

So, I don’t want to say there’s any silver linings to what we’re going through, but it was a good lesson that you can adapt and sometimes in adapting you actually get to some smarter choices.

**Craig:** I mean, you know I love me some HBO. But they’re in Santa Monica and I’m near Pasadena. So five o’clock isn’t – forget five o’clock. I can’t even go there if it’s two o’clock. So, yeah, I mean, I think I’m going to be requesting Zooms frequently. It works really well.

The first kind of group video chat I had when this all started was on Google Hangout. Not a fan. Got to be honest.

**John:** It’s not as good.

**Craig:** No. The Zoom people have figured something out. I don’t know what it is, but hats off to them. So, anyway, point being, yeah, I’m with you. I don’t want to drive to the west side ever again either.

**John:** I will tell honestly there was a project that I was considering doing with a company that was on the west side. And it was going to be a TV thing that I knew was going to be a ton of meetings. And I did not go with that company because it was on the west side. I liked the people involved, but I just knew that I would need to be at that office and, no. My life is worth more. And the number of hours that I’d spend in the car getting there are hours I could spend writing or doing other stuff. So, yes. The more Zoom the better. I will take it.

**Craig:** More Zoom the better.

**John:** So, Craig, other tips for people in terms of working at home? Things you think might be helpful.

**Craig:** Sure. So, a few things that are going to come up that you probably weren’t expecting. Well one is a bit specific to the time we’re in now. Suddenly I’m getting a lot of calls from people that are just calling to say, “Hey, how you doing?” Because they want to talk. Because they are probably people that like talking to people. And I’m, you know, I’m fine with that, but I’m not really that person. And more importantly some people may not understand that you’re still at work.

There are some people who cannot work right now. They are essentially on a forced furlough. And so they’re not working. And they may make the mistake of presuming that you’re not working. So, you’re just going to have to figure out how to boundary that off. Maybe just not answer the phone for a while. Like John said, carve out some time. And I think it’s important for you to – if you can – get some exercise. If you can get outside.

I mean, even here in California where we’re on essentially a statewide lockdown, exercise is allowable. Walking the dog is allowable. You’ve just got to practice Safe Six. Do you like that? Safe Six. I didn’t come up with that.

**John:** I like Safe Six a lot.

**Craig:** Yeah. That was Jeanine Tesori. Tony award winning Jeanine Tesori was the first person that used that near my ear. And I was like, ooh, I’m using that. I’m going to steal it.

I do think that if you can support local businesses, ordering in is a nice thing to do. It’s not something you have to do for every meal. You’re not obligated to hold up an industry at the expense of your own waistline. But ordering in is fine. Food safety wise, from everything I’ve read, food does not appear to be a major vector of COVID-19. That said, to be on the safe side when we order in we’re sticking to food that has been cooked. And we’re taking it out of the containers and doing some reheating which should be enough to kill any microbes.

If you have time on your hands and you’re at home, take a look at that room that’s got a lot of clutter in it. Get to work.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This is a good chance for some COVID cleaning.

**John:** My daughter’s spring break is not this week but next week. And we are looking forward to – there’s shelves in our library which we’ve never actually dusted the shelves. So it’s taking all the books off and actually dusting those shelves. Getting to the places that you never actually get to. This feels like a good time.

We pulled all of the various Arlo Finches in different languages off, and so they’re all on the office table now. And we will find something to do with all these Arlo Finches because I don’t need four copies of the second book in Swedish. One will be plenty.

**Craig:** I think so. I think you should be OK with one. And for people who are fortunate enough to be able to employ housecleaners, well they’re not coming to you right now. So, this is a chance for you to dig in and use a little elbow grease. For everybody else, maybe just pick a project. Even if it’s just once a week pick a project, do a little tidying.

**John:** On the housekeeper front is that if you have somebody who normally cleans your house and you don’t want them coming to your house to clean your house, they shouldn’t. For your safety and for their safety. Pay them anyway.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Find a way to pay them through this time. Because they rely on the money that you’re giving them to make a living. So, help them make their living. Pay them. And then what we did is we just made a schedule of like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, this is the thing we clean on those days. So Thursday is bathrooms day. It sucks. But it’s just one day. And it’s 30 minutes and we’re done. So, making yourself a cleaning schedule feels very Little House on the Prairie, but it does also provide some structure. Because that’s one of the most frustrating things about being home when you’re not expecting to be home is that there is just no structure.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And every day feels like a Sunday.

**Craig:** That’s right. So without a doubt if you can continue to pay – if you can afford a housekeeper I’m guessing you can afford to keep paying your housekeeper for a bit. There are quite a few people who pay their housekeepers under the table as it is. I don’t. My housekeepers are actually on a salary with the payroll service that I use. Either way, if you can – if you can – please do keep paying them. And it was really important for us to say, before the lockdown happened where it wasn’t even a possibility for them to come by, to say to them you don’t need to come. If you have even the slightest whiff of a bad feeling you don’t need to come because you have a job still. You’re getting paid.

And that leads me into my final thing. Which is give. While we are locked down and you’re working from home and we’re all inside our homes, try and give. That doesn’t necessarily mean money. If you have means and you can give money that would be great. If you have items that you can donate that would be great. For instance, I have a friend who knows someone who works in the prop business. And he happened to have boxes of masks. Hospital masks. Because, you know, if you’re doing a hospital show you need them. He donated them all. Dug them up out of storage. Donated them all to a hospital.

If you can give somebody one-on-one attention. If you can offer somebody an ear to cry into. If you can teach somebody something online. If all you do is just give thanks to somebody that would be great.

But please think about going outwards with the technology that we have that allows you to do it. It’s going to make you feel better. I guarantee it.

**John:** Absolutely. My mom is in a senior living place in Boulder. And one of the things they’re starting to do is have the residents call all the other residents every day just to check in and see how they’re doing and have those conversations. Because isolation is a really necessary thing for this pandemic that we’re in, but it’s a really unhealthy thing overall for people and their mental health and their physical health. So anything you can do to keep people from feeling so isolated and so lonely during this time will pay off dividends. And you will feel better for having done it.

**Craig:** 100%.

**John:** Great. Let’s take a listen to what some of our previous guests are up to this week. And so I emailed out to a bunch of our previous guests and asked if they would record a minute or two about what they’ve been doing since this all went down. I was not surprised that they had a whole range of experiences and that they were really generous sharing what they’re feeling and what they think our listeners can take from what they’re encountering out there in the world.

So, this is going to be an usual segment because we’re not going to be coming in between all these people speaking. I’m going to start off with Emily Zulauf who joined us for our live show in Seattle. And we’ll just let them introduce themselves as we go through this. Also I should clarify that a lot of these were recorded on Wednesday before the official lockdown sort of happened in Los Angeles. So, if you hear people talk about going from house to house that’s not really happening right now. So, here we’ll start with Emily Zulauf.

**Emily Zulauf:** Hi John. Hi Craig. I hope you guys are well. I am…not sure where to start when, John when I got your email asking for an update on how we’re all faring in this. So I live in Seattle. [laughs] That probably doesn’t need a lot more explanation. I work a block from the Kirkland border. So I think we have been in triage mode a little bit longer than everybody else.

My office has been pseudo closed now for a couple weeks. My daughter’s school was canceled. We are on our second week of that. It’s surreal. It’s completely surreal here. I think I’m feeling the same level of helplessness that a lot of people are feeling right now. Wanting to help and literally physically not being able to go out there and help is paralyzing and scary and I find myself reaching out to my friends and trying to sort of feeling this sort of ache to connect with people and just make sure that people I love are OK. And feeling scared for all of us and feeling also so connected to everyone in the same breath. So isolated and so connected. And I want to hug everyone. [laughs] Although hugs are not something that we do anymore.

But I am thinking about you guys. I’m thinking about all of my friends. And just, you know, sending love and wanting to connect with everyone and tell everyone that I love them and that somehow this is going to – this is going to work out. And that I’m here for anything that they need.

**Mike Birbiglia:** Hey, it’s Mike Birbiglia. Friend of Scriptnotes. Writer. Comedian. I just want to say hey. I’m holed up in Brooklyn with my wife and daughter. And on the screenwriting front I’m not doing much because the screenplay I was writing I’m not kidding or exaggerating is about a global pandemic. [laughs] It’s a comedy about a comedy pandemic. That’s the backdrop for the whole plot. And so we have to sort of see how things go before I figure out how the movie makes sense and in the new normal. What is the new normal and how does the movie differ from that?

And so what I’m doing on a comedy front is I’m trying to figure out who is in need in the comedy space. And so on my Instagram, which is @birbigs, I’m doing live livestreams where me and another comedian – this week it was Roy Wood Jr. and John Mulaney, Gary Gulman, Jacqueline Novak, and others. Next week Nicky Glazer and a bunch of other comics. And I do a chat where we pitch new jokes to each other. And then give feedback in real time. And then people watch the livestream and then can contribute to a site called tipyourwaitstaff.com.

And it’s a way to help comedy club wait staff that is currently not working because all the clubs are shut down across America. Because the restaurant and bar industry is obviously really struggling. So, I’m just trying to sort of be positive and be creative but also look around for who needs help right now.

That’s it for me. Continue doing this great, great podcast. Love you guys.

**Megana Rao:** Hey John and Craig and our Scriptnotes friends. This is Megana Rao, Scriptnotes producer. I’m currently socially distancing or safer at home in Los Angeles. And I guess a lot of us feel a bit like the “everything is fine” dog in that meme where the room is on fire. I’ve been working from home, sitting at my dining table. I really miss going into the office and seeing John and our office pup Lambert. But I’m so grateful I have a job where I’m able to work from home.

We’ve also been working with #PayUpHollywood and our support staff initiative. So, this is for those in our industry who have lost their jobs because of the shutdowns. I’ll definitely put a link so look in the show notes for information on how to donate or reach out for assistance if this fund applies to your situation.

Otherwise I’ve been rereading the books on my shelves. Going for walks. Checking in on my parents. Facetiming with friends. And generally trying to be as optimistic as possible. Normally it feels like social media creates this digital barrier between us, but right now I’m so happy that I can see my friends and my mom’s face. You know, it’s just so comforting because I think our instinct or mine at least when I’m worried or processing crisis is to be with loved ones, to be with people and gather a community. So, something I have to keep reminding myself of when I’m driving down a street like La Brea and it’s empty and completely surreal is that the way we’re coming through this and looking out for one another is by staying home. And as someone with family who works in medicine it’s heartening and encouraging that in what I’m saying seeing is this negative space, you know, we actually are united and doing our part to support the medical community, allowing those who need treatment to get it, and our healthcare providers a fighting chance in an already under-staffed and under-supplied situation.

So, you know, even though it’s hard for us to see it, I’m taking solace in that we’re each doing our part to contain the virus and protect our community. So thank you to everyone who is staying at home and thank you to all of the people who are going to work with essential functions. I’m especially grateful for the ways we’re adapting and able to stay connected.

I’m personally relying on my podcasts for a sense of normalcy. So if you think there’s anything we can do to support the Scriptnotes community please let us know and thank you to each of you for doing your part. Stay safe and be well. Thanks.

**BJ Novak:** Hi. This is one-time Scriptnotes guest BJ Novak responding to the request to share with listeners how I’m spending the time. I will say that although I am feeling very appreciative and lucky that my creative profession is one where I can do things at my own pace and I feel for producers, actors, let alone people not in our field who need to be more collaborative. I do feel very lucky.

In addition to having a long list of things that I want to watch and write, I am also making a point to be open to the moment, which I think is natural in a moment like this to just be overwhelmed. And there’s one instinct to think, oh no, I’m not pursuing things on my own schedule like I said I would. But there’s something very important to being an artist that is just being open to the moment and letting things surprise you and responding from somewhere deep in your subconscious to whatever is going on and creating something that you hadn’t expected to do. And that can be hard for writers like myself who are kind of more Type A.

So I think relaxing, not doing anything, and worrying, and thinking, and waiting for something to come to you out of necessity and truth rather than self-drive might be something really important.

**Chris Nee:** Hi. This is Chris Nee. And I’m the creator and executive producer and Doc McStuffins and Vampirina. And about a year ago I moved over to Netflix where I’m on an overall deal. We got sent home last Thursday. My staff is primarily the writing staff, so we were one of the first ones out. Obviously Netflix has been shut down about a week.

The weird thing about animation is that we are oddly situated to be able to keep going. You don’t have to shut down production. So Netflix has been really working overtime to get kind of kits and computer stations installed in all of the animator’s homes. Same thing is happening for my overseas studios. The biggest problem we’re having is voiceover records. That’s a little bit more of [the stumbling]. So I will be doing a lot of scratch that will live with our animatics and animation for quite some time until we can get our cast back in, which of course is totally fun for me.

And other than that it’s weird because everyone suddenly has all this time and they’re knitting and they’re learning to play the banjo and to be honest my days have been completely full. I have four shows that are going. And they’re all still going. You just get this very weird version of now seeing inside everyone’s homes. Seeing their pets. Seeing their wives and boyfriends and girlfriends. And that is a really funny version of it. I have found the need for people to chat more, doing a lot of emotionally trying to take care of my staff, and do check-ins and make sure that we have like a good texting feed going.

So all of that. Also, you know, there’s some hearts of darkness shit going on. I have spent some time recording all three parts of like English Madrigals that I remember from my childhood on Garage Band and I’ve spent hours doing that. And no one will ever hear that. That will never make the light of day for god’s sakes. And, you know, anyone who follows me on Twitter @chrisdocnee knows that my son is also home with me most of the time and is very much a 13-year-old boy. So his favorite thing is connecting to my Sonos with this which is just the opening licks of Eye of the Tiger. Here I go. So that will just show up on my Sonos very loud and very long by the way. This is half an hour. And no the beat never drops.

So, that’s kind of what I’m up to. It’s a little bit of business as usual without it not being business as usual at all. And I think kind of like finding that middle ground of taking care of people, giving them a purpose. So that’s what I’m up to. Animation continues. I wish it could come out faster. But around the world everyone has moved home and they are animating in their kitchens, their bathrooms, their bedrooms, their living rooms. Onward in these very, very strange times.

**Charlie Brooker:** Hello John and Craig and all your listeners. This is Charlie Brooker. Black Mirror person. And Londoner. And that’s where I am. I’m in London. Indoors, like lots of people are. Quite sensibly at the moment. I’m supposed to be focusing on doing a script. Quite a comedy script actually, which is both a challenge in the current climate, but also a welcome distraction at the same time.

Now I’ve also been an anxious person and a catastrophizing kind of person. Who would have thought that the brain behind Black Mirror was a paranoid flipping prick?

And oddly when things like this actually happen in the real world I find sometimes I’m kind of calm almost like I expected it. And I don’t know if that’s just me, or if there’s other – any of your other more anxious listeners feel like that. And I think strangely what that does mean is I’m staying optimistic. I’m sure that when this epidemic is over – I would like to be sure that when this epidemic is over we all will have had quite a wakeup call about our interdependence on one another about the need for investment in healthcare and each other. And, you know, I’m sure we’ll all get through it and I hope that we see a better world on the other side of it.

Now that’s the uncharacteristic, optimistic bit. Another weird thing that happened was quite a few people alerted to me to the fact that in Germany there’s a series of the reality show Big Brother where the contestants didn’t know anything about the coronavirus happening outside. Because they’ve been kept away from the real world. And people pointed out that this was very similar to the storyline of a show that I wrote before Black Mirror. A show called Dead Set which you can see on Netflix in the US and elsewhere I think in the UK.

And it’s a zombie show based around the real Big Brother house in Britain. And it does have eerie parallels. So, there’s been lots of things we’ve done in Black Mirror which have sort of come true. So if I am going to be – if it turns out I am Nostradamus, first of all I apologize. And secondly I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that I made a positive prediction a few moments ago. And let’s hope that comes true.

I hope everyone stays safe and well. Washes their hands. And let’s try and set up some virtual writer’s rooms worldwide. I don’t know. Write a fucking sketch show or something. Because otherwise, you know, what else are we going to do? Grow our hair? Take care. I’d say peace out, but that makes me feel like Ringo Starr. Bye!

**David Iserson:** Hi Scriptnotes. This is David Iserson.

**Susanna Fogel:** And this is Susanna Fogel.

**David:** And this is how we’ve been spending our quarantine. So, yeah, we had scheduled what we assumed was going to be like the last in person pitch at Netflix on two Thursdays ago.

**Susanna:** And brownnosers that we are, we got there an hour early and we were excited to get ready to really knock them dead.

**David:** And then we got like an email, or a phone call like ten minutes before we walked in that said, “Oh, yeah, they found somebody in the building who tested positive.”

**Susanna:** Oh, we had walked in. We had walked into the building.

**David:** No, we’d walked into the building. Before we walked into the pitch. Yeah. Ten minutes before they found somebody in the building who tested positive for coronavirus so get out. And then just like the flee and the flood of people heading to their cars. And we got mixed into that.

**Susanna:** So we figure that now they owe us a sale. They owe it to us to buy this high concept and rather mid-budget to high budget movie that they may or may not want to make. But now they really should.

**David:** So since then we’ve kept the sort of pod of people we interact with small, but we have chosen to continue to interact in person with ourselves. So, Susanna will come over to my house most days. And, you know, we try to get our work done.

**Susanna:** Yeah. You know, I think like most people we spend some time actually getting things done and some time dicking around on the Internet, which is not really any sort of change from what we were used to doing. Only now we’ve saved several hours a day in traffic that are now spent staring into space, indulging my Etsy obsession.

**David:** Yeah. We’ve found a lot of time not taken up driving from place to place. I’ve been posing my dog in like elaborate photographs, like a photo series of how we’ve been spending our time in quarantine, which I would not be able to do if I was busy trying to commute to things.

**Susanna:** Or busy being judged or how productive and employed you are. So, yeah, we spent some time talking about the end of the world like we all do. We spent some time then talking about what scripts we can write about the end of the world. Then we spent some time wondering if anyone else is writing about the end of the world and how many other people, particularly people that we feel competitive with, and whether they’re writing about the end of the world, and if they’ve already got a three-picture deal to write three scripts about the end of the world.

And lastly if people are listening to this podcast now and stealing our very unique idea to write about the end of the world.

**David:** Yeah. Someone like was I should write about the apocalypse that’s going on right now. That’s what our week in social distancing has been. Thanks guys.

**Damon Lindelof:** Hey John and Craig. Damon Lindelof here. How are you guys? I’m great. Just awesome. Fantastic. I’m just treating this whole thing as an opportunity for self-reflection. And I know I’m going to come out of this the other side as a better human. But seriously I’m scared and I’m worried. And I’m wondering how much I should project confidence that everything is going to be OK. Because I think being scared and worried is the more appropriate headspace for all of us to have in terms of just being safe right now. I guess the point is I’m Jewish.

I’m catching up on a lot of reading. I recommend Dave Eggers’ short new satire, The Captain and the Glory. It’s delightful. It made me laugh a lot. I’m listening to way too many podcasts about politics which are now kind of about the pandemic and I have to stop doing that. And the thing I’m enjoying most is that I’m finally binging The Crown. I don’t really care about the monarchy and I’m not an anglophile, but I love The Crown. And it’s excellent. And it’s actually gotten me to care about the monarchy and why the monarchy is important. And more importantly I guess it’s gotten me to care about the people in the monarchy. They’re quite miserable.

If you’ve seen anything that I’ve written I like writing about miserable people. And it is not easy being the Queen. I just started the third season a couple nights ago. I’m into the third season. And Olivia Colman has taking the rein – the reign – from Claire Foy. That’s reign, Craig. It’s a pun. Because taking the reins is when you hand over control. But it’s like reins when you’re steering a horse cart. But this is the kind of reign, R-E-I-G-N, that a royal person has, which is why it’s so, so clever.

I’m going insane. I love you guys. I’m glad you’re doing your Scriptnotes. Please stay safe. Bye.

**David Wain:** Hi, this is David Wain. I am spending my time in quarantine doing a series of things like solving jigsaw puzzles, going for walks, trying to read books, making YouTube videos, drawing, playing the piano, thinking of ways to make a whole movie starring myself in the house. Thinking about if I should start a dating website just for the COVID-19 infected. Throwing out everything in my house. Going through to-do lists from 2008. Putting on my own episode of Cutthroat Kitchen in my home with my children. Taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together. Writing thank you notes to people who have helped me out with things over the last 40 years. Checking out Breaking Bad for the first time. Answering emails from the ‘90s. Catching up on the college admissions scandal. Meditating. Binging General Hospital from the beginning. Planning a dinner party for August. Practicing magic tricks. Playing poker with friends online. Thinking about the record number of screenplays that are probably being written right now. Practicing the Rubik’s Cube. Watching The Wire. And conceiving of a new career path that involves not leaving my house.

**Mari Heller:** Hi. This is Mari Heller. I am surviving the coronavirus isolation as best I can. I’m with my kid and my husband out in the country in Connecticut with another family and we have been self-isolating since middle of last week. And we’re home-schooling our kids together. And the way we’re trying to get work done, because we’re all in the middle of writing scripts, is the dads are taking the morning of school, the moms are taking the afternoon shifts. We’re trading off working. And we’re sticking to a pretty strict schedule. Trying to keep the kids in a routine and give them a lot of outdoor time, but also give them expectations that they can trust in. And then we’re all trying to get work done.

And none of us are getting enough work done. Isn’t that a huge surprise? It’s pretty hard to concentrate when the world feels like it’s falling apart. But we’re trying. And that’s my update. Also next week I’m going to start trying to edit a project remotely with my editor, Anne, who is in a different part of the state and we’re going to see if we can figure out some kind of an Evercast or some system like that where we remotely edit. So we’ll see how that works.

All right. Hope everybody is staying safe out there.

**Rawson Thurber:** Hey Scriptnotes, it’s Rawson Thurber checking in from Atlanta, Georgia. Down here making my movie. We got put on hiatus for a couple weeks. Looks like it might be a bit longer than that. I’m here with my lovely kid, our two girls, or brand new baby boy, our dog, couple other folks. And we’re hunkered down and holed up here in Ainsley Park. And we’re using this period as sort of an ad-hoc vacation, looking at it as sort of forced time to not work. Spend time with each other. Read books. Watch movies. Catch up on the little things that maybe we don’t quite pay attention when we’re so busy all the time working, working, working.

So, kind of a strangely welcomed respite from the grind of shooting a movie. We were about halfway through when the plug got pulled. So it’s sort of interesting to be sprinting a marathon and suddenly have the finish line about halfway through it. Anyhow, looking forward to getting back to work. Please everybody out there stay safe. Wash your hands. And try not to lick any doorknobs. OK. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

**Liz Hannah:** Hey guys. It’s Liz Hannah. I hope everybody is safe and healthy over there. It’s been a very weird week. For my part, you know, my husband and I are trying to just stay active, stay positive, and for me a lot of that is staying off of the news and social media as much as I can. That doesn’t mean that I don’t check it out or try and stay informed, but when this started I just found myself spending all day watching MSNBC and that was not healthy for me physically, mentally, or emotionally.

So I’ve tried to tune that out. We go on long walks with our dog. And obviously in practicing social distancing in all of the parameters that we’re instructed to do, but try and get some vitamin D in there. And then, you know, I’ve honestly found it really hard to focus. I think a lot of it was at first feeling this pressure that because we’re all stuck inside we should be writing that next great American screenplay. And there’s enough pressure to just put a cohesive sentence down on a piece of people that somebody can read.

So, I think, you know, kind of the end of this week I’ve found myself getting into a better place, of being able to remove that pressure and remove that instinct to make everything perfect. And I’m writing again and trying to give myself kind of a routine. Trying to stay healthy. Trying to watch something new so it’s not just the same ten minutes of the last ten minutes of a movie I’ve seen 47 times on HBO. Read a new book. I’m reading Kurosawa’s autobiography right now which I couldn’t recommend more. And I’m watching a lot of stuff on the Criterion Channel.

There’s the puppy. Yeah, so I don’t know. I think the only thing I can recommend is try not to put pressure on yourself to make this situation perfect. Just do your best to stay healthy mentally and physically. And get outside if you can. And if you can write, you can write. And just know we’re all in the same boat and we’re all doing this together.

**Malcolm Spellman:** John August and Craig Mazin and the Scriptnotes people this is Malcolm Spellman, arguably the greatest guest in the history of Scriptnotes, and most underrated for sure of all time. Dealing with corona on Thursday. The update is writer’s rooms are being handled through Zoom. It works. It’s definitely not as good as being in the room with people. There’s just a thing that’s lost with it. But it’s way, way – it’s closer to being right than it is being wrong. Dealing with a lot of fear from the people around us. We still got a lot of folks that are dealing with, you know, real shit. People with regular jobs, not in Hollywood. And you can already see some of that shit falling apart which is very, very sad and, you know, this is just starting. So, we kind of feel like we’re getting a preclude – me being me and Nichelle. Getting a preclude to what’s coming.

Our mood is good though. My dog – I’m in a battle right now where I bought my dog like a leather chew toy, not toy, but kind of thing that’s leather that you – whatever. I’m fighting with my dog over this thing. He doesn’t want to eat it, but he bites if you try and take his shit from him. So, it’s a deadly dance right now up in here.

Let me think. Music wise, Nichelle controls the music. It’s a music of hip-hop and ‘80s rock. That’s the norm over here. Sometimes some blues. We’re watching War of the Worlds on EPIX. Our mood is good though. And, you know man.

**Alison McDonald:** Hello Scriptnotes. Alison McDonald here. Prisoner of Second Avenue. Actually I have a deadline today but wanted to fire off this dispatch because I adore John and have a saint-like tolerance of Craig. Social distancing has always existed on the continuum of being a writer in my experience at any rate. So, the plague redux hasn’t been all that disruptive to my daily routine. And fortunately New York City has just made it legal for bars to deliver cocktails, so look for the silver lining people.

Apart from becoming Tennessee Williams – not in terms of talent or career, obviously, just temperament – I have been mainlining books. And I think most writers would agree that reading is the most purposeful form of procrastination. I read three books this week and have two on tap for the weekend. And because there’s such a great deal of economic peril for small businesses as entire cities shut down I have made it a point to purchase from independent online booksellers as much as possible and encourage you to do the same.

**Ryan Knighton:** Hey Scriptnotes. It’s Ryan Knighton. Unscripted in the quarantine. Where am I now? I’m actually back up in Canada and it was a very strange couple weeks as it has been for everybody. I was in the writer’s room on the third season of In the Dark. We had just started when the room was dissolved and we moved to working remotely. So, I went back up to Canada to try that instead of being in Los Angeles. So, I’m in my house in Ucluelet which is a small fishing village on the coast and has naturally enforced social distancing because there’s no people.

And that’s where this blind guy is. I’m in the woods. And so what am I doing? I am on Zoom a lot doing the writer’s room through Zoom these days. And writing in the day. And then, you know, basically killing time by going for walks on the beach and in the woods and things in between. So far so good. I’ve got my white cane with me and I haven’t gotten too lost yet, unless this isn’t my house. But, I think it is.

And in the evenings what do we do around here? Well my teenage daughter and I kill time in a horrible way. She’s been trying to teach me TikTok dances which is horrible if you can’t see. It’s sort of like doing origami but you can only describe, you know, how to fold things. So, that’s what Tess and I have been doing. And she’s sitting beside me right now and she can tell you that I’ve been doing an amazing job at it.

**Tess Knighton:** To be honest I really love to watch you fail because it’s really, really funny for me. It just makes me laugh in the evening.

**Ryan:** So that’s how we do the quarantine. She laughs at me failing. [laughs] I hope you guys are well.

**Riki Lindhome:** Hi John and Craig. It’s Riki Lindhome. I’m just here at home like everyone else. What I decided to do was I took out my idea board, which is just this corkboard I have of every idea. Every time I think of something I just put it on the board. And I looked at it and was like which idea have I been sitting on the longest. And I saw this one that’s kind of been on there for probably ten years. I never take it off because I’m always like, oh, maybe I could crack that someday. And I figured right now is the time to try. So, I’ve decided to tackle it.

And basically I just write first thing in the morning. I wake up. Have coffee. And I start. And I try to write for three or four hours. And then after that I’ve got the rest of the day off and I just watch movies or do whatever. But yeah, so that’s what I’m doing. I hope everyone is staying safe. Bye guys.

**Chris Keyser:** Hey John and Craig. This is Chris Keyser. Thank you for inviting me back to Scriptnotes on this, I guess, somewhat inauspicious occasion. I don’t think I’ve really settled into any kind of rhythm yet to be honest with you. I just got back into town just a few days ago. Top of the week. I was in Boston shutting down a couple of productions and saying goodbye to people which I guess is sort of par for the course now but nonetheless.

And now I’m trying to figure out what to do. I usually begin my day the same way. I have a friend, Glenn Sonnenberg, who has been putting out this kind of newsletter-y thing via email called Notes from the Bunker, which is a combination of stories and suggestions about movies and TV and things like that. And it’s been a great way to actually connect to people and hear what people are thinking about in quite the same way as you’re doing right here. That’s been nice. That’s probably the best thing about everything which is I’ve been spending a lot of time getting back in touch with people from as far as back as high school and college and law school and obviously writers that I know, particularly important because I just got into town, so I have to stay away from my own wife which is kind of strange.

We’ve been arranging virtual dinners with friends. We haven’t done it yet, but I think that will be fun when we get around to it. And I’ve been working somewhat. I’m lucky to have some work left to do on some of these projects. So I’ve been talking to the writers on my show and some producers on the other shows that I’m working on. And that’s been good. Not because any of the work actually needs to get done, but because I just actually need something to do every day and feel like I’m productive.

And then we try to go for a walk about once a day. An hour or so. And then usually at the end of the day we do a FaceTime call with our kids who are far away on the East Coast. And that’s the nicest but also the hardest part of all of this, not being able to touch or see my kids, knowing I won’t see them for months.

But, everyone is safe and fine and trying to be productive and reconnecting and that’s the new life for a while. So, I hope everyone who is listening is OK as well and I appreciate you guys doing this. So, thank you.

**Lulu Wang:** Hi John. Hi Craig. It’s Lulu. I have been thinking about what to say about what I’ve been up to because the truth is I think I’ve mostly just been trying to adjust to this new reality. Except that the reality seems to shift every day, every few hours. And so much develops in such a short period of time.

You know, tonight a friend of mine her sister is a doctor in the ER at a hospital and she and many other healthcare workers have been asked to procure their own masks because the hospital doesn’t have a supply, or enough of a supply. It’s one of the few times that social media has actually been really wonderful because so many people replied to my request for N95 masks that they might be willing to donate. And my friend spent the night driving around the city picking up these donations. And it really made me think about how important it is for us to be creative right now and to think about what skills we might have, what resources we might have that we can contribute because so much of what happens in the next few months in this country is going to depend on the choices that we make as a community and as individuals that make up that community.

Well, thank you. It’s one o’clock in the morning and I hope everyone stays safe and healthy. OK, bye.

**John:** Great. So our editor Matthew Chilelli was the one who cut all that together. Matthew had a big week himself. And so I wanted him to have the last word in terms of things that went down this week. Here’s Matthew Chilelli.

**Matthew Chilelli:** Hi, my name is Matthew Chilelli and this is what my boyfriend Tao and I have been doing during this lockdown. I’ve read a lot of stories about how some people are already running out of shows to watch, or getting bored while practicing social distancing. One activity that I can recommend that is definitely not boring is trying to get married during a quarantine.

So, Tao and I have been together for four years and on Wednesday, March 18, we were planning to get married. It was going to be a small civil ceremony at the Beverly Hills Courthouse with family and friends flying in from out of town. Then a nice dinner. Then drinks with friends at a rooftop bar. We thought this would be a nice, cozy wedding day and that was the plan. Right up until March 12 when things started to change.

Now Tao and I had a lot of conversations back and forth. Should we cancel the drinks? Should we cancel the dinner? Should we ask our family not to come here? We spent so much time going back and forth on each of these questions that a lot of the questions were answered for us. First, the bars and clubs closed. We sent out a sad email to our friends. Then the restaurants closed. We sent out another email. Our family wisely canceled their flights. Instead they asked us to record the ceremony so they could see it. And we promised we would.

The celebration was canceled but the wedding was still on because surely they wouldn’t close down the courthouses this soon, right? Well, on Monday March 16 just to be sure I checked the Beverly Hills Courthouse website and they closed it. And so just like everything else our courthouse wedding was canceled.

Now, when I was on the phone with them they did mention that we could still get married somewhere else if we had an officiant. But finding an officiant right away in the middle of a quarantine seemed impossible. Tao and I spent a few moments just staring into space.

Maybe we weren’t going to get married on the 18th after all. Maybe it was going to be weeks, or months, or who knows how long before we could marry each other. It felt like we had lost. We had tried so hard to get one step ahead of the coronavirus. We pared down the wedding. We limited the number of guests. But the coronavirus was one step ahead of us. All our plans had been canceled.

Now eventually we shook ourselves out of our funk. Tao reminded me that eight is a lucky number in China, so the 18th must be somewhat lucky so something has to go right with the wedding eventually. And eventually something did. I remembered I know an officiant. John Bassinger-Flores works for my alma mater Ithaca College. And in his spare time he’s a professional officiant. I gave him a call and he’s such a great guy that even though this was ridiculously short notice he agreed to marry us on the 18th. We just had to find a place. So we thought instead of getting married indoors we could use social distancing to our advantage and get married outside in a park.

Once again, luck was on our side. We held our ceremony at eight in the morning on the 18th at the Lake Hollywood Park right below the Hollywood sign. So with the sun rising over the Hollywood Hills, the smell of morning dew in the air, and no one but us at the park, Tao and I got married. John performed a wonderful ceremony witnessed by our best friend who also took pictures and video so we could share it with our family later.

This ceremony was so different from the courthouse wedding we were expecting just a week earlier. Instead of a large group there were four of us. Instead of being in a courthouse we were in a park. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It was better. Tao described it to one of his friends like this. Our wedding was so quiet and peaceful. We were able to just enjoy each other and focus on each other during this moment that was meant for just the two of us. At the same time we had all of nature as our witness. It felt like the whole world was just quietly listening while we both said I do.

**Craig:** I mean, my heart. Right?

**John:** Yeah, my heart just breaks. Matthew is one of the kindest, most gentlest wonderful people I’ve met. And I met him through Scriptnotes. So he was coming to our Scriptnotes Live shows. He was a video editor. I had a hunch he could probably cut podcasts so I asked him to cut a demo podcast. He did a great job and he’s been cutting ever since. I’m so happy for him.

**Craig:** Yeah. Congrats guys.

**John:** Matthew was in Japan for a year. They made it through all of that. So it’s just great when great things happen during challenging times, so I’m so happy for the two of them.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Yes. Love still blossoms.

**John:** All right. Now it is time for our One Cool Things. I listened to a lot of podcasts, a lot of political podcasts, news podcasts, and you’d guess what they’re probably about. They’re about this pandemic that we’re in. And sometimes as I’m walking my dog in the morning I just don’t want to hear more about it. So I’ve started looking for other podcasts I can listen to that don’t freak me out as much. And so one thing I’m starting to listen to is Dead Pilot Society. So this is a not weekly show but an occasional show that goes through and they bring in people that have written pilots that never aired or never sort of got shot, but they were good pilots. And they bring them in and they do readings of pilots that never made it to air.

So, it’s a good thing that has nothing to do with this current moment, but is just good writing from good writers. So Dead Pilot Society is a thing to check out.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s awesome. We’ve been talking to a bunch of our friends to try and get some more dead pilots over there. So let’s see how that goes.

My One Cool Thing this week really is cool. Now, word of fair warning, hopefully you’ve all played the game Codenames. It’s great.

**John:** It’s phenomenal. So describe Codenames for people who haven’t played it before.

**Craig:** Super simple game. You have these cards with words on them. And you make an array, a five-by-five array. So you have 25 cards out on a table. And there are two clue givers and everybody else is a receiver. So you divide everybody into two teams. You have two captains that are giving clues. My job – and I can see on a little grid which one of the words on the table, there’s seven or eight that belong, or eight or nine that belong to my team. And the other clue giver has another eight or nine.

So our job as clue givers is to say one word to our teammates and then a number. That’s the amount of words that we’re asking them to guess on our one clue word. And then they have to figure out which are the words on this table that they are clueing us toward with their one single word.

It’s so much fun. It takes about ten seconds to learn. It’s really fun. And there is a fantastic way to play this now online. But I don’t think that this is some sort of official sanctioned thing. So what I’m asking is if you have not purchased the physical Codenames game do it. Then you can do this. OK? Be fair and kind to the geniuses that made Codenames. The website is horsepaste.com. That’s right. Horsepaste.com.

It works brilliantly. So we’ve already done this once. We’re going to do it again tonight. The best way to play is by combining a laptop with Zoom so you can see everybody and then keep the game running maybe on a tablet. And everybody is all looking at the same words. It’s quite brilliant the way it functions. Super fun. Online Codenames, horsepaste.com.

**John:** Excellent. I’m looking forward to trying that. I like Ticket to Ride the game a lot. I like the board game. And the iPad version is quite good and you can do shared games on that. So we are making some play dates with friends to do a game night with Ticket to Ride and other things like that.

**Craig:** Fun.

**John:** We’ll make it work. And a reminder that our Premium subscribers are going to be listening to me and Craig talk about math after this. But this is our show for the week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Congrats.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Ryan Dunn. 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 am @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We try to get them out about four days after the episode airs.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scripnotes.net where you can get all the back episodes and bonus segments.

I want to thank all of our previous guests who sent in their updates on what they’ve been up to this week. There are a few more trickling in so we might save those for next week. But we love you all. We miss you. And we hope you are doing great.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. See you next time.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, Craig. Math. This is two screenwriters talking about math.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, I thought about this because over the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading two books by Matt Parker who is a British mathematician and comedian. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension and Humble Pi. They’re both good. I’ll have links in the show notes to both of those. But it also got me thinking how much or how little I use math on a daily basis. My daughter is home from – she’s obviously doing school at home right now. And she is in algebra 2 honors right now. And she’s doing stuff that I kind of half recognize, but I’ve never done anything like that since high school. What’s been your experience of math as an adult?

**Craig:** Well, and I was a pretty mathematically-inclined guy. Yeah, I was a Mathlete. And I went as far as calculus. I didn’t go any further than that. I other than obviously simple arithmetic, generally I will use geometry more than anything else. Geometry actually does come in handy when you’re measuring things or trying to figure out the distance between things. If you need to know the hypotenuse because you’re like, well, if I hold this up high how long will it go there. Radius and diameter, often very helpful to know. Oh, statistics. Understanding how statistic generally function is a good thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m not sure I use it for much more than simple averaging and ratios, also very useful.

**John:** Yeah. I would say like when we did the Kickstarter for Writer Emergency Pack I had to deal with a lot of big numbers. And so I guess you should probably distinguish between like building spreadsheets of things versus sort of like the real figuring out math and figuring out variables.

Every once and a while I’ll come into a situation where like, oh, this is two equations and two variables. But that’s every like two or three years I’ll come into a situation where like, oh, there actually is an X and a Y and there are two formulas. There’s a reason why this thing in the real world requires this kind of math. I’ve not needed the quadratic formula in a really, really long time. I get it. I know why it works. But I’ve not needed to use it.

Now calculus I never actually had. So I stopped at algebra 2 honors and as a journalism major, this is kind of embarrassing, I never had to take any more math beyond that. So I took a physics for majors class my freshman year of college and it required that you be concurrently enrolled in calculus or already had it, so I kind of faked my way through it. And so I understood that calculus is about rates of change and higher functions, but I never really got it.

**Craig:** So many mathematicians just started screaming. [laughs]

**John:** Well, OK, it’s fair for me to say that calculus is about rates of change. That’s fair.

**Craig:** Yes, I mean, that is definitely part of what’s going on. How do I – geez, I’m trying to figure out how to say it. It is. Certainly change is an enormous part of it. No question. But, yeah, there’s differential and there’s integral and they’re two different things. So integral is more about the kind of growth of variables, quantities and things. And also a huge part of calculus is just figuring out how much is under a curve.

It turns out that–

**John:** That’s complicated.

**Craig:** Yeah. So figuring out the area of a triangle is easy. One-half the base times height I believe.

**John:** Height. Yeah. Because if you think about it a triangle is just half of a rectangle. So therefore you just, yeah.

**Craig:** Half of a – yes, that’s assuming that–

**John:** Half a quadrilateral. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yes. If it’s like a weird scaling one I guess it still works.

**John:** It works.

**Craig:** It still works somehow. But, yeah, I’ve already forgotten that one. But figuring out the area under a curve is hard. Until they came across calculus. But super helpful when you’re working in physics. I mean, really what it comes down to is calculus has great application for people who are mathematicians and it has great application for people who are working in physics.

**John:** Yeah. Or engineers. People who need to send rockets up. All that stuff does track and make sense.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Now people always define themselves as being algebra people or geometry people? I guess I define myself as a geometry person because the thing I got most out of probably all my mathematical education was how to do proofs and just the importance of like what is an actual logical proof and how you sort of make a thing happen.

And I’m guessing that you are also that kind of person because as a puzzle solver that really is kind of what proofs are, isn’t it?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, proofs, well yes. They are exercises in logic. And it is true that there are a number of puzzles that I’ve thought about are very much like geometric proofs in that they rely on certain axioms. So in geometry an axiom is just something we know is true. Well, in the way that geometry works is every axiom is something that had to be proved first. Really simple. Simple things like A plus B equals B plus A. That had to be proved.

And so everything is built on a series of proofs. So if you’re playing Sudoku you may know, well, if there’s one number here and one number there and you can make a square out of those little pairs that are exclusive and everything else. Then you get rid of the other ones. Yes, it becomes another axiom that you can figure out how to prove. Geometry was fun. I liked it.

**John:** I liked geometry, too. And I think people had a bad experience with geometry because they weren’t introduced to it at the right time, the right speed. They might have had a bad teacher. And so they throw it all out. And I do feel like that sort of rigorous thinking was incredibly important for just being a logical person sort of going forward and recognizing fallacies. And recognizing unsupported conclusions which people can fall into even if they don’t – you might not think they’re gullible people, but they will jump from A to F without actually thinking are B, C, D, and E all really supported along the way.

**Craig:** I mean, I will go out on a limb and say something that is probably going to get me screamed at. But it seems to me that we have inflicted an amount of math upon children that in many cases is just not purposeful. It is incredibly important for any kid who has a general interest or affinity for it even, the STEM subjects, science, technology, engineering, math. But if you’re looking at someone who wants to be a musician, well, I mean there’s some math involved in music I suppose, more on the engineering side. But if somebody wants to be an actor I’m not sure they need math.

If somebody wants to be a salesman, I mean, there’s some math involved. Again, everybody should know basic arithmetic, of course. But algebra 2 where you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to reduce down fractions with square roots in them, that’s simply not relevant to 90% of the children in that school.

And there are other things that we don’t teach that are. And I sometimes think that we are saddled with a kind of system that is that way because it’s always been that way. And it would be better, I think, if we started including things like critical thinking.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That would be incredibly useful to us.

**John:** So while you get all the negative email about your rant there, I’m going to stick up for common core. Because one of the things I’ve noticed when my daughter was going through her public elementary school is that the common core math and English stuff that they were doing was smart in the sense that it built off of each other. And like those critical thinking skills in terms of like is that a supported argument did fit well back and forth together.

Now, the common core math worksheet she got when she was in kindergarten, first grade, some of them were sort of inscrutable. Like why are we doing this thing? But once you understood the underlying logic it’s making sure kids understood numbers are counting things but numbers are not just counting things. That they actually have placeholders. How place values work and all that stuff. They were doing a very rigorous job explaining all of that stuff so that you could get to the other math and you could really have a foundation for understanding the more complicated math.

And I think when people struggle with math it’s generally because some important step along the way just wasn’t made fully clear for them.

**Craig:** Well, and of all the things that kids reasonably say, “I will never use this. Why do I need to learn this,” math is way up there. Because for a lot of it they’re right. I mean, honestly – look, I am glad that I know how to multiply fractions. And I am glad that I know how to add fractions. And if you’re cooking sometimes it comes in very, very handy.

But for a lot of people, especially now, they’re just going to type it into a calculator. And, in fact, they will say it. They will say, “Hey, blankety-blank, tell me what the such and such.” And their favorite PDA is going to speak it back to them.

**John:** Yeah. And I’m not so worried about that. The fact that I will use a tool like that to do division or multiplication or other things just because it’s faster, I don’t think that’s actually a crisis. As long as they understand what the process is that’s going on behind the scenes, that I could do it by hand if I needed to do it by hand, I’m really not so freaked out about that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Neither am I. It’s an interesting thing. And, look, the reason I’m saying this is not because I’m grouchy about – I love math. I legitimately love math. I also recognize that a lot of people don’t. I also recognize that it’s a massive problem for kids who have certain learning disabilities. And it is traumatic for kids that don’t have learning disabilities. They’re just no good at it.

We excuse the tone deaf from music classes. They don’t have to attend. They are not forced to sing in front of everybody. But there are people who are a little bit number deaf and they are forced to go on this somewhat humiliating march.

And when – look, look. I was an excellent math student. And then I got to Princeton and I was pre-med. And one of the deals with pre-med is that you had to take physics 103. Not physics 101, which was physics for poets. Physics 103. Physics for physics people.

**John:** I took that, too.

**Craig:** So off I went. And I’m in the lecture hall where Einstein used to be. And I’m surrounded by, you know, geniuses. [laughs] And for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to be utterly lost. I fought – and when I say I fought I mean I’ve never fought harder academically – fought my way to a B. That’s a B at Princeton, which is basically the equivalent of a C. Right? I fought. But I remember distinctly thinking, oh, this is what it’s like. When the teacher says something everybody goes, “Well of course, but what about this?” And he says, “Great question.” And you’re thinking, no, I’m still stuck on the “oh of course part.” Why is that of course? What are you even talking about? I’m drowning and with every additional sentence I’m further and further behind to the point where I just go limp. It’s scary and it’s upsetting and we have to just be aware that there are a lot of kids that are experiencing that every day. And I’m not sure they need to.

**John:** So my experience in freshman year Physics for Majors, which I took out of pure hubris. I didn’t need to take that science class but I took it. And there was some sort of like physics picnic at the start of the year. And so we were all invited to this thing. And it was at this playground thing and there was a spinning thing. And I thought, oh, centrifugal force. And I got these looks form people like, “Wait, did you just say centrifugal force?” And I’m like, yeah. They’re like that’s not a thing.

**Craig:** That’s not a thing, man. It’s centripetal.

**John:** Yeah. And I’m like, oh. And from that moment forward, oh wow, I don’t belong here. These are lovely people and I’m so glad they have the skills they have, but I’m not one of those people.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just remember thinking, oh god. Because what had happened was I had come out of a high school where the best you could do with math was to get to calculus. That was it. Well, wonderful public high school in New Jersey. And a lot of these kids had come from private schools where they were already taking Calc 2. They were in AP Calc. Their math skills were really far beyond mine. And the thing about math is like you said, it’s a pyramid. You build on it. So, that’s my big sort of plea to the world of education to maybe ease up on the math stuff because the kids that love math and excel at math are going to gobble it up anyway. And if you see a kid drowning, just back off. Back off.

**John:** Or build out classes that are actually practical applications of math. Because, I mean, teaching kids how to balance their budget is much more important than teaching them how to do high level things. And sine, cosine, and tangents, which they will never, ever touch again in their lives.

**Craig:** I mean, honestly, it is a rare thing. The only time I ever think of Sohcahtoa, you know what Sohcahtoa is, right?

**John:** I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Ok. So you once did. Sohcahtoa is the all-purpose pneumonic for figuring out how to calculate the sine, the cosine, and the tangent. So, Soh, is sine is opposite over hypotenuse. Cah, cosine is angle over hypotenuse. And Toa, Tan, tangent, is opposite over angle. Sohcahtoa.

The only time I ever use Sohcahtoa is when I’m helping either – well, Jack is now, he’s graduated so he’s no more math for him. But Jessica is in 9th grade and the 9th grade math they’re getting into it. That’s why I use it. To help teach my kids. And then I think WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS? We’re on this wheel. This purposeless wheel. Like they’re learning it, why? So they can teach it to their kids?

**John:** Indeed. So they can share the story with their children.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** It’s a generational gift.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Craig, thanks for the math talk.

**Craig:** Thanks John. Stay safe.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

 

Links:

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* [Dead Pilot Society](https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/dead-pilots-society) and [Online Codenames](www.horsepaste.com)
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* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/443standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/stop-counting-pages-and-touching-your-face).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 442 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we get statistic. First, for decades the film and television industry has used a rule of thumb that one page of screenplay equals one minute of movie. But does it really? New research shows the correlation is not particularly strong. We’ll discuss what that means for screenwriters and look forward to a future that moves beyond pages.

**Craig:** And then we’re going to look at how the coronavirus, have you heard of that, John? Coronavirus?

**John:** I have. Yes.

**Craig:** We’re going to look at how that has impacted Los Angeles and the industry and we’re going to talk a little bit about what we’re doing and what you might want to do.

**John:** Yes. And for Premium members we’ll have a bonus segment in which Craig and I will debate which first level D&D spell we would choose to be able to cast in real life.

**Craig:** Throw down.

**John:** I put some real serious thought into this last night and I have my choices.

**Craig:** Same.

**John:** Now as we get started on this episode let’s do a little table setting here because we are recording this on a Thursday. You’re hearing this on Monday or Tuesday. So whether you’re in the US or somewhere overseas things are probably kind of weird and scary in regards to coronavirus and they’re probably different than how they are as we’re recording this.

So, we were talking before we started airing is that we’re not going to be a definitive podcast about all things coronavirus and there’s a hundred other podcasts out there you could be listening to. So, I’d like this to be kind of a safe place to not be freaked out about everything, if that makes sense.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re already freaking people out about how hard it is to become a screenwriter. So, I mean, why pile on?

**John:** This will be our little nest of self-care. So it’s not going to be a doom and gloomy kind of podcast.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’ll give you some information. We’ll tell you how things are going here. But, yeah, you’re going to want to get your doom and gloom or hopefully your scientifically accurate information from places like the CDC or Johns Hopkins has a really good specific COVID-19 newsletter that you can subscribe to. So, good stuff out there.

**John:** All right. Let’s start with some follow up. Last week on the episode we talked about professional readers and how little they’re paid. We talked about the union. We talked about freelance readers. And we asked for listeners to write in with their experiences and a whole bunch of them did. So Megana went through a bunch of them and here is a sampling of some of what we got. Craig, do you want to start us off with Taylor?

**Craig:** Sure. Taylor from Burbank writes, “My fulltime position is as a development assistant for a production company but as the salary is barely enough to cover my monthly rent I also have a few jobs on the side. One of those is as a freelance script reader for Alibaba Pictures, or rather was as a freelance script reader because after about three years and no decline in the quality of my work I’ve been essentially ghosted. No more assignments. No more email responses. While I’m not exactly happy I have to find another side gig, after listening to this episode I was a bit horrified to realize how little I’ve been making. Two years in I was met with a congratulatory email I was now getting a raise from $45 a script to $55 and would now be paid $75 for a book, $85 if it were over 300 pages.

“Wow, almost a half a day’s salary for reading a script. And then John mentioned the rate he was receiving at the beginning of his career. I’m still not quite sure why Alibaba dropped me without warning, but as I was freelance and often wasn’t assigned enough scripts to even qualify for taxes at the end of the year it doesn’t seem like any big loss.”

**John:** Oh, Taylor from Burbank. So the fact that you were receiving the same money that I was getting 20 years ago, that’s a problem. I mean, reading scripts and writing coverage is hours of work. And to be making that little is crazy. I mean, you’re barely making minimum wage at that point.

**Craig:** And I assume that Alibaba Pictures is associated with Alibaba the large Chinese company?

**John:** I don’t think it actually is. I think it may be a different company. We left it in because he said we could leave it in, because he wasn’t working there anymore. I’m not sure which company that is, but they’re not paying a lot.

**Craig:** Well, I’m happy to say since he let us say it that Alibaba Pictures sucks. Yeah, you suck.

**John:** They should pay their people more.

**Craig:** They should pay their people something even approaching fair. That’s terrible. Shame on you, Alibaba Pictures. You suck.

**John:** Leslie would agree with you. She writes, “It is unconscionable that many agencies and production companies get away with paying readers the same rates that were paid to readers in the 90s, or barely a little bit more. #PayUpHollywood shows us that shame can work in getting Hollywood to live up to its so-called progressive values espoused by many in Hollywood. Granted, not all smaller companies can afford union rates, but there are plenty of higher-tiered companies that are getting away with paying too little.

“Not everybody wants to be a fulltime reader, but there should be more union reading positions for those that do. Considering how important reading is to this industry there should be more companies that provide union positions.”

**Craig:** Couldn’t agree more. And we’re going to try and exercise a little shame here.

**John:** Yeah. And I think Leslie does bring up a good point. There are people who read fulltime as their main job. Like our friend Kevin is a fulltime reader, which is great. But it’s more common that it is a little bit of piecemeal work. That people are doing a little extra on the side. And I think we’re trying to address both situations. If this is your side gig reading it’s got to be a side gig that’s actually worth doing. And if you are a fulltime reader you need to be paid like a fulltime employee and that’s why these people who have union benefits are getting union benefits.

**Craig:** No question. We can’t afford to have the reading of these things and the coverage of screenplays be reduced down to the lowest quality of gig economy as possible. It’s just not going to work for anybody at that point. That would be the definition of penny-wise, pound foolish.

Should we keep reading some more? Because we got a lot here.

**John:** Go to Colin.

**Craig:** Colin writes, “I’m a reader for an established entertainment company that will go unnamed because I love my job.” You got it, Colin. “They pay me $30 for a feature-length script. Less if it’s an hour-long or a comedy half-hour. Considering it takes around four hours to read a feature script thoroughly and produce the coverage, even $50 a script wouldn’t cover minimum wage. When I was first offered the position I quoted my employer $50 for script and was negotiated down to $30 because they make the very good point that they can find an intern to do it for free. Won’t be as good, but it’s not about being a good analyst, just one who can get the job done efficiently and quickly. I’m sharing this story because I feel lucky to have this opportunity and would never give it up to an intern.

“I’m proud to put it on my resume, but my resume also contains three other jobs that I need to have to support keeping the one I love. Fair warning to aspiring script analysts.”

John, I feel like Colin is being way too easy on this terrible established entertainment company.

**John:** I feel like Colin is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s just, come on. They’re not paying you well. It’s the job you love. The reason why you love the job is because you like reading scripts and writing coverage on it and because it’s giving you some creative satisfaction. That’s fine. That’s good. But you are not being paid properly for what you are doing. And the fact that you have to do outside work to cover your reading work just to make a living, that is a problem. You are not being paid nearly enough and so maybe they’re super nice where you work but they need to pay you better.

**Craig:** They don’t sound super nice.

**John:** No they don’t.

**Craig:** He says, “When I was first offered the position I quoted my employer $50 per script,” which was already low as far I’m concerned, and then was negotiated down to $30 because they make the very good point they can find an intern to do it for free. No they can’t. Colin, if they could find an intern to do it satisfactorily for free they would. You see what I’m saying? They’re just ripping you off.

So, “established entertainment company” that currently pays anyone, including Colin, $30 to cover a feature-length script, you suck. And you should be ashamed of yourself. And you have to stop and treat people humanely. The work that you’re going to get back from these people will not justify the cost savings. And even if it did, don’t you just want to be a human individual that treats people nicely?

**John:** Yeah. Well, there’s other people who are not treating people nicely. Let’s wrap up this segment with Ken who writes in, “I attended a graduate film program and in one of my classes we had a guest who is a big manager for writers and directors.” Craig, do you think this guy is going to turn out to be a good guy or a bad guy?

**Craig:** I’m going to go with terrible human being.

**John:** “He was a graduate of this university and offered the entire lecture hall of aspiring writers the opportunity to come to his office to meet with him one-on-one to discuss our scripts and careers. He seemed so sincere and eager to help.”

**Craig:** [laughs] I bet he did.

**John:** “When I went to the office he gave me about five minutes of his time to ask questions while he responded to emails. Fine, he’s a manager with successful clients. He’s busy. But then as I was leaving he told me the best way to stay in touch and build a relationship was to become a reader for his company. And unpaid reader. He had his assistant email me a few scripts and a coverage template and sent me on my way.

“I talked to my friends who also had meetings with this guy and they all had the same story. He spent a perfunctory couple of minutes with us hopeful aspiring writers in order to get free coverage. I found the whole situation pretty gross. I never heard of a single student receiving any meaningful career advice or help, even after covering many scripts.”

**Craig:** I mean, first of all, the graduate film program needs to never have this person back. Let’s start with that. Because they’re just letting the fox into the henhouse. Second of all, I’m not saying that this person is a horrendous pile of flaming garbage. I’m saying that they have behaved in a way that is consistent with being an enormous flaming pile of garbage. What an outrageous and disgusting thing to do.

**John:** So this is making me reflect back on the time after I graduated from film school and I was working as an assistant. My last assistant job. And so I was working as an assistant to these two producers. And they said, “Hey, get some film school people in to be interns and they can do coverage and such.” And so I posted it at USC and I actually had a couple people come in who were my interns. And I would give them scripts and they would come in with the coverage and we’d talk through their stuff. And I don’t think they got anything meaningful out of it except for the one who was ultimately hired to replace me when my bosses fired me.

But I will say there is some logic to if you were doing this for two or three weeks, if you’re going through a couple of times of coverage, and I think I actually did help them write better coverage because I would sit with them, read their coverage, and sort of be able to help them write better coverage. So I think I did help them to some degree. So I don’t want to say that an unpaid – well, unpaid internships are problematic for many reasons. I do think there is some value to learning how to write coverage. And if you’re not being paid to learn how to write coverage I get that for a small period of time.

But to try to bring through wave after wave of these people to do free work for you is ridiculous and needs to be stopped.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s exploitative. They asked this person to come in because he’s a big manager for writers and directors. They’re hoping that this individual can provide value to the students in a graduate film program. Again, to put in perspective, Ken and all of his fellow classmates paid money to be in that room. An enormous amount of money. I assume that a number of them took on significant debt. But the whole point was that they would have access to interesting people who would benefit them, like a manager who has no interest in benefiting them. He just wants to beat them up even more by getting free work out of them like they’re, I don’t know, Dickensian orphans that he can gather up, Fagin style, to go pick pockets.

It’s sick. It’s absolutely sick. I’m so angry. I want to know who it is. Oh, god, I want to know who it is.

**John:** We’ll email off the chain and sort of see if Ken will tell us who that person is.

**Craig:** If people read about a prominent big manager for writers and directors turning up dead in a week or two, I didn’t do it. I’m just going – not at all.

**John:** Not at all.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** You’re saying in advance if it were to happen it wasn’t Craig who did it.

**Craig:** I’m saying I didn’t do it. [laughs] I didn’t do the thing that hasn’t happened yet.

**John:** So, as we wrap up this little discussion about professional reading and people who are reading for their careers, we made no great progress here. But I think the way forward is to chart out sort of what’s acceptable and start applying shame for doing things that are unacceptable. And some of that shame should be vastly underpaying or not paying for this kind of work. And recognizing that there may be a place to learn how to do coverage, where you’re not being paid for it, but when you are doing the kind of work that a person is normally paid to do that means you should be paid to be doing that work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s just sort of a definitional circular logic thing. So the quality of paid work should be for pay.

**Craig:** I completely agree. I hope that what we can do is something similar to what we did alongside all the assistants who were struggling and continue to struggle for fair treatment in the Hollywood workplace come up with a vague guideline of what seems right. And then say, invite I guess, major employers to sign on and say, yes, that’s the way we’re going to do this. We are going to pay that amount. And it’s important because the clients of awful people like this manager have no clue that their scripts and other scripts that are being submitted to them have been covered by unpaid interns. Unreal.

**John:** Yep. Now, in the setup for the segment last week I said that we would talk about both professional readers and like reading your friends’ scripts and we sort of never got to the reading your friends’ scripts and some guidance on that. So Jerry wrote in saying he really wished we would talk a little bit about that.

And so I want to spend a few moments to talk about the difference of reading someone whose script you know and sort of someone comes to you with a script and says, “Hey, would you read this and tell me what you think?” Because that’s a very different experience and it’s important to sort of distinguish those two things.

So, if someone comes to me with a script that they want me to read, I will start with a question and this is a question that Kelly Marcel actually sort of first asked me. I’ll ask do you want me to tell you that you’re brilliant, or do you want me to tell you what’s broken and needs to be fixed.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And when she said that to me it’s like a lightbulb just went off. It’s like, oh, yeah, you know what, those are very different things and sometimes I need one and not the other. And so just being clear what it is the person actually needs.

So, if it is a situation they are looking for things that need to get fixed it’s important to structure your feedback to them in terms of the movie that they’re actually trying to make. When you are giving them your honest feedback don’t try to change it into a thing it’s not, or at least not the movie that they want to make. So you are going to need to ask some questions probably at the start like I see two different ways this could go. It seems more like you’re headed in this direction. If that is the direction you want to go in let me structure my comments towards that movie rather than the movie I sort of wish you would make. That always feels really important to me.

And finally I would say one of the most important kinds of notes I get from a friendly read is when they tell me where they fell off the ride. Because hopefully they were with you for a lot of the script, a lot of the story, but at some points they dropped off or they got a little bit bored, or they might have stopped reading if they didn’t feel a social obligation to keep reading. It’s so important to tell people where you got confused, where you got bored, where it just wasn’t clicking for you. Where you lost faith in the movie. Because those are the things that are so hard for the writer sometimes to recognize in their own work.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’re describing somebody who is serving a friend in an advisory capacity. So you’re not saying, “Well, I read your script. I don’t think anybody is going to make this.” That’s not useful. Or “I don’t this idea.” That’s also not useful. “I don’t really go for these sorts of movies.” Not useful. “Wasn’t very funny.” Not useful. None of those things are useful. You’re there to be advisory.

The scale that I offer is regular, spicy, or extra spicy. And many times people will say, “Oh yeah, no, extra spicy.” And I’m like just take a moment. Think about it. Extra spicy means I’m going to talk to you the way I talk to myself. And it’s not pretty. OK? So, take a moment. There’s no shame in regular or spicy. And a number of times people are like, “Oh, OK, let me back off to spicy or regular.”

The idea is to try and suss out from them what they were trying to do. And then say, listen, I think given that you’re trying to do that maybe consider doing this. So it’s all very advisory. As opposed to professional reading which is entirely a kind of marketplace analysis. It’s evaluatory rather than advisory. Is this what we want? Is it to our standard? No, yes, the end.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, literally coverage on the title page it says pass, consider, or maybe. And you’re scoring things into a grid. It’s not the same function as trying to help something. And so it’s also important to note that if you ever see coverage on your own project first sit down and be ready to just shudder a bit. Because you will see that it’s only pointing out problems and not pointing out solutions. It’s literally just looking for threads to pull. And so it’s not a constructive thing to read your own coverage. I’ve done it a couple of times. I would not recommend it to anybody.

**Craig:** It would be extra spicy almost always.

**John:** Yeah. So a thing to avoid.

Always imagine yourself getting the notes that you’re about to give and be thinking what would be constructive to you as a writer to hear and that can include some tough love about things that aren’t working, but it can be tough love delivered really genuinely with love.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** All right. Let us move on to one of our main topics. So back in 2006 I answered a question from a reader on my blog. And I should stipulate it’s just so weird that I can Google questions and I find answers to things I answered in 2006.

**Craig:** You mean you’re providing your own Google hit back is what you’re saying?

**John:** I feel like past me is offering a gift to present me.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** Aw. And it’s weird reading my old posts because I still sound like myself. I’m very consistent sort of year to year. But here was the question I answered–

**Craig:** Robots don’t age. [laughs]

**John:** We just don’t age at all. “Every screenwriting book I’ve read, class I took, and basically the first rule I learned says one page of a properly formatted script equals approximately a minute of screen time. I know one page of say a battle can last five minutes whereas one page of quick dialogue may last ten seconds if the actors talk fast. So my question is is this rule true?”

And so back in the day I said the rule is not really a rule. It’s true-ish, but it’s true-ish mostly because most scripts are about 120 pages. Most movies are about two hours. It kind of works out that way. So, I guess you can say it’s a very crude rule of thumb, but it’s no more than that. And we can obviously think of exceptions and I listed the movies I’d made at that point and sort of what my script page count was and what the actual running time of the movies were. And there wasn’t a strong correlation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But then a couple weeks ago I got thinking, you know what, I wonder how strong the correlation really is. And so I asked Stephen Follows, so he was the guy – remember, god, a year ago, two years ago I was talking about missing movies, like the movies you can’t find on DVD or on streaming? Like movies that just sort of disappeared.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** He’s the guy who did a systematic study of like which movies are not available for streaming anywhere. So I went to Stephen Follows and said like, hey, would you be interested in tackling this question and going through a bunch of scripts, going through a bunch of running times and really charting this out how strong is the correlation between how many pages a script is and how long a movie is.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And, Craig, can you guess the answer?

**Craig:** Not in any real significant way.

**John:** No. It’s not a very strong correlation at all. There’s some clustering around one would be a perfect correlation, so a 111-page script is 111 minute movie. But only 22% of scripts had a ratio between 0.95 and 1.05. And two-thirds were within 0.8 and 1.2. So a lot of them were even sort of beyond those borders. You can have scripts that were 100 pages long, it could be anywhere between 80 and 120 minutes, which is not surprising to you or to me because we’ve all encountered that.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, if you’re supposed to have a 100 and your range is between 80 and 120, this is not good. The concept we’re dealing with here is standard deviation which is to say how average is your average? If you add it all up and, yeah, there’s like a lot of scripts turn out where they’re really close to 1:1 ratio, in this case 0.95:1.05, then OK, it’s good enough. But the problem is standard deviation. A lot of scripts are not even close to that. And so you average because there are a bunch of outliers, if you want to call them that, to the left, and a bunch of outliers to the right. And in our case there’s so much variation it would seem in the actual timing of anyone’s particular page length that the measurement is not useful at all.

**John:** So we should say as an industry we have a person whose job is to do script timing. That is generally the script supervisor. He or she sits with the screenplay before production and in consultation with the director goes through scene by scene, does an estimated running time per scene, adds it all up and comes up with a crude estimate of like this is how long this movie will probably last if we were to put all of these scenes into the finished film. That is useful. That is useful to see if something is going to be really short or really long, or if things are feeling long that we might want to take something out. But that is a completely different skill than just counting the number of pages on it.

**Craig:** Yeah. There are two reasons that a studio needs to know from a screenplay how long of a movie are we looking at. Reason number one, as you mention, is what’s the running time of the movie going to be because they don’t want say a family comedy to be 2.5 hours. Kids are not going to make it. And the other one is how expensive is this going to be because the budget of movies is defined in no small way by how many days you have to shoot.

It turns out that the one-page per minute rule satisfies neither of those needs. You’ve got a script supervisor who can do a much better job of telling you roughly how long the movie would be. And you have a first AD who can tell you a much better job of roughly how many days you’re going to need to shoot it. So, we should get rid of it entirely. Warner Bros I think still contractually requires that your screenplay be 120 pages or fewer.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve signed contracts that require that. I was just looking at the contract I did for this next thing. And I got up to 130 pages, so I could just go nuts.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** But literally they don’t have to accept the script if it’s longer than that which is just ridiculous. So, let’s talk about sort of why it matters overall. The industry is obsessed with page count. And because it’s a number that they can look at and try to quantify and so that pressure pushes down on screenwriters in that we sort of have screenplay dysmorphia disorder where we will do crazy things to try to cut page count down. And so it’s the reason why the decision to double space scene headers or single space them. Why we’ll take out words on page 14, just like small little words, or like cheat margins on a dialogue block just to sort of pull up later pages.

And we waste hours–

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Hours. Collectively we waste thousands of hours probably a year doing these little tweaks on things just to bring it from 121 pages to 117 pages because it matters, even though it doesn’t matter.

**Craig:** Yeah. It matters even though it doesn’t matter. I mean, I’m really bad because I also hate dialogue being split across pages, so I fiddle around and try and avoid that as well. But, yeah, we waste a lot of time doing this and it speaks to the stupidity of it. If I can not change the meaning in any way, shape, or form and reduce my screenplay by six or seven pages which I could easily do. Easily. All those little widows, those huge blocks of white space–

**John:** Widows and orphans, yeah.

**Craig:** Gone, right? So you just eliminate those and, boom, you can do it. And so then what does this one-page-per-minute thing mean at all? People should just start talking about it. It’s stupid.

**John:** Yeah. Another reason why it matters is because movies don’t have pages. Pages only exist in the screenplay format. But the pages don’t match up to the movie at all. And so movies have scenes, they have sequences, but they fundamentally don’t have pages. And so working in animation one of the things I actually really enjoy about it is at a certain point you stop caring about pages because it’s just become sequences. They number things really early on in the process because they move from the pages to boards to actually animating things. And so you stop caring about what page something was on.

That is good and that is probably how we need to move overall as an industry is to stop thinking about pages and start thinking about scenes. And stop thinking about the screenplay being this paper document that has now become digitalized as a PDF but is still essentially the paper document that everything is sort of focused around. If it’s actually the text that matters, it’s the scenes that matter, the sequences that matter. We should really be focusing on a format that is about those scenes and not about what could be printed on a piece of paper.

**Craig:** Yeah. We are riding in a jalopy just cause. There’s no reason for it.

**John:** Yeah. Now, if we were to move beyond pages, if we were to move beyond the PDF, some things that could be vastly improved. First off is security. So, right now Craig you’ve probably had to deal with these when you get a screenplay that’s locked down that you have to go through the special app to use? Have you dealt with that?

**Craig:** I’ve done that. I’ve also had to physically – so when I read Rian Johnson’s script I had to drive to Disney, go in a room, give them my phone, and then get like AE Ink reader kind of thing, not an iPad, but some sort of reader like that. Read it. Hand it back to them. Get my stuff back and go, after signing 400 NDAs. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve had that kind of situation or things that are printed on red or other situations. Or like they would send me an iPad that had been locked down that I could only read that script on. But more often I get this terrible app and it’s the equivalent of [Pix], but it’s just for like PDFs. But it’s essentially like a Flash app that shows you one page at a time and they can digitally cancel you from it. So like if they decided they wanted to hire a different writer instead of you, like you could be on page 67 and it would just disappear.

And so if you’re going to do that, I guess you’re going to do that. But the problem is it’s all still based on a PDF and so they’re still sending you an image of a page rather than actually sending you the text. And there’s so many better digital ways to handle that kind of security to keep that stuff locked down. And if we were to be willing to get rid of the PDF we could do that stuff a lot better.

**Craig:** Well, eventually we will. I mean, it is disturbing to think of any kind of – I mean, maybe that application isn’t Flash-based, but when I hear the word Flash I definitely don’t think security.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that’s really backwards. I mean, one of these days I’m going to go off on CastIt.Biz. Have we ever talked about CastIt?

**John:** I don’t think we have. It’s worth a small discussion of what CastIt is, because everyone just loathes it.

**Craig:** CastIt is a web-based “solution” for casting where you log in, you access your project file, so let’s say it’s for Chernobyl. And then it keeps all of the little video clips of the taped auditions of everybody, along with their names.

**John:** In theory it is so much better than the days of tapes you’d get from casting.

**Craig:** Sure. But what I just said does not sound like it would be hard to do. It seems like most of the web has mastered the art of video archiving and database management. CastIt.Biz is literally unchanged since, I don’t know, 1998? I’m not kidding. I mean, I remember using it in 1999. It looks exactly the same. It is horrendous. The navigation is dismal. It’s ugly. For the life of me I have no idea why people are still using it. It sucks.

**John:** A friend of mine was working on a rival situation, a rival platform for it, and wasn’t able to make it work. It’s the Final Draft problem. It’s just they are established and people are familiar with it and so people are scared of change and they’re not changing but they should change.

**Craig:** Well, CastIt.Biz is a weird – I actually feel bad for them. Whereas Final Draft makes me angry. Because they have all this money and they keep “innovating” which is worse than actual innovating. It’s like fake innovation. Like, look, now we can do dual dialogue better. It’s like, dummies, that should have been there from the beginning, but whatever. CastIt.Biz, it’s almost like one day someone is going to be like, oh yeah, there’s a weird smell coming from their apartment.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Like you open the door and there’s going to be a coder slumped over and his cats have mostly eaten him. I mean, I can’t imagine that someone is actually over there going – anyway, poor CastIt.Biz. I do think that we do need a much better solution for this. The screenplay, first of all the screenplay format is ancient and creaky. And the idea of PDFs is ancient and creaky. The page-per-minute is ridiculous. It literally makes no sense.

Yeah, technology has not – well, we lag behind terribly.

**John:** Yeah. And so two last things. Collaboration could be much better if we’re not so obsessed with the physical representation of the page. So I both mean in terms of real time collaboration, the way that you can share Google Docs and update stuff in real time. The way that you and I are updating our workflow in real time as we change stuff. That is much simpler if you’re not trying to match a PDF page.

Also, the ability to sort of put notes on things makes much more sense if you don’t have a physical page that you’re sort of trying to represent.

And then version control. So really when we talk about script revisions and colored pages and all that stuff, it’s a really archaic old way of doing version control.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Where everyone says like, OK, well, we’ll now add page A36, which is going to be a cherry page, which will go into the script. And you know what? It’s charming that we had that system. That system needs to go away.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** No other system would ever have sheets of colored paper to represent sort of how stuff needs to fit together. We can do version control so much better and push it out to everybody and everyone can be looking at the most recent version of the script at all times because we’re not so paper obsessed.

**Craig:** 100%. The current revision system with revision marks and all the rest of it is based on Xeroxing. That’s just based on a large copy machine cranking stuff out. And we don’t have the ability to do very simple things. Everybody reading it for instance with a certain level of permissions should be able to just cycle through the revisions of a single line of dialogue. Just cycle through if you want.

And setting permissions, by the way, is another huge aspect of this.

**John:** Totally. That’s both security and collaboration. That’s what you need to do.

**Craig:** What are we going to do? Are you going to fix this?

**John:** I am not going to fix this myself. But I will say that as I think about this the two main products that my company makes, Highland 2 which its first claim to fame is that it could melt PDFs down so you could get the actual screenplay text out of it. That was its first trick was its ability to do that. And then Weekend Read which is to reformat PDFs so that you can read them on your phone. In both cases they’re trying to deal with the huge limitations that the current system is putting on things.

I would love to not have to solve these problems because we just agree as an industry – it doesn’t have to be one other solution. It can be multiple other solutions. It can be different ways to handle stuff. I kind of don’t care how we decide to do it. I don’t care if it’s one industry standard. I just think we need to be willing to move beyond our current situation that’s set up. And I think the page-per-minute is a part of this. We have this illusion that this rule of thumb is actually a rule. And it was never a rule.

The world is not going to fall apart if we stop worrying about screenplay pages and just focus on the actual text.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s not why the world is going to fall apart. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] There’s lots of other challenges facing the industry.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. There is. All right, so that’s my little rant there. This is one of those rants without an actual call to action other than just as screenwriters, as people in the industry, hey, what if we were to stop just obsessing so much about pages and page count. And recognize that there could be different ways to do this that would make so much more sense. And we have lots of showrunners listening to us, lots of writer-directors out there. Maybe on your next project think about how you might go to a workflow that was not so PDF/page obsessed.

**Craig:** Maybe I can get Neil Druckmann to figure this out.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, the videogame business is so version controlled and collaborative and permission based and all that.

**John:** Craig, maybe I’m just speaking to an audience of you. You have this opportunity with your new show. Think about ways that don’t have to use the normal screenplay way of doing stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, I like where this is going.

**John:** And report back to us what you decide.

**Craig:** Fine. Done.

**John:** Cool. All right. Now it’s come time for us to talk about the coronavirus or COVID-19. And really we want to focus on the unique impact it has had on film and television in Los Angeles because that’s sort of what we know.

So, I wanted to start by talking about film because movies, theatrical films, are designed to shown in big theaters with a bunch of people. And you talk about opening weekends and buying tickets and popcorn and a bunch of people in a place. And that is not conducive to keeping this disease under control. So, right now as we’re recording this it’s not clear what’s going to happen with movie theaters, which ones are going to stay open, but clearly we’re looking at dramatic declines. Already Broadway is closed. Disneyland is closed. Sporting events and concerts are canceled.

Movies are shifting their release dates. And the film industry as a whole I think some of the greenlights have started to become kind of flashing yellow lights because we just don’t know what is going to happen to the future of theatrical releases.

**Craig:** It’s not good. The thing that haunts me a little bit is how much time these businesses can withstand while being closed down. Because it seems that a lot of businesses run the way a lot of homes run financially, which is hand to mouth. No pun intended. If we’re not open today we’re going to be out of business. And that’s frightening.

So, yeah, I’m very concerned. The movie theater experience was already being severely impacted right now. It’s going to be hammered. And also I just think studios are not releasing their movies. They’re just delaying them until such time as theoretically everything is OK. But we know that Broadway as of today, our recording, has shut down. Disneyland is shutting down. The NBA suspended their entire season. I have no doubt that Major League Baseball will – I think Major League Baseball, my guess is continue but not with people in the stands. They’ll be playing to empty stands.

**John:** They’ll be playing to television. So sporting events I could see the ability for them to carry on in some way because they do have a tremendous home audience there. They’re not making all their money by selling tickets to that venue, that event. Versus theatrical features it is about butts in seats. And I’ve talked about on the show before that my husband Mike used to run all the movie theaters in Burbank. So he had 30 screens that he needed to run every weekend. And a ton of teenagers are working for them. And just imagine how stressful it must be for the person who is in his job right now to be thinking about safety of his own employees but also thinking about how do we keep this business running.

**Craig:** I mean, in some ways it becomes a very simple thing. There’s not a lot to do except shut down. The obligation that we have to our employees as employers becomes an enormous thing. As a nation we’re not particularly good at it. And so we’re about to find out what we’re really made of.

**John:** Now, Craig, if you were a studio boss and we often cast you as the studio boss on these podcasts–

**Craig:** Yes, of course.

**John:** And you have something like the Bond movie, some sort of giant event, at what point might you decide to put that on Pay-per-view or some sort of like launch that movie somewhere other than in the theaters? What would go into your decision making process?

**Craig:** It depends on the film. So, a movie like Bond is essentially an evergreen. You can theoretically release a Bond movie whenever you want. Is there an enormous cost to delaying a Bond movie? Probably not an enormous cost. There are other movies that feel somewhat timely. A sequel for instance, like a proper sequel. You want to capitalize on a hit. Well, if you delay it for a year it’s not going to seem so timely.

Or, if you’re in competition with another movie. Things like that. But again you don’t really have much of a choice. If you put something on Pay-per-view you’re going to be losing an enormous amount of money. Because when they decide to release something theatrically they have already done the numbers. They modeled it. It makes sense to do it. It doesn’t mean that their models always turn out correctly. Obviously there are huge bombs. But by and large something as blue chip as a James Bond movie they kind of have to release it theatrically. Because the amount of money they’re going to make on “Pay-per-view,” they’re going to make that anyway after the theatrical release.

**John:** Yeah. I do worry that if you were to release a movie like Bond on Pay-per-view it immediately drops the value for – it becomes pirated on day one. And so if you’re trying to maintain some window between the Pay-per-view event and sort of it normally being on iTunes, that’s difficult because everyone can pirate it immediately. It is a real challenge. I don’t think there’s a great solution to it.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I will say that I’m working under the assumption that movie theaters probably will close. Who knows where we’re at on Tuesday when this drops? I will commit at this moment that once the government says that movie theaters can reopen I’m going to go that weekend. I really want the theatrical experience to remain. I want to make sure our theaters don’t close. That our theater chains can keep going because big screens are great. And I love to be able to watch a movie with an audience. And I would hate for this to kill our theatrical experience.

**Craig:** Yeah. Me too. It’s disconcerting.

**John:** Now let’s talk about both film and television, the challenges facing there. The challenge of a group of people working together. So in some ways it’s like any office or any sort of workplace. There are people working together to make our movies and to make our TV shows. In the case of TV you have writers’ rooms. And so I just saw Ryan Knighton was headed back to Vancouver because the TV show he’s on is now a virtual writers’ room rather than an actual writers’ room with people in a room together.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s a choice that showrunners are making or studios are making for showrunners about we’re not supposed to have a big group of people together to do stuff. So for writers’ rooms you can make that virtual. It’s not ideal but you can make that virtual.

For actual production, for gaffers and grips and props and everyone else, there’s no working at home for that. And production is already being hugely impacted.

**Craig:** Without question. Across the board everything. I mean, I heard that NBC/Universal had shut down all production of all television shows. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I’m hearing stuff. I mean, it does seem like that’s what’s going on.

**John:** The other challenge is if you are a show that’s traveling someplace, so like the Mission: Impossible movie was supposed to go to Venice. Not only can you not film where you’re supposed to be filming, but there’s the real risk of being stuck someplace. Like I was supposed to be going to France and Switzerland in two weeks for my vacation. Even before this got especially bad my real worry was like, oh, we could just be stuck there and not be able to come back to the US. And that is the concern for anybody working on a production overseas is that you cannot get back to where you’re supposed to be getting to. So it’s tough.

**Craig:** Yeah. I was supposed to – we’re recording this on March 12. I was supposed to be on a plane yesterday to London for a couple of award ceremonies. And we obviously canceled that trip like two weeks ago. But I think the ceremonies themselves are canceled. If I had been there, well, it’s the weirdest. I can’t understand. So apparently we have stopped accepting people from Europe except from the United Kingdom. So if you’re in Europe just get to the United Kingdom. What?

**John:** It makes no sense.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** Take the train and get to–

**Craig:** Oh geez.

**John:** As we’re recording this I’m supposed to be at the Tucson Festival of Books. And so they kept sending updates like, you know, oh, here’s the precautions we’re going to take. I’m like they’re going to cancel the Tucson Festival of Books. I’m just waiting and waiting and like, yep, they pulled the plug. That’s why I’m here recording on a very rainy Thursday afternoon rather than from Tucson.

**Craig:** I guess if there’s a silver lining here it’s that it’s never been easier to communicate with each other and see each other without being physically with each other.

**John:** Absolutely. So a lot of my meetings for this week and next week have become phone calls or Skype sessions. That’s fine. A lot of that stuff does make sense. There are advantages to being together in a room. There’s a reason why writers’ rooms are rooms and there’s things you can do in a room that you can’t do virtually. But given the choices, yeah, virtual makes a lot of sense.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Now let’s talk about sort of if there’s any upside is that this is a great opportunity to catch up on a bunch of stuff you’ve been meaning to watch. If you’re a streamer this feels like a time to really showcase the things that you’ve got. And so some of the features that would have normally been going to theatrical will probably end up on streaming. They’ll get an audience. And it will be interesting to see over these next few months what that feels like.

I know our family, we started making a shared Apple note listing out all the movies we planned to watch as a family. And so it is an opportunity for your own film festival.

**Craig:** Well that is true. Just as it is the best time to communicate without being near each other physically, it is also the best time to be stuck in a house with a want for entertainment. Because there are thousands. Thousands.

**John:** Yes. There’s far too much TV to watch and now you have a little more time to watch all the TV you have not watched.

So let’s talk about in addition to safety precautions and sort of all the standard advice which people should follow. You should watch your hands. You should stop touching your face. You should listen to the advice of actual medical professionals. But what are some creative precautions or preparations that a writer could take? Let’s take a few minutes to talk through those. Because if you’re listening to this podcast and you are a writer, how do you best take advantage of this time? And to me I think it starts with making some sort of writing plan. List the projects you’re considering. Pick one of your projects. And then schedule time each day to write it. And make a plan for how you’re going to do it. Set some goals of effort. Not necessarily that you’re going to finish by a certain time but that you’re going to get a certain amount of work done each day. It could be pages. It could be words. Whatever. And find some system for holding yourself accountable.

If you have some friend who can be your accountability on this. That you are going to spend some time over these next challenging couple of weeks and months with your Internet turned off, with your Twitter shut down, actually focusing on doing something productive and good creatively and not just be a despair machine.

**Craig:** Yeah. You don’t want to be a despair machine. I mean, look, I’ve got my work to do. I’m doing my work. It’s hard. I find myself very distracted. Very worried. Very concerned. And I have to allow for that as well. I think it is perfectly reasonable for us to say as writers, “Maybe I don’t get as much done over the next few weeks as I would normally, because there’s stuff going on in the world.” And if we’re any good at our job we are kind of spongey when it comes to emotions and feelings. And we’re going to feel stuff. And it’s not going to feel great.

If you’re sitting there writing something sunny or happy it may be harder for you. If you’re sitting there writing something brutal, it may be hard for you. So, you know, just take it easy on yourselves. I don’t know how else to advise here because, of course, the most important thing is that you try as best you can to stay healthy and keep your loved ones healthy, and that includes your noggin. Writing second, health first.

**John:** Yeah. I got offered a project this week that I think in a different week would have been like oh yeah absolutely I’ll do that. That feels like a dream. And literally just like what that project was about and this week is just not a good combination. This period that we’re in is just not a good combination. So I passed on it. Not because it wasn’t a great and worthy project, but because I just knew that I did not have the emotional bandwidth to be putting it into that script and be living my actual life.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it’s weird. With me sometimes the subject matter, you think like, OK, writing Chernobyl or Last of Us, which is a global pandemic, you know, I mean, you think well geez. Actually weirdly for me individually the subject matter isn’t what does it. It’s just the concentration. It’s when the world is demanding my attention and I have to leave it and go to the world in my head it’s hard. It’s just hard.

**John:** The one thing I want to make sure listeners keep in mind though is you have permission to turn it off. It is important to sort of keep informed, but you can keep informed like once a day. And that’s OK. If you’re not up to every hour’s new drama that’s all right.

When I was living in France in the lead up to the 2016 election I got so stressed out that at a certain point I took Twitter off my phone and took all the news sites off my phone. And I just made a deal with Mike where once per day he could just give me the recap of what’s going on because I just couldn’t actually process it anymore. And I think it’s all right to give yourself permission to look away and to focus on some other things. And indeed it’s probably healthier to just draw some boundaries between when I’m going to be aware of the stuff and when I’m going to let myself cocoon within myself and work on my own stuff.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. You just have to take care of yourself, as best you can. Yeah. Maybe it will become a nice escape. It’s hard to say.

**John:** Yeah. It could. I mean, I will say that a lot of our listeners are probably younger than 9/11 or other sort of big dramatic – the Northridge earthquake.

**Craig:** I was here.

**John:** Yeah. I was here. Those were big, scary times. But there were also good moments during it where there were moments where you saw everyone coming together and rising up and being better. So, I don’t get concerned about everything falling apart as much when I realize that there are good people out there who are trying to put stuff together. And I can imagine myself as one of those people.

I often talk on the podcast about sort of seeing yourself as the protagonist of the story of your life. And so if I imagine John August as the hero in this saga right now, I think about what that person would do and what are some choices that he could make that would – as difficult as things are – would lead to a better outcome. And that’s sometimes helpful.

**Craig:** In your story though you’re just laughing as all organic matter perishes.

**John:** [laughs] That is true. Finally the robots will–

**Craig:** Finally.

**John:** Will rise up. All right. It has come time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is actually a bit of a law rule here. It’s actually a Scriptnotes episode. Episode 99, which was our Psychotherapy for Screenwriters. So, I posted it on YouTube and one of the cool things about having all of our transcripts is you can now post videos and then upload the transcripts and it will automatically sync up the transcript to our talking. And it turned out really, really well.

And so Episode 99 is when we talked with Dennis Palumbo who is a therapist who mostly deals with screenwriters and talks through their issues. It’s one of our most popular episodes and I just thought it was a good time to put that up for everyone who wants to listen to it can listen to it.

The idea to put the transcripts as closed captions came in conversation with Shoshannah Stern and Josh Feldman. Shoshannah Stern was on our Christmas episode. And as we were working through the logistics of getting her on the show it really became clear that for folks who are deaf podcasts aren’t like such a great thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Weird.

**John:** Weird, huh? I mean, as an audio-only format they’re kind of inaccessible. And so in the interest of accessibility we’ve always done transcripts. The YouTube video is another way to make some of what we do a little bit more accessible. So check that out if you want. There’s a link in the show notes to Episode 99.

**Craig:** Great. I like that. Even if there’s nothing to watch per se, if you are deaf and you’re able to watch the captions go by in the cadence of the discussion–

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** You get, I think, a better sense of the way the discussion flows as opposed to just reading it, which is, you know, reading.

**John:** Cool. Craig, what do you got?

**Craig:** Well, sticking on this whole COVID-19 thing, there is a very helpful, I think, newsletter the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security is putting out. You can subscribe to it online. We’ll provide the link. But, well yeah, no reason for me to read it out loud. By the time you hear this you will have that link.

It’s good. It’s good because it does not bombard you every two seconds as far as I can tell. I’ve only received one so far in the one day I’ve had the subscription. But it’s very measured and thoughtful and scientific, fact-based. It keeps you updated. It has running totals. It is not a freak-out alarm, but it is really informative. So, probably worth taking a look at that.

They are, because of the demand, sometimes when you sign up some people may get a timeout error. Just try it again.

**John:** Great. That is our show for this week. So reminder, if you’re a Premium member stick around and we will be talking about our first level spells. But otherwise Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is by James Launch and Jim Bond. We’re using one featuring Aline Brosh McKenna. It’s a repeat, but it’s a worthy repeat because it’s happy and bouncy and sometimes you need a happy, bouncy, dancey song.

**Craig:** True that.

**John:** If you have an outro send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. We’re running a little bit low on outros, so maybe you could take some of this time to write us some outros.

Ask@johnaugust.com is also the place to send longer questions, but for short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re just about to record.

Craig, have you a good week.

**Craig:** Thanks, you too, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Craig, magic. Let’s talk some magic. So this was a random idea. I’m not sure where it came from. And we should say that the idea behind this, so this is Dungeons & Dragons Spells, Fifth Edition. First level spells can be from any class, but you suggested and I think it’s a good suggestion that no healing spells will be included in this pack.

**Craig:** Yeah. So obviously because it’s a gaming simulation of reality the HP hit point system of defining how healthy somebody is just has no connection whatsoever to reality. Also, in the world of D&D when you sleep for eight hours and wake up you’re totally healthy. Wouldn’t that be nice?

**John:** Oh, it would be so nice.

**Craig:** So spells that are like “restore half your health points,” it just doesn’t have any possible relation to our existence. So I figured let’s just skip those. Yeah, it would be nice if I was like, oh, I have good berries so I can make a berry that makes me feel a little bit better.

**John:** No good berries.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** All right. My choice, I was debating between three. And so I’m going to pick this one, but I’m also going to argue for the other two because I think they’re really good. Looking through this list I was struck by how many of the spells I would pick in real life are not the spells I ever pick when actually in the game.

**Craig:** Oh, for sure.

**John:** Because I’m always worried about like attack or defend. I’m not worried about sort of utility spells. But they’re all utility spells the ones I picked. So I picked Comprehend Languages. It has a verbal, semantic material component. It lasts for an hour. I need a pinch of soot and salt. But for the duration you understand the literal meaning of any spoken language that you hear. You also understand any written language that you see. But you must be touching the surface on which the words are written. It takes about one minute to read one page of text.

**Craig:** [laughs] Apparently they do have the one-minute-per-page rule. I like Comprehend Languages. Here’s my argument against.

**John:** Go for it.

**Craig:** Argument against is, A, it lasts one hour which is kind of frustrating in the sense that you can hear and understand some things and I suppose have the memory of it, but then if you are at a party and you run into hour two, I guess you just cast it again. Is it unlimited casting?

Two, bigger issue, you can’t speak it. You can only understand it, which is kind of limiting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then argument number three is we sort of have this magic in our phones.

**John:** Yeah. I would say that Google Translate does a really pretty good job of this in a lot of situations. So, I totally hear you, but the ability to understand languages does feel very useful. And so I guess I did miss the fact that it doesn’t give me the ability to talk back.

**Craig:** Well, you’re dealing with a DM over here.

**John:** You are.

**Craig:** I’m always looking or the loop holes.

**John:** And also just the literal meaning. So, if it is – oh crap, the Jean-Luc Picard, something when the walls fell. What was the one, the civilization that only speaks in metaphors?

**Craig:** Oh, right. Yeah.

**John:** Is it Shaka, When the Walls Fell?

**Craig:** Yeah, I can’t remember.

**John:** I’m looking it up now. I will get the answer while you tell me about what spell you want to do.

**Craig:** So, I took at your other, you had a couple of backup choices which I’m happy to discuss, and one of which I looked at very carefully. Your two backup choices were Sleep and Disguise Self. Now Sleep, you know, has a little bit of a hit point in there because the amount of people you can put to sleep. But let’s just limit it to one person. Let’s just say Sleep is one person. The thing about–

**John:** How often would I want to cast Sleep on my kid when she was little? So often.

**Craig:** I mean, over and over. You’d spam that. But these days I’d mostly just want to cast it on myself.

**John:** True.

**Craig:** Because my theory is that if you cast Sleep on yourself you will fall asleep. Now the sleep only lasts for a minute, but my feeling is like if it’s midnight and I’m having a little bit of insomnia and I cast Sleep to myself, all I need is that starter.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And my brain will take over from there

**John:** Gets it going.

**Craig:** So I thought about that one. You also have Disguise Self. That’s a very interesting one. So for Disguise Self which also lasts an hour you can make yourself, including your clothing and other belongings, look different. You can seem one foot shorter, or taller. You can appear thin, fat, or in between. You can’t change your body type meaning you can’t have 12 limbs or turn into an octopus. But it’s pretty good.

The downside, and what use would that be? A lot of shenanigans, right? That’s a heavy shenanigans spell.

**John:** Well, it’s shenanigans but also like Instagram. I mean, the fact that it could make you look like anything else could also make you look much better. So in a culture where we are constantly putting filters on our stuff to make things more attractive Disguise Self is your friend. It’s just an ability to present yourself as you wish you could look rather than how you actually look.

**Craig:** Or as we also call it, Photoshop. But, I mean, the bummer is it only lasts for an hour. So you run into that thing where you show up at a party and then like Cinderella you’re suddenly running to re-disguise yourself or else people are like oh my god.

Here’s what I went for. A spell I would never, and I mean never–

**John:** I’ve never seen anyone take this spell.

**Craig:** Ever pick this spell as a caster. But in real life, super freaking useful. Unseen Servant. Unseen Servant. Duration one hour. This spell creates an invisible mindless, shapeless force that performs simple tasks at your command until the spell ends. It springs into existence and then you can ask it to perform simple tasks that any human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food, and pouring wine.

Once you give the command the servant performs the task to the best of its ability until it completes the task. And then it waits for your next command. Uh, yeah.

So basically this is the most ethical way to have the most abuse-able, unpaid intern ever. Right? I mean, so cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring, lifting, carrying, schlepping. This is incredibly useful day after day after day after day. If I had an Unseen Servant right now I wouldn’t have to touch the doorknobs anywhere.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** It would be so useful.

**John:** It’s like [unintelligible] but actually a little bit more flexible.

**Craig:** So much more flexible. Like, OK, you know what? It’s pouring rain and I need to get the mail. Hey, Unseen Servant, go get the mail. Brilliant. Love it.

**John:** All right. So circling back, it is Shaka, When the Walls Fell. That’s the Jean-Luc Picard reference. Here is my argument for Comprehend Languages which I just now thought about is that while we have Google Translate to do languages that people actually speak right now, Comprehend Languages would work on all the old stuff that we see that we can’t actually translate. So we’re talking about not hieroglyphics but other lost languages where we have things written in clay tablets and we have no idea what they actually are.

So the ability to actually understand what was written there would be a game changer for historical research.

**Craig:** Unseen Servant, do my laundry. I rebut it thus.

**John:** I find it interesting. Unseen Servant does not cook apparently.

**Craig:** It could. I don’t see why it won’t. Lighting fire. Serving food. I think cooking is too creative of a task. What you could say is Unseen Servant boil this chicken and put it on this plate. I think really simple – well, it says, actually the servant can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do. Simple dishes.

**John:** A boiled egg it could do, but not chicken cordon bleu.

**Craig:** No. Exactly. So, but this is very useful.

**John:** I agree it’s useful. It’s also – the D&D we play has very little to do with daily tasks.

**Craig:** Utterly useless in D&D. It is literally only useful as far as I – by the way, a billion nerds are like, “Hold on.”

**John:** “Hold on. Here’s a way I used it once to do stuff.”

**Craig:** To the keyboard. I apologize to you as a fellow nerd. I’m sure you have found a brilliant use for Unseen Servant, but honestly, er, meh, you can only have so many spells. Why pick that one?

**John:** Absolutely. Craig, I wish you and your Unseen Servant a very good week and stay safe out there.

**Craig:** Thank you sir, you too. Bye-bye.

**John:** Bye.

 

Links:

* [Scriptnotes Episode 441 – Readers](https://johnaugust.com/2020/readers)
* [How Accurate is the One Page per Minute Rule?](https://johnaugust.com/2020/how-accurate-is-the-page-per-minute-rule-2)
* Stephen Follows’s analysis on [Is the One Page Per Minute Rule Correct?](https://stephenfollows.com/is-the-page-per-minute-rule-correct/)
* Try [Highland 2](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/) for free!
* Download [Weekend Read](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173) to access your own or read our library of scripts today!
* [Hollywood and Coronavirus](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-could-take-20-billion-hit-coronavirus-impact-1284582)
* [Scriptnotes Episode 99: Psychotherapy for Screenwriters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIBboG1ddhs) with captions on Youtube!
* [Center for Health Security Updates](http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/newsroom/newsletters/e-newsletter-sign-up.html)
* Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium [here](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jim Bond and James Llonch ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/442.mp3).

 

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/how-to-grow-old-as-a-writer).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Yo, my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 439 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast we’re going to talk about how to grow old as a writer. We’ll also discuss tips for general readings and answer listener questions about character quirks and improv. Then in our bonus segment for Premium members Craig is going to talk about his experience as an actor on the new show Mythic Quest.

**Craig:** Well this is the first time I’m hearing of that, but I’m all for it.

**John:** Oh, I thought you said last week you were going to do this.

**Craig:** Then it’s not the first I’m hearing of it. It’s just that I forgot. So, you know, when you forget something it’s like you get to hear it all over again for the first time.

**John:** It’s a little surprise. Memory loss can be a really great thing because then everything you find in a drawer is like a present.

**Craig:** My every day is Awakenings. [laughs] I’m so happy to be here.

**John:** It’s like, wait, I’m married? I have children? This is so exciting.

**Craig:** Right. I know how long time has been simply by the number you say of the podcast. So as far as I’m concerned this is the first one we’ve ever done.

**John:** Yes. Goldfish memory.

**Craig:** You claim it’s 439. Well, all right. Well, we’ll see.

**John:** Who is to argue? In news, I’m doing two live events this week. The first is today, Tuesday February 25. I’m doing a Q&A with showrunner Sam Esmail to talk about Mr. Robot, Homecoming, and other things. That got moved to the Guild Theater. So we have more space, we have more seats. So if you want to come there’s still probably seats available. You can find tickets at wgafoundation.org. There’s a link in the show notes. Then tomorrow, February 26, I’m leading a panel on portrayals of criminal justice on screen. That one is at the SAG building. So it’s the same kind of thing when I did the addiction and mental health panel. It is that kind of thing.

There will probably be a livestream but there’s also some seats in that place, so if you want to ask your question come out to that thing tomorrow.

So, two times to see me, ask questions of people this week in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Brilliant. People should avail themselves of this.

**John:** Cool. A bit of follow up. Monica Beletsky wrote in. Do you want to talk about this, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, Monica Beletsky, a very, very talented television writer, who has worked on all sorts of your favorite shows, wrote in when we were talking about treatments and outlines and the difference. And she said that “in television an outline is a very common document and is probably more like what we call a treatment in features.” So, if you are a television writer or you’ve not yet become one, just be aware that our discussion of outlines and treatments the nomenclature was applying to the way it’s divided up in features. But in television it sounds like there’s not much of a treatment per se. It’s that there is an outline and it’s a very, very detailed thing.

**John:** Yes. So our biases really are kind of towards features. We try to be aware of our biases, but in that conversation we really weren’t. Even though Craig got an Emmy for his TV writing, we both kind of come at this from a feature background. So sometimes we will say things that mean a different thing in TV and features.

**Craig:** I got an Emmy? [laughs]

**John:** It’s so exciting when Craig doesn’t remember anything.

**Craig:** Every day is a new day.

**John:** Another great example of words that mean different things in TV and features is spec. And so in features a spec script is a script that you’re writing completely on your own that is entirely original. It’s an idea that is your own. And you’re writing it without being beholden to anybody else. No one else is involved in the project. So, a spec script is that thing that you write which can also be a writing sample.

In television a spec generally is a script you are writing for yourself of an existing TV show. I can write funny like in The Office. And so you’d say I have a spec Office episode. It’s frustrating that we use the same word for both things, but you’ve just got to get used to it.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is the problem with the way language evolves in general. And it’s an interesting indication that the television business and the feature business have been weirdly bifurcated for so long, which must be confusing for, I don’t know, someone who is graduating right now from college and coming to LA to be a writer. Because they’re like, wait, there’s a difference between TV and film? It’s all sort of mushed together.

I mean, we live in a time now where things that are made for Netflix are getting nominated for Oscars for feature film work. So, I think eventually that will all go away. I mean, actually weirdly business practices have probably started to retire the word spec for television because it’s not too common anymore that people write them.

**John:** Yeah. Some showrunners who are staffing up shows enjoy reading a spec of an existing show because they know that this writer can write the voices of an existing character and that can be useful. But more commonly showrunners want to read original stuff just to see what this person can do with no limitations on them.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re just trying to kick the tires and see how good of a writer you are in general.

**John:** Yeah. Other bit of follow up. A couple episodes back we talked about the upcoming negotiations for the MBA, which is the general contract that regulates sort of how WGA members work with the studios. Where we’re at in that process, we talked there would be a survey. There was a survey. There was a vote on a pattern of demands, which is this very broad laundry list of the things you’re going after in this negotiation.

The next step in this process is membership meetings. So they’ve already started in the east. They are coming up in the west. So if you’re a WGA West member, check your email because there will be a list of upcoming meetings where you can talk with leadership about what your goals are in this negotiation. There will also be special meetings just for feature writers. Sometimes they have different things that are interesting to them. So, check your email. Come to these membership meetings. It is the best chance to hear from leadership but also to communicate what you would like to see happen in this upcoming negotiation.

**Craig:** Yeah. They should be real fun this time around. [laughs]

**John:** There’s a lot going on. People have noticed that it’s been a busy year at the WGA. It’s going to be a busy year coming up here. So, I will be at several of these meetings. I won’t be at all of them. But come say hi.

**Craig:** You will be there I assume in your role as a member of the negotiating committee dealing with both the agency thing and the upcoming MBA negotiation.

**John:** Absolutely. So, I’m on both of those committees. So I’ll be there to talk about those things.

**Craig:** Great. Hey, can you do me one favor?

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** Is there a way – I don’t think there is a way – but somehow if people could just, on their way in somebody could hand them a lovely pamphlet that says we know you’re angry, excited, thrilled, upset, emotional. Take deep breaths and be nice to your fellow union members, no matter what they say. Is there a way that people could just be nice?

**John:** Be respectful? Yeah.

**Craig:** Be respectful. Yeah. There is going to be somebody who is going to get up and say we have to strike. And other people are going to go crazy and say you’re an idiot. If we could just avoid that that would be lovely.

**John:** I think that would be a terrific goal. I would say that my function on a lot of these big membership meetings, which I don’t think you’ve been at, is I’m generally the person who is that person saying like just calm down. So I will probably just be that guy who says just calm down a bit.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know if I’m going to go to any of them because I’ve gone limp and I’m allowing myself to be borne by the tides of the current.

**John:** Well, you’ve also–

**Craig:** Tides are currents. [laughs]

**John:** Tides are currents. You are a goldfish, Craig. But also I think one of the things your sort of stated goals for this year though was to acknowledge frustration but not always act on frustration.

**Craig:** Precisely.

**John:** So maybe–

**Craig:** I am frustrated. But I don’t have to act on it. Wait, I’m in the WGA?

**John:** Holy cow.

**Craig:** Whoa.

**John:** Craig, so we have two big topics this week. This one you proposed, so I’m going to let you take leadership on this topic of growing old as a writer.

**Craig:** Well I was just thinking about because we’ve been doing this for a while, you and I, and when we started there was actually quite a lot of concern about ageism in our business. The general idea was that somewhere after 50 the business started kicking people out. And, in fact, when you look at what the Writers Guild considers a protected class, writers over the age of 40 are considered a protected class. The world has changed drastically since the mid-90s. And I was talking to some people the other day who were pointing out that the writers who are being employed as showrunners and we’ll call them sort of major feature film writers generally are older than they’ve ever been before.

And I thought well this is interesting. There must be some sort of lessons that we can learn since you and I are among the people that are still here about how to keep yourself fresh and motivated and relevant as the years go on. Because we are not kids no more.

**John:** No. Craig, do we want to talk about how to have a long career, or how to be comfortable with aging in your career? Are we talking both? What are the edges of this conversation?

**Craig:** Well I feel like they’re intertwined. So, rather than talk in a very practical way about something that is applicable to about 80 people, I want to talk about something that’s applicable to everybody. Everybody who pursues any kind of creative concern, whether you are a visual artist, or an actor, or a writer, or a producer-director. Whatever it is that you do, as you get older your relationship to your own art and your own creative process does need to change or you’re going to suffer. A reflection of that may be in terms of the industry around you and people’s interest in you, or an audience’s response to you.

So, rather than view it through the lens of industry I just want to talk about how to keep ourselves in a kind of good place with our own creative minds.

**John:** Great. So the artistic side of growing older and how that relates to the craft and the thing that you’re trying to make on a daily basis.

**Craig:** And ideally that would be, you know, reflected back at you with some sort of industrial success if that’s what you’re looking for as the years go on. So, I mean, first let’s just consider it all in terms of strategies, because I do think like anything else there’s just practical things that you can apply to yourself as time goes on. And these are good thoughts and questions to just – even every birthday take a ten minute walk and think about it.

First, you have to think about what your task actually is. Because it changes over time. You may start as someone who for instance in the mid-90s you are “I want to write sitcoms. I’m going to be a sitcom guy that works on network sitcoms.” And there are hundreds of them. Over time that changes. The tasks that are available that match what you think you do can change. Also, formats can change. We think of television as a certain thing now. It’s all over the place. But when we started it was something else.

Chernobyl, for instance, couldn’t have been really done until a certain format change occurred. But that meant paying attention to what was going on with formats.

So there are two kinds of challenges that you can make to yourself. The first is is the thing that I’m doing the only thing I can be doing. Or could I be writing a different kind of thing, like a short story, or like you did a novel, or like we’ve both done some songs? Or, nonfiction work? Also are we working within a format that is maybe dying out or just getting boring to us? And what other formats might expand our own personal expression? If we don’t rotate the crops as it were then we will end up with a field that isn’t doing too well.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about rotating the crops, because I think that ties into a thing that happens with age which is this burnout. Which is that you’ve done one thing for so long that it’s boring to you. It’s just not interesting to you. And it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm to do it again.

I was talking with a writer recently. She was just starting on a new script. And she’s like, oh wow, wait, I’m back doing this again. I’m having to start a whole new script again. And she was ready to. She knew how to write a script. But also she didn’t have the same enthusiasm for it she would have had five years, ten years earlier in her career.

And I think that’s one of the reasons why I was attracted to write the Arlo Finch books or to write the Big Fish musical is it gave me a chance to be a beginner again. To be someone who is brand new to things and be curious and eager to explore and willing to make mistakes as I’m figuring out this new art form. And when you have mastery over something it’s nice, it’s helpful, things are easier for you, but they’re also less exciting. And so picking a new thing to try to do, just challenge yourself on a regular basis to try something that you haven’t done before as a writer so that you get that experience of being new at things.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, getting yourself in that rut is the function of a good thing, I think. We know that you need to focus and you need to practice and perfect. That’s part of how you get good at any creative pursuit. But there is a point where, and a little bit like when you get into a videogame you’ve maxed out your level, you’re now just walking around all the areas of Skyrim and beating everyone’s brains in with ease.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. You’re just doing a little side quest.

**Craig:** And there’s no challenge because you are perfection. And it gets boring. You’re absolutely right. Being a beginner again is a wonderful thing. And it’s a little scary, so it’s also a function of fear. You know, trying new things is scary. But the thing that I’m scared of the most is actually at this point now in my life being bored. So, challenge yourself to reconsider the nature of the formats you do work in, that you’re willing to work in, that you’re willing to try. Take a look at some formats that you didn’t maybe know even existed before. Because there are new ones all the time. And challenge yourself to even break out of a genre and into another genre.

**John:** You’re really saying stay curious. And really look at the world around you and see, OK, what is out there. What is a thing I could make out there that is interesting to me. And it doesn’t mean you have to pursue everything. Like, you know, you don’t have to become a social media influencer. You don’t have to master TikTok. It’s OK to sort of leave some stuff by the side. But also recognize that if these things are coming online they’re serving some need. And so what is it you can bring to this need and what can you do that could fit into this bigger universe of new content that’s being made?

**Craig:** And you’ve mentioned the key to all of this which is stay curious and be connected with the world. The biggest complaint people will make about we’ll call them aging artists is that they’re out of touch. Well, how do we get out of touch? We get out of touch by essentially ignoring the world around us because we feel like we figured it out in a moment and then we stay there. The world will move past that moment. If you don’t, you will be out of touch.

Sometimes people engage with the world simply in opposition. Kids these days. Let me just boil it down to that, right? The world, you know, I don’t understand the world today. Everyone is on their phones. Anybody who ever says, “You know what the problem is with the world today? Look around you man. Everyone is staring at their phones. They’re not looking at each other.” You go ahead and tell that person they’re an idiot. Because the world changes. They are interacting in fact with more people faster than you could have ever done in your life.

Is it true that sometimes uninterrupted eye-to-eye contact is wonderful? Absolutely. Is it a cliché out of touch thing to say, “They’re all looking at their phones?” Absolutely out of touch.

So, rather than instinctively saying, “In my day everything was perfect and now it stinks,” listen. Just listen to the world. Even if you disagree with it, listen to it. Because perhaps in your experience of the world around you and your differences of opinions with it, you may find grist for the creative mill. Defensiveness isn’t going to get you anywhere.

**John:** Yeah. Being defensive is never a good look. You know, when you say no to something people stop engaging with you. I would say over this last 20 years one of the most helpful ways I’ve been able to stay caught up with how things are for screenwriters and just for general people making creative things, well I’ve always had an assistant. My assistants have always been younger than me. They’ve always been at the start of their careers and doing stuff that people at the start of their careers do. And it’s been fascinating to see how the starts of careers have changed over the last 20 years because just the industry has changed around them.

Also just engaging with the people who originally were writing into the website who are now Scriptnotes listeners. You see what they’re doing. And sort of what the challenges they’re facing, but also what is exciting to them. And I may not be excited about the same things, but what they’re into is valid. And listening to what it is that they are going after is great. I always try to remember that the people I’m interacting with are the people who are going to be running this town in 10, 20, 30 years. And so it’s worth hearing what’s sparking for them because those are the kinds of movies and TV shows that we will be making the next couple decades.

**Craig:** I mean, inherently you are not jealous of the young, nor am I. I think a lot of older people get quietly subconsciously jealous of young people. But my feeling is that when we judge them, well, remember what it was like when we were judged by older people because in my memory my feelings were not hurt at all. I just kind of rolled my eyes and made fun of them because soon they were going to be dead and I was not. And they were old and out of it and not vital. And so my feeling is judging people who are younger and thinking that they “all they do, they’re obsessed with their influencers and their TikTok,” and you’re like you’re not having any impact on them. They’re laughing at you.

So, maybe just listen to them and observe them. What’s wrong with that?

**John:** Well, you can also ask advice. Which I think a lot of times older people have a hard time asking advice of younger people because it sort of reveals something that they don’t know. Well, the fact is you just don’t know some things, so again, be curious. Ask the questions. And don’t ask the questions in a way that feels judgmental like, “Why are you doing it this crazy, stupid way?” It’s like what is it that’s interesting to you about this thing, or why did you decide to make that choice? Again, when you get to move into new fields that’s very natural because you just actually just don’t know. And so you’re in a much better position to ask kind of naïve questions because you don’t know what that thing is versus us as screenwriters we have a good sense of sort of like how all the stuff fits together.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That said, when I talked with a writer – Liz Hannah who just did a movie for Netflix, I am genuinely curious about what the experience is like making a movie for Netflix. What are the deliverables like on that movie? Are they expecting the same things that we’d expect in a theatrical feature delivery system where they want – are they cutting negative? Are they doing all the stuff that we used to do for normal, traditional features? Or is it more like a TV delivery system?

So ask those questions and realize that like the different kinds of things people are making these days are more likely the future than sort of what we knew.

**Craig:** Well, the things around us that happen that we can lose touch with in a dangerous way are not just the kinds of things that I guess the different experiences that younger people are having, but also the general viewpoint of the world. Attitudes change. And it’s very hard for us to keep up with it. It really is. I understand that.

And I remember a friend once told me like – he was like I’m going to keep listening to whatever the pop music station is, like the current hits station, because I never want to be one of the old people that doesn’t know current music. But inevitably you will be. It’s not possible, right? There are some things that are going to leave you behind. But general attitudes and vibes and feelings are things you need to be in touch with. Because what was once funny may not be anymore. Things like funny and dramatic and scary and shocking are not absolute values. They are relative to the time in which you live. And if you’re not paying attention to the kinds of things that are shocking people or making them laugh you’re going to flop because you’re out of touch and out of time.

**John:** Let’s talk about authenticity, because one of the things I see which can be kind of embarrassing is when an older person is trying to seem younger than they are and is not acknowledging the fact that they are in a different generation than people they’re talking to.

**Craig:** Hello fellow kids.

**John:** So language is one where they’re trying to use slang and they’re using it improperly. That’s sort of a tell. And it’s not just that it’s embarrassing that they’re using it wrong. It’s that it’s clear that they’re not being authentic to who they are. I think one of the reasons why young people spark so clearly to Bernie Sanders is he feels very much himself. And that is true of any generation. When we were in our 20s we didn’t want the old person who was trying to be like us. We wanted the old person who felt like themselves. And so don’t reach too far in terms of your own voice trying to sound young.

In terms of your writing voice, though, you are going to be writing characters of all different ages, all different backgrounds. And you have to be listening for sort of how those things sound so that your character’s voices don’t drift away.

So our example in last week’s episode where we were listening to how people speak, that’s I think even more important as you age into your career because your assumptions, your memory of what twenty-somethings sounded like is not going to match how twenty-somethings sound right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then we kind of come to our last point which is just language. Just the realities of language. Because you’re right. There is something terribly inauthentic about someone who is chasing language. They will always be five steps behind anyway. They will always be your dad walking in saying, “Oh, chill out. Oh wow, this is fresh.” Shut up, dad. Right?

That’s so old and lame. And it’s faster now. So whatever is cool five seconds will not be cool five seconds from now because that’s what youth is. It’s a churn. So, don’t chase it, but do let yourself be carried along by it. Be aware of it. And let yourself be old authentically without either chasing something, which is inauthentic, or denying the reality of it, which is just as terrible.

Just be aware of the way that the world is changing and be aware of the way you’re changing. And if you are those things and you are willing and open to evolving then it doesn’t really matter how old you get. I mean, you’ll just be cool. Dr. Ruth Westheimer is 4,000 years old.

**John:** Good lord, yes.

**Craig:** And she’s cool.

**John:** Yeah, she’s a lich, but she’s really cool.

**Craig:** She is a lich.

**John:** There’s a [unintelligible] hidden away someplace.

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s a lawful good lich. Very rare. Very rare.

**John:** But special when you find them.

**Craig:** She’s a lich. [laughs]

**John:** Let’s talk about some advantages of age, because a thing I have found over time is we’ve talked about how with mastery some things that used to be really difficult for me are actually very simple for me. And I can sort of figure out narrative problems way in advance just from the experience. But a thing in terms of a career that I’ve been able to take with me and hopefully share is that you have a memory of what’s been done before and sort of where things used to be. And people who are new to the industry won’t have that. And so that’s not like everything should be the way it always was, but pointing out what’s been lost or what’s changed where people new to an industry might not know.

So to me an important thing to always point out is that residuals used to be kind of great and they used to actually be worth something. And someone who is starting in the business right now might not be aware of that. And so I think sometimes as an older person you need to make sure people know what has happened before, what you fought for, what you got. The way things used to be just so that people acknowledge that things could go back to a better place, or to a worse place if you’re trying to avoid bad things that happened before.

**Craig:** Yep. And similarly it’s really good to listen to those people when they tell you what actually – what the boots on the ground reality is for them. Because I remember when we were starting out in the union like the obsession was over DVD residuals. And I didn’t feel really that connected to that. Didn’t have many DVDs out there. And soon enough those went away. So, it’s a two-way street. But there is a beautiful thing that comes with time and that is the release of pressure to define who you are and become a thing.

**John:** True.

**Craig:** We are who we are. There is no confusion anymore about who either one of us is. And at least in our own minds we’ve accomplished enough where we don’t feel like everything is a test of our worth and every problem is an existential crisis. You do get to relax, which, you know, you have more work than ever in these days, but you can psychologically relax because not everything is a kind of a life and death moment where it can all be taken away.

**John:** Yeah. So some of that is economic security, but I would say even when I was in my 30s and doing really well there was still that sort of career insecurity, that artistic insecurity, like you know the imposter syndrome. And I think you and I have both moved past our imposter syndrome, which is lovely, but with that wisdom you want to make sure you don’t just become settled into a rut. Now that you know who you are you’re unwilling to change or unwilling to grow or unwilling to adapt into the next good thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, David Zucker always used to say, “Beware the day that they give you the lifetime achievement award.”

**John:** Lifetime achievement. Yeah.

**Craig:** “It means you’re done.” They don’t give that to you if you’re still like rolling like kind of hard. I mean, they do. And every time I say rolling my daughter looks at me like, “Don’t say rolling, dad. It’s a whole other thing.” And I’m like, oh yeah, that’s right, that’s right, I’m sorry. But I guess the nice thing is that – I don’t know what I was saying, so you can just – Matthew, I apologize. I’m old. [laughs] My mind just wanders. In fact, don’t edit that out. I think that’s important for people to know.

**John:** All right. Well, we talked about sort of growing old as a writer, let’s move all the way back to the start of your career. Let’s talk about your first general meetings. So this is a suggestion from Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Craig:** Who?

**John:** Aline has been listening back to the early episodes of the show, which apparently exist Craig.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** Yes. Goldfish Craig.

**Craig:** There’s more of these?

**John:** There’s more of these. So she’s been back listening to the first season where we talk about stuff. And she says it’s still good, but we’re much less comfortable in our podcasting voices in those early episodes.

**Craig:** Well, that’s good. Amnesia Craig is startled by all of this.

**John:** So, I want to talk through the experience of your first general meeting. So a general meeting as we’ve talked about before on the show, we often describe the water bottle tour of Los Angeles where you go in, you meet with an executive, and you talk about stuff. And we’ve described them in a very general sense, but we haven’t given any real practical advice for sort of what you do on those general meetings, so this is going to be a little sort of step by step thinking about a general meeting.

So, Craig, I would like you to pretend that you are a screenwriter with no produced credits. You have a manager and they have scheduled a meeting with an executive on the Paramount lot. And now let’s walk through what you do to prepare for this general meeting with an executive on the Paramount lot.

Think back like a day or two before, what kind of stuff is on your mind as you’re preparing for this meeting?

**Craig:** So there’s two ways. There’s the modern way and then there’s the old school way. I would strongly recommend a combination of the two. The first thing is to just figure out, OK, who is this person. Ideally what do they look like? Very important, what have they done? So in the old way what would happen is you would talk to your manager and say describe the person to me. Paint me a visual picture because there is no Internet. And what have they worked on that I need to know about? The new way is to just Google. The problem with just Googling is you don’t get that insight from a person who says, “They are very intellectual. You might find them cold, but they’re not cold. That’s just the way they are.” Or, “this person is a militant vegan, so maybe don’t tell the story about how you won the rib-eating contest.” All of that is important.

The most important kind of research is to find out what it is they’ve done so that you don’t walk in there and say in the midst of a great conversation how much you hated this thing that it turns out they produced.

**John:** Absolutely. And that’s so much easier to research now. So just spend your 20 minutes Googling. Figure out what they’ve worked on and what they’re working on just so you have some guardrails around it. But I agree with Craig that you do need to talk to your manager, whoever set up the meeting, just so you know why are you meeting with them. What is the purpose of this meeting? What are the possibilities in this meeting? So you can go in there with some knowledge. It’s just not a complete blind date there.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Also, figure out where the meeting is because Los Angeles is giant, and sometimes you could get scheduled in meetings that are much further away than you think they are. So just knowing where the meeting is in relation to where you live is very important.

**Craig:** And this is something that is much easier to do now than you and I–

**John:** Yeah. Google Maps.

**Craig:** So you and I in our early days would have to figure out where a place was if you had never been there. We’d pull out our trusty old Thomas Guide. We’d look at it and then we’d freaking guess. How should I get there? And, man, sometimes you guess wrong.

**John:** I remember going to a general meeting. I showed up 40 minutes late.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** It was horribly embarrassing. But that’s as fast as I could get there.

**Craig:** Went the wrong way. There were two ways to go, and the way I went a car smashed into a tree and that’s that. And also I didn’t have a phone, so there’s no way for me to tell you. That happened all the time. Now we have Waze. We have Google Maps. There’s all sorts of ways to arrive on time. Do try and get there early. Of course you don’t want to be sitting there for 20 minutes, but try and time it. Worst comes to worst, just hang out outside the lot parked on the side street or something and then go in when you need to go in.

**John:** Absolutely. So we got to the day of the meeting. So let’s talk about confirming meetings because this is a thing that I don’t know happens in other industries, but it’s pretty important in Hollywood. So, a meeting gets scheduled but a meeting is then confirmed, which is usually the night before or the day of if it’s like an afternoon meeting. Basically everyone gets kind of an out, especially executives, because they get pulled into other stuff. So, generally you don’t could on a meeting happening unless it’s confirmed the night before or the morning of.

If a manager set it up, generally the manager’s assistant will confirm the meeting. If you have an assistant they will confirm the meeting. Sometimes you will actually call and confirm with that assistant. But it’s a good idea to confirm, especially if the meeting has been made like two weeks in advance.

**Craig:** Right. That said, if you don’t hear from anyone, presume it’s confirmed.

**John:** Go.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Aline wants us to talk about clothes. And so let’s talk about it. I will say dress appropriately. And that is such generic advice, but I don’t want to be so specific that it precludes one way of dressing or not. So I would say I would never wear a tie to one of these things, and yet sometimes people dress really cool and that’s part of their look. And so I would say kind of dress your look is a useful way to think about it. Dress the way that a writer who they’re meeting with should dress, if that makes sense.

**Craig:** Well, the garb of the artist is wide ranging. Johan Renck would show up at all of these award shows in the strangest outfits. Sometimes I don’t even know if he was wearing a shirt. He always had some strange hat on. Many rings. He’s like a pirate director. And he’s awesome. And that’s cool, because that’s the way he is.

My feeling about clothing is this. If you in the meeting are an impressive human being, if you say and think things that they like, then your clothes, whatever they are, are going to be cool. And if you don’t, then they’re going to be awful. That’s the way it goes. If you are dressed gorgeously and you say dumb things, they’re going to be like, ugh, like I guess all this person does is shop, because they’re stupid. And if you dress like a slob and you’re brilliant they’re going to go, oh my god, the bohemian Mozart. That’s the way our minds – in the end as writers the value that we’re bringing ultimately is what we’re saying and thinking. And the rest kind of goes along with it.

The one thing you don’t want to ever be is unhygienic. That’s just a zero for everybody.

**John:** Agreed. All right. So now you are arriving at the studio. So, first we’re going to say this is Paramount. Let’s talk about the process of actually getting on the lot, because I remember the first time I did this I was a little unnerved. And so you’re driving up to the gate, so generally they’ll tell you which gate you’re going onto for the studio. It’s usually the same, but sometimes they will send you in different ways, so do look at the email about which gate they want you to go in.

There you’ll stop at the guard gate. You will show them photo ID. This happened 9-11 that they asked for photo ID of everyone going onto a lot. Now, Craig, do you remember like before 9-11 often you’d have to stop to leave a lot, and basically they might search your car, but they wouldn’t stop you on the way in? Do you remember back in those days?

**Craig:** I don’t remember ever not being stopped on the way in.

**John:** I guess that’s not true. I guess I was stopped on the way in, but I was always stopped on the way out. And now they just seem to be happy to let you just leave.

**Craig:** Fox will still ask you to show the pass. So, save your pass, because it changes from studio to studio. And it’s pretty rare that a studio will require you to show the pass that they gave you to get in to get out. But don’t chuck it. I’ve made that mistake. And then in Fox in particular on your way out there’s nobody manning it, you just have to scan it, so that it knows that you’ve left. And if you’ve chucked it then, you know, basically people behind you are going to get annoyed.

**John:** Let’s talk about the pass. So generally on a studio lot there actually are two passes. So there’s one pass which is for you as a person, and there’s one for your car. So the one for your car stays on your dashboard, or sometimes they’ll tape it in your window. Sometimes that will have a parking space assigned to it. But there will be one that you carry around. At Disney they want you to clip this little thing on your belt, on your shirt. It’s a hassle. Other places won’t make you do that. But you will have some piece of paper that indicates that you are supposed to be on that lot and also that your car is supposed to be on that lot. So, both are important.

**Craig:** I don’t clip the thing at Disney. I hold it. And then I put it in my pocket.

**John:** I hold it, too.

**Craig:** You just need to get past the guy at Team Disney and then you’re like here’s my thing and he goes, “Go there,” and then I just shove it in my pocket. I’m done.

**John:** Craig just said Team Disney. So Team Disney is the big dwarf building on the Disney lot.

**Craig:** Oxymoron.

**John:** Yeah. The big dwarf building. It’s the building with the dwarfs holding up the roof. It is designed by I think Venturi. He’s a famous architect. It is really a kind of dumb building.

**Craig:** It’s a shame. It is beautiful.

**John:** It is beautiful. But it has this useless interior courtyard.

**Craig:** Massively useless.

**John:** It’s dark and weird.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the office layout, I mean, no one who has ever worked in it has said, “Awesome.” It is definitely a challenging building to work in. As opposed to the old animation building which is where they put all the producers and all their suites which is really cool because it’s like this old art deco – ‘30s?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Something like that. ‘40s?

**John:** It’s cool.

**Craig:** It’s just a cool building. I like an old building. Anyway, each studio will have its own kind of thing. Figuring out where you’re going is sometimes difficult. It depends on the lot. Some lots are pretty easy. For instance Disney, you’re usually going to one of two places – Team Disney, or the old animation building. That’s where the people are that you meet. Paramount, usually you’re going to that one building where all the executives are.

**John:** The executives building.

**Craig:** But god help you if you’re going to Universal or Fox or Sony where stuff is scattered around across 400 different buildings. And they give you a map with tiny little numbers on them. The numbers are not in sequence. I remember the first lot I was ever on was Fox. And I was like why are these numbers like this. First of all, where is number three? And why is 88 next to 120 next to 46? Who did this?

**John:** A mad man did this.

**Craig:** A mad man did it. So, take a little moment to see if there’s a studio map online. See which building you’re going to and actually figure out your walking route from where you’re going to be parking if at all possible.

**John:** So, back in the day when you drove up to the guard gate they’d say, “Who are you meeting with?” And then they would call that person and there’d be a whole system for that. That happens less often now because they just scan your license and they see, OK, this person is in the system. They have a meeting. So they’re not asking you those questions anymore. But they will still ask like do you know where you’re going. And the best response is generally, “No, I don’t.” And so they will take a moment and actually pull out the little map and highlight where it is that you’re supposed to be going. Because that’s really helpful on a big lot.

Now, we should also say that you’re just as likely to have a meeting at Netflix, and Craig have you met at Netflix yet?

**Craig:** No. I’m not allowed to. [laughs]

**John:** I get it. The HBO deal.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So Netflix the process is very, very different. There is still a guard gate you go through. But then you pull into this garage, you give the keys to the valet. Some places have valet. We should talk about valets in a second. But then you go into this giant sort of open area courtyard thing, interior courtyard, and sign in at the front desk, or check in at the front desk. And then it’s just – it’s like the school cafeteria in a way. There literally is food that you can help yourself to. But you see everybody you kind of know. Other actors and writers and directors. And everyone waits down in the main area until your executive comes and gets you and takes you up to your place. So it’s a very different experience.

Generally on most studio lots you go directly to the executive’s office, or at least to the lobby of that executive building. Here at Netflix you wait downstairs until they come get you. And generally they won’t take you to their office, because their offices are tiny. They will take you to some meeting room where you have your small meeting.

**Craig:** And this is probably the way of the future because these companies don’t require large real estate and sound stages. These things are just rented as needed. I mean, HBO for instance is pretty similar in that regard to Netflix. I mean, you pull into a garage. There’s a valet. You go up to HBO. You check in. You wait in the waiting room. It’s like the nicest doctor’s office waiting room. And then someone comes and gets you. And you walk through the rabbit warren of HBO offices. I mean, let me explain for anyone who has not been. Have you ever been to HBO?

**John:** I’ve never been inside HBO, no.

**Craig:** So they’re going to be moving I’m pretty sure. That’s at least what I thought. But the existing offices at HBO, if you bring me to an office there and then walk away, close my eyes and turn me around three times, I will die there. I will never get out. It’s really a maze.

**John:** Netflix has the kind of elevators where if you’re calling an elevator you tell what floor you’re going to, rather than up or down. And so then you have to wait and see which elevator – they’ll show you which elevator you’re supposed to get into.

**Craig:** Fancy.

**John:** Fancy.

**Craig:** So fancy. So there are places that have valet and places that don’t have valet. Places that have valet, let me run it down real quick. Paramount. Not Fox. Sony.

**John:** Sony has it.

**Craig:** Definitely. Not Universal. Not Disney. Warner Bros.

**John:** Warners does it.

**Craig:** I think that’s it, right?

**John:** Yeah. Warners sometimes it depends on where you’re going to at Warners. But, yes, they have a valet. So let’s talk about sort of protocol with valet, which is a little bit different on studio lots than sort of at a restaurant. You go up, you tell them – I often say how long I’m going to be because that will influence where they want me to park, or where they’re going to park my car. If it is a short meeting I may just ask is it OK if I park myself, because sometimes it is OK if you park yourself. Or they’ll steer you to a space.

The issue of whether to tip or not to tip is complicated and based on the lot. Sometimes there will be a sign which will make it really clear that you’re not supposed to tip. When there’s not a sign I do tip. I tip a couple bucks. Craig, what do you do?

**Craig:** Yeah. I do tip but it’s always – I never quite know. It’s a weird thing. Because the thing about tipping is if you don’t tip you might feel like you’ve done something wrong and insulted this person. Then in that situation sometimes I think if I do tip am I insulting them? Like they need a tip because they’re not being paid by the studio? Because at a restaurant you know they don’t pay those guys anything. It’s all tips, right? But I don’t know how it works at a studio. I can’t imagine that a studio is treating them like that. Although come to think of it, they probably are.

**John:** [laughs] Talk about assistant pay, so just imagine what the valet pay is.

**Craig:** That’s a great point actually. So, in any case I’ll usually do five bucks. These days by the way I’ve had one of those moments where I’m like I’m adjusting all tips upward. There’s a general sense of what tips are. So, probably I would go to ten at this point.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** Because, you know, honestly, it relates back to our “we’re getting older” thing. Like as there’s less and less life, you know, it’s like spend more. And I like spending money on human beings. I do. It makes me feel good more than other stuff. And at some point I’m not going to get to the end of my life and go thank god I didn’t tip more. I just – I’m not gonna.

**John:** Quickly let’s say that sometimes you’re having a meeting at a place that is not at a studio and where it is just an office someplace. That’s fine and great, too. Figure out where you can park. If you’re going to be at a meter pay for much more time than you think you’re going to need because you don’t know if the meeting is going to run long. You don’t want to be antsy to get out of your meeting because your meter is about to expire.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** That’s not a good look at all.

**Craig:** Frankly, if your meter is going to expire just shut up and take the ticket. Just take the ticket, because whatever. So it’s going to be $50. Unless you are really, really scraping for dough – honestly – and by the way call your manager and tell them, listen, I would have thought you would have wanted me to stay in there. I can’t afford this. I need $50. I mean, literally. It’s just a weird thing. Because the problem is once you get up at that point to say, “Oh, you know what? I’m just going to run outside and feed the meter.” They’ll be like, “No, no, no, you know what…”

**John:** Oh, the meeting is over.

**Craig:** “Yeah, no, we’ve been here long enough.” And then you’ll get a ticket anyway. [laughs] And it will be over.

**John:** So you’ve arrived at this executive’s office. Generally there will be an assistant or somebody in the lobby who says, “Can I get you something?” And by get you something they mean a drink. That’s all they mean is a drink. The appropriate choices are water, coffee, Diet Coke, or I’m all good. Craig, would you add anything to that list?

**Craig:** Prime rib.

**John:** Prime rib. I want some prime rib.

**Craig:** I would love a plate – by the way, prime rib horrifies me. I don’t know, like people get so excited by it. And I look at it and I just want to barf. It doesn’t look like anyone has cooked anything with prime rib. I don’t know what the prime means. Prime barf material.

**John:** I’ve not had beef in 30 years, so I wouldn’t know.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Well, you’re missing nothing on the prime rib. Yeah, it’s water, coffee, tea, or Diet Coke. And generally speaking over time I’ve defaulted to, “Nope, I’m good,” because if I drink stuff in the meeting I’m just going to have to pee. And I don’t want to pee.

**John:** I generally bring my Arlo Finch water bottle with me to everything. So, I just have my water bottle and therefore I’m all good.

**Craig:** Advertising.

**John:** Advertising. While you’re waiting for the meeting to start, it’s worth studying the outer office. It’ll give you some sense of the vibe. The posters they have on the wall for the movies they’ve made could be useful. Obviously you’ve done your research beforehand, but just get a sense of the vibe. Also, if the assistant is talking with you, talk with the assistant. That assistant is probably very much in the same spot that you are. Try to learn that assistant’s name. That may be a person that you’re emailing back and forth with in the future. That person will probably end up running the studio at some point, so it’s good to be friendly with those assistants.

**Craig:** For sure. Treat them well. Especially if you’re starting out and you’re young, they’re looking at you thinking why am I not there? Why are you not in my seat and why am I not in your seat? So, treat them well because sooner or later they will be where you’re standing and it’s good to just – you know, talk to them like they’re humans. Notice that they’re alive. It will make a huge difference to them. And it is human decency. I mean, we don’t really deserve points for doing what we’re supposed to do. But do what you’re supposed to do.

**John:** Agreed. So, you finally made it through the door. You are in the meeting. Craig, talk us through the protocol of that first minute or two the meeting.

**Craig:** Usually it’s going to be about the person that you’re meeting with saying, “So, yeah, I came across,” they’re going to basically give you a quick log line of why you’re there at all. They’ve seen something of yours, read something of yours. They talked to your manager. You have a mutual friend. Whatever it is, there is some reason they agreed to this. And so that’s kind of the intro. Very quickly it will turn into where’d you grow up, where’d you go to school, how long have been doing this, how did you get started here. “Let me tell you a little bit about what we do here” is a very common thing. They will explain.

And I always laugh. It’s a little bit like when you go to a restaurant and the waiter says, “Have you eaten with us before?” Ugh, no, but go ahead.

**John:** It’s tapas, which are small plates.

**Craig:** Oh god. Because literally if they don’t say – right. So, here what we do is we load the food into a cannon and we fire it into your face. If they don’t say that, I’m like, guys, I mean, yeah. OK. Just say we’re small plates, family style, small to large on the menu, whatever it is. But it’s that thing of like well let me explain a little bit of what we do here. And then they’re going to start talking. A lot of times this will be boring to you. Because what they’re not doing is telling you how specifically money is going to end up in your pocket, which is probably what you’re imagining or hoping for when you’re starting out at the very least. So you just have to kind of nod and be engaged and feign interest as best you can in how their production company came to be. And ask questions. You know, everybody likes to be shown interest in.

**John:** Agreed. So in that first minute you are really trying to establish some pattern of mutual interest. I really liked that thing you made that just came out. I have that same – you’re trying to find areas of commonality just to sort of ground you a little bit. But it’s important to remember it’s not an audition. It’s not a job interview. It’s not a first date. It is really more imagine you have a mutual friend who said like you two should get together and talk. It’s sort of that vibe.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so there’s a transactional quality to it. You’re both looking for how you can help each other. And in that listening that Craig describes, I actually find that really useful because people will stake out a very general area of kind of the things they’re looking at, and more importantly the things they’re not looking for. So when I moved over to Verve I went out on a bunch of general meetings for places that I just had never met before. And so I met at Working Title. And so I thought I had an idea of what a Working Title movie was, and I was basically right, but even within the Working Title framework I got a much better sense of like, OK, they’re very much looking for this kind of thing.

I met at Tristar and Tristar was a different mandate than what it was when I was a reader at Tristar, definitely. So, I got to hear what they’re looking for. I had a meeting at Monkey Paw and it’s a really specific mandate of the kinds of things they’re trying to do.

I had a meeting a studio and they said, “We’re looking for non-IP IP.” Which is like, OK, that’s weird.

**Craig:** Public domain stuff.

**John:** Public domain stuff. They want unicorns or Greek mythology. I’m like, oh, OK. So if I have things–

**Craig:** Why are they looking for it? It’s there. [laughs] It’s all there.

**John:** They want people to come in with non-IP IP basically.

**Craig:** I see.

**John:** Or they’re trying to develop things based on that stuff. So if you had a Medusa story that would be a place to do a Medusa story.

**Craig:** I do not.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But that is good. You’re getting a sense of what they want and you’re listening to them. Because it is kind of a two-way evaluation process, right? I mean, you may walk out of there, you don’t want to say it in the moment, but you may walk out of there thinking well I have no interest in doing non-IP IP. That’s not what I’m interested in right now. And then you know, OK, so I guess not them for now.

**John:** Yeah. So you’re also getting a vibe on like would I want to work with this person. And I would say trust your instincts there. If they give you a bad vibe, maybe you’re not going to really enjoy working there. So maybe that’s not the right place to take that pitch down the road or to–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, you won’t.

**John:** Or to go after that open writing assignment, because if you’re not going to be up for it that’s cool.

Now, let’s talk about open writing assignments because at some point in a meeting they may pull out a buck slip which is a narrow card that lists these are the things we’re looking to hire writers for. These are projects that are open for discussion. Listen to those. That’s great. But this is also an opportunity to talk, sort of pitch broad areas of things that you’re interested in. This is not your elevator pitch. This is not your sort of concise pitch. This is just I’ll often describe general areas. So if I wanted to say like I can be doing a lot of research on Outward Bound programs and I think there’s a real opportunity to do a horror movie centered around the Outward Bound experience.

That’s not a pitch, but it’s describing an area. And if what they told me was that they’re looking for horror movies and I pitched that back, I can see in the room are we on the same wavelength there. And if we are on the same wavelength then I could come back later in later on with an actual prepared pitch for it. But I’m just getting a sense of like is this the kind of thing that we should be talking about.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. It’s good to also listen in that list, if they pull out the buck slip and they give you their – be aware of two things. One, what you’re hearing are slightly distressed properties. So, first question is with whom am I meeting? If I am meeting the president of something, and they pull out that list, that’s a real list.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s real. If I’m meeting with anybody under that that list is their list. That is a list of stuff that they are in charge of. That they want to get going because it will move them up internally. It doesn’t mean that any of those things will ever actually get made at that company. That said, sometimes they do.

When you hear that list, if you do spark to something engage on it. Just start talking about it. What will happen is they will hear in you maybe the ability to be smart. It’s really what they’re – oh, this person said a lot of smart things. They’re smart. My boss will literally never let me make this movie, but now I have a writer who I know is smart, who if I vouch for for something else will not embarrass me.

To that extent, when you are in there with these people if there is some way – if you’re vibing, right. If they’re NG, then beat it, it’s never going to happen. But if you’re vibing with them try and have some way to express that you were excited to be there in the first place. That you didn’t drag yourself there because your manager said go here, go here, go here, meet a person, go home. You wanted to meet them. You were interested in them because of A, B, or C.

It will make them feel like this isn’t just one of those things you have to slog through, yet another reminder that they are not in charge and have to take general meetings with the likes of you.

**John:** Craig, what is your opinion of giving them your email address or getting their email address? Do you do that after a good general meeting?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I just assume that if they want my email address then they can get it from my lawyer. If you have a manager, they’ll get it from your manager. If you are at one of the code of conduct agencies they can get it from your agent. So, yeah, no, of course. My feeling is that the privacy of contact information, talking about how you grow old in this business, that’s gone. There is no privacy of contact information. Everyone is contactable at every moment. The thought of withholding that would be I think the most offensive possible thing ever. No, you may not have my email address. Good day, sir.

**John:** Good day, sir. I would say that in this last year I’ve been much more forthright about just giving them my email address and say you can email me that directly. So I’m not trying to cut my reps out of it, but basically saying you don’t have to go through the reps for every little thing anymore. And that we have a relationship that is independent of my relationship through Verve or through my attorney. Just because if it’s somebody I actually do spark with and think like, oh you know what, actually I could see myself working with her on projects, just emailing directly is nice. And also if I have the email I can do the etiquette thing of following up and saying like, “Hey, I really enjoyed meeting with you about this thing, or, “we talked about this thing, I’d love to come in and talk with you more about that.”

I traditionally did not do those follow up kind of emails because I didn’t have those emails. And now I tend to do them.

**Craig:** For whatever reason I have always been someone that everyone thought they should just talk to directly. I have actually bemoaned this. Like I would say sometimes why – is this really – people just call me directly, even about stuff that isn’t great. They’ll just call directly and I’m like shouldn’t you be talking to someone? [sighs] Never mind. Never mind.

**John:** Never mind.

**Craig:** Never mind.

**John:** Craig, I have this new invention. So, let me pitch this for you. So it’s a bell that you have in your house and it has a nine-digit number, I’m thinking maybe a 10-digit number. And anybody with that 10-digit number can make that bell ring at any time. Would that be good?

**Craig:** Yeah, I would be OK with that.

**John:** I mean, the idea that we have phones is crazy. The idea that any stranger can call me on the phone at any point. So that’s why I kind of don’t answer my phone anymore. Like I’ll answer it if you were to call.

**Craig:** Well, we don’t answer when somebody we don’t – so, every phone call was a roll of the dice. And now none are. The worst comes to worst is you get a number, it’s unknown number, or from some town you don’t know because somebody moved out here and didn’t change their number. And then they leave a voicemail and you go, oh, that was that person. Let me add them to my contacts. That won’t happen again. That’s it basically. But, yeah, we always know who is calling.

**John:** Wrapping up the general meeting discussion, I want to say that my first 10 to 15 general meetings were kind of terrible. I was not good at general meetings. It took a while to get used to them.

**Craig:** Define terrible.

**John:** Take our advice–

**Craig:** Like what would happen?

**John:** They weren’t productive. I wasn’t getting to the next stage after them. I was awkward in them.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** I didn’t feel comfortable about it. I wasn’t comfortable sort of in my writer-self skin. But I did get a lot better with practice. And so I would say take our advice, but also don’t be hard on yourself if you find it weird and sort of uncomfortable being in those meetings, especially at the start, because it is a weird thing to be doing.

**Craig:** And as it happens this is one of the few jobs where you can actually be weird and awkward. It’s just that you have to be that much better at your job. But you are allowed to be weird and awkward. You know, some of the greatest screenwriters out there are weird and awkward. And what happens is the executives will go, “Yeah, I’m working with so and so.” “Oh my god, he’s a genius.” “I know. He’s weird. God, he’s weird.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “But he’s a genius so it’s OK.” Or like, “Oh yeah, she is kind of a shut in. Like she’s a recluse. She doesn’t actually leave her house. But the pages have been amazing.” So it’s actually kind of like the legend grows of this weirdo lady that’s pumping out these great scripts. They’ll do that all the time because this business loves a narrative. They love to characterize everybody. The danger zone is when you’re fine, and you’re also super boring, or awkward or weird in a room. That can be an issue.

**John:** In a future episode we’ll talk about the process of going in and meeting with a showrunner, like if you’re trying to get hired on a show. Some things will apply, but some things won’t apply. So we’ll try to get a really good showrunner on to talk about those meetings as well.

**Craig:** Sounds like a good idea.

**John:** Let’s answer some questions. Craig, do you want to take Zack’s question?

**Craig:** Yeah, Zack asks, “I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions on character mannerisms, specifically on the best way to go about formatting them. For example, if a character has a nervous tick of laughing to relieve inner anxiety,” huh, I think I’ve seen a movie with that, “should you write, ha-ha, or parenthesis chuckles in the dialogue, or parenthesis every time it comes up? Another example would be a physical tick like an eye twitch, more than just a normal occurrence, something that is psychological or neurological. I’ve recently seen this done in a script when the character is introduced as, ‘Note, Eric nervously chuckles throughout the script when nervous or feels out of place in social situations.’ But I feel like readers will forget something like this with everything else they’re supposed to be paying attention to, especially closer to the end of the script when the introduction was back on page one. Any thoughts?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** I think it’s a really good question and honestly a difficult thing to make a blanket statement for. But what Zack is pointing towards is that the experience of watching the movie, we’re going to see all this nervous behavior, we’re going to see these ticks, we’re going to see these mannerisms. But on the page it’s so easy to miss them and to forget them, especially if he said it on page one and he didn’t say it again. So, I think you’re going to have to remind us over the course of the script that you’re doing it. But I wouldn’t do it a parenthesis kind of thing every time it happens. And I wouldn’t try to call it out in action every time. I would find reasons why what he’s doing is either noticeable to other characters or if he’s alone in the scene that his nervous behavior or whatever that mannerism is is worth calling out in the action because it is the main thing that we’re seeing at this moment.

Craig, what would you do?

**Craig:** I agree with you. I think the first time you experience this it’s important to describe it in action and to describe it in a way that is connected to character. So it’s not simply he chuckles when nervous. I can’t think of a more boring way to describe a very complicated thing. In the moment let us experience it as it happens for the first time. Let us feel like the other people in the room who are confused. Is he laughing at us? Is he laughing at that character? Is this just covering something up? We can tell something from his eyes that he has no control over this.

And then throughout that scene he laughs, he laughs again. Show other people reacting. Make a meal of it the first time it happens. Later in subsequent scenes you can say it’s happening again. Right? Like the laughing thing happens again, so that we understand how it’s happening. I would not do parenthesis. That would get very annoying. And I would certainly not just dump it in the beginning like some random boring note. That’s not how we paint human beings.

**John:** Yeah. So if a character had a larger physical thing that was important to call out at the start, certainly call this out. If a character uses a wheelchair we’ve got to know that. But we’re also going to hopefully see reasons why that is a factor in other story points along the way. And so it’s going to be a thing that is going to affect the story as it goes along.

Something that is more subtle like this or that has an influence on dialogue, yeah, look at your dialogue and see how it’s going to possibly impact that. But what Craig said about how other characters react to it is equally important to what the actual character itself is feeling about the mannerism.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s there for a reason. You can’t just dust it on an actor. It will be the first person to tell you how much am I doing this? Am I doing it every line? Am I loud? Am I quiet? What do other people hear and notice? So you cannot bullet point it. You have to bake it in.

**John:** All right. One more question. Rebecca asks, “I want to write a screenplay using improv through a Second City style approach. I come in with a detailed written outline of what each scene is. The actors improvise it in a rehearsal space. As the writer-director I offer feedback, then they improvise it again. The process repeats until each scene is set. If I go home and turn the exact dialogue they came up with into a shooting script are they still actors who improvised their lines, or have I basically turned the rehearsal room into a writing room and now everyone would need to be credited and paid as a writer?”

**Craig:** Oh, that’s a really good question. I got to be honest. I don’t know. I know that for instance the Larry David shows do work in this kind of script-provisational style. But there isn’t this thing where the outlines are written and then actors gather together. They perform like a stage play. Someone transcribes it. And then three days later they act it out. And repeat the things that they said. It’s rather on the day they improvise. Improvising on the day in front of cameras is not – so there is no transcript being made. There is a kind of freedom to just act on camera.

The writers of Curb Your Enthusiasm are the writers who wrote those outlines. And they usually have specific lines of dialogue that they need to get out. In this case I am concerned that if you’re just writing down all the things they said that it is a little – it’s like a roundtable kind of thing. I’m not quite sure.

**John:** Yeah. We can talk about sort of the actual WGA sort of legally kind of definitions of who is a writer and who is not a writer. I would say, Rebecca, you are the writer because you are making ultimately the editorial decisions about what is being written on that page. And you’re actually creating a script that reflects this thing. So if your rehearsal process is getting you to that point, OK. What I would stress is that all of your actors need to come into this with a clear understanding and maybe even sort of write down in the contract saying this is how we are doing this. And you won’t be credited as a writer but we will acknowledge that you contributed to the storytelling.

I mean, an option might be to sort of give story credit, to share story credit with all these people who are doing the thing.

**Craig:** I don’t know. It’s really messy. Because if you go through these rehearsals and one person is just awful, except for this one brilliant line, so you replace them as an actor but you keep their line? It’s weird. I’m not quite sure how – I’m sure this has been done many different ways. The part that’s a little nerve-wracking for me is that there is no script to begin with. There’s just an outline. So if there were a script to begin with and then you go into rehearsals with actors, I mean, we all do this. We listen. We watch. Things come out. You then go back and put those in the script because they work and they feel good. But that’s different. These people are creating all of the dialogue. So, I’m not sure. The answer Rebecca is I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t know. But going back to our growing old discussion, this is a way of working. And so there are other filmmakers in the past who have done this. There are many filmmakers in the future who will do this. So you are going into some ground that has been tilled but there’s not a set pattern for how this is supposed to work. So, just try to be respectful of the patterns you’re trying to set here.

**Craig:** That makes absolute sense to me.

**John:** All right. It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a book by Mark Miodownik called Stuff Matters. He is a material scientist. He is a person who studies how we make things, things of metal, things of plastic. I thought it was actually just a great exploration of sort of how the modern world sort of makes our stuff. Craig, for example, if you are eating with a fork why are you not tasting the metal of that fork? Because you know what iron tastes like. Why are you not tasting it when you eat with a fork?

**Craig:** Uh, I don’t know. [laughs]

**John:** So stainless steel is this remarkable substance that they’ve been able to make which shoves extra atoms of other things in there. And when you scratch stainless steel it reacts with oxygen to form a coating around it. So you are never actually touching the metal of the fork. You are touching the outside coating of it. And it’s a self-healing kind of coating.

So, if you enjoy any of the physical sciences or sort of like it ties into recycling and how we make things that we make today, I thought it was y really great. It even gets into chocolate and how we’re able to take this weird being which is not useful at all and turn it into chocolate which is delicious.

**Craig:** Chocolate is delicious. That sounds terrific. My One Cool Thing this week I have not yet had a chance to use but I picked this up, I think this was written about in Wired. It’s a website called DoNotPay. And there’s a bunch of things that it does, but the thing that I’m kind of most curious about is what they call Robo Revenge. The idea is you get a phone call and maybe you’ve been getting a lot of robo calls, spam calls from a particular number or service and you’re tired of it. And presumably you have registered for the National Do Not Call Registry, which no one seems to pay attention to.

So, the idea here is that you see that call and you’re like, oh, here we go. And you’re like in the movies when you’re going to trace someone’s call. You answer the call and you also at the same time click on the DoNotPay website. And there’s a very easy way, literally one click button that creates a credit card. And you say, great, I’m totally into that. Let me give you my credit card information. And you give them the credit card number, expiration date, and security code and zip code that have been generated by this website. It will go through on their end. It will not ever send them funds, of course. But it will go through as an actual card.

What then DoNotPay does is they get the number of the vendor, because it comes through to their information, and they go, ah-ha, and then they call them and go, surprise, Mother-F-er. You just violated the Do Not Call Registry. We are sending you a demand letter for compensation. Also you can never call that person again.

I mean, it sounds pretty great. Will I ever be in the right place and time to make it work? God, I would love to.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** DoNotPay.

**John:** DoNotPay.

**Craig:** DoNotPay.

**John:** All right. Stick around after the credits because we will be talking about Craig’s turn as an actor on the show Mythic Quest. But for now that’s our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is also by Matthew. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today. But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. You’ll see the transcripts there. We get them up about four days after the episode airs.

You can sign up to become a Premium member of Scriptnotes at Scriptnotes.net where you can get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re just about to do. Craig, thanks for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Craig, I have not watched all of Mythic Quest, but I have watched your debut on the TV show Mythic Quest. So, for folks who don’t know this is a new show created by Rob McElhenney and Megan Ganz and Charlie Day.

**Craig:** That is correct.

**John:** And it is set at a game development company. If you like Silicon Valley you will like it. If you like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia you will probably like it as well. I really enjoyed the episodes I’ve seen, but I did watch your debut which happens in episode five I believe.

**Craig:** Maybe? [laughs] I can’t remember. It was one of those.

**John:** Let’s take a listen to Craig’s debut on this television program.

[Clip plays]

**Craig:** Close the door. I can’t see with the glare on the screen.

Female Voice: Sorry, who are you?

**Craig:** I’m Lou. They brought me up from the third floor tester pool to replace some chick who quit or died or something.

Female Voice: Her name is Dana and you can’t replace her.

**Craig:** I’m sure she was a saint, god rest her soul. Anyway, I’m up her from now on.

Female Voice: OK. You know what? Let’s maybe not talk for the rest of the day. I’m kind of chomping at the bit to test out these new maps.

**Craig:** It’s actually champing.

Female Voice: Sorry, what?

**Craig:** You said chomping at the bit. It’s actually champing at the bit. Don’t worry about it. It’s a common mistake.

Female Voice: Great. Excellent.

[Clip ends]

**John:** Craig Mazin, tell us how you came to be an actor on this program.

**Craig:** This was a show that Rob and I had been talking about before I think he – not creatively – he expressed that he wanted to do this show. So I knew that it was kind of on his radar. And he and I had worked together briefly on another project just for a couple of weeks, but we were fast friends. He’s an awesome guy and he’s a very, very smart guy along with being talented and working in the hardest genre there is which is serialized situational comedy. And I believe It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the longest-running live action sitcom in history, in television history.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which is incredible. I mean, they should be in the Television – do we have a Television Hall of Fame?

**John:** We do.

**Craig:** Well they should be in it. And then when he actually did set up the show he said do you want to just come and consult, just be a consulting producer and hang in the room and just talk about the shape of the season and stuff for the first week or so. And I said, yeah, of course. And I did. And it’s a terrific room and I got to meet some awesome writers, including Megan Ganz and David Hornsby who are both outstanding at what they do and they’re kind of like the brain trust over there with Rob and Charlie. And also Ashly Burch who is the person acting in that scene with me.

**John:** OK. Great.

**Craig:** Who plays Rachel, one of the game testers. And I’m not exactly sure how this came about. It’s not like I was calling him up saying, “Can I please?” I wasn’t like Lucy going, “Desi, please let me be in the show.” But they did create a character who was a total dick. [laughs] And I don’t know why I came to mind. But I did. Rob had asked me to initially audition for the part of Brad, who is one of the major characters, which I was fairly certain I was never going to be. But it was fun to even audition. I had never done it before. I’ve been on the other side of the audition a billion times. I’d never actually done an audition. It was cool.

So, anyway, yeah. So I became Lou. And initially it was supposed to be I think just one episode. And I ended up in I think four maybe. Four of them. Usually with two lines. I’m like one of those two-line guys, which is fine by me. But that first day I had a lot. There’s a lot more than that because there was a part of Lou’s character that ultimately got cut for I think smart reasons, but it was like two pages of dialogue. It was brutal.

**John:** So, tell us about preparing for filming your role. And sort of how much did you know about Lou? How much were you just basing it on like, OK, this is me and I’m just doing a slightly – because it feels like a slightly more asshole-ish version of you.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so tell us about how you prepared for it.

**Craig:** Well, it was clearly a slightly more asshole-ish version of me and that was the whole point. So that part I wasn’t concerned about. Had that down. Preparing was, I mean, there are certain practical things. You have to go to a costume fitting and have wardrobe and hair take a look at you and pick out some things to wear. So there’s a little bit of a well what do you think, and here’s what we think. And then you end up with what it is, which is fine. And obviously I’m not a particularly picky guy being number 16 on the call sheet.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** So, yeah, so that was fine. And then you get the pages. You get them very late in the game and then, of course, they change them. So like I do have an appreciation for what it’s like to be an actor and learn your lines and then have them change them at the last minute and go, D’oh, but I already learned these. And so you memorize the day before. You memorize your lines. You work on them and you have to both memorize your lines and then also memorize the beginnings and ends of the other person’s lines at a minimum. I mean, ideally, you know, everything, so you can be reacting and responding in real time. And then knowing when to come in without feeling like you’re waiting.

You also have to be, I mean, the nice thing is because I’ve been around production a long time I also know the difference between when you’re both on camera as opposed to being individually on camera. And then really honestly the big part was not freaking thinking about it too much. Because I wanted to. I wanted to just, you know, run it a billion times and come up with the funniest way of doing things. And then you realize what am I doing? I’m doing the thing that I hate when actors do. Just shut up brain. Show up on the day. And just freaking do it. And less is more. And that’s that. You know?

**John:** Talk to me about your prop handling. So in the scene that we’re listening to you have popcorn. You’re matching is not perfect but also editorially it was probably the right choice to do sort of what they did. Were you thinking about like, oh shit, I have to eat all this popcorn as I’m doing this?

**Craig:** There was a bunch of things going on. There was actually a dog in the scene that you don’t see.

**John:** That’s a good choice.

**Craig:** Yes. So I was working with a dog. I was working with a bag of popcorn. Yeah, the dog in many ways was wild. That stuff just isn’t there. But you get pretty good, I mean, you get pretty good at repeating. No matter how good you are at consistency, if they want to make an editorial choice that is discontinuous because they don’t want to include the bit with the dog or something, there’s going to be a matching problem.

In the moment they’ll let you know if you picked it up with the wrong hand or something. There were a couple of times where I was like, wait, did I – especially after the first time you do something. Did I reach over this way with this hand or like that? And they let you know.

**John:** Let’s talk about it. So, it’s the script supervisor who lets you know. Correct?

**Craig:** Yes. Sometimes because in that particular space, it’s a very small space that we were in there in that little testing room, and so very few people can fit in there. It’s basically me and Ashly and then the camera folks and they’re shooting three cameras, so that’s a lot of camera people in there and cameras.

**John:** Is it a four wall set? Or is that just walls will fly out?

**Craig:** Those are walls that fly. But not too much. I believe the back wall flies. Well, you know what? I’m not sure now. I think it does. I think the back wall flies and that’s about it.

It’s tight. So that means that the script supervisor is not in there with you. So sometimes, especially if it we were already deep into and I was just curious about something I would ask the camera op because they’re watching the whole thing the whole time. And he’s like, oh yeah, you totally did it with that. But if he’s like, uh, then I would go, hey, can someone tell me. And so as an actor you’re actually talking more with the camera operator and the script supervisor than with the director. Unless the director is really unhappy with what you’re doing. But mostly I mean–

**John:** You’re checking in with the folks who are sort of helping you get your stuff. Did hair and makeup come in and pat you down and touch you at times when it was uncomfortable?

**Craig:** Not much. I mean, my hair and makeup is very simple. I get a little bit of a trim and then a little bit – they pat the makeup on so that as always the light isn’t beaming off my bald head. If you act they’re going to come in there with some sort of spray gun.

**John:** Oh yeah. 100%. Just put a matte finish on me.

**Craig:** It’s just shine is the problem. But, yeah, every now and then somebody would pop in there and be like blot-blot-blot. But that was about it. It’s not super fancy in that regard. And this is classic kind of television shooting where they’re doing seven, eight pages a day. So things are moving quickly.

**John:** So the scene we listened to, did that take a half an hour to shoot?

**Craig:** No, much longer. Because again there was a dog. [laughs] There was a dog.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** And they have to shoot – even with three cameras they’re doing multiple setups and a character is entering. Entrances and exits take time. So there were a couple of scenes later on where I’m entering. Those take time. There’s a scene where I’m catching up and going to an elevator. A scene where I stop into somebody else’s office. And for those things then it’s very much about the physicality of hitting your mark.

**John:** Let’s talk about marks because people might not know them. But on a set if a character needs to arrive at a place or is standing at a place there will be tape marks on the floor or some other way to indicate where that character is supposed to end up so that lighting and camera and everything is properly set up.

**Craig:** Yeah. The most important thing is focus. Because there isn’t some sort of auto focus for regular film and television cameras. You have to pull focus so that the focus is instantaneous. Auto focus takes time to adjust. You need instant focus all the time when you’re shooting. So the focus puller is adjusting the focus on the fly depending on the distance between you and the camera. So what they do is they say, OK, he is going to enter that door there, so that’s that focal distance. And he’s going to walk to this spot and stop. That’s your arrival. So, you start at that number and then as I move from A to B they move their thing and land on a number. And it generally works great, as long as I hit that number, that mark.

I had no problem with this. I don’t know why actors do. Because the thing is in your blocking rehearsal which is what you do at the very beginning that’s when you’re figuring out where you stop and stand. So the director will come in say I think you should enter this way and move to here. And I’m like, great, do you want me to go around this thing or this way. And she goes, oh great point, why don’t you come around this way and stop here. So then I do it a few times and I just have to remember where I stop.

**John:** Yeah. Do you remember how many steps it took you to get from one place to the other?

**Craig:** No, I just use a visual cue. I just go, OK, I’m going to roughly stop here. So how hard is that? [laughs] It’s not hard. That’s the one thing where – so much of acting did increase my regard and respect for what actual actors, I know I’m not a real actor, what real actors do. That was one thing where I lost respect. [laughs] I was just like if any actor on one of my sets misses their mark I’m going to be like, “Come on, it’s not hard.”

But one of the things I learned that very first day was how important it is to think of the person you’re acting with and to know whose scene it is, and in that case it was her scene. It’s clearly her perspective. So as a writer know whose perspective – don’t fall into the trap of thinking that I’m acting so it’s about me. And do whatever is needed for her so that she can get where she’s going and needs to go because she is an important character, she’s a main character. I am a little bit of garlic salt for the French fries.

**John:** Sounds good. Finally, last question, when did you shoot this? Because people know sort of your history with Chernobyl. So, were you already shooting Chernobyl when you shot this, because I have no sense of like when these episodes were actually filmed?

**Craig:** I believe that I was shooting this I think it was after Chernobyl, pretty sure it was Chernobyl was wrapped. Yeah, it had to be after Chernobyl wrapped. I was in Lithuania. But it was before we were done editing. So I think it was in, I think, I want to say it was in the fall of 2018. I think. Yeah. It’s been out there for a while. But it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And I am in season two. I know that, yeah, I do something bad. [laughs] But that’s all my character ever does is stuff that’s bad. So, anyway, yeah.

**John:** Cool. Craig, congrats.

**Craig:** Thanks man.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* Tuesday Feb 25th, John hosts Q&A with showrunner Sam Esmail to talk about Mr. Robot, Homecoming and other things. Click here for [tickets](https://www.wgfoundation.org/events/all/2020/2/25/showrunner-sessions-with-sam-esmail).
* Wednesday Feb 26th, Join John at Beyond Bars, a panel on potrayals of criminal justice on screen. Get your [ticket here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-bars-changing-the-narrative-on-criminal-justice-tickets-91710373195)
* [Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik](https://amzn.to/2SRKOGw)
* [DoNotPay](https://donotpay.com/web/robo-revenge)
* Watch Craig on [Mythic Quest](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/mythic-quest-ravens-banquet/umc.cmc.1nfdfd5zlk05fo1bwwetzldy3)!
* Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium [here](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

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