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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/pg13-blood-boobs-and-bullcrap).

**John August:** So, hey, this is John. Today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about the PG-13 rating and kind of necessarily we’ll be using some bad words. So if you’re listening to this podcast in your car with kids, here is just a warning about some bad language coming your way.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is episode 215 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we’ll be talking about the PG-13 rating, why it exists, and what it means for screenwriters. We’ll be talking about healthy and unhealthy relationships between writers and their representatives. And we’ll be answering some listener questions about what to do on an L.A. visit and using real stuff in your movies. So a big show today.

**Craig:** It is a big show. And I have to say that now that you — well, now that we have made it to episode 215, now it’s impressive. Every time you say it, I think, “Wow.”

**John:** A lot of episodes.

**Craig:** We have a body of work.

**John:** This past week we were on Franklin Leonard’s podcast and we talked about the show and things that are interesting to screenwriters. And it was weird being on someone else’s show with you talking about the show because it felt just like an extra episode that I didn’t have control of.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, we’re starting to learn about you and your issues.

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** For me, it was exactly the same.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Show up and talk.

**John:** Actually, it was exactly the same because you did show up late and talked.

**Craig:** I know. It’s getting bad. Well, today, as people saw on Twitter, I thought I was 10 minutes late and in fact I was 1 hour and 50 minutes early.

**John:** Yeah. So maybe that’s good. Maybe that should be the plan is I’ll always pretend that the time of recording is a different time than it actually is. For people who just listen to the podcast and don’t look at us on social media, last Friday, I did post a long series of text messages between me and Craig from the very start of the show up until last week about Craig is running five minutes behind. So that’s up there for everyone to see. There’ll be a link in the show notes for that.

**Craig:** I mean, in my defense —

**John:** In your defense.

**Craig:** Those texts are over years.

**John:** Mm-hmm, true.

**Craig:** And, you know, obviously I don’t text when I’m on time.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] So that’s my defense.

**John:** That is an absolutely fair defense. And it’s worth waiting for you, Craig.

**Craig:** Aww.

**John:** Aww. As I was putting together that series of text messages, I had to trim some stuff out that was just like not germane to it. But I regret, there’s a text message, I texted a photo of me and Malcolm watching Fantastic Negrito while you were off playing D&D with the rest of our friends. And I regret taking that out of the feed because it was just a nice moment of just me and Malcolm.

**Craig:** You know, I remember that and I still haven’t seen Fantastic Negrito live. But I do feel like I am responsible for his success.

**John:** Clearly, because you mentioned him on the podcast and talked about him for a few minutes. That’s really how a person becomes successful.

**Craig:** Well, that plus just a general mental exertion. In my mind, I’ve been willing him to be successful.

**John:** That’s good. Well, you’ve dis-secreted him into his success.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Most people, in order to implement the secret, they have to believe in themselves. But actually, just Craig believing in you is enough for it to come to be.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not even a secret.

**John:** No. The Secret is no secret anymore.

**Craig:** Yeah, my book is called the fact.

**John:** [laughs] So the other thing which is a complete fact is that our Scriptnotes T-shirts are available only for one — not even one more week. If you’re hearing this podcast on Tuesday, you have exactly two days left to buy these shirts and then you will not be able to buy the shirts. So you probably want to get on this.

So go to store.johnaugust.com. You’ll see that there are three designs for the T-shirt. There’s the classic Scriptnotes logo in purple. There is the Three-Act Structure shirt by Taino Soba in blue. Both of those have been very popular. And this year we have two different colors of the Camp Scriptnotes shirt, which is a brand new design. There’s Craig’s shirt which is blue. It’s a navy blue.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And there’s my shirt which is green. And this really hearkens back to the first batch of Scriptnotes shirts which we had two colors. There was umbrage orange for Craig and there was rational blue for me. And we’ll see. Right now we’re neck and neck, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** And I’m really curious who’s going to pull ahead.

**Craig:** You know —

**John:** Do you want to pitch anything to your navy fans, your blue cabin buddies?

**Craig:** Well, I just want to say, you would look really sexy in that blue shirt.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You know, Sexy Craig loves blue. Ah, so sexy.

**John:** That’s a strong argument for or against the blue shirt.

**Craig:** [laughs] I think it’s both really.

**John:** It really is. So depending on what your reaction is to Sexy Craig imploring you to buy the blue shirt, you might —

**Craig:** Oh, come on.

**John:** Choose to buy the blue shirt or the green shirt. But whatever you do, the nice shirts are $19 each. We are posing the order into the printers on Friday. So that literally is your last chance on Thursday to order one of these shirts. We will be printing them. We will be folding them up on the very table on which we record our live sit-around-the-table episodes of Scriptnotes and sending them out to your homes so you’ll have them for the Austin Film Festival.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re going to be in your house.

**John:** Yeah. So maybe as we’re looking out at the crowd in Austin we’ll see how many blue shirts and how many green shirts there are.

**Craig:** You know, Sexy Craig has been away for a while.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** [laughs] I feel like he should be back more.

**John:** Yeah, maybe he can have his own spin-off podcast.

**Craig:** Yeah. He should.

**John:** He could do that on Earwolf.

**Craig:** Well, you know, I feel like Sexy Craig and Dan Savage could probably do a great podcast together just about sex, you know —

**John:** Mm-hmm, yeah.

**Craig:** And advising people.

**John:** Yeah, being sexy.

**Craig:** Just being so sexy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** We have some follow-up to get to. First off, couple of episodes ago, we talked about misleading reviewer quotes, that thing where you sort of excerpt certain words out of a review to make it sound much better than it really was.

**Craig:** I love this so much.

**John:** So talk us through this one example here.

**Craig:** Well, so there’s a review here for a film called Legend. I think it’s about The Krays, the British mobsters, stars Tom Hardy. And so they put up a very typical review-oriented ad where they just listed four stars, four stars, four stars, four stars. And underneath the four stars, who gave it the four-star review. And then in the space between their heads, they have what you would think would be yet another four-star review and the person who said it which was I think it was The Guardian.

**John:** It was The Guardian, yeah.

**Craig:** Benjamin Lee from The Guardian. But in fact, [laughs] because it was situated between their two heads, it wasn’t that their heads were obscuring the other two stars of the four stars, he actually just gave it a two-star review. [laughs]

**John:** I think it’s just —

**Craig:** So great.

**John:** I think it’s just remarkable because it’s such a different way of doing a careful excerpting. And a good graphic design can hide many flaws.

**Craig:** I loved it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, I loved it. And I actually think that everyone should do this. It’s so brilliant. And it again boils down ultimately the only value that reviews have for studios is to flack their movies. And so, yeah, I mean, hats off. Whoever did that should get a promotion.

**John:** I agree. And I was going to say like slow golf clap but now I’m questioning whether — do you think that is worthy of a slow clap or do you think it’s a negative thing to say a slow clap? I think a sort of an appreciative like slow clap like well done, well done. But there’s also you can slow clap in a negative way. How do you perceive slow clap?

**Craig:** Both. I think slow clap is flexible. And in this case, I would give it the honest non-ironic slow clap.

**John:** I think it’s a slow clap with a nod is really what the differentiation is.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Yup. In a previous episode we talked about Apple Watch. And I complained/bragged that I didn’t think the Apple Watch was doing a great job tracking my exercise because I have an incredibly slow heartbeat.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or my heart rate is low.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I think you had said a similar kind of thing. And a listener sent us a post about, I think it was a Swedish study, that low heart rate is linked very strongly to criminality. And so people with low heart rates are much more likely to be criminals.

**Craig:** Well, I guess that makes sense because they’re generally calmer in situations that would make everybody else nervous. So I guess we could say they’re just dead inside. So they need crime. They need crime to get their heartbeat up a little bit.

**John:** That’s what one of theories is is that maybe it takes a much larger amount of activity to get them excited. And so therefore they are pushed to criminality. But I think it’s one of those interesting/troubling kind of findings because it strikes back to like what is it called? Phrenology, where they start to feel the bumps in your head.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s like, well, that’s a thing you can’t control at all. Then what? Are you just like going to lock up people with low heart rates or you’re going to give them drugs so their hearts beat faster?

**Craig:** Well, no. I think that you would just kill them early.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** The idea is you would screen everyone I think at the age of three.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That seems reasonable. And if your heart rate is below a certain number, you’re exterminated.

**John:** That’s true. And of course very easy to overlook in this study is that the odds of any of these people being criminals at all was really, really low. Period.

**Craig:** Right, right.

**John:** So it’s one of those things where, you know, people freak out because like, oh, this raises your risk of something 1% but it raises it from like it’s never ever going to happen to it’s never ever probably going to happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. This was essentially a valueless study and a bad headline.

**John:** [laughs] Yes. But even in those sort of bad headline stories, sometimes there is something interesting to study about why that correlation exists. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything you can do about it. But it’s a correlation.

**Craig:** I think I’ve already suggested what we can do about it.

**John:** Is to kill all the slow heartbeat people.

**Craig:** At the age of three.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** When they’re at their cutest.

**John:** But those people might not grow up to be professional athletes, which leads us to our final bit of follow-up.

**Craig:** Segue man.

**John:** Segue man. I’ve said on the podcast several times something like you are much more likely to be a professional basketball player than to be a professional screenwriter. And that my perception was that there are actually more professional athletes than there are professional screenwriters. That was an unverified, un-really-thought-through statement.

But someone tweeted at you and I this graphic that’s been circulated around which was apparently from — it has NFL logos on it, so it really is from the NFL, the National Football League, so not basketball but football, talking about what your odds are of making it in the NFL.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s a really cool graphic. We’ll have a link to it in the show notes. But, Craig, talk us through some of these numbers.

**Craig:** Well, they start by looking at high school football players, which according to them, you’re looking at around a million. And this is I think per year, essentially. So you have a million high school football players in a year, and that’s a million kids with at least one parent who thinks, “Oh, this is it. You’re going to make it.” But narrow it down a little further, let’s just presume we’re talking about seniors since they’re probably the most developed. That’s still 310,000 seniors.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a lot of kids.

**Craig:** It’s a lot. Of those kids, 70,000 will play NCAA football, college football. Still an enormous amount, 70,000. 20,000 of you will only play as a freshman. That’s what FR means, okay. Overall, 6.5% of high school players will play in the NCAA. So right off the bat, only 6.5% of those kids will even play college football.

**John:** So really 1 in 20 almost.

**Craig:** Right. Eventually, you get down to this number. The amount of players scouted by the NFL, 6,500. So out of the 70,000 NCAA football players in college, which again was culled out of the 310,000 high school football seniors alone and the million kids playing in high school football, 6,500 get scouted by the NFL. 350 are invited to the combine which is essentially the tryouts. You know, John, it’s like auditions. It’s like Broadway auditions.

**John:** It is. American Idol.

**Craig:** Exactly, but on a field where you’re hitting things.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Of those 350, 256 are drafted by the NFL. 300 rookies actually make a team. Percentage of players from the NCAA to the NFL is 1.6%. So to recap, 1.6% of 6.5% of 1 —

**John:** Million.

**Craig:** Million make it to the NFL.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s very tiny. And then, how many of them actually last? How many NFL players actually play more than three seasons? 150. This would be of that year’s class.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Very few. But I will say that I still think the odds are worse for screenwriting.

**John:** Look at these numbers. It does strike me that the number of actual professional football players is smaller than I was kind of guessing. So if you look at how this narrows down, it really does narrow down quite dramatically.

Compare that to WGA numbers. In 2014, there were 4,899 writers reporting earnings, which is basically writers who were working in some capacity. And of those, 1,556 were writing in features.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So if you have NFL players making your four — we have a number for 150. We don’t have the total number of football players who are playing in the NFL. But it’s not going to be 1,500.

**Craig:** No. It won’t be. So on that metric, yes, easier to be a screenwriter than to play professional football. But the metric that interests me is how long you play because I think from what I understand, at least from the WGA, is at any given point, a very large percentage of worked are people that will work once. Maybe twice, and that’s it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So to have a career as a feature screenwriter, I bet there are fewer people in the WGA who have, let’s say, we’ll call it five years of earnings as a feature film writer than there are NFL players who have played regularly.

**John:** Yeah. So I’m going back to sort of my sort of off-the-cuff analogy of professional football players or professional basketball players to working screenwriters. The jobs are so different. And I think one of the reasons why it’s such a strange comparison is that it becomes very clear who can be a professional football player versus who can be a professional screenwriter. So there is almost nobody playing professional football, I would say, who wasn’t a high school football player and a college football player.

**Craig:** There isn’t.

**John:** And screenwriters, it’s not the same thing. You can’t say like, “Well, that kid from high school who wanted to be a screenwriter is now a working screenwriter.” There’s not the hierarchy process at all for becoming a screenwriter. Like literally, someone could have written their first screenplay when they were 40 and now they’re working as a screenwriter. So that’s a very different thing.

Also, the NFL, your career is short because of there’s always new people coming up but also because you get injured. And you don’t get injured in the same way as a screenwriter. You may stop working, you may sort of lose heat and nobody wants to hire you to write stuff, but it’s not the same kind of thing.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, there is a built-in limitation on that which we don’t have. I mean, even if you stay healthy, you will age out of the NFL. You know, as you get older, you lose athletic ability. That’s just life.

But there is something on the flipside of that that is tricky for people that want to be screenwriters. And that is you can. You know, anyone can, theoretically, be a screenwriter. If you are 5’10” and 170 pounds, unless you are a brilliant kicker or super duper fast, you’re not going to be in the NFL.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so you inherently can’t. But anyone can. So that’s the lottery mentality of screenwriting that you don’t see when you look at the NFL because it’s not a lottery. I mean, there’s an enormous amount of genetics and hard work and talent that should have been tracked along the way.

**John:** I guess it’s one of the reasons why if someone doesn’t succeed as a screenwriter, they might feel like a failure. But if someone doesn’t succeed as a professional football player, well like, “Well, no, you didn’t.” But no one’s going to say like, “Oh, I can’t believe you didn’t make it as a football player.” It’s like, “Well, of course you didn’t make it as a football player.”

Like it seems so remarkable that anybody would make it as football player. Like you can just sort of look at the person, it’s like, “Well, no, obviously you’re not going to make it as a football player.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Versus a screenwriter, you can just keep slogging and slogging and slogging. Also, the only way you’re playing professional football in the U.S., basically, is to play for the NFL. Versus as a screenwriter, you can be doing your screenwriting thing and be still trying to make it as a professional screenwriter for a very long time on the edges. And that is a thing that doesn’t exist in football either.

**Craig:** Right. And so the opportunities are paired with the traps. I know a few guys who played Minor League Baseball and I know a couple of guys who played Major League Baseball. And, you know, the Minor League guys are, yeah, I mean they wished they had made it to the majors. But they’re awesome. I mean, they were in the Minor Leagues of baseball. I mean they were really, really good. They just weren’t good enough for that final level.

There’s no such thing like that in screenwriting. It’s not like there’s anyone out there where people are like, “Man, you are really good. I mean, you’re not great enough but, boy, you’re good. I mean, you’re really good.” It just doesn’t work that way.

So the opportunity is there but then there are the traps of, “Well, I just got to write one more script,” or “Well, I just got to try a little harder,” or “Well, you know, my time is coming.” And you can chase the lottery your whole life.

**John:** Well, I think what you’re pointing to is that good versus great is in professional athletics, there are clear metrics. You can tell how good a player is by, you know, whatever the metrics are of that sport. So I mean, how many runs, how many whatever, how many hits. You cannot track those metrics for a screenwriter. You can track how many things they sold, how many things they set up. But that’s not telling you how good of a screenwriter they are.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** There’s no objective measure about how good your writing is versus another writer versus, quite famously in professional sports, you can really track that and sort of predict how good a team will be based on the players that are on that team.

**Craig:** And so, again, no one can tell you that you don’t have what it takes to make it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No one will stop you from trying. Well, I mean, they can try but they can’t make a great argument. I mean, I can’t say, “Look, you want to be a pitcher but your fastball is 78 miles an hour. It’s never going to happen.” I can’t say that to anybody as a screenwriter.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So there’s nothing to stop you. And you just have to be aware of that because unlike these other things where they will stop you, no one can stop you. And so, good, but also, beware.

**John:** I remember talking with a writer after one of our live shows. It was at the WGA. And I can picture his face but I don’t remember sort of all of the details. But he said, “I just wanted to thank you because listening to your show gave me the permission to let myself stop trying to be a screenwriter.”

**Craig:** I remember that guy.

**John:** And I thought that was actually such a brilliant, smart thing. And this is a guy in his 30s, I would say. And that is a sort of brave and wise thing to sort of come to is the realization that there’s an opportunity cost to pursuing one dream, and that is the exclusion of other dreams. And that if you are monomaniacal about this one thing and that one thing isn’t working, you have to also be aware of the things you’re not trying to do because you’re pursuing this one goal.

**Craig:** Precisely. And there is a very interesting aspect, at least it’s interesting to me. A strange aspect to what I would call American dream culture where we are encouraged to imagine this wonderful and romantic and exciting, passionate, creative life for ourselves. And then if we just believe and try hard enough, we will achieve it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The problem aside from the inherent unrealistic nature of that kind of dreaming is that the thing that you’re dreaming about, you do not understand. What you’re dreaming about is only what you can understand, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to dream it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** When you get there, it will not be your dream. Your dream is not attainable because it’s dreamlike [laughs]. I don’t know how else to put it.

**John:** I think Miley Cyrus might put it best in one of her lyrics is like there’s always going to be another mountain.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it has to be the climb. And that’s the thing that feels so cliché when you hear it in a song lyric but you find it to be very true is that you kind of think like, “Oh, I’ll reach this destination and then I’ll be happy.” And then you reach that destination and like, “Oh, wait, why am I not happy? This is what I always wanted.” It’s recognizing that you have to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the work itself and in the struggle because there’s not an actual, necessarily, an outcome, which ties in very well to my One Cool Thing at the end of the episode.

**Craig:** And I feel like my One Cool Thing has been brilliantly set up as well.

**John:** Well, we should get on to our next topic so we can get to our One Cool Things at the end.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right. So our first big topic today is the PG-13 rating. And it’s one of those things where once you start looking for something, it’s just sort of everywhere. And so this has been in my week a lot. So I finished this script and this script is intended to be a PG-13 script.

Originally, I thought that this was a pretty hard R. And I remember pitching it to a really good director and he said, “Oh, that sounds really cool. So we can do it PG-13?” I’m like, “Oh, no, no, it’s a hard R.” And I can see sort of the light dim in his eyes a bit. And then as I was driving back, I’m like, “Wait, why is it a hard R?” And I started thinking about like what are the things that absolutely would make it have to be a hard R. And by the time I reached home, I was like, “You know what, I can totally do this as a PG-13.” And so I believe I wrote this as a PG-13 now.

So I want to talk through what those characteristics are of a PG-13 movie.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** But the other thing which struck me this last week because we were watching Reds. And Reds is a great movie.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And it is rated PG. And I’m watching this movie, I’m like, “How is this rated PG?”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s rated PG because it’s from 1981.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And so, in this movie, there are multiple fucks, there’s actual fucking. There’s, you know, sex scenes that are sort of more explicit than you would sort of guess would be there. There’s a lot of stuff in this movie that would not pass PG now and would probably actually push it to R, like you would have a hard time getting a PG-13 on Reds right now.

**Craig:** Well, if there’s multiple fucks and fucking, you’ll be R.

**John:** You’ll be R.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so I want to talk through sort of what that is and sort of what that means as you’re having a conversation about making movies in Hollywood today. So, some back story on the PG-13 rating. We’ll put up some links in the show notes.

But PG-13 rating comes from 1984. And there’s an article by Frank Pallotta that sort of talks through the genesis of it. But it’s basically Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984 was the breaking point for the PG-13 rating. And you look at Temple of Doom and it’s a darker movie than the first movie is. There’s human sacrifices, a lot of blood. And there was enough outcry that the PG-13 rating came into being.

The text of PG-13 is “Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.” Again, it’s the MPAA, it’s the U.S. rating. Different countries are going to have different ratings around the world. And as we get into this, you’ll see that some movies that are rated one way in the U.S. are rated very differently overseas.

**Craig:** Right. And this was a rating that Spielberg himself pushed for because he felt that his kind of filmmaking wasn’t supposed to be R. It was meant for a wider audience but also it wasn’t quite as namby pamby as PG either.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I think that he was right. It’s a useful rating to an extent. What’s happened over time is that PG-13 has replaced PG.

**John:** Yeah. So few movies that I see these days are PG.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, the feeling is, “Well, if we’re not PG-13, why don’t we just be G?” Or, you know, people view PG as G, which is startling when you consider what PG used to be. Because you’re right, PG there was nudity. [laughs] It’s backwards from what you’d think. I mean, it seems like over time society becomes more permissive about these things. When it comes to movie ratings, it’s gone in the other direction. We are less permissive.

**John:** Clearly. We were talking about this at lunch in that there’s this overall perception that culture has gotten more liberal over time. But on everything about sex and language, it’s gotten much more conservative, especially when kids could experience it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I’m not here to debate that. But I will tell you that as a person who’s trying to make movies, you are always having that conversation about what rating we think this is. And from very early on in the discussion of a movie, just like what I talked with the director about this movie, or when I talked about Scary Stories, that discussion of like, “Is this a hard PG-13?” The answer is yes, it has to be a hard PG-13 and not a soft R, because who wants a soft R?

**Craig:** Well, yeah. I remember early in my career I co-wrote a bad movie called Senseless. And it was never intended to be R. We wrote it to be PG-13 and they came back with R. And the problem was there was a bit where Marlon Wayans is making out with a girl. They are both clothed but he experiences an orgasm.

We don’t see nudity. We don’t see ejaculation. We just see him shutter and have an orgasm. And they said, “Yeah, that’s enough. R.” And for whatever reason, and again, just backwards, the studio was like, “Well, good. We want to be R.” I’m like, “No, we don’t. We really don’t because this is the softest R in history.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it was. When you make a rated R comedy in particular, there’s an expectation that there’s going to be — you know, it’s going to get edgy.

**John:** Yeah. And so let’s talk about for international listeners, they may not really understand what the difference is in terms of practically like boots on the ground. A PG-13 movie, teenagers can go to it and they don’t need special permission. A rated R movie, theoretically, most places in the U.S., they will not sell you a ticket if you are a teenager unaccompanied. You cannot get into the theater. They may check IDs at the door.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Are they doing that all the time? No. But that is the expectation. And as a parent, I will tell you that my expectation of a PG-13 movie is like, “Yeah, my kid could probably see it. It would really depend on sort of like the nature of the movie.” But there’s no way I’m going to let my kid see a rated R movie —

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Unless I’ve seen it first.

**Craig:** Exactly. And interestingly, they will not check on PG-13. So that’s not a legal thing. That’s just a general signal to parents. But if a 10-year-old kid walks up to a movie theater by himself or herself and asks to buy a ticket to a PG-13 movie, they get it.

**John:** Meanwhile, I should caution people internationally who come to U.S. theaters. There’s nothing prohibiting a parent from bringing a baby into a rated R movie —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That will scream at a 10 o’clock show. So there’s nothing that stops parents from being terrible because of the rated R movie.

**Craig:** Nothing except my fists.

**John:** So let’s talk about what the things are that are involved in a PG-13 versus R decision. So it comes down to really three things. It is blood, boobs, and bullshit. And basically, it’s what we’re seeing in terms of violence, it’s what we’re seeing in terms of sex, and it’s what language we’re allowed to use in the movies.

So let’s start with blood. So I did a quick survey of some writer friends and director friends about what their experiences were with blood in movies because the last two things I wrote have some blood in it. I was concerned that like the amount of blood could just push us over the edge.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And what they came back to me was descriptions of the experiences they went through. And it seemed to me that if you have blood plus a verb, that is a potential problem. So if you see blood spattering, if you see blood oozing, that is more likely to trip you up than if blood is just an adjective.

So if something is bloody, not so bad. Something is bleeding, blood is flying out, that can be the problem, specifically if it’s human blood. Seems like the ratings board is much more forgiving of alien blood, violence happening to non-human creatures —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Not a problem.

**Craig:** Yeah. Of course there are times when we see movies and I think to myself, how did that get — I’m like, I know for a fact that I got jammed by the MPAA on something. And now I’m in the theater watching a PG-13 movie and they’re doing it. I’m like, “What magic did you guys use?”

I mean, for instance, I mean you’ve put this down in our summary to discuss. In Jurassic World, there’s that moment where the dinosaur eats someone off-screen and there is a splatter of blood all over the frame. And I think maybe they got away with it because the blood comes from off-screen, so you don’t see that it’s generated. But we know what’s happening. My daughter was terrified. She knows where that came from and it’s a big shower of blood.

I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s, you know —

**John:** Yeah. But they go back multiple times and they’re —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And one of the things that was a common refrain is that just like language, which we’ll get to, if you think there’s going to be a problem, you put in too much at the start so you can cut something out. And so you can go back to the rating board multiple times and you can show that you’ve cut stuff out and eventually sometimes you can win those arguments.

You’ll also make really strange logical arguments about, “Well, this superhero character is not actually human.” So the violence that you’re doing to him is not the same as violence to a human, because they seem to be very fixated on human to human violence. So even just in a fist fight, they don’t want more than a certain amount of blood. And they’ll be very deliberate about sound design or the feeling of fleshiness, the feeling that a body is being penetrated is a real issue and problem.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not a problem for Sexy Craig. I will tell you, one of the strangest blood rulings that ever came down was for Kill Bill.

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** It’s that sequence where Uma Thurman fights off the Crazy 88, I think they’re called, this enormous gang. So Lucy Liu’s gang.

**John:** So it’s the sequence that’s inside the pagoda, sort of the indoor sequence —

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Not the one that was outside in the snow.

**Craig:** Right. So the indoor sequence where she essentially slaughters everyone. And it goes on and on and on. And there’s dismemberments and a ton of blood. And when they went to the ratings board, they came back and said, “It’s NC-17. There’s just too much blood. There’s so much blood and there’s so much spurting and splashing that it’s even beyond R.”

So rather than cut the sequence down, that’s when — I believe I’m correct about this — that’s when Tarantino decided, okay, I’ll have a moment where we’re kind of inside Uma’s mind and she blinks and the whole scene turns into black and white.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And in the black and white, the blood is not red anymore, it’s just wet. And then later she comes back and then it’s okay. And they bought it. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which is insane to me. But I actually think it made it a really cool sequence, so.

**John:** Yeah. Several directors said that it’s the redness of blood that can be the problem. So if you desaturate it, you can get away with more than you could otherwise.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So it seems crazy but it’s true. So another friend recommended this really great side by side comparison of The Possession, which is a movie about a —

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** A terrible Jewish box and — [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Just like my mother.

**John:** Aha. This movie was released as PG-13 in the U.S. and it was cut down in the U.S. in order to hit that PG-13. But in the U.K., it was released just in the original cut. And so you can see what they actually did to trim to get to the PG-13. And it’s really interesting.

And so, there’s less blood spattering. They hold on blood not as long. So there’s a moment in the U.S. version where some blood drips on his shoe but you don’t see where the blood is coming from in the U.S. version. There’s just a little less violence and it feels like they also scale back on some of the sound design so that less bad things were happening to a person’s body.

**Craig:** Yeah. And there was one moment where they didn’t include a particularly graphic injury. You know, so in one version, you see a woman smash into a table from behind. You’re behind her. She smashes head first into a table and flops backwards. In the U.K. version, you’re looking up through the glass as her head makes impact.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I got that. I understood, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That made sense.

**John:** That’s violence. But let’s talk about boobs and let’s talk about sex. And so my —

**Craig:** [sighs].

**John:** Oh, Sexy Craig’s favorite topic.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** My perception, and I don’t know this is actually true but this is sort of like screenwriter allure is that you’re allowed to show boobs once as long as they’re in a non-sexual context. So classic examples are Kate Winslet in Titanic.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so he’s sketching her and she’s topless but it’s okay because they’re not actually having sex at that moment.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s essentially artistic. And similarly, if you had a scene where a mother was nursing a baby or there was a scene where a woman was getting a breast exam, I don’t think that would push you into R. But again, this is an area where PG used to be more permissive.

So in the movie Airplane, Airplane was PG. And that was 1980. And there’s that famous moment where a woman goes jiggling by topless in the plane. And that was clearly meant to be sexual, and it was for me. And you would never be able to get away with that now. And not even PG-13, much less PG.

**John:** Yeah. And in terms of the actual seeing sex on screen, you know, I was looking through the movies that I’ve done and I don’t have a lot of sex scenes in my films. And the ones that do have sex scenes are rated R anyway.

So the first Charlie’s Angels, Drew wakes up in Tom Green’s boat and so she’s like half-covered naked. There’s moments in the first movie where she’s dangling naked from the Chemosphere over Hollywood and falls and rolls down a hill naked. And we were able to do it, but it was very careful to sort of like not show nipple.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So you can get by with showing a lot of boob and a lot of butt, as long as you’re not seeing nipple and sort of no pubic hair. And as long as you can do that, we can get away with the sequence. And again, it was not a sexual sequence, it was a comedic sequence.

**Craig:** Nobody has pubic hair anymore anyway. It’s all gone.

**John:** It’s realism.

**Craig:** It’s used to cover the plains. It’s all gone.

**John:** [laughs] it’s all gone now.

**Craig:** All gone.

**John:** But I don’t have a lot of other experience with sex in PG-13 movies. And so the thing I wrote — one of the things I wrote has a sex scene and I was careful it in ways that like, yeah, I could see the (inaudible) you wouldn’t see more than you would see on TV.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I hope that works. I hope it feels like, you know, I’m seeing the right amounts of sex to let us know that a sex scene happened, but that we’re not dwelling on it.

**Craig:** I have a pretty good amount experience with the MPAA and sexual innuendo because when we were doing the Scary Movies, Bob Weinstein just loves sex humor and would just demand it be jammed in. [laughs] And it wasn’t really our favorite thing. But we did it. And inevitably, I would say to him, “This is — here you go, Bob.” And he would say, “No, it’s too soft. This feels like it’s PG.” That’s what he would always say, it’s PG. And I would say, “No, that’s going to be R. I guarantee you, that’s going to R. And we need to be PG-13 per your — ” And he’s like, “No, it’s PG.”

And then we would send the movie [laughs] and the MPAA and come back and say, “You can’t do that. It’s R.”

**John:** And give me an example of what that would be.

**Craig:** So for instance, a bad joke where we’re doing a spoof of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. And Regina Hall’s character, Brenda, is attracted to one of the villagers. And you cut to him, he’s standing. And we just see him waist up and he is moaning in ecstasy. And then we see her, she’s — essentially, we’re looking at her from behind. She’s waist level with him and she’s making a jerk off motion with her hands. And it clearly appears that she’s jerking him off. And then you reveal that she’s actually churning butter and he’s just so excited and the butter is delicious and it’s terrible joke.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, I mean —

**John:** That was too much innuendo?

**Craig:** Oh my God, way too much. So we had to go back and forth and it literally came down to how many times does her hand move up and down. I mean it’s the dumbest. These conversations get so stupid —

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And so, I don’t know, like when it’s how many thrusts, how many hand movements and —

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** It’s so ridiculous. And because the point is the joke, it’s not about length. Either it’s offensive or inappropriate for a child or it’s not. I always thought it was. I would hate it. I would sit in these screenings and something like that would come on and I could just feel like 14-year-old girls squirming in disgust. [laughs] And I didn’t blame them. It just was — it felt creepy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And, you know, but what could we do?

**John:** Yeah, that feels creepy. Test is actually a really useful one, is that, you know, especially when you are a parent or even if you’re not a parent and you just have to sit in an audience and watch something with some teenagers or kids and you’re like, “Oh, that feels really uncomfortable.” It happens, it’s a real thing.

I worked a little on the first Scooby Doo and so I saw an early cut of that. And I just loved it and then I saw it at the premiere and they had changed the word demon to monster in a bunch of places, and they’d done a lot of weird softening. And it was because they wanted a PG rating and they couldn’t — I think it was a combination. They wanted a PG rating and something about demons pushed them too hard. But it was also that parents felt — parents really didn’t like the word demon. And that they thought it was too scary. And so they went through and did a whole bunch of sort of careful softening. And I just thought it really hurt the movie.

**Craig:** I bet you that was a religious thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, because there —

**John:** I bet it probably was.

**Craig:** There are a lot of Christians that believe in demons, which is, you know — I’m just going to out on the limb here and say that it’s — there are no demons [laughs]. I’m going to go out on a limb, guys. They don’t exist.

**John:** A thing that is probably most evident from a script stage is language. And language is one of the few things that you sort of can control as a screenwriter on the page. And so let’s talk about what the beliefs are of screenwriters as they’re approaching language in movies. My rule of thumb and I don’t know if this is true, but this is just what people say, is in a PG-13 movie, you’re allowed one fuck as long as it is in a non-sexual situation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So fuck you, fuckin’ a, go fuck yourself, all lovely. Let’s fuck, no. That’s not acceptable.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Or I want to fuck you, that’s not acceptable.

**Craig:** That is correct. As far as I know, that is the rule. That was always what was cited back to us. We would get one fuck and that was it. And it couldn’t be in a sexual context. What’s that woman’s name? I think her name is Beth Hand or something like that. She’s the MPAA lady who comes back to you and says, “Yeah, you have one too many fucks and one too many hand motions, whatever.” And I believe that was the rule. And I haven’t seen that rule violated, actually, in any PG-13 movie since I heard of it.

**John:** As screenwriters, I think we have watched every movie and we sort of like listen for that one fuck and it’s like, “Oh, there it was.” And then you sort of — I was just watching Wolverine, Days of Future’s Past — is it that one? No, sorry, First Class. And they try to recruit Wolverine and his only line in the whole movie is, “Go fuck yourself,” and then they walk out. And go fuck yourself, I guess it sounds like it’s a sexual situation, but it wasn’t — he wasn’t talking like I really want to fuck you.

**Craig:** Yeah. No. Everybody knows what that is. I mean we would carefully — there would be debates when we were doing the parody movies, “Where do we use our fuck?” And we would have — so we’d have three or four spots where we would shoot alternates because we weren’t sure where we wanted — I mean, and it’s sad, but it’s true. [laughs] It’s like salt on food. You add the word fuck in and the laughs get bigger. It’s bizarre.

**John:** They do. So let’s talk about shit and how often we can use the word shit and — because I’ve not ever run into a problem where I had to cut them out.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But do you run into that problem in your movies?

**Craig:** No, I believe that you are essentially unlimited. The only limitation is probably just how many times could people say the word shit anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, fuck, you can say constantly.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Shit, not so much. So you’re basically, if you use it, you can probably even say shit once in a PG.

**John:** Yeah, you can.

**Craig:** But for PG-13, you know, go for it.

**John:** Yeah. So we’re talking about movies and sort of the MPAA. But there’s also, of course, restrictions when you’re writing for television. And in many ways, those restrictions are stronger, at least, on broadcast television. And this weird sort of nebulous of cable television and sort of what you’re allowed to and what you’re not allowed to do on cable television. So the shit barrier has been broken in cable. And so most cable networks will let you say shit, throw it in as much as you want to do. And there’s a South Park episode where they go — they famously go way overboard with shits.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And do it. Watching Mr. Robot this season, which I really enjoyed thoroughly, I noticed they were saying fuck so often. And what they would do is they would say the F and then just like silence out the rest of the word. And so it was it — you see them on screen, so clearly, they were saying fuck but you just didn’t hear the “uck” of it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I tweeted at the show’s creator, Sam Esmail, to say, “Hey, are you like breaking new ground there? Like I’ve not seen this on basic cable before.” He’s like, “No, I don’t think we’re breaking any new ground.” And a bunch of people jumped in to say that, “I guess on Breaking Bad, the approach was they would do it once per season. And in Mr. Robot, they’re doing it like seven times in an episode.”

**Craig:** Right It’s interesting. I seem to recall going around with the MPAA on a movie where we were going for PG-13 and we were trying to play that game of what if we bleep it. And they said, “No.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “You don’t get to do that in a movie. It still counts.” I guess in television, it’s a bit different.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t know, the whole thing is so stupid. It’s like, who’s watching the show? And my feeling is, if you can put a rating on the show, then put the rating on the show because — especially now, if your kid’s at home and you have no parental controls on your television, they can watch whatever they want.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They can watch a rated R movie with a press of a button. So put the ratings on the television shows. They’ve done it. And then just let it go.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Let there be rated R TV.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And not do this dumb shit.

**John:** Yeah. So I will say in the U.S. at least, there tend to be different standards for 8 o’clock shows, 9 o’clock shows, and 10 o’clock shows on broadcast networks. Cable networks tend to be much more liberal and sort of increasingly liberal when you get up to the pay cable, the HBOs, the Showtimes, the Netflixes, anything goes. And so they’re incredibly permissive about sort of what you can do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If all this conversation is making you think of the documentary by Kirby Dick, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, you don’t have to tweet at us. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well. So that’s a full documentary that talks through the MPAA’s rating system and sort of the controversies about how it all works.

**Craig:** It’s so worth seeing, especially because the documentary itself was then subject to the MPAA’s bizarro rating system.

**John:** Yes, it becomes very, very meta.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Let’s go to our next topic. Craig, how do you have a good relationship with your representatives, your agent, your manager and how do you have a bad relationship? What are some signs you can look for whether your relationship is going well or poorly?

**Craig:** Well, first, let’s start by acknowledging that when we talk about our agents and our managers if you have a manager, it is a relationship. I think a lot of writers feel like there’s some special category called representative and that’s its own thing and then — but it’s not really like — it is, it’s a relationship. It’s a relationship between people. And there are things that you can do to make that relationship work better and there are definitely things you can do to make it work worse.

So let’s start with the good stuff. I think the first thing that’s important for writers to do is be realistic about what their representatives can actually accomplish. Agents and managers are not magicians. Basically, what they are are people that are leveraging what you provide them.

**John:** Exactly. So they can only work their magic or to the degree they have any magic in showing the work that you’ve provided and getting that out in the town and getting other people interested in what you’ve written for them. They can’t tell you what to write. They can’t tell you how to write your stuff better. They can only work with the material you’re giving them.

**Craig:** Correct. And ultimately, they can’t force people to like something. They’ll do their best. Let’s remember that they get paid when you get paid. But they can’t force anything. So you have to be realistic about what they can accomplish. They’re just people.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Secondly, I think it’s important for writers to set the agenda of how the relationship should work. I think everybody that gets into the entertainment business, on some level, is a child with issues looking for parental approval from the world, which you will never get.

Specifically, you will not get it from your representatives and yet I hear often times writers describing or talking about their relationship with their agent like that person was their mom or their dad. They’re not. And what the danger of that transference in saying that my agent is like my mommy or my daddy is that what you’re then saying to them is, “In this relationship, you set the agenda. I’ll be sitting here waiting. You tell me what to do.” Bad idea.

You need to be in charge of your career in that sense. I actually think agents and managers appreciate it when a writer can sit down and say, “This is who I am. This is what I write. This is what I want to write. This is what I want my career to be like. And this is what I’m willing to do. Now, you help me do that.”

**John:** What you’re describing, I find so often. I think part of it comes because a new writer comes into the business and is so excited to have anybody taking them seriously, whatsoever. And if that person has more experience, if that person is 10 years older, naturally you’re going to fall into those I’m the child, you’re the parent roles. That’s not usually helpful for anybody.

And I remember my relationship with my first agent was sort of that thing. We were friends, too, but it was more that he was the person who knew everything and I knew nothing. And while that was accurate, it wasn’t overall helpful. And so when I moved to my current agent, we were much more peers. We were rising together and we could very much understand what each of us wanted.

**Craig:** Exactly. And when you lay out what you want, you actually enable them to get you what you want. It’s hard for them to get you what you want when you haven’t told them, when you’re just waiting for them to describe it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’ll start to lose faith in you, too. Everybody wants a strong client. They want missions. They want goals. They want just as we do. Like when we’re sitting with people and they give us notes, we don’t want, “Can you make it 5% funnier?” We want actionable items.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So give your representatives actionable items. And to that end, it’s important that you communicate purposely with them. We get a lot questions and I see a lot of questions. How often should I talk to my agent? Should I bother them every week or every day or every month? How about this? Bother them when you have something to bother them about.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I don’t talk to my agents every day. Sometimes I go a month or two without talking to them. But when I talk to them, there’s an agenda and there’s a purpose. And that I think is very helpful because I’m not grinding the relationship with my insecure need to chitchat or gossip. We have a professional relationship. And I find that helpful because when I do talk to them, everybody takes it seriously.

**John:** Absolutely. I talk to my agent much more often than that. But, you know, there’s times where like weeks will go by. It’s because I’m busy writing something. And there’s really nothing to actually talk about. There’s no business to get done. And so those day where I’m talking to them five times, it’s because there’s something really pressing and decisions have to be made right away. And so I think, communicate purposely.

And also, get back to them quickly. So if they’re looking for you to read something or to respond to something, do it promptly. Because you’re expecting them to respond promptly, you have to respond promptly as well.

**Craig:** 100%. And similar to the get back to them promptly is listen to them. And this is something that I think a lot of writers say they do but don’t actually do. Our agents are constantly trying to tell us things. But because of their training and I think just the personality that goes along with agenting, they sometimes struggle to relay bad news or negative information. Listen carefully to what they’re saying. You can be skeptical about what they’re saying, but you can’t be a denialist.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because sometimes there’s bad news.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you have to listen to it and you have to be — you have to show a willingness to hear it and absorb it because there’s no way to move forward or get better or improve things if you’re denying what they’re saying.

**John:** And sometimes it means asking the tough follow-up question. So the kinds of bad news that you’re going to get from your agent is, yeah, they didn’t think the meeting went well, they’re going with another writer, they’re not going to take you for your optional step, you got passes from these places on your spec script.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The question which is harder to ask, but which is sort of needed to ask is, is there any feedback? Is there any sense of sort of what happened there? And sometimes they’ll have the answer, sometimes they won’t have the answer. Sometimes it’s a thing you can fix or change, sometimes it’s not. But by asking that question, you might find out like, you know what, they really just liked this other writer better. And like that’s going to happen. Or they just didn’t sort of believe in the draft. That’s going to happen too. And I’ve had to ask sometimes the tough questions like, was it me? Am I being unreasonable here? And sometimes I’ve heard like, “Yes, you are being unreasonable.” I remember Aline talking about her agent who said like, “Shut up and write the next draft.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And sometimes you need the agent who can tell you that and you’re only going to get that relationship by asking those questions that could have negative answers.

**Craig:** Yes. Sometimes I find myself talking to a writer who is wondering out loud about something. And like, “It’s been a while. I’m trying to get work. It’s been a bit of a struggle. I’m wondering if maybe like somehow I’m on the outs.” And I just want to say, “If only there were someone you could ask. Pick up the phone, call your agent and say, ‘I am giving you permission to speak as frankly and honestly as possible, where do I stand?'” Only then can you do something about it. So you have to listen.

What you shouldn’t do — let’s talk about ways to poison the well — where I think things can go wrong, is when writers start to lean on their representatives like they’re therapists.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Or they’re emotional dumping grounds. You’re the person, I call it, a cry — you know, I’m going to cry on the phone to you because I feel upset. Or I’m going to treat you like my parent. Or in the worse case, I’m going to be abusive to you and blame you for everything that’s going wrong. Or on the flip side, I’m going to count on you like my angel. So I don’t have to worry about taking control of things. My angel will come and save me if I just pray to them hard enough. That’s not what they do and you will be disappointed.

**John:** It’s so tempting to vent to your agent because people are annoying and frustrating. But that person who you had a terrible meeting with could honestly be one of their good friends. And so you have to sort of, you know, be honest but measured in your criticisms with people and just not sort of slam a lot of doors.

**Craig:** Agree. You should not be passive. Don’t think of your agent as person who gets me a job. They actually aren’t people who get you jobs. They’re people who negotiate employment for you. You get you a job. Yes, they can help put you in rooms. Yes, they can help get you opportunities to get a job, but you are going to end up with a bad relationship if you view your roll in the partnership as entirely passive. It’s not.

**John:** It’s not at all. So you’re responsible for landing the job. They can sort of get you — they can put you on the runway, but you have to like fly the plane.

**Craig:** Precisely. Another mistake that, I think, people make in their relationships with their agents is being naïve about the nature of the agency business itself. So what will happen is someone will say, “I’m going to fire my agent. I hate them. I really wanted this job. And they knew I wanted this job. And then their other client got the job. And how can he do this to me. And it’s not fair, nanananananana.”

And I just want to say, did you not know? Oh, were you at the Just You agency? Did you not know that were other clients there that could also do what you do, that would also want what you want? Did you not think that they also had this conversation? Get used to conflict of interest. It’s inevitable. You can’t get around it, so don’t hold that against the agency.

**John:** You know what, I’ve sort of been at one agency for a very long time. And I really sort of only dealt with sort of one person, and sort of one way, it all works. But there are some writers, and I think you may know who I’m talking about, who play this sort of strange meta game where they’re at one agency, but they actually know agents at other agencies and they’re talking to other agents. And the other agencies are working for them, too.

There’s ways you could sort of be very connected with more than just your fundamental agent and really have a good sense of the overall, how it’s all working. I’m not sure that’s helpful for most writers. But there are people who, in some smart ways, really understand how everything fits together. And they can end up getting those jobs or having better relationships with filmmakers and with other talent because they are, you know, they’re friendly to everybody and they’re not sort of focused only on this one relationship with this one agent.

**Craig:** Right. And you should know as a client that if you end up in a situation where you feel your agent somehow screws you over in favor of another client, fire them, get a new agent, but just know that the new agent will be in the exact same position.

**John:** Yeah, I have a friend who’s looking at replacing his agent. And it’s one of those weird situations where he has to decide, do I stay at the same — he’s at a big agency. Do I stay at the same agency and go to a different team or do I leave the agency? And I don’t understand how it can possibly work that you stay at the same agency with different agents. I feel like, especially today, everything is so connected and you’re going to end up dealing with those other agents no matter what. And so just like you kind of fired them but you’re still around.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It feels like a mess.

**Craig:** It does feel like a mess. And lastly, I would say to our writer friends that when you talk to your agents, it is a mistake to on the one hand simply assume that they’re right because they’re talking to you. And then on the other hand, get angry when they’re not right. The fact is they’re just people. I don’t listen to my agents and invest 100% faith in what they’re saying. I have a conversation with them the way I would with anybody else. There are things that they know that I don’t know and I can — I know the difference between fact and opinion. But we have a dialogue about the opinions.

And there are times where I have challenged them and I was right. There were times when I challenge them and then they were right. But we have the discussion. It’s important that you do have that discussion with them because you will then forgo the disappointing ‘you were wrong’ discussion. Yeah, that’s right, sometimes they’re wrong. Shocker.

**John:** I think you also have to remember like what are agents actually trying to do? Agents are trying to keep their clients employed because agents get paid — we’ve said this a thousand times — agents get paid when you get paid. So their goal is to keep their clients employed. Their goal is not to make the best movies in the world. Their goal is not to make everybody happy or make one studio incredibly rich. Their goal is to keep their clients working.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so look for their expertise in sort of what deals are happening right now, where things are getting set up, that kind of stuff. They will actually know a lot of information about that. Don’t look to them for great advice about like how this could be a better movie or what the nature is of — would this filmmaker be the right fit for you. Like that’s not going to be their expertise. Their expertise is in making deals, making connections, and hoping everything works out okay.

**Craig:** And even when you’re talking about their area of expertise, don’t be afraid to express your opinion. If they say, “Listen, we want to go in and ask for this.” It’s okay to say, “I actually want you to ask for this,” and then have the discussion. You can, eventually they may say, “You’re nuts and you just got to trust us on this.” And then you can. Just the way that it works in any discussion with people where they just finally look at you and go, “No, no, no, you just got to trust me on this.”

But there have been times where we’ve had those discussions and we came up with a new plan together.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You have input and this way you don’t feel like you just got jobbed somehow.

**John:** Yeah. You have to remember that you have a relationship with your agents and your managers, but you also have a relationship with studio executives and with producers and other people who are involved. And so sometimes, that triangle is sort of strange. And like, that producer will try to play you against your agents, or you’ll be trying to play the producer. And it’s a complicated thing especially as you’re trying to talk about money or how are we going to get this movie made? And recognize that different people have different agendas.

So invariably, as you’re trying to ask for a raise on a project, you’re going to get these weird phone calls saying like, “Oh, we can’t possibly do that. Business affairs is slamming us down.” And you’re going to have to make some calls yourself because your agent won’t be able to do it. Like there are going to be tough decisions that you yourself have to make and you can’t just expect your representatives to do it all for you.

**Craig:** No. But whatever those decisions are, you just have to know that you’re going to be making them in concert with your representatives.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** So they need to know. And that requires you having those grown up discussions with them.

**John:** Yeah. You went through this whole thing without talking about your fundamental, underlying advice which is to fire your agent.

**Craig:** Well, you know, because it’s not going to necessarily [laughs] help you to have a good relationship with your agent.

**John:** No, it’s not.

**Craig:** But yeah, don’t forget that this is not a marriage. It’s a work partnership. It’s a professional partnership. So in the back of your mind, just know I can end this.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That in and of itself helps you be a little more confident and a little more aggressive — and when I say, aggressive, I don’t mean angry aggressive, I mean active, a little more active in the relationship because I want it to work. I chose this person to partner with professionally. I’m not going to then now lean back and just let them do everything and complain about how they do it. I want to work with them.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So keep that in mind that if it’s not working, you fire them.

**John:** Yeah. I’m going to underline the point you made, that it’s not a marriage. And that so we talk about how important it is to have a relationship and we may talk about things that sort of sound like marriage terms and about open lines of communication and expressing clear agendas. But you are not as bound to this person as you think you are. And if things are not going well, both parties have the ability to walk away and it’s actually very simple and relatively unencumbered. You are going to be dealing with them on some projects that they may have set up. Sometimes, there are lawsuits about, you know, certain things and who set what stuff up. But most cases, you just walk over to another agency and stuff is fine.

**Craig:** Exactly, exactly.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** You will live. You’ll survive.

**John:** We have run out of time in this episode for two of the things we want to talk about, which is about what you should do in L.A. if you are just in L.A. for a short time as a screenwriter, and how to use more real stuff in your movies. So we’ll save those for next week. But I think we have to get to our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** They’re so cool.

**John:** So my One Cool Things is an article by Tom Chivers writing for BuzzFeed where he asked — he sat down with a bunch of atheists. And he asked them how do they find meaning in a purposeless universe? And I thought it was a really great conversation with a bunch of smart people because I think the default assumption is that if you are an atheist, you’re going to have a view that nothing really matters. And so well, how do you find stuff that does matter if there’s no sort of end game to it?

And for screenwriters, I think it’s really interesting because we have this incentive, this instinct to narrativize everything. And so there has to be a final goal. Like your hero has to accomplish something because they’re going to achieve something at the end. And as we look at our lives, we have those little small milestones, but we want our overall life to have some sort of purpose like my being here on Earth was meaningful for this reason.

And there’s going to be this natural instinct to, well, I do this and then because I did this, there’s a reward at the end. And the reward at the end could be heaven if you’re a religious person. But if you’re not a religious person, how do you find rewards in the present day? And I thought it was a bunch of smart conversations about how you find meaning in the present day. And if you don’t perceive life as being a dress rehearsal for this next stage, what does your daily agenda look like?

**Craig:** It’s a fascinating topic and certainly close to my heart because I am an atheist and because I do believe that I live in a purposeless universe and yet I also derive great personal meaning from my life and I have values and I have morals and I believe that those things are all compatible. And I’ve never actually met someone who is an atheist who says, “You know what, I’m going to drive my car into a crowd of people today, because why not?”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It just doesn’t work that way. That’s not the way we are.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There’s another great talk by Sam Harris. I believe it was a TED talk and we’ll throw the link on, where he talks about science and how even if you eschew metaphysics entirely, that the pursuit of scientific truth in and of itself helps us live a good life and helps form the bedrock of certain moralities. It’s really, really well done. So if you’re of this sort of bent, take a listen.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** All right. Well, my One Cool Thing is a one cool person. And it’s an athlete so it ties in a little bit to our NFL discussion with the coolest name, Didi Gregorius.

**John:** That’s a great name.

**Craig:** Isn’t it great? So Didi Gregorius is the starting short stop for the New York Yankees. Why is he so cool? Well, for starters, he had just about the biggest shoes to fill ever. He was Derek Jeter’s replacement. Derek Jeter isn’t just a future first ballot hall of famer and former Yankee captain, but he’s an institution. He is just truly beloved, not only by the Yankees, but by all of baseball. And that’s a rare thing indeed. So you can’t get bigger shoes than that to fill.

And who did the Yankees turn to? Well, very odd guy in, at least statistically speaking. Didi Gregorius is a black man who’s Dutch. He was born in the Netherlands. He is, I think, one of two black Dutch men to play [laughs] Major League Baseball in history and maybe one of six or seven Dutch nationals to play ever. He speaks four languages. Born in Amsterdam, raised in Curaçao. And he’s young. He’s really young, he’s 25 years old. He’s never been an everyday player until this year. He gets paid $533,000 which is barely above the minimum. So the union minimum in Major League Baseball is $507,000. So he’s not even getting scale plus 10 on that, you know, in that sense.

So already, we have this very interesting character for our sports movie of a guy that has to fill in for legend. And he’s first month was a disaster. [laughs] He was terrible at the plate and even worse, he was terrible on the field. And that was really where everybody had kind of hoped he would shine because God love Derek Jeter, but as he went on in his career, his defensive skills did start to wane. And it was costing the Yankees some games.

Well, just like a sports movie and life doesn’t usually work like this, but in this case, it did. He turned it around. And he started to do amazing things in the field, truly amazing things. And he even started to hit the ball really well. And at this point in the year, so it’s his first year where he’s an every day starter, filling in for Derek Jeter, plus his name is Didi Gregorius which is the coolest name ever, plus he’s Dutch. He currently has the second highest WAR in the American League. And that means wins above replacement. It’s a fancy statistic that basically says, if we replace you with a scrub, how many games would we lose? [laughs] In other words, how many games do we win because you’re not a scrub?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And he is the second highest in the American League and fifth among all short stops. How cool is that? Didi Gregorius, awesome season. One cool guy.

**John:** What I love about your choice there is it plays on both of our instincts in that, you know, in baseball now, it does come down to so much the numbers. So you’re citing a number with this WAR figure and yet what is really appealing to you about him is not his numbers but about his sort of unique story —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And his unique character. And that’s honestly what we’re drawn to is we’re drawn to characters and we want to see the story even if the story may not necessarily always be reflected in the numbers.

**Craig:** Indeed, indeed.

**John:** And that is our show this week. So a final reminder. This is your last chance to get your t-shirt for Scriptnotes. And so if you want one, you should go to store.johnaugust.com. If you want to support the John side, you should buy a green camp t-shirt. But if you really need to have Sexy Craig’s blessing —

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, you want the blue shirt, don’t you, baby?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Was that like a shiver of disgust? [laughs]

**John:** It’s whatever you want to be, Craig. They’re only up there until Thursday. So if this is Tuesday, you’re listening to the show, you should chop, chop, get on it. Our outro this week is by — comes via Chris French. And so it’s actually a snippet from the Coming to America soundtrack which actually has the Scriptnotes theme in it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So some time traveler listened to the podcast, went back in time and wrote it into the theme for Coming to America.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write those longer questions to ask@johnaugust.com. johnaugust.com is also where you can find the show notes with links to many of the things we talked about. If you’d like all the episodes back to the very start, you can go to scriptnotes.net, that’s where you sign up for membership for $1.99 a month. That gives you access to all the back catalogue and through the app that you can find on the app stores, you can listen to all those back episodes.

We’re on iTunes. So while you’re there, leave us a rating. Leave us a little comment because we love to read those little comments.

**Craig:** We do.

**John:** We’re on Facebook, but we almost never check the Facebook, but we — because I mentioned it this week, we’ll actually check the Facebook comments. But we do check Twitter a lot. So that’s where I make fun of Craig for being late.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. And that is our show for this week.

**Craig:** Good show, John.

**John:** Good show. I’ll see you next week.

**Craig:** Next week, bye.

Links:

* [For two more days, Scriptnotes shirts are available for pre-order in the John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Black List Table Reads, with John and Craig](http://blacklist.wolfpop.com/audio/39626/john-august-and-craig-mazin)
* [Craig is running a few minutes behind](http://johnaugust.com/2015/craig-is-running-a-few-minutes-behind)
* [Tom Hardy’s Legend snuck a 2-star Guardian review onto its poster, made it look like 5](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/tom-hardys-legend-film-snuck-a-2star-review-onto-its-poster-made-it-look-like-5-10492505.html), from The Independent
* [The biology of crime: Low heart rate may predict criminal behavior, study says](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-low-heart-rate-criminal-behavior-20150909-story.html), from the Los Angeles Times
* [The odds of making it in the NFL](http://imgur.com/gallery/zNOVaO6)
* [Addition of the PG-13 rating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_of_America_film_rating_system#Addition_of_PG-13_rating) on Wikipedia
* [How ‘Indiana Jones’ Finally Forced Hollywood To Create The PG-13 Rating](http://www.businessinsider.com/indiana-jones-and-the-temple-of-doom-created-pg-13-rating-2014-4), from Business Insider
* [The Possession: PG-13 Vs. Uncut Edition Comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1vwu2R6ox0) on YouTube
* [This Film Is Not Yet Rated](http://kirbydick.com/thisfilmisnotyetrated.html), and [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated)
* [I Asked Atheists How They Find Meaning In A Purposeless Universe](http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/when-i-was-a-child-i-spake-as-a-child#.em1Y5xnxG5), from BuzzFeed
* Sam Harris’s TED talk: [Science can answer moral questions](http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right?language=en)
* [Didi Gregorius making a name for himself with Yankees](http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/yankees/post/_/id/88945/didi-gregorius-making-a-name-for-himself-with-yankees) on ESPN.com, and Didi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/DidiG18), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didi_Gregorius) and [baseball-reference.com](http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gregodi01.shtml)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) from Coming to America, sent to us by Chris French ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/ndas-and-other-acronyms).

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

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

**John:** And this is episode 213 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, Craig, this last week I got to give a presentation, like a proper presentation with like Keynote slides and all that stuff. Have you done one of those recently?

**Craig:** With Keynote slides? No, because I’m not a sales rep for the southwestern medical appliance industry.

**John:** Yeah. I very rarely get to do those. And so whenever I have to crack open Keynote, it’s basically, you know, half an hour of reminding myself how Keynote works. And then I have a lot of fun with it. But it’s a ways to sort of get started in the whole designing of a proper presentation.

But I had a really fun time. And one of the slides I put up was about Clueless which is, of course, my favorite or my second favorite movie of all times. And in the Q&A afterwards, someone asked a question about Clueless. And it brought up an interesting point which I hadn’t thought of, is what if Cher in Clueless didn’t have voiceover? And how would you perceive that character if you didn’t have the ability to go inside of her head?

**Craig:** It is an interesting question. Some movies are just begging for it, you know. You need it. And we’ve talked about how musicals require you to sing what’s happening in somebody’s head. And it’s weird. It seems like the teen genre often feels like I need to know what’s going on in their heads because so much of what they’re saying and doing, the joke is, “This is not how I actually feel,” which is a very teenage kind of thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I think Mean Girls has a lot of VO, doesn’t it?

**John:** It does. It’s one of those things where I feel like in Clueless, she would seem like a sociopath if you didn’t actually have that inside, if you just like had all the shots of her walking around thinking, like, “Wait, what is she thinking? I don’t understand what’s going on inside of her head.” And that ability to have voiceover is like the ability to have a song. You get to know what is driving her at those moments.

And in a weird way, it allows her to keep many more simultaneous wants because you would not be able to keep track of what it was she was trying to do at the moment if you didn’t have that voiceover to sort of talk you through what was happening.

**Craig:** It’s an incredibly useful tool. It’s so flexible. I was actually talking the other day with a director. He’s currently in post-production on a movie he did. And I won’t say who it is or what the movie is because I don’t want any spoilers.

But the movie has a lot of VO kind of in the Goodfellas style. And he said, “I’m so tempted to never make a movie without VO again because in terms of editorial, it’s the most freeing thing ever.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You need to cut a scene because it’s not quite working but there’s that one piece of information there, we got VO [laughs]. It’s throughout the whole movie, not a problem.

**John:** Well, let’s try to distinguish that kind of Goodfellas VO from the Clueless VO. So the Goodfellas VO, I want to say it’s like the ellipses kind of, like basically it allows you to skip over a bunch of things because it is telling the overall narrative. Is that correct? Is that what you were trying to describe in a Goodfellas VO?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, Goodfellas VO is more of a — one of the characters actually narrating the story as if they’ve already seen the movie —

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** Or they’re telling the story of their lives. In the case of Mean Girls or Clueless, a lot of times, the VO is an interrupter. It’s like a commentary. Like somebody who’s doing color commentary on their own life.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But the color commentary version allows you to also do the skip ahead stuff if you need to.

**John:** Yeah. I would say that the Clueless and Mean Girls VO is very much a present tense VO. It’s describing what’s going on inside as they’re experiencing the scene in front of them. And so they’re having revelations at the moment and you’re seeing the revelation on their face while you’re hearing the voiceover, versus the Goodfellas which is like it’s telling the story as if this has already happened and this is the through-flow of a narrative.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a great way of thinking about it. It’s like in sports, there’s the person who’s commenting on the game as it’s happening. And then there’s the person who does the post-game wrap-up. And, yeah, Goodfellas is more of a post-game wrap-up and Clueless is more of the color commentary as the game is being played.

**John:** And our experience has been, and I’m sure that I speak for both of us, you have to plan for that in advance. And if you try to put that color commentary or that narrative commentary voiceover on after the fact, it will probably not work.

**Craig:** It won’t work because first of all, you need space. I mean, you need to be able to shoot in such a way. Like if you know that there’s going to be VO sort of sneaking in, you need to know that as you’re shooting.

**John:** Yeah. I have not shot any movies where it’s been so crucial. Like Big Fish has a lot of voiceover but in a weird way, there was always time to sort of get that voiceover in. But classically, you will have somebody read that stuff on the set just to make sure you’re allowing enough space. So be it the assistant director or somebody else will read what that voiceover is just to make sure that everyone understands what it is that’s going to fit in that space.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** In the case of Big Fish, rarely is the character responding to the kinds of things that are being said in the voiceover. But you still want to make sure you have enough handles on those shots to be able to get that voiceover in there.

**Craig:** Yeah, especially if the voiceover is part of a joke.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Then somebody really does need to read it because the person on screen needs to react or at least acknowledge with their eyes that this is what they’re thinking. So you do need to prepare. The post facto VO is usually a desperate rescue mission.

**John:** Yes. And that’s why it gets such a bad rap.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Yup. Today on the show, we are going to be talking about non-disclosure agreements which came up because this thing I had to give a presentation on, I had to sign an NDA, so I can’t talk about what I talked about. But we can talk about non-disclosure agreements.

We’re going to answer a bunch of listener questions, including questions about international writers, acronyms in dialogue, and what someone means when they say, “This would make a good writing sample.” Is that a good thing or a bad thing? So those are our new topics but we have so much follow-up.

First off and maybe most importantly, we finally have T-shirts.

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** Yay. So there are four Scriptnotes T-shirts and they are available right now in store.johnaugust.com. They’re all preorders. And so when we say preorder, that means you will purchase a T-shirt and we will print the T-shirt and we will send it to you. But if you purchase the T-shirt today, it will still be three weeks before it gets to you.

So the four T-shirts that are available, first is a classic Scriptnotes T-shirt that has —

**Craig:** Classic.

**John:** The typewriter logo. And we had to find a new color we had never done before, so we picked vintage purple. Is that a fair description?

**Craig:** Okay. Is it? [laughs] I would call it purple.

**John:** Purple. Yeah, everything has to have some modifier to the actual color —

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** It’s the J.Crew rule where everything has to be a heather something.

**Craig:** I see. So this could be like a courgette purple.

**John:** Yeah, a courgette. I mean, an eggplant really is the other sort of good choice for it. But this is the classic typewriter. And so if you have the other collection of Scriptnotes T-shirts, there was a black one with a typewriter, there’s the tour shirt which has sort of a modified typewriter. There was the original orange and there was the blue T-shirt.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So this is the new hotness. Our second T-shirt is developed by one of our own listeners. Taino Soba came up with this design. It’s called Three-Act Structure and it is a blueprint of a script.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like it. It was very minimalist. It was clean. I like that it implied that you could assemble a screenplay like a piece of IKEA furniture.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I have to say, having assembled quite a bit of IKEA furniture in my life, writing screenplays may be slightly easier.

**John:** Yes. It might be a little bit more straightforward. You have choices with a screenplay that you really don’t have with IKEA furniture. There are sites, and we’ll try to put a link to it, of like IKEA furniture assembled in ways that are not the way they’re supposed to be assembled. And sometimes they’re brilliant.

It’s sort of like the way you can take a cake mix and modify it in ways and it creates something fantastic. There’s ways you can do that with IKEA furniture.

**Craig:** You’ve built a lot of IKEA furniture, right?

**John:** Oh, so much in my life.

**Craig:** A question for you. Have you ever, in your life, successfully built a piece of IKEA furniture without making one mistake that required you to unscrew something?

**John:** Never once in my life.

**Craig:** No, no one has.

**John:** I’ve always had to backtrack a little bit.

**Craig:** Everyone has because their instructions are horrendous.

**John:** Yes. Well, their instructions are designed so that they don’t have to put a lot of words and therefore translate them a lot. But sometimes the pictures cannot actually accurately explain what’s going on.

The one piece of advice that I have for anybody who has to assemble IKEA furniture — actually, when we finish this podcast, we are going to be assembling a new IKEA table that we got as a work table for downstairs.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Buy yourself, you know, a cordless drill or a cordless drill driver and get yourself the Allen wrench bit because that will make assembling IKEA furniture about 17 times as fast. If you don’t have to turn that little Allen wrench manually, your life will be so much better.

**Craig:** Let me go one step further.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Not only should you have the power drill and a wide variety of bits, by the way, get yourself as many Phillips head, flatheads, hexes, all of them, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Torx. But also, they make an extender. So it’s like a long bit with another receiver at the end so that in those tight to reach spots, you’re not defeated.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you get that thing and now you’re golden.

**John:** So is that extender, is it a hard thing or is it flexible?

**Craig:** No, no, it’s hard. It’s a hard piece of metal. So it’s got a male on one end and a female on the other. The male goes into your drill end. And it’s magnetized at the receiver end.

**John:** Oh, nice.

**Craig:** So the bit just slips in and it goes click. And now you can reach everything.

**John:** But I foresee there would be a benefit to the flexible version of that. So it’s kind of like a sigmoidoscopy. It can sort of sneak into those places which would be otherwise hard to reach, that otherwise you would have to use that stupid little Allen wrench tool to get in there.

**Craig:** John, I want you to think through what you’ve said there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I want you to imagine [laughs] the flexible thing turning in the drill. And now tell me what’s wrong with this.

**John:** You’re saying that the whole thing would whip around and —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That they’re not —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I bet someone solved this problem. There’s a way in which the —

**Craig:** What you’ve created is essentially an edge trimmer. There’s a piece of fishing line that’s —

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s what you’ve done. Now, there are universal joint ends that can actually spin and turn in a hard right degree. You can get at a certain angle with the universal joint. But I’ve never seen one made and it would be structurally shaky at best because it wouldn’t really — universal joints are best when both ends are hard fixed to something.

I would love to see you build this —

**John:** I believe we —

**Craig:** [laughs] And attempt this because it will be hysterical.

**John:** We live in an age of carbon fiber and nanotechnology. There’s a way that they’re going to be able to do this.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Basically, so the things inside is spinning even though the outside is solid.

**Craig:** But once you… [sighs].

**John:** No, I agree with you that the anchor on the outside is going to have to not spin. But I think there’s a way to do that.

**Craig:** But even inside. I mean, if it’s spinning rotationally in one plane —

**John:** I fully comprehend the challenge.

**Craig:** You see what’s happening? [laughs]

**John:** I do fully. So whenever the cable is inside —

**Craig:** This is awesome. [laughs]

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I want you to build it. I actually want you to do it and then I want you to turn it on and get hurt and your furniture is everywhere. [laughs] But I —

**John:** I don’t know if this is a Kickstarter or a suicide pact but —

**Craig:** It feels good, man.

**John:** It feels really, really good.

**Craig:** Feels good.

**John:** So that is our structure T-shirt. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And our third T-shirt actually comes in two different colors. This is the Camp Scriptnotes shirt from way back when we were at camp in 1981. And this just really a chance to relive, god, those memories from so long ago and sort of where this all started.

And so I want to thank Dustin Bocks who designed this recreation of the original Camp Scriptnotes logo. God, I just look at it and the feeling of nostalgia I have. And I mean, so many of our listeners were there at the very beginning.

**Craig:** In so many ways, this podcast is a sad attempt to recapture the glory of a past summer.

**John:** Yeah. That summer of bug juice and mosquito bites and, you know, those crazy moments where Nora Ephron could talk us off the high rope scores. We’ll never quite be able to get back to those highlights. But, I don’t know, something about wearing the T-shirt from that camp will, I don’t know, at least recreate the experience. And people who weren’t around for that time, it’s a chance to sort of experience a little bit of what that was like.

**Craig:** Did you ever work at a summer camp, John?

**John:** I did work at a summer camp. So I was at the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch in Colorado. So that’s where I went to scout camp every summer. And so I was never a counselor there, but I ended up doing a lot of special weeks up there for troop leadership training. I did Order of the Arrow stuff. And so I was essentially an employee because I was back behind the scenes a lot of the times.

**Craig:** I worked at Ivy League Day Camp.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** This was a terrible misnomer. There’s nothing Ivy League about this day camp. I basically worked as a short order cook in the whatever you call it, the snack shop, you know, that thing.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** And I learned a lot. I learned a lot that summer, just about life and stuff.

**John:** You were living there and working there?

**Craig:** No, I wasn’t living there.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** It was near my house. I was 16 years old, I went there. Here are the following things I learned that summer. I learned how to cook hamburgers on a grill. I learned how to make certain sandwiches. I learned how to have sex. I learned about drugs. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I learned about Vietnam from —

**John:** Yeah, of course.

**Craig:** From the, this guy had the best name ever, the caretaker. And always, whenever you hear caretaker, you immediately think it’s Jack Nicholson, it’s The Shining. All caretakers are troubled people, I believe, which is why their name is so ironic.

This guy was a Vietnam vet and his name was Bill Cruel. Bill Cruel. But he wasn’t cruel.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** He was cool. He had a tattoo that said “Bill”.

**John:** Did he smoke?

**Craig:** Yeah, man. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And he would teach me all sorts of stuff about Vietnam and that was a hell of a summer.

**John:** That’s great. So you were a townie essentially?

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** Townies have the most fun.

**Craig:** No, no. I mean, listen, man, townies do have the most fun. Well first of all, everybody was a townie there. I know I said Ivy League Day Camp, so you think this must be a destination. No. It was not a destination. It was terrible. But, you know, everybody probably has that summer in their life when the world kind of explodes on them. And that was mine. It was awesome.

**John:** Amazing. Well, this is our last podcast for the summer. Labor Day is fast approaching.

**Craig:** Wow. Okay.

**John:** So it feels appropriate that we’re celebrating the end of summer as we talk through summer camp T-shirts and all these opportunities for new gear to wear as we head into the fall.

So all the T-shirts we have up for sale, they are preorders that have to be in by September 17th. That’s a Thursday. So we will remind you on the next two podcasts. But you should probably not wait because inevitably what will happen is on Friday the 18th, we’ll get a bunch of emails saying, “Hey, hey, hey, I really wanted a T-shirt and I forgot the deadline.” And we’re going to say sorry because once we put the order in, the order is in. So September 17th is the deadline. And I want to thank Taino Soba again for his work on the Three-Act Structure shirt.

**Craig:** Yes. Thank you.

**John:** It’s also the end of summer, so therefore, it’s the end of our Featured Fridays in Weekend Read. So Weekend Read is the app I make for iOS for reading screenplays on your phone. Every Friday this summer we’ve been putting up scripts for people to read. We had a bunch of Aline scripts up there. We’ve had different themes. We’ve had pilots. We’ve had Black List scripts. This past weekend we had Dodgeball up there and a bunch of other sports-themed movies.

**Craig:** Oh, Dodgeball.

**John:** So this next week will be our last week. If you have a suggestion for what this final theme should be, there’s still some time for us to scrounge up some scripts and put them in there. So we’re wrapping up Featured Fridays because it’s about time for awards seasons stuff and we have to get ready for the awards season scripts to be in there.

But thank you to everybody who wrote in with their suggestions for Featured Friday stuff and said they like the app. And if you would like to see something in this app for the last week of Featured Friday, please let us know.

I should also say, if you are a person who has a script that is going to be one of those awards season contenders, it might be good to email us or just tweet at me so we can get your script in there and get it in there formatted properly.

Or if you are person who works for these studios who puts out those for your consideration scripts, most of the time we can just link to the one that’s on the website and everything is swell and fantastic. But every once in a while, you guys will put up something that is just like crazy and impossible to format and like one email between us would make things so much happier and easier. If you’re a person like an Andrea Berloff who has a script that’s going to be in consideration for those Awards, email us and let us know.

**Craig:** I don’t think that the Huntsman is going to be out in time for awards season. I’m just — I don’t get it.

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** I mean it just feels like a slam dunk, again, by the way, another slam dunk script.

**John:** Yeah, you’re really just being hurt by timing. I mean I think that is really the reason why you don’t see more Craig Mazin —

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** Awards is timing.

**Craig:** For whatever reason, my films, my oeuvre, doesn’t come out in the November-December months.

**John:** Well, if we decide to do a Featured Friday again in the future, Craig, can we have the Huntsman as one of those scripts?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That would be nice.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** More follow up. Nick writes, “In a recent episode about last looks, John mentioned going through his script to replace two spaces with one space. I was always led to believe that two spaces is standard. Is one space the standard in screenwriting or is it more of an accepted shortcut to trim some length?”

**Craig:** One space, one space, one space.

**John:** It’s now one space. And honestly, it should be one space in everything. So I used to use two spaces. And typewriters used to love two spaces. Everything is now one space. And actually, if you look on the Internet, everything you see on the Internet now is one space because html actually compresses two spaces down to one space. Just go with one space. It will look weird for a day or two and then you’ll get over it and just be one space.

**Craig:** Just be one space, man. We’re all in one space, bro.

**John:** It really is. It’s a shared experience. And once you accept that we’re in a shared experience, life is happier.

**Craig:** There’s no you and me, man. There’s just one space.

**John:** Yeah. In that one space, there are many different countries. And a lot of our questions and comments this week are from China. First off is Cindy in Beijing who writes, “I’m a loyal listener to your podcast Scriptnotes. And I’m also a screenwriter/creative associate working for a film production company in Beijing, China. I listened to your latest podcast, The International Episode, and I would like to share some thoughts with you. Most of the Chinese market discussion you and Craig had was accurate.”

**Craig:** That’s all I needed to know. That’s it. We’re good. We’re good.

**John:** We’re good. Done. End of question.

**Craig:** Thanks. Thanks, Cindy.

**John:** “Just a few facts I’d like to clear/discuss with you. Yes, Monster Hunt made history as the highest grossing Chinese film. One reason is that its production value is much better than most other local films. However, another major factor is, ‘Domestic film protection month in China.’ It’s usually around June to July when the summer vacation starts. During this production month, only Chinese movies will be shown in the theaters making audiences choices during these couple of months very limited. It helps lots of Chinese films to perform well in the box office. Imagine Monster Hunt hits theaters with Mission Impossible 5, Terminator 5 at the same time. It will never do this well. However, it also shows how big and how much potential the Chinese market has.”

**Craig:** Well, we did touch on this, actually, I think, although, I didn’t realize that there was a specific domestic film protection month which turns out to be the biggest movie going month of the year, big shock.

This is part of the issue that we’re dealing with. On the one hand, China, we call China this enormous market. On the other hand, it’s not a market yet. It’s a sort of market. It’s a market when the Chinese government decides it’s a market.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because I don’t know about you, but when I go to the market, it’s open all year long. It doesn’t close so that certain protected goods and services can be offered to certain protected audiences. This is a thing. And China has actually been quite successful and smart about this for themselves. Obviously, this doesn’t have a lot of advantage for us. So it will be interesting to see how long this goes like this.

Now, what confuses things is as Chinese finance continues to proliferate in our market, the question then becomes, well, what is a Chinese movie? In the end, I always feel like money wins out. And if very moneyed Chinese interests say, “Hey, I invested a ton — ” I mean, for instance, take Mission Impossible 5.

**John:** I was going to say.

**Craig:** It is heavily backed by Chinese money and yet the Chinese government won’t allow it to be shown during primetime. At some point, that will get figured out.

**John:** Yeah, I agree.

**Craig:** Should I read this next bit of follow up?

**John:** Great. This is from my friend, Mike Sue. So why don’t you —

**Craig:** Oh, it’s from your friend, Mike Sue. All right. Well, here’s what Mike says. He says, “I just listened to the International Episode and it reminded me of how they turned South Park into a hit show back in my homeland, Taiwan.

“The Simpsons had launched there first, but largely landed flat. For South Park, the translators actually watched the episodes on mute five or six times first and crafted their own storylines to match the show. So instead of Kyle being a Jew,” okay, “he was a… — ” this is amazing, “he was a Taiwan aborigine. They throw in Taiwan pop culture references and jokes about Taiwanese politics all while preserving the irreverent and over the top voice of South Park and it caught on like wildfire. For you guys as creators, I’d be curious whether this level of complete rewrites still follows in Craig’s ignorance is bliss camp or whether it gives you guys the willies and in this case, trading off the creative license for commercial success?” Well, what do you think about that?

**John:** In general, I would say, you know, if I’m not aware of it, I sort of don’t care about it. Where this would become very frustrating is like let’s say, these people in translating this show I’ve made makes some wild, crazy, controversial change that has things in an uproar and suddenly I’m the person dealing with the firestorm over this thing that I didn’t write and I didn’t sign off on is a huge change they’ve made to something.

So if they’re saying, you know, something incredibly inflammatory or racist and it’s perceived that I wrote this thing, that’s the only thing that gives me pause about this.

**Craig:** That racism wasn’t the racism I wrote, I wrote different racism.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** I think it’s both, honestly, Mike. I think that it is ignorance is bliss and it gives me the willies. But, you know, this is one of those things where as Americans, we can only be so focused on the way the work is presented around the world because we have to ultimately serve the English-speaking audience, that’s who we are. We are ourselves English-speaking audience.

Other people will always be there to help us, make sure that things aren’t completely lost in translation. But in those cases where they are, yeah, I think this one’s probably ignorance is bliss and willies.

**John:** And one of the aspects of ignorance is that something I may have written in my movie or on my TV show, which plays completely one way in the American market and like in a not offensive way in the American market or like not so offensive that it’s actually sort of, you know, a cause for riot, could be completely offensive to another culture in a way that I don’t intend at all. So having somebody look at it and intervene in some cases may be the good thing because something that I did not intend at all could come about — which could mean a very literal translation of what I wrote.

**Craig:** Makes sense to me.

**John:** All right. Our first new topic is NDAs because this thing I did this week, I had to sign an NDA. And I don’t end up signing a lot of NDAs. I mean you and I both had to sign an NDA for this thing we went to see a couple of weeks ago, but I would say, I sign maybe four or five a year.

But I’ve been signing probably more of them each year related to film stuff than I ever have before. So while we can’t talk about specific things we signed NDAs for, I wanted to talk about NDAs in general and whether you’ve been encountering them, Craig.

**Craig:** I have, rarely. I’m always surprised when they’re not there. I mean I know that for some of the stuff I did with Todd Philips, we had NDAs. I didn’t sign any NDAs, but I was writing the damn thing. I mean other people had to sign NDAs. I’m surprised, honestly, that they aren’t more widespread.

It may be that they’re just not as enforceable as people hoped them to be. Perhaps, we just don’t have that culture. I mean I don’t know exactly how that actually works in the real world. You know, I mean it’s one thing — I mean we all sign things when we download software and none of us read it. It is the, I guess — what do they call it, a contract of adhesion?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I would — I mean if I were running a company, I’d make everybody sign an NDA every four minutes.

**John:** Yeah. So these terms get conflated and again, this is not a legal show, so we can’t suss out exactly what the boundaries and definitions are, but there’s non-disclosure agreements and there’s non-compete agreements. And non-compete agreements you hear a lot about because it basically says like you can’t work for any of our competitors after a certain period of time. Those things I’ve seen challenged a lot in state law and sometimes in federal law about being, you know, restraint of trade, restraint of ability to like move from one job to another job. And I’m not seeing those things yet.

But what I am seeing our NDAs, particularly if I go in on an animation project, I’m quite frequently having to sign some documents saying like, “You’re going to see some stuff, we’re going to talk about some stuff and you can’t talk about what we’re talking about.” I was thinking about why animation has that more often than live action.

And I think it’s because animation works a little bit more like software development. You have these small teams of people who are working in private on a very long time scale to do one specific project. And they need kind of the freedom to mess up and make mistakes and completely, you know, change course in what they’re doing. And without that, if information about what they were working on got out, it could be completely the wrong information very early on. It could make it seem like the movie is about this thing when actually they just end of scrapping that main character and sub out a whole different thing.

Whereas, a live action movie, by the time you are shooting your movie, that’s kind of the movie you’re making.

**Craig:** That’s possible. I wonder also if this is something that was driven by Pixar. I mean Silicon Valley is NDA obsessed. Pixar is in Silicon Valley basically. It started as a software company. Maybe, it just became a cultural thing once the biggest started doing it, everybody started doing it.

**John:** What I have heard, anecdotally, and this is again, I put up a question on Twitter and people wrote back saying, “I work in visual effects and we’re signing NDAs all the time.” And so again, you know, visual effects kind of comes from that software background and maybe that culture is just more naturally going to happen there. These visual effects companies may be doing previews on a movie and so like they’re sort of making the prototype of the movie and so therefore, that’s a very — it’s coming at a very delicate stage.

Or they’re working on the final version of a movie and they want to make sure that not only does no frames of that movie leak out, but also no information about what actually happens, no spoilers leak out about what actually happens in the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So if you’re making Star Wars, well, of course, I bet everybody on there has a thousand NDAs —
**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** They’re like little laser dots sort of tracking through. And if you see one on your forehead, you know it’s over.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean actually the apparatus to secure ties development is not in and of itself inexpensive. So on huge movies like Star Wars where there’s an enormous desire for information and also an enormous budget, they’re going to be extraordinarily secure. On a small movie where no one’s paying attention, maybe it’s not as important to spend all the money. Even if the script for it should somehow leak online, it’s not a problem because there’s not a voracious demand that’s going to ruin the mass market experience.

**John:** The other thing I have encountered is that certain people who are very high profile where there’s actually monetization and value in people finding out secrets about them, if you are entering their house, if you are working for them, if you are their gardener, you’ll probably be signing an NDA or some other sort of confidentially agreement.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I’ve encountered this with like people who just like they’re remodeling their house and anyone who walks in the house has to sign this agreement. And whether that’s enforceable or not, I don’t know, but I think it’s meant to be just a, by the way, don’t be a jerk, this is what’s going on here.

**Craig:** You didn’t see any cocaine.

**John:** Not a bit. I’ve never seen any cocaine.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** In certain celebrity’s house.

**Craig:** Yeah, she was 18, right?

**John:** Right. Yes. Let’s get to our questions. Justin in Beijing writes, “How does the WGA deal with their writers working overseas? Let’s say a Chinese company wants to hire Craig to write a script.” Craig, congratulations.

**Craig:** Hey.

**John:** “Does the WGA get grumpy because that company is not a signatory? Is Craig on his own for salary, credit residuals and everything else?” There’s a second part, but let’s answer this first part first. So Craig, congratulations on your job, the Chinese company wants to hire you.

**Craig:** Yay, yay. The deal is that the WGA is a labor union. All the power and authority that the labor union has is backed up by federal labor law here in the United States. What that means is that the WGA has absolutely no jurisdiction or authority anywhere else other than in the United States.

So what the WGA can do to me is say, “If you are working on a work area we cover like writing a feature film and you are in the United States working on it, then you have to do it through us, through a WGA contract.” What they can’t do is say, “Oh, are you working in China?” No, they literally can do nothing. Are they grumpy about that? A little bit. They only get grumpy if they feel like people are gaming the system.

Like for instance right now I’m writing a movie for Working Title. Working Title is a British company. Well, if Working Title said, “Oh, and by the way, would you mind just hopping on a plane and writing this in an apartment in London and then going home because this way we can get around the WGA?” That makes them grumpy. And people have tried that, but by and by, no.

So legitimate companies like Working Title would never do that. But if you are working overseas in China, no, you’re not signatory and I am in fact on my own for salary, credit, residuals [laughs], if I get them, and everything else.

**John:** So I’ve heard discussion with actors and with I think they call it like SAG Global Rule One or something where screen actors were feeling like they’re being pressured to sign international contracts so that they wouldn’t enforceable by SAG. But I didn’t really dig into it enough to understand what the beef is. Is that something that we need to be thinking about as writers as well?

**Craig:** Not really. There’s a ton of production going on all over the world. Most writing takes place domestically. So, you know, if Todd and I write a movie and we’re going to go make it in Thailand, we’re still writing it in Los Angeles. And even then, because we’re usually one budget item and people want a certain actor in a certain way — I’m sorry, a certain writer in a certain way and it’s one writer that they’re getting, even if we were writing overseas, very often the company will say, “Oh, you know, look, yes, they are going to be writing in London.”

Let’s say Star Wars, for instance. You know, oh, you’re going to be in London doing a lot of writing but it’s fine. You’re being hired by the American company, it’s a WGA deal. With casts, really what the — was it Global Rule One?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s about everybody else. It’s not about the big movie stars. It’s about the, you know, 10 other people that are being hired and told, “Okay, and you got to get down to Mexico and shoot there and also, we’re not doing it SAG,” because casts can be enormous.

SAG has a ton of problems that are unique to their situation. For us, by and large, this isn’t a big deal. Frankly, we have a bigger problem with the fact that we don’t have feature animation covered in this country. Much bigger problem than this particular issue. But Justin asked the reverse question.

**John:** So what happens if Sony wants to hire a Chinese writer to adapt a project? Do they hire them directly or through a local company? And if they do, would the WGA become involved for things like credit?

**Craig:** That depends. If Sony wants to hire a Chinese writer and they’re okay with the Chinese writer working in China, they can go ahead and hire that writer through one of their non-union subsidiaries. It’s not like Disney or Universal is a WGA signatory. They have these kind of sub-companies that are WGA signatories, precisely so that they can hire writers who are and are not WGA dependent.

Now, practically speaking, if the movie is going to be a Chinese production, this is no big deal. They hire a Chinese writer. She’s in China. She works on the movie there. They shoot the movie there. If they need to rewrite her, they bring in another writer and he rewrites her and he is Chinese, and it’s all there and it’s all non-WGA.

**John:** And so they figure out credit however they want to figure out credit.

**Craig:** However they want to figure it out. But let’s say they just happen to love this Chinese writer because she’s written some amazing stuff and they want her to work on some big movie starring Angelina Jolie. So she’s in China and she’s going to do this first draft. And Sony thinks they’re smart and goes, “Oh, we’ll do it non-union.”

Well, the problem is that eventually Angelina comes along and says, “You know, I really want John August to do that Angelina polish he’s so famous for.” Well, they can’t hire you through the non-union company. So now the project is WGA again. So I suspect that the way the companies work these things is if they think they’re going to want to hire WGA writers for it, they just start it as a WGA gig.

**John:** Yeah. So in this situation described where I come in to rewrite the Angelina Jolie movie, and by the way, I’m happy to, that original writer’s script, you know, for credit purposes, it could get complicated because it could be — is that it would be like based on a screenplay by the Chinese writer or is it just she gets pulled into the WGA and she just becomes the first writer on the project? What would happen?

**Craig:** In the case where somebody starts non-union and then they turn to you and turn it into a union gig, her script becomes source material. She does in fact get a based on a screenplay by credit. That doesn’t come with residuals or separated rights and she won’t be considered a participating writer for the purposes of the WGA credit arbitration.

So it’s a raw deal. And it causes problems along the way. I mean, again, I do think that the companies spend less time trying to game this system than we think. I think they look ahead and they say, “Well, if we are going to end up doing this the normal way, let’s just start it the normal way.”

**John:** Yeah, save some headaches.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** All right, next question. Chad writes, “I have a question about money. How do you get paid for a story credit? How much for an uncredited rewrite?” I like to mix in a question that is just sort of like, you know, completely basic. And so this is one of those completely basic questions that Chad wrote in.

**Craig:** It’s so basic.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, Chad, first, story credit, screenplay credit, those aren’t salaried items. So we get paid to write. True, we also often negotiate bonuses should we get credit, but the credit is ultimately determined by the WGA. So we get paid a bunch of money, hopefully it’s a lot. And then the WGA decides who gets credit and who doesn’t, which means depending on what your bonuses are like, you might get paid a big bonus for getting story credit. You might get paid nothing for getting your story credit. So just be aware of that.

When you say how much for an uncredited rewrite? Well, that’s essentially what your salary is, right? So the salary is for the writing. The basic structure is we get paid a certain amount of guaranteed money to write. Then there are optional payments that they can make if they choose to keep us for another step of writing. And then after that, there’s bonuses that we may or may not get depending on how we negotiate because they’re not guaranteed by the union. And those bonuses are for sole screenplay credit or typically, they’re for sole screenplay credit or shared screenplay credit. They are almost never for story credit.

**John:** Yeah. Just to underline what Craig said is we get paid to write. And so the time that we are being paid to write, we don’t know if we’re going to be credited on this movie or not. So there’s no difference in salary between a credited rewrite and uncredited rewrite because the time we’re writing the scripts, we’re just getting paid either a flat fee for doing a draft or we’re getting paid a weekly fee for the work we’re doing on the script that week.

And so that weekly fee can vary hugely, as could the fee you’re getting for a draft. That fee you’re getting for a draft is going to be no smaller than the Guild minimums, so, you know, a fair amount of money. But it’s not any different based on whether it’s supposed to be a credited rewrite or an uncredited rewrite. That’s not a thing that exists at the point that you’re being hired.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** You want to take the next one?

**Craig:** Sure. Derek writes, “Following up on your one-handed movie heroes episode, I teach literature to high school students. One of my favorite things about literature of all types is its ability to reflect truth and life experience. Movies have always been my favorite form of literature and I had never considered before your conversation that film characters have motivations that are less complex than real life human beings. I find that notion disappointing, even troubling. Does that mean that film characters tend to be less complex than characters in books?”

**John:** So this was the topic that I brought up. And I would push back and say that I don’t know that movie characters are less complex. But I will say that it’s harder to expose that complexity in a movie than it would be in a book.

It’s that because we only have experience of a character through what we can see and what we can hear, it’s harder to do the deep forensic work inside a character to expose to the audience what is going on inside his or her head. To the degree there’s less complexity, there is less opportunity to explore that complexity because of the nature of the medium.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that I would say that all characters, characters in books, characters in any kind of drama whatsoever are ultimately less complicated than real life human beings because they are purposeful. Most people, in a snapshot of their day, aren’t purposeful. Most people, sadly, when you look at their entire lives, are not purposeful. They existed, did things, moved in erratic, non-productive circles like Eddies in time and then died.

And you could remove them from existence and probably things wouldn’t be that much different. The point of dramatic characters is that you cannot remove them because they are part of a narrative that is purposeful. It’s interesting, I think that Derek is intending the world complex to be complimentary.

But in drama sometimes, actual complexity is boring. What’s more interesting is resolvable complexity or a dialectical complexity where somebody is occupying two interesting sides of a debate. We call that complex. Sometimes I see a movie and it does appear that the movie is trying to simulate the everyday numbing, pointless complexity of real life. And those movies make me sleepy.

**John:** Yeah. I think he is trying to create antonyms between complex and simple. And I would say that the better antonym is complex and focused. And I would say characters in literature are focused, and characters in movies are even more focused generally than characters in books.

In all literature, you are editing down the experience of a lived life to focus on the things that are important to your story. And so literature is, by its definition, going to be less chaotic and complex than real life but that’s sort of the point. You want to be able to expose certain things through editing away the stuff that is not part of the story you’re telling.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think that’s a very good way of putting it.

**John:** John in Roswell, New Mexico writes, “In dialogue, if a character pronounces an acronym as its own word rather than a string of individually spoken letters, how would you do that on the page without it being confusing in any way for the reader? To give an example of this, there’s a military institute in my town. The acronym of its full name is NMMI. In conversation, people routinely refer to it as NIMMY, turn the acronym into its own word. How would you do that in dialogue?”

**Craig:** Well, a couple of ways. Ideally, you’re going to introduce the NMMI establishment before someone says the word. So in action description, you say EXT.NMMI.DAY, this military institute blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The locals pronounce it NIMMY. And you just tag that in your actions so that from then on, you can write NMMI or just NIMMY, whichever you prefer.

My guess is I probably want the dialogue to say N-I-M-M-Y, NIMMY, just so people don’t have to constantly be like, “Oh, right, that thing where I’m supposed to pronounce it this way but it’s spelled this way.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If that does not occur, then I think probably what I would do is on the first mention, I would have somebody say, “Oh, yeah, he’s been working at NIMMY for five years. I would write that as N-M-M-I for five years. And then if they continue on, I’d put this parenthetically or then I’d add afterwards “The locals pronounce N-M-M-I NIMMY” in quotes and then everybody after would be N-I-M-M-Y.

**John:** Yeah. I would probably do something similar to that. I would also consider changing the name because I always think about it from the audience’s perspective. And it’s like, “Are they going to get confused about what it is we’re talking about?” And NIMMY sounds kind of silly. And so, you know, unless I could see the sign and someone says, “NIMMY,” then I would get what it is. But I might honestly just pick a different name for what that is just to sort of get past that confusion.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What Craig is talking about also with the spelling things out is part of the reason why we tend to always spell out numbers in dialogue because sometimes there are multiple ways someone could say that number and they probably want exactly one way. So if you have the number 212, well, do you mean 212 like a phone number or do you mean two hundred and twelve or two-twelve? Just spell out the words so you can get the actual line of dialogue that you want.

**Craig:** Yeah. This brings to mind another way that you can solve this problem is by having someone casually say NIMMY, N-I-M-M-Y, and then someone say, “What’s NIMMY? Oh, NMMI. It’s the military institute.” I hate that personally, but.

**John:** Yeah, but you see that in procedural shows a lot.

**Craig:** By the way, I generally don’t like this sort of thing. I find it cutesy. I find it like I’m sure the people in your town do call it NIMMY but it feels like false cruelness somehow. I don’t know, it just seems weird. Like if you’re going to have a military institute, have the military institute. You know, call it the institute. I don’t know. I don’t like NIMMY.

**John:** Yeah. But Craig also pronounces all the words in SCUBA because he doesn’t like that abbreviation.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Lowell in New Hampshire writes [laughs] — come on, I get a little credit for pulling that — “I have gotten advice recently that my spec would serve as a great writing sample. But I am not sure what that means. That is to say, what do I do next? Also somewhat related, I heard once that it’s a good idea to write a spec for a TV show that’s off the air as a writing sample.” He likes i.e., “That is, you want a staff job on the new sci-fi you heard something about and so you write a spec on Star Trek: The Next Generation. If that’s true, it’s not clear to me what you might do with it.”

**John:** All right, let’s clear up some things really quickly here. If someone says something would make a great writing sample, that can be a backhanded compliment, kind of saying like, “No one’s ever going to make this as a movie but maybe it’s a writing sample.” But it could also mean like, “Yeah, that’s a good writing sample. It shows good writing.”

So don’t necessarily take that as an insult that someone says it’s a great writing example. It just means that if someone were to read this and might say like, “Oh, this guy could write. I’d be curious to see in writing something that I would actually want to make.”

In terms of specking a TV show, you are listening to some old advice. And so most of the TV showrunners I’ve talked to recently, they do not want to read an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation unless it was some brilliant meta-conceit of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that would get them fascinated. So, like if you wrote an episode of Bonanza where they encounter a UFO, that might actually be kind of great and fascinating, but they’re probably not looking for a show that’s off the air.

And honestly, back when people were still reading spec episodes of existing shows, they were looking for the shows that were the new hot show. And so, you’d be writing a spec episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. You wouldn’t be writing an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Most TV showrunners I have talked to would rather read original scripts, though. They want to see what you can do that’s your own thing, rather than aping someone else’s voice.

**Craig:** Yeah, no question, whatsoever. It’s part of the evolution of television. It’s less of a factory now. There are fewer shows and they exercise more care, I think. So they do want original voices. Also, the reduction of feature films means a lot of former feature writers are now in television. I think a lot of television showrunners started reading feature scripts and going, “Wow. This person is a really good writer.” And then getting rewarded for it when they put them on the show. So —

So yeah, this thing of writing some show that’s either — some other show that’s on the air or god forbid you write a Star Trek: The Next Generation is — that’s like going outside in I don’t know whatever the fashion of the ’20s was. No, that’s probably hip now. Whatever the fashion of 15 years ago is like, what’s the worst? Anyway, you get the point.

**John:** We get the point. Trudy writes, “How do you do research? Is there a process for this? And do studios allow for research time when they hire a writer? Are writers compensated for that time? I’m really just curious about the process of writing a screenplay where a lot of due diligence is required to make something that is representative and accurate.”

**Craig:** Good question. I am currently working on a pilot for HBO that is very research intensive because it’s based on a thing that happened. And do I have a process for this? Yes. It’s the research process. So, remember research methods and how to research things in high school and college? It’s that. It’s research. You start looking things up. I mean, it’s easier now than ever before but you, hopefully, are getting your combination of primary sources, which are people describing things that they personally experienced, secondary sources where people are talking to people who primarily experienced it. You’re getting various view points and perspectives. And you’re getting your facts straight. And you’re being as accurate as you can. It’s just research. Are we compensated for that time? Not specifically. No. We’re paid to write. That’s our job. If we need to research stuff to write, that’s on us. That’s part of our writing process and it’s folded into the cost of us writing for them.

There are times, however, where if necessary, the studio may be willing to fund a research trip.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And that’s something that you have to convince them is necessary. When they hear research trips, sometimes they get excited and sometimes they think, boondoggle. Or if you’re writing your movie about — what was that movie? Couples Retreat, where the couples all went to Bora Bora for marriage therapy. Well, if that’s your research trip, smells a little boondoggly. But if you need to research, I don’t know, the slums of East Berlin, sure. I can see that, yeah.

**John:** So two examples of research trips from my experience. So first was a project I was writing for Paramount a zillion years ago. And it was set in New York City and it’s set like at the Dalton private school and sort or that kind of world. And I really — I’d never been to New York. And so, I needed to go there and do some basic research. And Paramount said, no. It’s like it’s New York, just write New York. And so, Gale Anne Hurd who was my producer, she used her personal miles to fly me to New York. I ended up staying at Doug Liman’s apartment. And it was a great research trip. And so that was the case where the producer stepped up and got me on that trip.

More recently, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is set in a very specific place and I needed to go to that place and do some research there. And I just flew myself there and I put myself up. And there was never going to be a question that I was going to try bill the studio for that because partly they’re paying me enough money, but also, it was a kind of arbitrary choice I was making for why I wanted to have it here. So I needed to defend that choice.

What I do in those research trips I find is you are looking for the geography. You’re looking for specific details, but also, I was looking for people. And so —

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I was looking to try to meet those people, hear the vocabulary they were using and getting a lot of great contacts so I could have people who I can text at like, you know, seven at night and say like what would be the word for this thing? And they can text me back with what that is. That is really the value of research. And that’s the kind of thing that if I had — I had Stuart do it, it wouldn’t —

**Craig:** It would be terrible.

**John:** It would be terrible if Stuart did it.

**Craig:** Once again, if you had Stuart do it, it would be a disaster.

**John:** Because the thing is, I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m just listening and like, ah.

**Craig:** I thought it was just because Stuart is doing it.

**John:** No, no. I mean, I — even like a really good Stuart, it wouldn’t work the same way.

**Craig:** [laughs] I don’t even know what that would be like.

**John:** [laughs] Yes, we could imagine, though. We’re screenwriters. You can imagine anything.

**Craig:** It’s crazy. Patrick in San Dimas writes — I love Stuart. “I heard Craig warn a Three-Page Challenger that he was pitched a Time Bandit movie and he was unsure if he was going to do it. At this stage of your career, do you both get pitched specs scripts or ideas by different studios to write? Or are these things your agents have found for you?”

**John:** Great. So, we need to take the word spec script out of there because that actually doesn’t make sense there. So —

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** A spec script is something that Craig and I would write independently. But we are pitched ideas by studios, by producers. They say like, “Hey, we want to make a movie based on this thing or about this idea.” And sometimes they’ll approach me directly if I have a relationship, but more likely they will call my agent David Kramer and David Kramer will call and say like, “Hey, they want to do this thing.” And I’ll think like, “Do I want to do that thing?” And about half of the time, I’ll say, “No, that’s just not a world I’m interested in.” Or I’ll say like, “I don’t know what that is, but I’ll look it up.” And then, I will pass on it a few days later.

But sometimes, it’s a really great idea. And then I go in for the meeting and that becomes a thing. So that was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which I was like, “Yeah. You know what, I kind of know what that is, let me look into it.” And then I hop on the phone and that happens.

So I would say at this point of my career, a significant majority of the stuff I end up being paid to write is that kind of thing, where someone has pitched me, this is either a project we own, it’s a book we want to adapt or it’s this — a story world we want someone to approach.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s basically the way it goes. I mean, I — seems like it’s half and half for me, in terms of whether somebody has something that they give to my agent or they just call — I don’t know. I must be the most accessible guy because people are calling me all the time. Or sending me emails all the time saying, “What about this? What about this?” And I always think like, you know, it would be better if everything did go through an agent because one of the benefits of an agent is that you don’t have to have that awkward conversation.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know. I mean, look, sometimes, somebody pitches you something and you just know within four seconds, you just don’t want do it. Or you can’t do it. And you find yourself, you know, I don’t like saying no at all.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I mean, there’s a part of me that wants to do everything anyway. And just because, why not? Let’s see, you know. But you can’t.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** But yes, at this stage of our careers, we get pitched stuff all the time to rewrite or to write. And it’s very flattering. And it is — it’s funny. It just sort of happens at some point, you know. You spend of a lot of time, many years, waiting for it to happen in the way you imagined it happening. And then it happens. And soon enough, it will un-happen and then you quit.

**John:** Yes, exactly, when they stop calling you about that, you know, would you want to make remake of this? And you’re like, “Well, of course not.” And then like, “Wait. Why aren’t you calling me about that anymore?”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I think that’s one of those fascinating things. When we get off the air, I’m going to ask you whether you got a call about a remake of a specific TV show.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And I will judge my worth and your worth, based on which of us got the call first.

**Craig:** [laughs] Okay. Sounds good. I’m excited. What do we have next?

**John:** Kathel in Dublin writes —

**Craig:** Kathel.

**John:** “I am wondering whether to set my next screenplay in the 1970s or modern day. It’s a buddy/fish out of water comedy. And while the time period won’t change the concept or story, it will impact how I write some scenes.”

**Craig:** Will it? Will setting it in the modern day or the 1970s impact [laughs] how you write some scenes? Will it? Huh? This is a very strange question.

**John:** I think it’s actually really easy question to answer.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, it is an easy question, which is — you better — you need to set it in the 1970s or in modern day. It belongs somewhere. It wants to be in a time. It has to be specific. You just can’t go, “No, it could be 70s.” I just feel like, well, why answer your question, I’m wondering whether to set my next screenplay in the 1970s, or ’80s, or ’90s or modern day, or ’40s, or ’50s or the middle ages. Why the 70s?

**John:** What I find so fascinating is like my idea is so unformed that I’m emailing you but I don’t even kind of know the basic nature of this idea. Because it can’t be. The same idea really couldn’t be in both places. Like if the email had come in saying like, “I have this whole approach, which I’m really excited about, like the 1970s of it all. And yet, I’m worried that it’s going to be so locked down in ’70s. I could also do it in this way, which obviously changes a lot of things. I’m really torn. Or if the question was how much more difficult am I making my life by setting this in the ’70s versus the modern day? That email, I kind of get, but to have it be so unformed is fascinating to me, so —

**Craig:** it’s bizarre. Look, the time period is one of the fundamental elements of your story. For instance, John and I recently watched Diary of a Teenage Girl, last podcast episode.

**John:** We did a podcast about it. Yes, yes.

**Craig:** We interviewed Mari Heller, the great Mari Heller. Now, that needed to be in the ’70s. I felt it. Because I didn’t think — I don’t think I would have believed a lot of what happened there had it happened now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It felt like it needed to be a product of a time that was both sexually adventurous and also sexually naïve. It needed both. It needed to be before AIDS for instance.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And it needed to be before the kind of morality panic of the ’80s. You need to have this movie now or in the ’70s? Need to. You just don’t know which, because I don’t think you’ve thought this through well enough.

**John:** So if the question from Kathel in Dublin had been, “Given your druthers, should a movie be set in the 1970s or modern day?” I would say, in general, modern day. Because I think the things you are making your life more difficult about by setting it in the 1970s are substantial. And sometimes, a movie really wants to be set in ’70s. But if it doesn’t really want to be set in the ’70s, then set it in modern day.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that that modern day is the default.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you need to want it to be period for a reason. All right.

**John:** Pick good defaults.

**Craig:** Pick good defaults. Harris from Brooklyn writes — hey, Brooklyn, what’s up? “I have made two short films so far that I’ve written and directed. I’m interested in doing both of those things, writing and directing. The thing is, I don’t know if I should focus on writing my full length screenplay or write and actually make my short films.”

**John:** So Harris in Brooklyn, you’ve already made two short films. That’s good. We encourage people to write things and direct things, so they actually understand what the process of writing and directing things consists of. If you have not yet written a feature length screenplay, you should probably write a feature length screenplay just so you know what that is and what that whole experience and process is. Because you could make 17 short films, after film number eight, I don’t think that’s going to help you write a full feature length screenplay or get a movie made. That’s just my first instinct.

**Craig:** It’s sort of an unanswerable question. I don’t know if you should focus on writing your full length screenplay or continuing to write and make your short films because I don’t know what your — I don’t know what you’re good at.

**John:** Does this guy want to be a music video director? Then he should make more short films. Does he want to be feature screenwriter? He should probably write a screenplay.

**Craig:** Yeah, if you want to make feature films, you better start getting into feature films, sure. But, you know, you — I’m sure are aware, Harris, that it’s one thing to write a short film script and then go shoot it because it’s manageable. It’s another to go shoot a feature length screenplay. You have experience now, so it is possible for you to write a feature length screenplay that is shootable. I would write so that you can make it, because ultimately, there is no better currency than a film. It’s better currency than a script.

**John:** I agree. Our last question comes from Jay. “I’m always fascinated with going to Wikipedia and finding out what the budget for a movie was against how much it grossed. But then I heard somewhere, maybe on your podcast, that movies have to gross at least double the budget of their movie to break even. But what exactly does that mean? In terms of screenwriters, producers, et cetera, do they get piece of the backend? Or is that just the studio behind the film? I’m basically curious of the entire process of how everyone involved [laughs] in the movie makes money?”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So I just figured it would be a good last question to throw in here.

**Craig:** So first, there was an enormous explosion in space. And stars were formed. Then, it’s the — okay. So there’s a lot here. We can’t answer it all at once. I think we’ve actually answered a lot of this before. But let me just go through it quickly.

You’re fascinated with going to Wikipedia and finding out what the budget for a movie was against how much it grossed. Well, maybe, be a little less fascinated with that. It’s just so — who cares? Okay. But —

**John:** You don’t know that the budget that Wikipedia lists is at all accurate.

**Craig:** Yes, it’s not. I guarantee you, it’s not. No budget ever is accurate. I believe that. No budget that is ever published anywhere is accurate. The budget that they show us, that when we’re making the movie, I don’t believe is accurate. [laughs] So all those numbers are baloney, okay? So just know that.

Two, against how much it grossed. Theatrically or grossed theatrically, plus DVD, plus rentals, plus Internet. What does gross even mean? Okay? So there’s that.

You heard somewhere, maybe on our podcast, the movies have to gross at least double the budget of the movie to break even. There’s a rule of thumb. That if you can gross double your budget theatrically, then eventually you’ll be okay. Why double? Because the movie costs money, but then the advertising of a movie costs almost as much — sometimes more money than the movie costs. A lot of times, more money than the movies costs. Then, they have to distribute the movie which costs money as well.

And remember, advertising isn’t just in the United States, it’s everywhere all over the world. And then, all the overhead that goes into play as well, all the salaries of the many, many people that work at the studio in marketing, in distribution and development, all the rest.

And there’s things like taxes, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And of course, the money that was reported as the theatrical gross, that doesn’t all go to the studio. The theaters take a big cut of that as well. Now, you ask, in terms of screenwriters, producers, do they get a piece of backend or is that just the studio behind the film? Screenwriters do not get backend. If a screenwriter is working as a producer or director on the film, then optionally, they may be able to get a real backend. But screenwriters just doing the screenwriting job, no, they don’t get real backend.

Producers almost exclusively get backend, meaning they don’t get paid much for developing the project. They often have fees for making the movie. And then those fees are applied against a backend, so it’s recoupable against a backend. And then if it goes over that amount, then they get more.

So, yes, big movie stars, big producers, big directors can get a piece of the backend. Their salaries are applied against it.

**John:** We can stop there.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that that’s good.

**John:** That’s good. It’s a good introduction to this. But I will say there are previous episodes, we’ll try to put links to some of those previous episodes, where we talk about sort of how money works in the business. But it’s a topic for a book, not a topic for the last question of the show.

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** Let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, I see something called Dead Synchronicity. What’s that?

**Craig:** Dead Synchronicity is a game that is out for Mac, PC and iOS and possibly, possibly Android, although who cares about Android? And I liked it. I liked it a lot. I played it. I thought it was really, really good. It’s an interesting game. It comes from a company in Spain. I think three Spanish brothers actually are the principals of the company.

And it’s not revolutionary game play. It’s basically a point and click puzzle adventure. I love these point and click adventures where the game structure basically is find things and figure out where to use them. Very old school way of doing things.

What made this game interesting for me was that it was incredibly dark. It’s got a lot of sci-fi mumbo jumbo. The sci-fi story, in and of itself, is bordering on incoherent. It promises a sequel, which I’ll play. But what blew my mind about the game was one moment [laughs], one moment in particular, where I thought, “I can’t believe the balls on these guys — ”

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** “For putting this in a game.” It is gross, and disturbing, and awesome. And there were a lot of gross, disturbing, and awesome things in it. But there was one moment where I went, “Wow, this is getting sick.” And you just don’t see that very often juxtaposed with the point and click graphic adventure. So I really enjoyed it. It is dark and disturbing, so trigger warning.

**John:** Okay. My One Cool Thing is Mr. Robot, which is a show on USA. It’s a summer series that I heard people talking about and then I didn’t start watching and it’s like, “You know what, I’ll start watching it.” It is fantastic. And so I would strongly recommend that really everybody listening to this podcast at least watch the pilot episode because I thought it was just terrifically written by the guy Sam Esmail who I’ve never encountered before.

The pilot is terrifically directed. This guy, creator of the show, also directed the second episode. It was just terrifically done as well. The conceit of the show is you have a guy who is a computer security technology expert who is definitely on one of Craig’s spectrums.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** He is an incredibly dark central character to try to follow and yet he’s fascinating. And so at the top of the show, we were talking about Clueless and how Cher might seem like a sociopath if you didn’t have her voiceover. Same situation with this guy. He has voiceover and yet the conceit behind his voiceover is he’s talking to a person he knows is an imaginary person, and that is you.

And so he will address you directly through his voiceover. And it ends up becoming incredibly important and helpful to the show. It’s all entirely from his point of view and to the degree to which things within the world have bent to sort of his point of view. And so the villainess corporation has a giant E. He calls it Evil Corp and then from that point forward, every time you see it and everyone who refers to it calls it Evil Corp, which I think is just great.

It’s such a great example of how a strong central character can drive not just the plot but really the world of a show. So I strongly recommend Mr. Robot on USA.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Okay. You will find links to most of the things we talked about on the show today at the show page at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes or /podcast, both will get you there. Also, while on johnaugust.com, you should go visit the store, store.johnaugust.com where you can see the four Scriptnotes T-shirts and pick your favorite. Pick a couple if you want to.

Again, these are all preorders. You only have about two-and-a-half weeks to order these shirts. Then we will print them, we will package them up, we will send them to your house. They will be on your body in time for the Austin Film Festival if nothing goes horribly wrong. And I don’t think anything will go horribly wrong.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Thank you, Matthew. Our outro this week comes from Duncan Pflaster. If you have an outro for our show, you can write in to us at ask@johnaugust.com with a link to your outro. That same address is a great place to write questions like the ones we answered today. And so ask@johnaugust.com. Little short things are great on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin, I am @johnaugust. And that is our show this week.

**Craig:** Thanks, John.

**John:** See you next week.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes shirts are available for pre-order in the John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Dewalt hex bit set](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000628SO2/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) and a [magnetic bit extensions set](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V3TQP2/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* This is the last week of the summer for [Featured Fridays](http://johnaugust.com/2015/weekend-read-featured-fridays) on [Weekend Read](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/)
* Scriptnotes, 130: [Period space](http://johnaugust.com/2014/period-space)
* [South Park popularity is soaring in Taiwan](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-12-28/features/0012280062_1_taiwan-south-park-four-musketeers) from The Baltimore Sun
* [Non-disclosure agreements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement) on Wikipedia
* Screenwriting.io on [handling numbers in dialogue](http://screenwriting.io/how-should-you-handle-numbers-or-confusing-jargon-in-dialogue/)
* Screenwriting.io on [spec scripts](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-a-%E2%80%9Cspec-script%E2%80%9D/)
* Scriptnotes, 11: [How movie money works](http://johnaugust.com/2011/how-movie-money-works)
* [Dead Synchronicity](http://www.deadsynchronicity.com/en/home/)
* [Mr. Robot](http://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot) on USA
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Duncan Pflaster ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/nobody-eats-four-marshmallows).

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

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

**John:** And this is episode 203 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** You know, I’m doing quite well. I’m in the strange screenwriter summer place where my children seem to be off of work. I’m not off of work but I feel like I should be off of work. In fact, I think I have more to do now than I did before. I don’t think we ever outgrow the feeling that summer is supposed to be not-work time.

**John:** Yes. I had the week-long vacation which really felt like my summer break but I’m definitely now back into it. And I’m in to this rewrite and figuring out how to actually execute those things. I said, “Oh, yeah, sure. I can do that.” And then you stare at the scenes and figure out, “Oh, my god, how am I going to do that?”

**Craig:** Isn’t that the worse feeling when you think to yourself in the moment, “Oh, you know what, there is an easy path there.” And then after maybe five more minutes of private consideration you realize, “Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no.” But it’s too late.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You’ve said it was easy.

**John:** You already said yes.

**Craig:** Yeah, I know it’s terrible.

**John:** Yeah. And the challenges are, in general, I could do all those things but to do all those things without adding pages is incredibly difficult. So you’re looking at sort of how to make these changes work in a way that makes everything better and doesn’t drag stuff out. And I think I can really do that in this pass, but it’s just taken some really careful brain time to do it.

Craig, I don’t know if you ever do this thing called Morning Pages? Have you heard this idea of Morning Pages?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. So I think I’m probably doing it wrong and I’ll probably explain it wrong. But it’s the idea that the first thing when you wake up in the morning, you go and you write down the stuff that your day is about or the stuff that you’re going to be working on that day and it’s meant to be a way to focus your brain and focus your attention. And I think there’s probably a philosophy that I’m not executing quite correctly. But this last week I tried it.

And so, every morning I’ve been waking up and before I go downstairs and drink my coffee, I’ll just spend a few minutes scribbling down sort of what this stuff is that I’m writing that day. And it has been useful, I think, in terms of focusing on what I’m actually going to do and what the scene work will be for that. And so, some of the solutions I found this week have come out of that. So, if people are looking for a new thing to try, that might be the new thing to try.

**Craig:** I do a similar thing but I usually do it right before I go to bed. Because I find that if I have some clarity about what the next days’ accomplishments are supposed to be, it’s a lot easier for me to go to sleep. I feel comforted. I think, okay, I have a plan.

If I go to bed without any concept of what the next day is going to be, sometimes, I toss and turn. I’m a little worried. When I wake up I can just start to do those things, of course, as you know, I will use the shower as the shower.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Get it?

**John:** The shower is the shower of revelations for how you’re going to get things done.

**Craig:** Don’t anyone ever tell me I’m not clever.

**John:** Uh-uh-uh.

**Craig:** I changed a vowel sound.

**John:** Yeah, no one will ever tell you that you’re not clever.

**Craig:** [laughs].

**John:** They’ll never tell you that you’re not clever.

**Craig:** Everyone is thinking it.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So let us get to the work for today which is we were going to talk about what turnaround is and how it works. You know what, it’s possible we discussed turnaround on a previous episode, but if we have, it’s been so long ago that you and I don’t even remember what turnaround is.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So we’re going to have a Professor Craig explanation of what turnaround is.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** We’re also going to answer a bunch of leftover questions from the live 200th episode. That was a fun time where we had people writing their questions, you know, listening to the show in real-time, sending in their thoughts and their questions. We were able to answer maybe five of them on the air, but we had a lot of them leftover.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So Stuart gathered them together and we’re going to try to blow through a bunch of them today.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, it should be a fun episode.

But first we have some follow up. In the last week’s episode, we discussed a site called FAST Screenplays and our opinion of it to summarize was not high. And we did not think it was necessarily a site to which people should be paying money. Craig had the opportunity this week to do some follow up and conversations with the owner of the site and the program, Jeff Bollow. So do you want to summarize what that entailed?

**Craig:** Yeah, well, Jeff contacted both of us on Twitter publicly so everybody could see that that’s there and essentially and then followed up with an email saying, “Hey, you know, I feel like I’ve been misunderstood here and actually I’d love a chance to explain to you what I’m doing. I think you will agree that it is a positive thing and it really is worth $30,000,” and et cetera.

And before we decide how we’re going to deal with this, I did have one question for him. Because the thing that was bothering me I suppose the most, the thing that stood out the most that was setting FAST Screenplays apart from a lot of the other sites that we get angry about was that he was claiming it was not-for-profit. And so I asked him if in fact his company and I wasn’t sure if his company was Australian or American, if it was recognized by any relevant taxation authority as a not-for-profit or non-profit company and he wrote us back and said, “Actually, no, it’s not.”

And what he said is that he never intended to imply that it was a legitimate charity, you know, or a non-profit organization the way we understand them to be in the legal sense. He wasn’t even aware that that was possibly something that he could be misleading about, but he understands now that that is misleading and so he apparently has taken that description off of the website. So, at least, there was a positive development.

You know, I’m not sure how to go about this with him because on the one hand I do feel like anybody that we suggest is not being, hmm, let’s say, ultimately useful for the good and welfare of screenwriters should have a chance to defend themselves or rebut or explain. On the other hand, I’m concerned about just giving him our venue as a platform to promote his program. I don’t want to do that either because, frankly, I have no interest in that. So I’m not sure how to proceed here.

What’s your instinct, John?

**John:** My instinct is to do sort of exactly what we just did in this last 30 seconds which is to explain that there was a conversation and that some things were said, but, you know, it’s up to other people in their own venues to figure out the ways to respond and that it’s not our place to offer an open-mic to anybody who feels offended.

**Craig:** Well, I think that that settles that. I mean, I do think that he is obviously — he can go ahead and sort of put his own rebuttal up on his website. I was glad that we cleared up the non-profit issue. That was the thing that was really sticking out to me. But, yeah, I agree with you. I think — and, you know, we’ll respond to him but, you know, he was offering to explain his system to us and how it works. I just I’m not interested in that. I don’t —

**John:** I’m not interested either.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a podcast about things that are interesting to screenwriters, notably us, and that was not particularly interesting to me.

**Craig:** We’re not interested in it therefore it will not be on our podcast about things that are interesting to us.

**John:** You and I both got a tweet from a person named Matt Treacy who writes, “Curious whether you guys actually do any genuine research or contact individuals before assassinating their character.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And I do want to clear this up because we do a lot of research and people may not realize that part of the funds that we’re getting from the subscriptions is to hire private investigators to sort of really do the leg work and the field work to make sure that it’s possible for us to really, you know, know what we’re talking about. So it may just seem like we’re just two guys standing at microphones talking once a week but there’s really a whole crack research team behind this whole thing. And, you know, sometimes, you know, the ethical calls that we get into, it’s sort of like an Aaron Sorkin show where there’s a lot of back and forth, Craig and I are arguing before we get on the air but that we really have all the facts exactly right and straight. And I hope that comes across in our weekly banter.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, look, we sit down every week and we pick from a list of people who we feel deserve to be assassinated. And then we have, yes, a lot of times we’re yelling at each other, “But are you sure? Are you sure?” No, we’re not in the business of character assassination. We read a guy’s website and we commented on it. I think probably that’s a friend. I assume that’s a friend.

**John:** I think it may be a friend.

**Craig:** I think it might be a friend. I don’t think that friend is doing his friend any favors with that kind of thing. I mean, no, we’re not interested in character assassination. We are interested in protecting, as I said before, the good and welfare of screenwriters in general. Anybody that’s looking to make a buck off of screenwriters ought to be able to face this kind of critique. And considering that I basically start from a default position of don’t spend money on your screenwriter career, is it really that shocking that I had a problem with that?

**John:** Nothing is shocking to me anymore, Craig.

Our next bit of follow up is Tess Gerritsen who has a lawsuit in the works against the film Gravity. So we first talked about this in a full-length dedicated episode. It’s episode 183. And so I think it’s time for a little bit of Game of Thrones sort of previously on Scriptnotes so we can actually get all up to speed because it’s really complicated. So I’ll try to do the short version of this.

So previously in the Gravity legal drama, novelist Tess Gerritsen writes a book called Gravity. She sells the film rights to Newline for $1 million with additional payments due if they make the movie. Alfonso Cuarón makes a movie called Gravity for Warner Bros which is a giant hit. Gerritsen says, “Hey, wait, that movie is based on my book.” Warner says, “Nah-uh. It isn’t. And even if it were, the movie rights are owned by Newline and we own Newline so there’s no issue here.”

Gerritsen sues. She wants the money she feels that she’s owed and also a discovery basically, ability to do research within Warner Bros, so she can establish that Warner and Newline are deliberately trying to screw her out of the money.

So the judge here was Judge Margaret Morrow and she said basically, “Nope, you haven’t made a compelling case.” But she gave Gerritsen’s legal team an opportunity to revise their complaint to address the nature of the corporate relationship between Warner and Newline and that’s where we left it last February.

So in the meantime, it turns out Gerritsen’s legal team did file their amended complaint and Judge Morrow this past week came back and said basically again, “Nope.” And so we’ll put a link in the show notes to the actual like 50 or 60-page legal document that came out of it, like, Gerritsen’s opinion. But I’ll tell you, it’s one of the most boring legal documents I’ve ever gone through and I’ve gone through a bunch, because it’s only really looking at the nature of the corporate relationship between Warners and Newline and it’s just eye-glazingly boring in terms of what is the difference between a merger and an acquisition and a stock thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And, I don’t know, Craig, did you try to pile through it?

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, I tried. You’re exactly right. What’s happened here is that Gerritsen’s case which the moral core of it is, “Hey, you ripped off my book.” And she also alleges that she did some writing on the screenplay that was developed of her book directly which was written by Michael Goldenberg, not the Cuaróns. The moral core, you rip me off, that’s been discarded. At this point now it’s just been drifting to this whole other thing of, “Hey, these are the same companies and so I should automatically…”

It’s very much now about the relationship between these companies. And so, naturally, the ensuing legal decision is as boring as that topic. And I couldn’t finish it because, as you said, it was eye-glazingly tedious. But the upshot is that the judge enlisting multiple cases and all that other stuff just said, “No, no, you’re done.”

**John:** Yeah, it feels like the whole thing was like one giant parenthetical. It was all like, you know, half of a page would be sort of parenthesis about all these other cases. And so, it was really hard to get through.

One of the key phrases that’s in here is “breach of implied covenant” which is basically that Katja/Newline had an obligation to pursue the claim against Warner Bros for, you know, making Gravity —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which is the same as their project or related to their project, she wasn’t buying that. So that was sort of the upshot of that. It looks like there’s still one more round of this where they’re able to go back another time and try to make their case on the specific nature of the relationship, but she’s even sort of drawing a tighter circle about what could be in this revised complaint. So we’ll see what happens next.

**Craig:** it’s getting pretty watered down. I mean, look, she’s —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She’s now saying like, forget whether or not I can prove that they did this; now what I’m really angry about is that they, Newline, didn’t try and sue them. But, yeah, okay, fine and no, but also, where is the substance now? At no point have we ever seen any substance from her that Cuarón’s movie has anything to do with her book or her screenplay with Newline.

**John:** Yeah. So in her latest blog post Tess Gerritsen talks through sort of her reaction to this whole thing. And so, continuing tradition from the first Gravity, we have our friend Christy reading Tess Gerritsen’s words here so we can respond to it so it’s not just me talking this whole time. So here is a sample of the latest blog post.

“This ruling allows me no possibility of remedy. Even if the Warner Bros film had copied my story word for word there would be nothing I could do about it.”

**John:** Craig, is that true?

**Craig:** No, that is totally not true. It’s so not true that my teeth hurt.

**John:** So let’s imagine this hypothetical where she is exactly right, where there’s just no question that the film Gravity completely copies the plot, story, characters, everything from her book, what would be different about this situation?

**Craig:** So she’s saying, even if the Warner Bros film had copied my story word for word there would be nothing I could do about it. At that point, the easiest thing for her to do about it would be to file a credits complaint and she would certainly know. File an arbitration complaint with the Guild when the credits for Cuarón’s Gravity are being determined to say, “Hold on a second, they’ve left my name off. I should be included on this as a participating writer.”

If for story alone she had written material, not just the novel but had also written screenplay material, so right off the bat, there is a way — and let me point out, you don’t even have to be employed. If she had written a screenplay in her house and had — and there were some proof that it had existed prior to Cuarón’s screenplay, that would be enough for her to say to the WGA, “Hold on. I got ripped off here. I deserve to be a participating writer. I have material in the final screenplay of this film.” That is separate and apart from her rights issues and her contract issues with Newline and Warner Bros, but it would afford her, if she were correct, and hearing her hypothetical “copied my story word for word” she would almost certainly get some kind of story credit and she would also get residuals.

And then working backwards from there, it would be extremely hard for Warner Bros or Newline to say, “Oh, yeah, and you know what, we’re also not going to now honor the contract that says, if we make a movie of your book, you get $500,000.” I’ll ignore the 2.5% of net profits since that doesn’t exist.” Really, what it comes down to is $500,000 and credit. And so, of course, there would have been something she could have done about it.

But no, the Warner Bros film did not copy her story word for word. And I find this very slippery. What’s she’s doing is saying, “Well, okay, what I know is that I cannot show that they copied my story word for word or a word as far as I could tell, so I’ll just say that if they had, there’d be nothing I could about it.” But they didn’t and there would have been.

**John:** Yeah. Also, imagine this hypothetical. So let’s say it plays out more the way the real situation does where Tess Gerritsen says she was aware that there was a film called Gravity, at the time, she believed it wasn’t based on her book at all. It was only after seeing the movie that she was aware like, oh, she said she became aware like, “Oh, clearly, this is based on my thing. And I find out later that Cuarón knew about it and all that stuff.” Let’s say all of that is true, if in this hypothetical it really were based sort of word by word on her book or very strongly related to her book, there is no way Warners would have let this go to a lawsuit. The hypotheticals would have worked out very differently because there would be no sort of ambiguity about what the situation is.

The reality is she is sort of waves her hands and saying, “It’s the same title. It’s about these same kinds of things” but when you dig deeper into it, they’re very, very different stories. And that’s why Warners feels like, “You know what, these aren’t related at all.” And I think a lot of people would find they’re not related at all if they actual compare it apples-to-apples.

Let’s listen to a little bit more from what she says.

“The court’s latest decision focused solely on the Warner Bros/Newline corporate relationship. It did not take into consideration my novel or Cuarón’s film or the similarities between them.”

Well, that’s true. This is the nature of this new complaint and this new round was that it was only supposed to be about this relationship. That’s all they’re allowed to talk about.

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s saying this like she didn’t file this complaint.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She files a complaint saying, “Hold on, these two companies are more related than they think and the judge is saying, ‘Actually, no, they’re not.'” And now she’s complaining that they didn’t talk about the material in the book?

**John:** Yeah. One last one here.

“It did not address my third-act rewrite of Michael Goldenberg’s Gravity script in which I depicted satellite debris colliding with the International Space Station, the destruction of ISS, and the sole surviving female astronaut adrift in her EVA suit.”

So this is new information for me because this is the first time I think I’ve seen her claiming that she actually wrote on the screenplay itself or that she’d — because she said something about like she was writing like story stuff, but I’m really unclear now, was she hired to write on the movie? Like, is she a contracted writer on the movie? What is she claiming here?

**Craig:** The truth is that, I’m not sure, because like you, I seem to recall that she was providing story material of some kind in additional to her novel, you know, prose material that then was handed to Goldenberg possibly or maybe handed to the studio and not handed to Goldenberg. We don’t know. Now she’s saying that she did a rewrite of his screenplay itself. Either way your depiction, her depiction of satellite debris colliding with the international space station, the destruction of the space station, and the sole surviving female astronaut adrift in her EVA suit would in its essence have no more to do with Cuarón’s Gravity then what was it called, Deep Space Homer did?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, when The Simpsons did it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This is the part about this that’s so puzzling to me, she —

**John:** South Park defense.

**Craig:** Yeah, there you go. Tess Gerritsen is behaving as if she invented the concept of a space station in trouble and astronauts adrift in space. I remember seeing that whole, the Mission of Mars movie had astronauts drifting in space. This is not new and that’s not the core of unique literary expression in fixed form. I think she refuses to acknowledge the fact that these casual similarities do not rise to the test of infringement or use of her copyrighted material or the material that she licensed to Newline. She has provided still as far as I can tell no concrete evidence. The way, for instance, was provided in the Sherlock Holmes case by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle. There’s nothing. She’s just making assertions.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I think frankly if her book had been called something other than Gravity, we wouldn’t be dealing with this lawsuit. It’s like the title has become a fetish where you can’t get past the fact that it’s two things, a book with one title and a movie with the one title and they’re both about trouble in space but that’s seems to be — I just, I’m puzzled by this. I don’t know why she’s continuing to do this. She’s going to keep losing because what’s not there is what needs to be there. This is the, you know, the case of the dog that didn’t bark. Where is the literary material that is the same?

**John:** So I do think I understand more why she’s pursuing it because from her perspective all of us could say these same things until the end of time. And she would still feel in her heart that it was based on it and she’s not going to ever change that feeling. I don’t think she’s going win this lawsuit. But I really do fundamentally understand why she feels the way she feels. It’s really hard to take yourself out of the experience that you lived and the book that you wrote and sort of your perspective. It’s not even sort of egocentricism, it’s just reality. And I kind of get it from her side and I’m sympathetic to her feeling about it.

Where I’m frustrated is that to raise this as like this is a battle cry to all writers that they’re going to try to screw you over, that this is a great injustice being done, that all writers are in danger. And this was my frustration in the original episode, too, is that she’s trying to generalize her kind of unique situation to the plight of all writers and that’s actually not accurate.

**Craig:** It’s not accurate. Here is the nightmare scenario she’s putting out there as one that she’s experiencing and therefore look out everyone. What she’s saying is if you write a novel and you license the film rights to a studio, the studio can then essentially be bought by somebody else and then if that somebody else rips you off, you have no recourse because the studio you sold the rights to are really the only ones that have standing. They’re the ones that have been “injured,” but they’re in bed with the purchasing company so you just got screwed.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** Here is the problem with that. I don’t believe that’s how it works at all. It doesn’t work that way because it doesn’t happen. It would happen all the time. If it were that easy, it would constantly happen. It does not. This is the first lawsuit of this kind, I recall. And second of all, I would think that if you could show clear infringement, there would be a legal case against the people that you sold your license to to say basically you dealt in bad faith here.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And the material would be the proof, but it’s not there. So what’s happening is I think she’s confusing somebody saying, “You really don’t have,” I mean, based on what you’re saying you don’t have a case with — then none of you would have a case. No, no, it’s just — you don’t have a case. Because the similarities, at least, from what I’ve been presented don’t appear to be there.

**John:** Yep. So let’s move on to a new topic and this was suggested by a mutual writer friend of ours who asked, “Hey, could you guys talk about turnaround.” And so, turnaround is a term of art that you hear thrown around Hollywood about a script that used to be at one studio and now it’s at a different studio or something is in turnaround and it probably doesn’t mean quite what we think it means. And there actually are very specific terms to it. And so, whenever there is something that has very specific contractual language associated with it, my first recourse is to call Craig Mazin. And so, Craig, let’s talk through turnaround, what it means and what it means for screenwriters.

**Craig:** Sure. Well, turnaround basically means the studio that had been marching in a direction toward making a movie is turning around. They’re saying, “Look, we have been developing this screenplay. We have decided we are no longer interested in spending more money to develop the screenplay to a place where we could then put it into production. We are ceasing development on this project.”

**John:** Why would a studio decide to stop?

**Craig:** Well, all sorts of reasons. The most obvious is that they realize the futility of the effort. [laughs] After a bunch of tries, they all look at each other and go, “Does anybody still like this?” I mean, sometimes people buy things and they think, “Well, the idea is good. We don’t like the script. Let’s develop and now it’ll get good.” It never does.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Very frequently what happens is that there is a change in leadership at the studio. People are fired or quit. New people come in. They look at the development slate and they go, “What’s that?” And someone says, “Oh, yeah, we’ve spent $4 million trying to make that into a movie.” “Well, stop. It’s stupid. I hate it.” The project is now in turnaround.

**John:** What kinds of projects can go into turnaround? Is it anything that a studio is developing or only very specific kinds of projects?

**Craig:** Every single thing they’re developing can be put into turnaround. There are things that are more likely than others to be put in turnaround.

**John:** But let’s not conflate the idea of letting the option on a book lapse is not the same thing as turnaround. So in general, something that gets put into turnaround is something that the studio owns out right and entirely. So it could be a spec script that they purchased. It could be a book that they purchased. They didn’t just option it. They actually purchased it. They bought out all the rights to it. They own it and control it. So it’s not that they have a ticking clock on it. They really are done.

So, a lot of the work that I end up doing, working on is adaptations of books. And so there are some of those movies that haven’t been made. But those projects that I’ve written can’t go into turnaround really because they’ve left the options on those underlying books lapse. Or there’s some fundamental rights that are not associated directly with my script that a person would also have to buy. And so those things don’t tend to go into turnaround.

**Craig:** Yeah, essentially what happens is when they let rights cycles lapse, that is the ultimate proof of turnaround. Essentially, they’re saying, “We have a renewal fee coming up. Do we want to spend money to renew this or should we just kill this thing now?” So they say, “Let’s kill it now and let the cycle lapse.” It is essentially turned around and then it goes out of rights cycle, yeah.

**John:** Yeah. But in general, we mean turnaround when the studio is actively letting someone else buy it. Is that what you mean for turnaround?

**Craig:** No, to me, a movie studio can go into turnaround on a project and that’s the last thing anyone ever hears of it. It’s a dead letter office project. They stop developing it and it goes away forever. But things can be bought out of turnaround by other studios. And that’s where it gets a little interesting.

**John:** Great. So talk us through how a studio can buy something out and what a screenwriter needs to know about turnaround. If she was working on a project that is now in turnaround, what does that mean for her?

**Craig:** At the moment, it means that the studio that hired you or purchased your spec screenplay is no longer interested in making it into a movie. They’re not going to be spending any more money on you or any other writer to keep marching towards possible production.

It doesn’t, however, mean it’s dead absolutely. It just means it’s dead there. At that time, if an agent says to you, “Hey, look, you know, maybe we can get another studio interested in getting this out of turnaround,” what they’re saying is we can get another buyer who can come to your studio and say, “We actually like this project. Can we have it? Would you sell it to us?”

And this creates an interesting situation for — let’s call them Studio A has put something into turnaround and Studio B comes along and says, “Oh, you know, actually we would take that off your hands.” The question now becomes an issue of negotiation.

Studio A, let’s say, John, they buy a script from you. It’s an original. After a year, they say to you, “You know what, we kind of want to bring in a new voice.” So then they bring in me, which is natural, of course. [laughs] Of course.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Because they are hopeful, John.

**John:** To pay twice as much.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] They want this to be good. So they bring it to me, I work on it for a year and then they look at each other and say, “Wow.”

**John:** We made a huge mistake. I mean, Craig Mazin to rewrite the script? What were we thinking?

**Craig:** [laughs] Basically, both of these guys have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither of them know what they’re doing and this should not be a movie. Let’s put it into turnaround.

Now, you, not me, because here’s the thing, I don’t control anything there, ultimately. I don’t have anything sort of to buy. And I’ll explain why. You do. You have this first script. So your agent goes to Studio B and says, “Let’s go get it out of turnaround.” Studio B calls up Studio A and says, “Hey, you’ve spent X dollars developing this on John and Craig and you’ve gotten nowhere and you have nothing to show for it, nor will you ever. How about we take it off your hands?” And Studio A says, “Fine. Pay us what we spent on it and you could take it off our hands.”

And then Studio B goes, “Nah, I don’t think so. How about we give you half? Half is better than nothing.” And so the negotiation begins. The reason that you have to drive that and not me is because of chronology. See, my screenplay is based on yours. Your screenplay is based on nothing. You created it. If they came and they just said, “We just want Craig’s script,” the problem is that my script is useless because it’s based on your script and Studio A would still own your script.

**John:** Yeah. Chain of title.

**Craig:** Chain of title. They’ve got to go all the way back to the beginning. That’s the key one. Now, they may go back to the beginning and say, “Look, we love John’s script, we hate Craig’s script. We just want to buy John’s script out of turnaround. And we assure you, as we develop it forward from John’s script, we will not be infringing on anything that’s in Craig’s script. So we just want to buy John’s script out of turnaround.”

Sometimes they say, “We actually really like what Craig did. We want to keep going, so we want to buy both scripts out of turnaround.” That’s how it works.

**John:** That’s great. So when can turnaround kick in? Is there something that a screenwriter needs to be mindful of? Are there ticking clocks, are there windows?

**Craig:** There are, if you’re talking about reversion. But that’s a different thing than turnaround.

**John:** Yeah, so let’s go through both of these. And, you know, because I think when the writer was actually asking us, I think he was really looking at reversion. He was looking at a script that was lying dormant for a while.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So let’s draw a sharp line here between turnaround and reversion. So, turnaround is the studio said, “You know what, we’re done.” Another studio comes to it and says, “Oh, you know what, we actually would really want to do that.” And sometimes, individual writers will have in their contract specific language about that turnaround, that there would be some sort of dates and times and abilities to control. But in a general sense, it’s just a negotiation where Studio B comes to studio and says, “Hey, you know what, we actually really do want to make this movie. What would you think about that?”

Now, Craig, sometimes Studio A doesn’t want to make the movie but they don’t want Studio B to make the movie either. Let’s figure out why they wouldn’t want that to happen.

**Craig:** Happens all the time. It is one thing to say, “We’re making a guess that this project is not worth producing.” It’s another thing to say, “We’re making a guess that this project is not worth producing and we’re willing to let another studio prove us right.” Because they may prove you wrong and there are a lot of examples of this.

For instance, Fox had The Blind Side. They didn’t think it was worth producing. They let it go in turnaround to Alcon and Warner Bros. And Alcon and Warner Bros. went along and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Fox was wrong.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That is, it’s embarrassing and it impacts them competitively. I mean, the worst thing in the world is you put a movie out in the same week and another studio puts out a movie that you used to have but you let go in turnaround and they kick your butt. It’s a little bit like trading a pitcher to another team and then three weeks later that pitcher no hits you. It’s just a terrible feeling.

So sometimes, it’s worth it to them to just bite the bullet and say, “No one gets it because we don’t want to have our faces rubbed in this.” And they can do that if they so desire on projects that are based on underlying material.

But, interestingly, they can’t completely do that with impunity when we’re talking about an original screenplay. And this is where reversion comes in. A turnaround is something that studios do. Reversion is something a writer can do. And this is something that’s in our collective bargaining agreement.

**John:** So talk us through it. Talk us through what a writer has the ability to do if she has written an original screenplay or something that she’s set up off of a pitch. It was her entire idea.

**Craig:** So she sold a spec or she pitched something that was original, they bought it, and she’s written the first screenplay. She has originated this. That is, A, number one criteria, it must be original. If there’s underlying material, there’s no way that she would ever be able to control the rights in toto for somebody else, right? Because there would be an author out there. Okay, so that’s number one. Script must be original.

Next, she has to wait five years from either the sale of her spec or when she finishes her initial services. If she’s hired to write a draft or even if she’s hired to write two drafts, when she’s finished with that, that’s when the clock starts. She’s got to wait five years.

Five years and then on the day that five years is up, a two-year window begins. The two-year window allows her to go shop this somewhere else. But we’ve got some restrictions. And frankly, the restrictions are so odious that reversion happens extraordinarily rarely. It is unicornic, as we often say on the show.

So, restrictions. You’ve got your two years. One, the two-year window only really begins if the script is not in what they call active development. Well, what is active development? From our point of view as writers, well, are you paying another writer to work on this? From their point of view, while we’re looking for another writer, we’re having meetings with writers, we’ve attached an actor, we’re talking to directors.

It can get very fuzzy. And essentially, the studio can obliterate your effective two-year window if they really want to. If they really wanted to, they can just pay somebody scale. They can chuck 60 grand at somebody to go really slowly over two years. So, there’s that.

Let’s say they’re cool about it. They’re like, “Yeah, cool. Take your two years. You got it.” All right. You can get the script back at that point by paying the studio the money that they paid you.

**John:** So in my case, let’s say that I wanted to reacquire the script that you had horribly butchered and the five years have passed. So I would be able to pay them back the 100K they had paid me to write the script — so let’s say it was a pitch. So I write them a check for $100,000 and I own the script again. And I don’t have to pay the money that they paid you, right?

**Craig:** That’s almost right. Yes, you don’t have to pay the money that they paid me. However, you have to pay them, I believe, the money that they paid you, plus interest, I think. I think. It may just be that you have to pay them back the money they paid you. Let’s just say it is. Fine.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** You give them that money. Right off the bat, that can be a problem because let’s say they bought your script for $1 million. You don’t get $1 million. You get $900,000 after your agent. Whoop, it’s down to $850,000 after lawyer. Whoop, it’s down to, let’s say, 500 grand after taxes, okay?

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And that was five years ago. They need $1 million. So right off the bat, that’s an issue. Okay, that’s number one. Now, you could theoretically find a studio to back you on this, right. If a studio wanted to buy it, that’s probably the way it works.
So at that point, let’s say you have a partner in line already. And they say, “Yeah, we’ll take care of it. We will pay back the money for you.” But the new purchasing studio, in the case of reversion — because remember, reversion is something that must happen if you follow the rules. It’s in our contract. It’s not something that Studio A could do, right? If you catch them the right way with the rules, they have to give it.

So, unfortunately, there are punitive things built in. Studio B, when they’re trying to get something that you’re reverting, they have to pay the original studio for all the costs to all the subsequent writers, including the pension and health that was paid on top of that, and interest on top of it.

And this becomes tough, especially if you wrote a spec screenplay and then, as is often the case, six writers came along and each of them, you know, $1 million a pop or more and there’s $8 million against the screenplay and you get the rights, you know, in your two-year window and you take it out of Disney and you bring it over to Universal and they’re like, “Well, we’d love to but it’s going to cost us $12 million just for a script. And that’s too much. We can’t do it.”

And so, unfortunately, this is why reversion is very, very rare. It’s basically saying, “You can get your script back but you have a very narrow timeline in which you can do it. And the studio you sell it to has to be full burdened of development paid for. It can’t be negotiated down.” Frankly, you’re much better off just doing a traditional turnaround process.

**John:** Yeah. That sounds brutal. So, very few projects do go through reversion. More projects sometimes do go through turnaround. You and I both, through our Fox deal, we have sort of special reversion rights on the things we write underneath that special Fox deal. So I think sometimes there are special cases where, you know, a screenwriter would have better terms than sort of the standard WGA deal.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But it’s not common. And so, the writer who’s writing to us, I think he was asking about this exact sort of reversion question. And our general answer back to him is that it’s theoretically possible. But it’s challenging.
Would our advice to him be to go forthright up to the studio and say, “Hey, it’s about this five-year window and I’m just wondering because I would like to reacquire it,” or should he just wait and then suddenly spring it?

**Craig:** I would wait and suddenly spring it.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** You know how this goes. People don’t want something until they realize somebody else wants it. You know, the worst thing you could do is come to a studio and say, “Hey, look, I was thinking about maybe getting the script out of turnaround because Chris Pratt wants to be in it now.” They’re like, “What? Oh, really? Great.”

**John:** What? What? What?

**Craig:** “He could be in it for us. And please go away. We’re hiring another writer.” So, in a way, you kind of want to spring it on them. It will work best if there is not a lot of money against the project. It’s going to be very tough to get it out of there with reversion if there is a lot.

**John:** Yeah. That is absolutely true. The last bit of leverage that you might have is that sometimes there are relationships. And this is a relationship business. And there are cases I can think of where someone has been able to take a project from one studio to another studio when Studio A would wouldn’t make it, they got it to Studio B because you say like, “I will never work for you again unless you let me make this movie somewhere else.”

And if you are a filmmaker with enough power to do that, Studio A may say yes because they want you to be happy and they want you to be able to do things in the future. I guess my general advice in the situation is become a very powerful filmmaker and then you can have more ability to do turnaround and reversion in the way you want them to happen.

**Craig:** No question. I mean, let’s remember that reversion, as I’ve described it, is something that we “get” for better or worse in the minimum basic agreement. It is a right for every single writer, including the person that has just sold their first screenplay. It is not a particularly great right.

So you always have the opportunity to do better when you have leverage when you’re selling something. You can put in what they call Proceed to Production clauses where if the company does not get you to production in a certain amount of time, you automatically get things back in an easy way.

Or you’re in a position where you can say, “Look, I’m writing this for you. You don’t want to do that. Let these guys do it and I’ll do that for you.” But when you’re talking about the minimum basics, unfortunately, our reversion rights are minimum.

**John:** The last thing I want to ask you about, Craig, is sometimes in relationship turnaround, I’ve heard something happen about like, oh suddenly this actor became attached and therefore that canceled the turnaround.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** What’s happening with that? What is the nature of that attachment that messed up turnaround?

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, there’s a thing called no new elements where basically, when you have Proceed to Production clauses and everybody deals with this. Producers deal with this, writers, directors, everybody. When you have any kind of contractual arrangement where you’re saying, “Look, if you don’t get me to production in a certain amount of time, I get to leave with this.” Or if you have a deal where it’s like, “Oh, I have a first look for you, right? I have a first look. You get to look at it once. If you pass, I get to take it somewhere else.”

A lot of times, you’ll see a no new elements clause which basically says, “Hey, when we say we don’t want it, we say we don’t want it as you’re showing it to us. But if you add a new element to that, like attaching a big actor or attaching a big director, that’s not the same thing you showed us. We get to have that now or at least we get a chance to say no to that.”
And that’s only fair. Let’s say you spend a whole bunch of money to give somebody a bungalow and a production deal and all the overhead and the whole deal is but you bring us stuff first, and they bring you a script but they don’t really want to do it with you, so like, “Yeah, here’s the script and we don’t have anybody attached.” They’re like, “Um, no.” “Okay, thanks.” And then a week later you realize, you read that they have sold it to a different studio with Chris Pratt attached, “Come on, guys. It doesn’t work that way.”

So when they add a new element, or you add a new element, you got to realize you’re kind of resetting the clock.

**John:** Absolutely true. Great. So let’s get to some questions that were left over from our live show and talk through as many of them as we can. Jenny Shelton asked, “Can you talk about the difference between selling a screenplay versus selling a series? And if a new writer has sold a spec pilot, would that guarantee them a spot in the writer’s room?”

So Aline was on the show, so we were talking a lot about television on that episode. But I could talk about sort of selling a pilot because I’ve done that. And you’ve done that now, too.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, selling a screenplay, let’s say you’re a new writer and you sell a screenplay. You are going to be sticking around for minimum of one new draft, Craig. What is the guarantee for new writers selling a spec screenplay?

**Craig:** The minimum?

**John:** Minimum.

**Craig:** You are guaranteed the first employed draft, essentially.

**John:** Great. So you will have a purchase price for that screenplay and they will also have to pay you Writers Guild minimum at least to do a rewrite of that draft. But there’s no guarantee that you’re going to continue on with that project after that.

In series land, there’s probably some WGA minimums there. I don’t know what they are. But I’ll tell you, in practice, if you are a new writer coming in without a lot of experience and you are writing a spec TV show, which didn’t use to be that common but now sometimes are more common. Well, they will just buy or read a script and say, “Oh, maybe we’ll try to make this.”

The very first thing they’re going to do is partner you up with an experienced showrunner. And, hopefully, the two of you together will figure out how to make this into a series and how to do all these things. You will, yes, be in the room for that show. You’re going to have some role in it. And as long as you prove yourself to be invaluable to it, you will have a function on that show. If you do not prove yourself to be invaluable, they will find a way to not have you be part of the show.

**Craig:** Unfortunately, that is true.

**John:** That is true. So, creatively, I mean, there’ll be contractual language, so you’ll still get paid for some things. But they will try to find a way to not have you be around because you are a drag on their vision for what the show should be.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s not like they default to getting rid of the new guy. I mean, it’s not that. It’s just that what they default to is getting rid of somebody that they think is going to be disruptive or counterproductive to the production of the show, which is really hard. And the last thing you can really survive is any kind of toxic presence, particularly in the position of authority. So, yeah, you know, if you’re useful and essential —

**John:** I was fired off.

**Craig:** You were fired.

**John:** Yeah, I was fired off of my TV show.

**Craig:** Yeah. You were obviously a toxic. You were toxic.

**John:** I was toxic.

**Craig:** Toxic. You were toxic. [laughs]

**John:** Ugh. Steve Betters writes, “With regards to getting an agent, which is better, a really good script, a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 or 3/8? Is there a difference to that answer going for a writer’s assistant job?”

**Craig:** Too much calculation here, Steve. I wouldn’t worry about that. Who knows? You know, the whole thing about these numbers, the rankings, this is one thing where I think The Black List has caused trouble is The Black List and their system of 1 to 10 has started to codify what these numbers mean. They don’t mean anything at all. A really good script, a 9 let’s say, one really good script, a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, whose 9? Whose 9 is that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And three scripts that are 8s, whose 8s? I don’t know what any of that means. This is normal to want to find some predictability and certainty. In a business like this, I must tell you, there’s none. There’s none. You just got to write as well as you can. You can’t write better than you can write. Try and get better as you go. But where you are right now, that’s as good as you can be and that’s as good as you can be.

**John:** To try to do this without the numbers, let’s do some adjectives rather than numbers. I think to rephrase his question of like would an agent rather have a writer who has written one spectacular script and nothing else or a writer who has written three really good scripts?

I maybe would side with the three really good scripts, only in the sense that you want to know that this person can write multiple things. This person is a workhorse. These are all things that are very exciting for an agent. But honestly, both those situations are probably people that an agent would be interested in.

As far as a writers’ assistant, I’ve never read anything that my assistants have come in — I’ve never read their samples. I’ve never read their screenplay material. So I don’t know that that’s necessarily a huge goal of yours to write an amazing sample to try to get a job as a writer’s assistant because you’re often not being read. You’re basically like, “Hey, you seem like a confident person who’s not going to screw up my life.” That is one of the fundamental characteristics of a great writer’s assistant.

**Craig:** Is that the way it works for the television writer’s assistants, you know, when they work in the room?

**John:** You know, I think sometimes they are read like in a staffing kind of way. But my inkling is that in many situations, they’re not really being read as writers. They’re being, you know, hired for — this person seems like a competent person to take the order from Tender Greens and not screw things up.

**Craig:** Ah, I couldn’t do that.

**John:** Yeah. I could never do that. And the fact that they end up becoming a good writer and that they have good ideas in the room is what gets a co-EP to read heir script and say, “Oh my gosh she can actually write.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that hopefully gets them the freelance episode on one of the shows.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Wayward writes, “Say, you’re bogged down in a script, around the rocky shoals.” This is an Aline Brosh McKenna term. She’s talking about pages 60 to 80, sort of like post middle, before you get into the third act. “Maybe things aren’t coming to you as fluidly as they were on the pages before, what are some good ways to evaluate whether or not you should put your head down and push through or take a step back and reevaluate the decisions you made up to that point?” Craig, what’s your advice as you’re getting stuck there?

**Craig:** I think you should probably consider doing both. I mean, you certainly want to go back, read from the start again and ask yourself where your plan might have gone awry. Hopefully, you had a plan. And maybe think to yourself that perhaps you are projecting the end of your script a little further away than it actually was.

What I notice is that a lot of people who run into the rocky shoals between 60 and 80 end up with a 128-page script and think, “Oh actually, I really think this is reading long. I probably should just move things up.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because things take longer to write than we think they’re going to take. But if you’re having trouble there, take a break. Show it to somebody that you trust, read it out loud, put it aside and come back in a week.

Or if you haven’t organized things prior to the writing, this would be the time to sit down and start making index cards and really ask yourself what needs to happen to get me from here to here and what would be the most interesting way to do that.

**John:** I think long-term listeners will know exactly what my advice will be, which is to skip ahead and write the third act stuff that you know because my hunch is that you have a really good sense of what’s happening later on. You’re just stuck in this one little moment. Write that stuff that you do know later on. Just don’t forget about sort of like what’s going to go in that middle part.

By the time you’ve gotten through that stuff, you’ll have some clarity about what needed to happen to get you to that moment. And what Craig’s realization of like, “Oh man, maybe I didn’t need all that stuff,” will probably become very clear once you’ve written that later stuff. That’s just my way of doing it.

**Craig:** I’m with you. Here, I’ll read one, if you’d like. This is from Rebecca. She says, “Army wife here. I’m happy with the idea of moving to LA to work my butt off. And my husband is very supportive of my writing. But the army thing, down with the Ryan Knighton version of doing things, I’m just wondering if you have any other suggestions for me. Are their entry type jobs like long-distance reading, et cetera, that might be possible for a gal like me? Not so delusional to think I can just write a spec and break in from wherever the army takes us. Also, want to be realistic and mature. If it’s not meant for me now, then it’s not.”

What do you have to say to Rebecca?

**John:** I love Rebecca.

**Craig:** She’s cool.

**John:** Rebecca is the best.

**Craig:** What I love about Rebecca mostly is that she drops the subjects of sentences. I love that.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** I do that all the time.

**John:** She’s writing like she’s writing action lines.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You know, like a clipped scene.

**Craig:** It’s exciting.

**John:** Yeah, I love Rebecca because she is both optimistic and realistic simultaneously which is such a difficult quality to pull off. So, yes, as an army wife, you are probably going to travel around a lot. Los Angeles may not be the easiest place for you to get to. I would say that she should write, write, write wherever she is and build up a war chest of maybe three good screenplays and then look at whether it’s going to be realistic for her to come out to Los Angeles for a period of time and really make a run at this.

And whether their family — I don’t know if they have kids, sort of what their situation is, but there might be a realistic situation where she’s out here for six months trying to figure out this thing and see if it’s really going to be possible for her and see if it will work.

She won’t know until she tries. And I think it’s worth maybe trying.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it’s easier now than it’s ever been before. So one thing Rebecca could consider is just dipping your toe in by writing a script and sending it off to a place like The Black List, not because the numbers are determinative of anything. But at least, they can give you a general idea, am I way off base here? Am I the guy who goes on American Idol and gets laughed at? Am I the woman who goes on American Idol and they’re like, you’re good, you’re just not great? Or am I the person who goes on and they go, wow, you could actually win this thing?

Generally, find out what general bubble you’re in and then make some choices based on that because the last thing you want to do is uproot your life over something that probably just is never going to happen or won’t make you happy while you’re trying to make it happen. So get some like — I would say start there, by getting some very broad evaluations of your work, just so you have a sense of like where am I exactly in this whole thing?

**John:** And I’d also say that screenwriting is one of the few kinds of writing that is so location-dependent. Anything else you want to write, you could kind of write from anywhere. And so if there’s another kind of thing you want to write, if you want to write short stories, you want to write novels, if you want to write plays, honestly, all of that stuff happens everywhere. Screenplays and television, it’s just one of those rare things that is so specific to Los Angeles and to some degree New York, a little bit to Austin. It’s just not as realistic to do at other places.

So if there’s another kind of writing that you also like, try that other kind of writing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Agreed.

**John:** Kevin writes, “Random question. In Hangover III, one of the great jokes in my humble opinion is ‘Nobody eats four marshmallows, Stu!’

**Craig:** Nobody eats four marshmallows, Stu! [laughs]

**John:** This joke is in theory is set up in Hangover II, but could have been reverse engineered after the fact. What is the genesis of this joke, Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** I am the genesis of this joke. [laughs] Well, it wasn’t reverse engineered. It was forward engineered. So in Hangover II, Alan — oh, spoiler alert — Alan drugs his friends. He’s just trying to drug Stu’s fiancee’s brother with some chloroform-laced marshmallows. Well, I don’t know, I can’t even remember what he puts in the marshmallows, but we started with chloroform. And unfortunately, everybody eats the marshmallows and they all get drugged.

And so in Hangover III, we had a scene where the guys were on their way to Tijuana to meet up with Mr. Chow and we needed just like a bridging scene there and we had written one and we got out there and we were shooting it. And, you know, shooting scenes in cars is the worst. I mean we had the guys actually in a car. And we were in the chase car and all the process truck.

It just was not working. The scene was just deadly. I can’t even remember what it was. All I know is that — so after about few takes, Todd said, “All right. We’re not — this is never going to be in the movie. We got to figure something else out.” And so I did a first draft of another scene that we ended up then shooting in like a green screen car which I got to say, shooting green screen in cars now is great. It really — I mean for a simple discussion in car — I mean, for a cool car scene, no, but for a simple car discussion, it’s pretty great. It’s so much easier anyway.

And in that scene, they’re talking about how they’re going to get Mr. Chow and Alan suggests that he can drug Mr. Chow. He’s drugged lots of people before and Stu says, “Yeah, us. You almost killed us.” And Alan says, “No, that’s ridiculous. I set it so that you could eat at least three marshmallows before you would die.” [laughs] And Stu’s like, “What are you saying? That if we had eaten four marshmallows, we would have died?” And Alan says, “Nobody eats four marshmallows, Stu.”

I just love that Alan’s logic was such that he thought it through. And he’s like, “Yeah, no one’s going to ever eat four marshmallows. That was it. And that’s why —

**John:** It’s not a possible thing.

**Craig:** That’s why Stu is alive because — and by the way, here’s the crazy thing. Alan was right. Nobody eats four marshmallows. Nobody.

**John:** I’ve eaten four marshmallows in my life.

**Craig:** Yeah. You should be dead.

**John:** Adam Alterberg writes, “What are some tips for writing for production? Does the tone change when you’re doing rewrites day after day?” I’ll take the first crack at this. I would say yes. If you’re like literally writing the stuff that is being shot tomorrow, you might find yourself being a little less artful in the scene description and little bit more pragmatic to exactly what’s happening.

I do find that I’m a little less precious about my clauses and sort of how things are going to play in the non-dialogue lines because I’m just trying to get it to be as clear as possible and specific so that everyone and every department knows exactly what needs to happen.

Craig, have you found any change in what your writing feels like when you’re writing for production?

**Craig:** Yes, I think that is generally far more compact. It’s concise. And when you are writing during production, you are, well, you should be informed by what you’ve been watching. You’re starting to pick up on certain rhythms. You’re starting to see which actors do better with which material. You’re starting to see which ones are more fun when they’re talking and which ones are more fun when they’re not. And you’re writing to everyone’s strengths. And you’re also writing within the tone of what seems to be sticking out as good and away from stuff that maybe just wasn’t working.

I mean, production is going to reveal things about your screenplay. Nobody gets everything right, so your job is to notice what is right? And then write towards that. This is why very frequently the stuff that you write during production has a much higher rate of inclusion in the final movie because it’s informed.

**John:** There will be some times where, in the scene descriptions, like not angry at all dash dash because like you see that one actor is going just nutso in a place and you need to sort of rein that back. In the live show, we talked about writing with locked pages. And so you’re trying not to force page breaks because then it becomes an extra page. And so sometimes I will write the shortest sentence imaginable so it doesn’t break in to two lines, so you try to get things together. It’s not nearly so pretty.

And the funny thing is sometimes when they send out the Academy For Your Consideration scripts, you can sort of tell like which scenes were like the pristine sort of like, oh, the literary scenes like where everything is beautiful and like which were just like the nuts and bolts for productions scenes. You can sort of tell a shift in how that scene description is written.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I mean you start to lose all of the fufara, the fufara.

**John:** Yeah, it starts as poetry and becomes —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Much less.

**Craig:** Much less. Amy, is this your daughter or a different Amy?

**John:** It’s not my daughter. It is some other, Amy. There’s apparently multiple Amy’s in the world.

**Craig:** Who knew? Amy writes, “Is an unknown writer better off writing ‘high concept’ specs, that is to say inherently big budget, or should I write an indie drama with a limited budget.” There’s a lot of presumptions in that question. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] I think most of our listeners know, our standard advice here is you should write the script that is the best script you can possibly write and the script that could actually get made. And both the high concept and the indie script have a chance of getting made if they’re the right kind of thing.

But if you are a person who should be writing big things, then write the big thing. If you are person who should be writing the small thing, you should write the small thing. If you don’t know what kind of writer you really are and what’s really interesting to you, pick one and write it and let’s see what happens.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, what’s your thoughts?

**Craig:** I completely agree that we have lots of examples of people breaking in with big, big action adventure, tent pole kind of movies. We also have a plenty of examples of people doing the opposite and writing very small independent films and breaking in that way. And you have to write what you’re good at. Nobody wants Diablo Cody’s tent pole action movie. I don’t think Diablo Cody wants Diablo Cody’s tent pole action movie. It’s just not what interests her creatively, at least not to this point.

Similarly speaking, I’m not sure that I would want and I’m trying to think of like a big tent pole-y kind of guy. Like I don’t want their tiny little movies.

**John:** Simon Kinberg.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s think about Simon Kinberg.

**Craig:** I don’t want Simon Kinberg’s My Dinner with Andre. I just don’t. I want Simon to do what Simon does. I will challenge this, though. High concept does not mean inherently big budget. There are a lot of tiny movies that are very high concept. High concept just means that there’s a big hooky idea at the heart of the script. And you can have a very small movie with a big hooky idea in it.

**John:** I agree. Juan writes, “I’m currently pursuing a BFA in film production at Emerson College. I’m also having a quarter life crisis because I have no idea what I’m going to do once I graduate. What are your thoughts in pursuing a collegiate film education versus diving into the industry head on?”

**Craig:** First of all —

**John:** We’ve talked about this before, but —

**Craig:** I mean —

**John:** Go.

**Craig:** He says he’s having a quarter life crisis, but that presumes he’s going to make it to 80. We don’t know Juan. [laughs] This could be mid life.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Think about it. This could be end life.

**John:** You could be dead tomorrow, Juan.

**Craig:** Exactly. You may not be alive right now.

**John:** You may eat your fourth marshmallow and this is all for none.

**Craig:** Nobody eats four marshmallows, John.

**John:** Oh, true.

**Craig:** I kind of love the way Zach said that. He was like righteously indignant. [laughs] Like how dare you say something that stupid? Look, my personal feeling if you are asking, and you are, is dive in. I believe in diving in. I think that if you have the money and the luxury and the time and you have been accepted to one of the very few prestigious film schools like UCLA or USC or NYU. I don’t even know if UCLA counts, USC or NYU, then sure, it’s something absolutely to consider. You will meet a lot of people. John went there and met a lot of people.

But on the other hand, it is absolutely not necessary. Scott Frank, I think, went to UC Santa Barbara. I’m not even sure he went to graduate school there. I didn’t go to film school. I don’t think Ted Griffin went to film school. I don’t think John Gatins went to film school. Alec Berg didn’t go to film school. I’m just running down a list of friends that just didn’t go, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And we just dove in. So I would say, consider it a luxury. And if you have the money and the time, go for it. If you’re ready to go now and you’re more of a dive-in, let’s just do this, I learn better by doing guy, then dive in.

**John:** I largely agree with Craig. I did go to film school and it was hugely valuable to me. And I don’t think I would have the same career perspective if I hadn’t gone through film school. I just, I wasn’t ready to dive in, but film school was a great place for me to start.

I’m a little concerned for Juan that he feels, you know, finishing up his BFA and whatever is happening at Emerson isn’t giving him the confidence to say, “I know what’s next. I know what my steps are.” Well, that’s something you should be getting out of film school. You should be hopefully making friends and contacts with people who you want to be working with for the next 15 years and be excited about making movies.

And if film school is not making you excited about making movies, then something is wrong. So I can’t fix everything. But that’s my punch.

**Craig:** I just don’t think that anybody taking an undergraduate course in film production anywhere is going to get that kind of thing. I mean you, like you and Rian, I believe Rian went to USC as well, right? Rian Johnson. So you guys went to — this is a, you know, premier film school and it is supported by extraordinary alumni like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and others. And the people that you meet there are the cream of the crop and they will be in the movie business. They may be in the movie business hiring you. I mean they have a whole production, you know, a whole system for that.

Emerson College is a perfectly fine school, but I can’t imagine that a BFA in film production from Emerson College is going to put you in touch with a lot of people that will ultimately end up in Hollywood nor I am surprised that you seem puzzled as what to do.

This is the problem with higher education right now anyway. A lot of what passes for so called film studies in undergraduate education is really about film criticism. And it’s not about filmmaking. And you may have found some filmmaking there, I hope you did. There is no substitute for actual filmmaking.

People are different. Like John said something interesting. He wasn’t ready. And that’s important to know. And if you don’t feel ready, find your way to kind of — that channel that will prepare you. If you do feel ready, if you’re impatient — I was born impatient — then honor that and get in there. Get your hands dirty.

**John:** And I recognize as you were talking there that I misread and I was — for some reason thought he was an MFA rather than a BFA. So he’s an undergrad and as an undergrad, he asks, you know what, it’s kind of actually totally natural to not know what’s next and what’s happening. So I was sort of slamming Emerson for not helping you out as an MFA, but, no, as a BFA, you’re supposed to be a little bit lost in the weeds now. That’s just part of your nature and your life.

And so if you feel like you need more structure getting started, moving out to LA and going to a film school would be great. Moving out to LA and being the person who is scrambling would also be great. So just know which kind of person you are.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Do you want to take the last one here, Craig?

**Craig:** Sure, the last is from Crowe Sensei. “In episode 82” — oh, come on. That’s not fair. “Craig said,” like I would remember, “Craig said, he would be willing to read the entire script of The Answerer by Ben W. after reading his Three Page Challenge. Did Ben W ever send it in and did Craig read it?”

Yes. Now, I’m going from memory here because this is years ago, but I believe, yes, Ben W. did send me the whole thing. Yes, I read it. Yes, I liked it. And in fact, as I recall, I actually did send it along to a friend who worked at a, well, let’s just say a very prestigious animation studio, because it was intended to be animation, I believe. Or even if it wasn’t, it seemed appropriate for that medium.

So I actually did a nice thing. That’s how I remember it. That’s how I remember it, by the way. [laughs]

**John:** But I kind of remember that, too. I remember you talking about this on the previous episode that you did actually follow up with him and you did forward it on. So my recollection of it was the same as what you’ve just said, which means it probably actually happened.

**Craig:** How could we both be wrong?

**John:** That’s not possible.

**Craig:** Not possible.

**John:** Nobody eats four marshmallows.

**Craig:** No. Nobody eats four marshmallows, John.

**John:** Craig, talk to us about One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Okay. So my One Cool Thing was featured at E3. By the way, I went to E3 for a day.

**John:** Oh my God, Craig, you went to E3? That sounds amazing.

**Craig:** It was —

**John:** Was it a zoo?

**Craig:** Yeah, it was a zoo, but it was a great zoo. It was like a zoo of — I mean, you know, there was a lot of fedora wearing, very cool stuff there. Just a general trend, virtual headsets everywhere. Everywhere. Everyone’s making them.

But Microsoft in conjunction with the Minecraft people demonstrated this thing. I didn’t see this live, but there is a video of it and we’ll put it in the show notes. It’s pretty startling. So they’re using this new technology from Microsoft called the Microsoft HoloLens. Have you seen this thingy?

**John:** I have. So it looks like a visor that’s in front of you, but you’ll actually be able to see through it and at the same, they’re projecting image into the lens you’re looking through.

**Craig:** Yeah. So essentially, it’s putting virtual things in your environment that you can see and they’re of remarkable quality, actually. And they were demonstrating how you can use this with say a game like Minecraft where you have a table set up and the HoloLens understands that this table is specifically key to what it’s creating and you can start to just through voice commands create an entire structure in Minecraft in front of you, in real space, right there that you can see and you can manipulate it. And by moving your head into it, you can see inside it.

It’s kind of remarkable. In looking at this stuff, you start to realize, we are on the verge of some awesome stuff, I mean truly awesome, mind-blowing stuff that’s going to change the way we interact with that world around us.

That said, apparently, the demo for this thing was kind of goosed to be maybe a little bit better than you might be able to get now. I mean I don’t know even know if the HoloLens is specifically available yet. But from what I understand, there are some field of view issues with this thing. It doesn’t quite work the way you want it to work yet. But as a general proof of concept, it’s astonishing, just astonishing.

And the applications are — I mean, just absurd when you think of the things that you can do once they nail this stuff down. It’s going to be pretty amazing. And I would imagine, John, when you and I are 60 years old, the way that we now all walk down the streets staring at our little phone. We’re all going to be walking down the street wearing these stupid goggles and just seeing what we want to see. I mean just seeing an entirely different world. It’s going to be bananas.

**John:** Yeah, it’s going to be crazy. The same way that I can’t do any work or walk any place without like a podcast in my ears. I will want to have my own reality projected in front of me so I don’t need to see everything that’s horrible around me. So there’s a whole troubling Black Mirror episode that could probably be written about just that.

But we’ll have a video for this demonstration in the show notes because my daughter saw the same video that you linked to. And she squealed like three times.

**Craig:** It’s squealable, yeah.

**John:** It is incredible.

**Craig:** Yeah, way, way cool.

**John:** Yeah. My One Cool Thing is Jonathan Mann who is a very talented songwriter, composer. He’s mostly known for Song a Day. And so in the sort of nerdy podcast world, he’s certainly well-known. He started listening to the show. And he tweeted that he loves the show. And he also tweeted a link to a video he made called Some Guy and it’s very much related to a conversation we had had where so often in the headlines or even in the stories about the things we write, we’re just referred to as, you know, it’s as if the movie suddenly happened, it was written by Some Guy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And Jonathan Mann has a very funny song called Some Guy which is about this very concept. So we will use that as the outro for this week’s episode, so you can take a listen to that as well.

**Craig:** That’s awesome. Well, thank you, Jonathan. That’s really cool. And we’re glad to have you as listener.

**John:** So that is our show for this week. If you would like to send us a question, like one of the questions we answered today, short ones are great on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Our email address is ask@johnaugust and that’s where you can send those longer questions to us. It’s also where, if you have an outro, that you would like to put on the show, something that uses the [hums] intro, send it there. Send us a link to that and we’ll use it in a future episode, perhaps.

We are on iTunes. So go to iTunes please and subscribe. If you’re listening to this on the website where the show notes are, that’s fantastic. Also really helpful, though, if you do subscribe and leave us a comment to let us know that you enjoy the show, hopefully.

We have an app in the App Store. It is called Scriptnotes. It’s for listening to all the back episodes, way back to episode one and all the bonus episodes as well. You can find that in the app store for iOS and for Android. And that’s our show. So Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And have a great week.

**Craig:** Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes 202, in which we discuss FAST Screenplay](http://johnaugust.com/2015/everyman-vs-superman)
* [Scriptnotes 183: The Deal with the Gravity Lawsuit](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-deal-with-the-gravity-lawsuit), and follow up from [Scriptnotes 186](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-rules-or-the-paradox-of-the-outlier)
* [The Gerritsen Ruling, in its entirety](http://www.scribd.com/doc/268738073/Gerritsen-Ruling)
* [Turnaround](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnaround_(filmmaking)) on Wikipedia
* [The 200th Episode Live Show](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-200th-episode-live-show)
* [“Nobody eats four marshmallows”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMh8D9Bce40&t=47s) from The Hangover 3
* [Scriptnotes 82, featuring Ben W’s Three Pages](http://johnaugust.com/2013/god-doesnt-need-addresses)
* [Minecraft Hololens demo at E3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgakdcEzVwg&feature=youtu.be&t=2m25s)
* [The “Some Guy” Anthem, by Jonathan Mann](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ird715k0t-g)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jonathan Mann ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))