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The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 701 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, how do you leverage connections to get work and help others get work? We’ll discuss the sometimes uncomfortable aspects of getting writing jobs and really almost any kind of job. We’ll also talk about the surprisingly good news for future writers in the recently released WJ numbers.

Then we’ll answer more listener questions we didn’t get to in last week’s live show. In our bonus segment for premium members, Craig, let’s continue our discussion of connections with literal connections, this being Lego. Here, we are looking at some Lego flowers. We’ve talked about Lego in a general sense over the 700 episodes of the podcast. I want to have a deep dive discussion on Lego and our philosophies regarding Lego because there’s the Lego we grew up with, and then there’s the Lego now, and how you’re treating these bricks we’re assembling.

Craig: I’m always here to discuss Lego, the plural of which is apparently Lego.

John: Which I love. Some news. The Scriptnotes book is now up on Goodreads. If you’re a person who uses Goodreads to review your books, you can mark that as a want to read and just helps people remember that, “Oh, this is a book that people want to read.” We look forward to hopefully some very positive Goodreads reviews once the book is out there in the world.

For now, a thing you can do is mark it as want to read. You can also preorder the book and send Drew the receipt. Right before we got on microphones, we were talking through a special thing we’re doing for all those people who sent us their receipts.

Drew Marquardt: We don’t have enough.

John: No, we do. We have a lot. It’s been a chore for Drew to sort them, but it’s a chore you love, right?

Drew: I love it.

Craig: Oh, yes. I can tell he loves it.

Drew: You see the twinkle in my eyes?

Craig: It’s always fun when you’re like, “But you love it, right?”

John: Don’t you just love it?

Drew: So good.

Craig: I said you love it.

Drew: I’m very excited.

Craig: Keep loving it.

John: We have a bit of follow-up here because last week was our 700th episode. It was a live show. It was so much fun to do. It was on YouTube, so thank you for everybody who participated in that. We forgot one thing from last week, which was that we actually had a thing we were supposed to do. It was something that had been set up a year in advance. Drew forgot the thing.

Craig: Oh, well, that’s all right. You’re only human.

Drew: Thank you.

Craig: You’re welcome.

John: People decided to see Drew on the livestream because everyone thought Drew was a child.

Craig: Why would they think he’s a child?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: First of all, that violates labor law.

John: Absolutely.

Drew: That feels like you guys, though.

Craig: Oh, that we would do that?

Drew: Yes.

Craig: It feels like we might. It feels like the kind of really good hypocrisy. Oh, we’re talking about the union and getting assistance paid. Now we make our seven-year-olds put this all together. We keep them in a room the way the musical Oliver! begins.

John: Yes, absolutely. It is a hard-knock life.

Craig: No, that’s Annie.

John: Oh, that’s right. I’ve confused my musicals. Well, they’re both about ragamuffin food.

Craig: Food. Glorious food.

John: I don’t know all of that.

Craig: Oh my God. We have to have an entire Oliver! podcast.

John: Right. Before we do that, we need to talk through this bit of follow-up here. Way back episode 645?

Craig: 645.

John: 645. Meredith Scardino was a guest along with Jen Statsky. We opened up an envelope that I had sent to Jen Statsky with my prediction for what was going to happen on the upcoming season of Hacks. I had written the prediction and sealed it and mailed it to her. She opened it live on recording. Meredith Scardino was like, “Well, I want to do that.” She made a prediction for what was going to happen on the 700th episode of Script Notes. Drew, will you open this and read what Meredith Scardino– this is a sealed envelope that Drew is opening.

Craig: I can confirm this. 700th show prediction, Meredith Scardino, June 1st, 2024. Over a year ago.

John: We were living in a different universe.

Craig: I hope it says something like, you both died.

Drew: “700th show prediction. One, compilation of best advice from guests,” which we kind of did.

Craig: Did we?

John: No. We brought people in for some advice.

Drew: “Two, then you go into an interview with special guest, one but not both Coen brothers.”

Craig: Wow.

John: No, we’ve not gotten the Coen brothers on this.

Craig: Oh my God, that would have been amazing. I’m not saying it would have been better than what we did, but we really should get one if not both. Did you say one but not both?

John: Yes, one but not both Coen brothers. She still think we can do it? She think we can bring the brothers back together for our podcast episode.

Craig: We’d like at least to get a Coen brother in here at some point. Oh, we could do a deep dive on a Coen brother movie.

John: Totally.

Craig: That might be fun.

John: They have one or two good movies.

Craig: They just have a few. Just a few, literally all of them. Miller’s Crossing, by the way, is one of my favorites.

John: I like Miller’s Crossing. I love some Fargo. I love–

Craig: Fargo, of course, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men. It goes on. You know Barton Fink is the one I really want to do. We’ve been talking about Barton Fink for a long time.

John: It’s a screenwriter movie.

Craig: It has that Barton Fink feeling.

John: Funny that a Barton Fink movie has Barton Fink.

Craig: Where would I find another writer? Kidding. Go to the commissary. Throw a rock, you’ll hit one. And Fink? When you throw it, throw it hard.

John: Meredith Scardino, thank you for this card. Also, your handwriting is fantastic. It almost feels like architect handwriting. It’s tidy and neat. It’s printed. It’s all uppercase.

Craig: You know what I like? It’s not gendered handwriting. I wouldn’t know if this was a man or a woman. There could theoretically be a slight serial killer aspect to this handwriting. If you look at it, the kerning is really chaotic. It’s very ordered and yet it’s also saying, I might murder.

John: The I is very close to the P.

Craig: You see what I’m saying?

John: There’s some weird spacing there.

Craig: There’s signals there. If you are close with Meredith, just keep an eye open, is really all we’re saying. Just keep one eye open.

John: She makes the both and the brothers, they’re very different Bs too. It’s like she’s just choosing–

Craig: Like there’s a lot of different people up in there.

John: She’s cutting and pasting things out from a magazine.

Craig: There’s a little bit of a ransom note.

John: I love it. Thank you very much for sending it.

Craig: Also, she has great– her cardstock here is a great imprint on it. It says–

John: It says, from the drywall experts of Scardino & Sons, established 1859s. Awesome. So fantastic. We have some more follow-up on streaming services and creator pay.

Drew: Jeffrey writes, “A couple under-the-radar platforms worth mentioning. Vimeo On Demand. Not a subscription streaming service and very few consumers know about it or use it, which is a shame because the revenue split is extremely favorable for filmmakers.

Another one is Kanopy, which is the library and university-based streaming platform. When your film is on Kanopy, the residuals are decent compared to other streaming services. Best of all, you need is a library card to use it.”

John: It’s Kanopy with a K because, of course, it’s Kanopy with a K. Vimeo On Demand I have used for things. Not for things I’ve made, but to watch other people’s things. It’s good. I’m glad Vimeo has persisted in the world of YouTube.

Craig: I go there when it’s a result. I never think about going to places. I just go where–

John: Another reason I end up on Vimeo is when people have a trailer that’s not released yet, they want me to see it. A password-protected thing.

Craig: I will see some things there. Sometimes when I’m looking at, they’ll send me, “Oh, hey, here’s a director if you want to hire them for your show.” Then they’ll send a movie that they did or another episode. They’ll put it on Vimeo.

John: Exactly.

Craig: It’s password-protected.

John: It’s good stuff. Last bit of follow-up here from Dan who’s asking, “In regards to renting a movie on Apple TV or Prime, does one service provide higher residual payments or are they both the same?” They’re essentially the same. I think because it’s based on the actual price they’re charging, I think it does not matter.

Craig: The price that they charge is relevant, but the formula that we use is applied across all of the companies because it is a collective bargaining agreement term.

John: If you choose to pay $4.99 versus $3.99, that’s technically a little bit more. Also, just thank you for actually doing that and not pirating it.

Craig: That’s the most important thing. Don’t feel like you need to shop around for the highest price.

John: No. Not at all. Please don’t. Continuing the discussion of writers and money, last week, the Writers Guild sent out the Screen Compensation Guide, which was synthesizing data from 800 screen deals, feature deals, for high-budget features, which is high-budget features or anything with a budget of $5 billion or more, that was made during the term of the 2023 MBA.

We negotiated this new contract, and there were 800 screen deals made since that time. They looked through all the deals, and this is how you get a bird’s-eye view of what writers are actually being paid for the work that they’re doing. Craig, can you remind us of some of the terms we’re going to hear here? Talk to us about scale and what does scale mean for feature writers? How important is scale for feature writers?

Craig: Scale is the minimum amount that a WGA writer can be paid under a WGA agreement. Typically, we don’t see a ton of it in features. Scale is the rule of the day in television because so much of television compensation is moved over into producing numbers and things like that. For feature writing, you’re paid entirely as a writer, typically.

The lowest you’ll usually see is scale plus 10, so the company agrees to add 10% on so that you’re not losing money to your agent and going below that. Scale for original scripts is probably something like $130,000 now or something like that.
John: It’s over $100,000, so it depends on whether there’s an attribute or outline involved.

Craig: Generally speaking, if you’re going to be hired to do something as a screenwriter, you’re probably looking at six figures. Low six figures, at least to start, but not below scale.

John: As you and I, and this predates Script Notes, as we were going around meeting with studio bosses saying, “You need to really look at how you’re paying feature writers to make sure that you’re paying them better,” one of the things we were talking about is, it’s not just that you’re being paid a certain amount for this draft, but if you’re only being paid for one step, that is a crisis.

That was a real problem that we were seeing was that writers are being paid X dollars for one draft and there was no guarantee of a second draft. Therefore, they were being held hostage to these situations. As we talk about one-step deals, we would often describe that it’s an issue if they’re paying you or me for a one-step deal as higher-paid writers, but it’s really debilitating to younger, newer, lower-income writers.

Craig: The part of the problem was that studio executives were used to paying big writers, A-list writers, a lot of money, and not worrying about steps. If you hire somebody to fix a movie, “It’s a rewrite, fix this.” “Okay, well, it’s going to cost you $1 million.” You’re going to get a draft and be like, “Hey, well, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let me fix that,” or, “First, I could use some work. Okay, let me fix that. You paid me $1 million.”

They get used to that. They get used to not worrying about the paperwork of like, “Oh, sorry, the amount of yogurt you put in your cup went over the medium size. Now you have to pay the large.” Nobody likes to deal with it. The problem is, when you’re paying people a little bit, if you make them do more than one step, they are effectively getting shoved under scale.

All the way back in 2004, the last time that they were silly enough to put my dumb ass on a negotiating committee, what I asked was that, if a writer was being paid less than twice scale, they should be guaranteed two steps. In this way, the writer gets a chance to get the studio notes, get paid to write something else officially. The producer doesn’t have quite as much anxiety about that first draft and quite as much meddling to do. That request went nowhere until 2023.

John: In the 2023 MBA negotiations, that’s the thing we actually won. Future writers earning less than 200% of scale, you’re guaranteed a second step. That was designed so that it’s helping the writers who are most hurt by one-step deals.

Craig: It protects, in a way, the studio. This is why I never understood why the studios, why it took them 20 years and a strike to agree to this, it doesn’t cost them anymore. Okay, I pay you $200,000 for one step, or I pay you $200,000 for two steps. You see what I mean? Anyway, I hope that that has made life a little bit better and has retrained the studios a bit to see that two steps are helpful.

John: Anecdotally, based on what you were experiencing in these 10 years leading up to this, how many writers did you feel were encountering one-step deals in the future land? What percentage?

Craig: I would have guessed it would have been over 50. I would have said 60%.

John: That’s my guess too. At least over half, maybe two thirds. The good news is one-step deals now account for only 3 in 10.

Craig: That is definitely a reduction. It has to be.

John: It has to be. The better news is, when they actually break it down by the amount that the writers are earning, the median pay for one-step deals went from $250,000 to $450,000 over the course of this term.

Craig: What that tells us is they’re still reserving the one-steps for the people who are being paid a lot. They’re being paid enough that, really, doing two steps or even three isn’t going to push them below scale. In short, we protected scale. That was what this was always about. Sounds like it’s working great.

John: Looking through the numbers, at least one screenwriter got $2.25 million for a one-step deal. Good for them.

Craig: I get that. That’s fine.

John: The other factors in here, the other–

Craig: I wanted 2.7, but they only gave me 2.25.

John: 2.25.

Craig: 2.25. It’s a nice number. I like 2.25. You could tell that that’s a negotiated number. Nobody wants to be there.

John: No. It was between 2 and 2.25.

Craig: They were like, “Fine.”

John: Members with two-plus credits got the biggest bump of $100,000 for the last three years. Even new members with no credits were receiving $25,000 more than they were in 2021. It’s progress in future pay across. That matches anecdotally with what I’ve been hearing from people.

Craig: This was always a quality-of-life thing. The question that I am interested in is, again, it would be anecdotally, survey-style, do writers feel like they are doing more or less “free work”? I would hope that it would be a little bit yes. I mean, a little bit, yes, I’m doing less free work because, in my mind, this term was never going to increase the earnings that much. It was really quality of life.

John: That’s the hope, too. One way, if you are a future writer who is encountering these things and want to help figure out what it looks like on the ground, is that they’ve started sending out the survey leading into the negotiation cycle. It’s a good chance to fill out that form and let us know really where you’re at and what the biggest issues are for you. If there’s a thing that we’re not catching here, this is the time to speak up.

All right. Let’s get to our main topic here, which is connections, which is not just a fantastic New York Times game. Do you still play Connections?

Craig: Of course, played it this morning.

Drew: It’s great.

John: I’m trying to remember, today’s Connections involved– what was the purple category of this one? It was–

Craig: Well, there was Blank Land.

John: Blank Land, yes.

Craig: There were things with the antennae.

John: Like in Teletubbies.

Craig: There were Blank Doodle.

John: Yes, Blank Doodle, I think, was the-

Craig: It was Blank Doodle was the thing.

John: -the purple.

Craig: Oh, yes, and the other things were Blenders.

John: Dipsy Doodle. I didn’t know what Dipsy Doodle was.

Craig: Oh, you didn’t know about Dipsy Doodle?

John: What’s Dipsy Doodle?

Craig: The first thing I thought when I saw Dipsy Doodle, I knew that she was trying to fool us into heading towards the Teletubbies. Nice try, Wyna.

John: Wouldn’t happen.

Craig: Nope, not today.

John: I love Wyna Liu.

Craig: What’s that?

John: Wyna Liu.

Craig: Wyna Liu. By the way, I don’t even know what Wyna Liu looks like. I’m looking up Wyna Liu right now.

John: There’s an interview with her, and she’s a woman in her 30s, maybe early 40s. She seems to love what she’s doing.

Craig: She’s got a great name. Wyna is a– oh, look how happy she is.

John: Doesn’t she look happy?

Craig: Oh my God, she looks thrilled. She looks thrilled.

John: I also love the discussion around Connections. People will have whole TikToks on, let’s break down the most insane connections of them all, and they’ll talk to you.

Craig: Somebody said to me early on, I won’t say who it was. They were like, “It’s good, but there’s no way Wyna Liu can keep this up day after day.” I was like, “I have faith,” and she has.

John: It’s justified. That’s Connections the game, which is fantastic and we all love, but let’s talk about connections in real life. Connections between people, and especially people who need a thing from each other, and how we handle those connections in our town, and how we use connections, but even just saying use connections feels gross.

Craig: It’s a better word than exploit. How do you exploit your connections?

John: The good use of connections implies a reciprocity, a generosity, a good-for-everyone quality to it.

Craig: I think sometimes we feel like we are begging or that we’re charity cases. In fact, if the connection works, it’s not because the person that you begged took pity upon you. It’s because they thought that your thing is good and it will reflect well upon them. That’s really what that is. Otherwise, sometimes your connections, “Oh, my mom is best friends with your mom.” That’s going to get you a 20-minute chit-chat. Is it going to change your life or career? No.

John: No. Craig, you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, I can tell.

Craig: Love LinkedIn.

John: How many connections do you have on LinkedIn?

Craig: I have zero connections on LinkedIn, John.

John: As do I. We’re not talking about LinkedIn connections or any of that performative networking. I think we’re talking about the casual stuff that does happen all the time, and this is the thing I’m sure happens with you, is that a friend asks you to put in a good word on a show that they’re trying to step on. That’s a valid, accepted part of the practice.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Let’s talk about the specific kinds of connections, when it’s okay to reach out, when you should step back a little bit. You were talking about our moms, our friends kind of thing. Weak connections are things like acquaintances, your dad’s friend’s friend, the guy you went to high school with but you don’t keep up with. If you’re reaching out to them specifically for this thing but you wouldn’t talk to them otherwise, that’s a weak connection.

Craig: It’s important to be mindful if you are the one that is being connected to, that the person that is asking you to talk or consult or advice, you’re their thing. You are probably the sum total, in many cases, of their connection to Hollywood. There’s an importance that they’re putting on this that you’re not. At least be mindful of it. I try and be as respectful as I can and I try to remember what it was like when I was grasping for crumbs, little hints of threads of things. Everything is high stakes, everything.

John: Let’s talk about strong connections. Close friends, collaborators, your writing partners, all that kind of stuff. Employers, supervisors, classmates in a program is good. Drew and I both went through the Stark program. The real advantage of going through a film school is you have 25 connections who actually you can get information from, they can help you out and stuff, and that is super invaluable. Those are the people who you should feel like you can count on and they can count on you. Again, it’s that reciprocity thing feels so crucial.

I think another aspect of reaching out to somebody is intent. Are you trying to exchange information? Are you trying to extract something from them? Are you asking someone that will take five minutes of their time or is it a lot more than that? If you’re asking someone to read something, that’s a lot to do. If you’re asking for advice on a specific situation, that’s a thing I’m more happy to take some time to do. Tell me about being a screenwriter in Hollywood, it’s like, “I got a podcast. Listen to this.” Now there’ll be a book.

Craig: We have a book. Advice for people reaching out, the more specific you can be about what you want, the more likely it is that the connection will at least happen initially. The hardest ones are the, “Can I just pick your brain podcast.” You can go pick my brain for 701 hours, but when they say, “I have three questions I need to get answered somehow,” or, “I have one situation that I’m wondering if you can help me with,” then it’s practical, it’s targeted, it feels a little bit like a mission.

It’s not an open-ended quest. When it’s an open-ended quest of just like, “Hey, I just want to talk with you about–“ then we’re just going to talk. It’s not great.

Craig: An example of the former, which is the specific thing, a friend reached out to say like, “Hey, there’s a thing they’re trying to put in my contract for this deal. Can I talk to you about it?” “Yes.”

John: Oh my God, yes.

Craig: 100%. To me, that’s not even connections at that point. That’s like, okay, we’re colleagues. We’re in the same business. That’s different.

John: It’s in the category of generosity, but a thing I do, which some friends do and other colleagues do, but I don’t see people do enough and I think that people should do more is, if I see a friend written up a deadline, like they sold a show or they did a thing, I’m always right there with an email saying, congratulations. I’m making it clear that I’m rooting for that person.

Craig: You’ve never sent me that email, not once.

John: Then I’ve said something like that to you.

Craig: I don’t think you have.

John: You probably have.

Craig: I’m different, I know. You know why? Because you just take me for granted. That’s why. I’m just the guy that’s there. I get it. I know how Mike feel.

John: Actually, you had a show that you were producing that was announced in Deadline, I didn’t email you [unintelligible 00:21:54].

Craig: You didn’t. Exactly.

John: How many other people– did other people email you about it?

Craig: Yes. They texts, mostly texts.

John: Texts, yes.

Craig: I don’t expect it. I don’t expect it, and also, I never do it because I don’t read Deadline.

John: That’s good for your sanity.

Craig: I think it might be.

John: Here’s what I’ll say about the dropping the email or the text. The email is good in the sense that there’s less of a pressure to respond to a thing sometimes, or like an Instagram congratulations to somebody. It’s just reestablishing. It’s making it clear that I’m rooting for you and some good things have happened in my life because that.

Like, “Oh, this is a good chance for me to catch up with this person,” or there’s actually a project I ended up doing when I sent through the congratulatory email. The guy said right back, like, “Oh, you should do this other thing.” I’m like, “Oh, yes, I should do this other thing,” and I ended up selling a project. Do those. It takes a minute to do and do it at the time.

Craig: Generally speaking, when it’s people in our business, if you’re already inside the business, I feel like you have a very specific need, want, that another person can help you with. Some friend that you and I both know called me the other day with this exact situation. “I have a problem. I think you’ve had this problem before. Let’s talk.” Those things are great. Then, of course, great job and so forth. I’m very texty about that sort of thing because I’m a teenage girl. I don’t know. Text is better.

John: Text is better for a friend or somebody if you regularly keep in touch with, or semi-regularly. For example, writer friends who I haven’t seen in six years but then I see that they sold a show.

Craig: Really?

John: I want to drop them a note.

Craig: I go text.

John: I think it was maybe I’ve actually never texted these people.

Craig: You may not even have their number. You may only have their email. That’s a different situation. Even then, I try and do the thing with text where it’s like, “Oh, can I text you via your email?” If it turns blue, just like that.

John: That works.

Craig: I always say, “This is Craig.” Never text somebody that you are not in an active conversation with.

John: If there’s not a thread back and forth.

Craig: There are a few, I have to say, that I occasionally get. It’ll happen once every two years. I’m like, “Thank you,” and I don’t know who it is because it’s a number. I’m saying this quietly like no one’s going to hear me. I can look back over six years of these. It’s too late now.

John: It’s not too late.

Craig: Can your phone do this?

John: Sorry, your name isn’t showing up.

Craig: They’re like, “Has it ever been showing up? Have you ever known who I was?” That’s what I would say. I wouldn’t. I am so against making people embarrassed for not knowing something about me. We need to have a whole podcast about how to handle the, I don’t know who you are. That’s like a whole situation. It’s a real life situation.

John: It’s in real life, for sure, too.

Craig: It’s a massive situation. It wasn’t when we started. The older you get, the more people you know.

John: There’s just more people.

Craig: It just becomes a real issue.

John: A situation that happened, we were at a restaurant way out on the west side, a place I never would have been. We’re sitting at this big table and having a good conversation. There’s a guy who’s in my eyesight who waves to me. It’s like, crap, I know I must know who that person is, but I don’t.

It was the challenge of I’m more recognizable than he is. He’s seeing me repeated in deadline stories and other things. I have no idea who he was. Fortunately, at the end, he did come over and reintroduce himself. Of course, an agent I had 15 years ago who I hadn’t seen in person in so long.

Craig: They all look the same. They wear the same clothes.

John: He did a very gracious thing. I think that’s the right approach.

Craig: He said, “Hey, it’s so and so.” There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s so much right with that. This is why it’s hard to go somewhere when your spouse, this is the case for both of us, is not in the business because they’re not going to know who the person is. When that person goes over, you are now supposed to go, “Oh, hey, Melissa, this is blah-di-di-blah.”

When I know who somebody is, I’m so proud. I’m like, trumpets, red carpet, this is so and so. Here’s what he’s done. Here’s what he did. Here’s where he came from. I’m like a Wikipedia article all of a sudden. Then the other people, I’m like, “Oh my God.”

John: Obviously, this is advice. If you’re the plus one going into one of these situations, get in there.

Craig: Get in there fast.

John: 100%. Let’s talk about other connection outreaches. Make sure to give people an out so that you’re not boxing them in. If you’re too busy, no sweat at all. Recognize when someone might be stretched thin. The last thing I’ll say is close the loop. Thank them for doing it. If there’s an update, give them the update because so often, I’ll give someone advice, I have no idea what happened. Just a follow-up email, “I just wanted to let you know this is what happened. It was great, and thank you for this.”

Craig: I can think of a couple of people that have emailed me years after I spoke with them, and did it perfectly. Reminded me of who they were. Acknowledged that I might not even remember it because it was just 30 minutes two years ago. Give me some context that might help me remember. Tell me why they’re updating me because this good thing happened. A lovely sentiment of thanks or gratitude.

John: My day is better because of it.

Craig: Then, thank you, goodbye. Perfect.

John: Perfectly done.

Craig: Perfect.

John: Wrap this up with an example of a connection that ends up paying off for everybody involved. Years ago, we were hiring a designer for the company, and I met with a bunch of people. One guy was great, but he wasn’t quite the right fit. He asked, “Hey, can I stay in touch?” I’m like, “For sure. You’re great.”

He was really good about dropping an email once a year to keeping up with where things were at. He ended up getting a job at Amazon and working on a very specific top-secret project. It was a once-a-year email and sometimes a short Zoom to catch up on stuff. We ran into a problem with our emergency pack, which is sold on Amazon, where we suddenly weren’t able to sell it because Germany was requiring this authorization. Basically, our whole account was shut down until we verified with Germany, but there were no appointments to actually do this video.

Craig: I immediately feel a pang of fear when you tell me that Germany, because of new regulations, is shutting something down. I start to panic.

John: For two months, it was this bureaucracy nightmare. Finally, I’m like, Jared works at Amazon. I don’t think he works anywhere in that department. It’s like, “Can you help?” He’s like, “Yes, I think I can help.” He was able, because he just knew people, was able to connect the things and thoughts.

I still had to do the stupid German interview, but I got it bumped up so I could, at 3:00 in the morning, talk to some German person. He made the thing happen. That’s because he was a smart person who was like, “Oh, I’m rooting for you.” He could help me out down the road.

Craig: You could make an interesting graph of how much you’re going to be helped by connections in your life. The graph will start with a line that is very low to the X-axis, and then it will not rise linearly. It will rise exponentially.

John: There’s a compounding effect to that.

Craig: The more you achieve, the closer the proximity to other people who are achieving, which means the more likely it is that you can help each other, and that grows and expands. It is very easy, I think, and reasonable to be close to the X-axis and look upwards at the people who are high on the Y-axis and go, “Well, this is unfair.” It is, but it is also just a function of reality.

I’ve thought about that a lot, actually. There’s really no way to create equity there. It’s just something that’s going to happen. At least, if you are high on the Y-axis, try to not just shut down the X-axis people completely.

John: 100%. I think I found myself doing during the WGA negotiations is we have all these big member meetings. We have them with strike captains and with members and all these forums. I wasn’t answering a lot of questions, but I was up there on the stage or I was in the audience. When people come up to the microphone, they say their name and they ask their question.

In my little notebook, I wrote down people’s names and I wrote down their question and put a star by them. That is a smart person. Sometimes afterwards, I would come up to them and thank them for asking a smart question. Just to establish a radar for, these are good people who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow, it’s always easy to remember the jerks and the idiots. When somebody is like, “Oh, that is a smart person who is asking a good question,” it’s helping you understand through the invisible mesh of trust and smartness that’s out there.

Craig: I try with the connection thing to also look for institutions. These are mentorships that aren’t already dealing with people that have other legs up. It’s not that I don’t talk to people who email me from Princeton because they get my name from the Princeton Alumni Guide. It’s just that I’m not as motivated. They’re Princeton. You got a lot going on. I’ve done my charitable work there.

It’s more interesting when other groups come and you have a chance to talk to people who don’t have– okay, well, that one didn’t pan out, but here’s 40 other people in the alumni handbag. I don’t know. I’d rather talk to other people. Sorry, my Princeton [unintelligible 00:31:51].

John: You’re setting some boundaries, too, which is a helpful way to–

Craig: Prioritizing.

John: Prioritizing. I think the final bit of advice we would probably both agree on is paying it forward. The degree to which you are benefiting from connections, make sure you’re creating connections with other people that can help lift them up.

Craig: Everybody who achieves a certain status in our business is going to get hit up by people. That’s inevitable. It’s not like you’re going to have any shortage of opportunity. Don’t never do it. Do it. You can’t do it all the time. You have to gatekeep somehow. You just have to because you have a job and you have a life.

The other thing is, sometimes, I remember thinking when I was starting out, this person just needs to give me 10 minutes of their life. I know that they’re wasting 10 minutes all the time. That is true. I am constantly wasting time. Also, I’m sorry, I can’t. If I just talk to people, then that’d be a rough life.

John: That’s one of the things. It’s like, I can’t have this conversation with each individual person, but I can have a conversation in aggregate among all these people.

Craig: Just listen to the 701–

John: Or buy the book.

Craig: Or buy the book. I keep forgetting we wrote a book. I wonder how I could forget that.

John: Let’s answer some new listener questions. Can we start here at the bottom of the list with Michael Neal?

Drew: Michael writes, “I had my first kid at the beginning of the year.”

John: Congratulations.

Drew: “Well, my wife had the kid. I was the cheerleader.”

Craig: Well done.

Drew: “When I watch film and TV now, I find myself having much stronger reactions to scenes, even ones I’d seen before. They don’t even have to involve kids. When I talked to my mom, she said she had to stop watching horror movies for years after I was born, and I was her second kid. After you both had your kids, was there anything that changed about your viewing habits or how you reacted to film and TV? Was there something specific that surprised you?”

John: I’m trying to think whether my viewing habits changed greatly. Obviously, at a certain point when she started watching TV shows, I was watching a bunch of inane TV shows with her. I think we talked about it on the show. I used to swear a fair amount, and it just stopped completely suddenly. It really is awkward for me to swear now.

Craig: Whoa. I started swearing more.

John: You did?

Craig: Yes, because of those effing babies. I don’t think there was anything that changed in terms of taste. My threshold for, yes, I want to see that, went way higher because I had a kid. That is a question of, would you like to not be with your baby and see this movie that, whatever? Just because people are like, “Oh, it might be–“ It just changed. It changed.

I used to see movies all the time. I would watch a lot of different shows and things, and then it just changed after that. It does change you. This is why critics are unreliable. Think about what he’s saying. It changes. As your life changes, you change, your taste changes, your ability to appreciate or not appreciate something changes. The rhetoric of, I have deemed this good or bad, just doesn’t make sense. It’s an odd thing.

John: My sensitivity towards onscreen when children are in danger probably shifted a little bit. It’s not like I was like, “Oh, I want that kid in peril.”

Craig: You used to love it.

John: I think there’s always the aspect of watching something is that you’re imagining yourself in that situation. When you have a kid, that kid is an extension of you and you’re imagining that kid being hurt. It feels like it’s a part of you.

Craig: I think maybe I probably did also empathize more with parental characters whose children were in danger. It is a different feeling. It’s a bit intellectual prior to that, and it becomes incredibly middle brain when you’ve had a kid and your limbic system is getting triggered by Liam Neeson getting a phone call and taken.

John: My eyes are on Mike. Watching the end of Toy Story 3 when the kid is going off to college, just broke him. He couldn’t even think about it without sobbing.

Craig: Interesting.

John: That was directly a factor of having a kid and not being able to imagine our daughter going to college. Then the teenage years make you really ready to leave.

Craig: Get out. It’s almost like it’s all planned. They make it so that you finally are like– although my youngest is living with us right now, which is great. She could get her own place, but you know why she’s living with us? She’s like, “It’s better here.”

John: Honestly, it’s better.

Craig: Yes, it is. It’s cool. We’re good. You’re all right. Just stop making a mess.

John: Let’s answer a question that actually ties back into our initial connections question. We have a question here from Tara Garwood, which is related to connections.

Drew: “I’m almost finished with my first screenplay, a horror comedy, which I wrote under the mentorship of two well-known Hollywood horror screenwriters. As someone living outside LA, how can I best proceed with my first screenplay and mentors who are presumably willing to help me out?”

John: Great. Tara, congrats on this project. We don’t know how you got it to these horror screenwriters, but if they’re actually working in the business, they’re great connections for you here. The real issue is, how do you let them help you in a way that they’re going to be able to help you and not be too much of a hassle to them? They can connect you to other people, including a rep, a manager, somebody else. They can just get your script in front of people, and that’s going to be the most helpful thing to you going forward.

Craig: Sounds like you know what to do. You’ve got two people. They’re your mentors. You’ve written something. Depending on how close that mentorship is, you might want to say, “Hey, I’ve written the script. I’m not going to make you read the whole thing. Unless you really want to, just read the first 10 pages. Just read the first 10. You don’t even have to respond. If you do, I’ll send the rest.”

John: Assuming they like it– I went into this question assuming that they had read the whole thing, which would be great, but if they haven’t, that’s also fine. If they can help you find other people to talk to so it’s not just them all the time, will be good. That’s why I was trying to look for a manager or just like, who else do you think I should talk to? Who else could be a good connection here because that feels useful and important?

You’re outside of LA, which is great and it’s fine, but I think you need to find some other writers, people in this space who you can talk to so it’s not just on the backs of these two mentor people because they will burn out if they’re getting an email from you every two weeks.

Craig: Yes, eventually they will burn out, no question.

John: Cool. Let’s do a question here from Reid.

Drew: “John and Craig compared being hired on a weekly project as making a corpse presentable enough for an open casket funeral.”

John: That was Craig’s.

Craig: That’s me. It’s not always like that. Sometimes it’s like that, yes.

Drew: “Well, when you’re in a situation like this or in the throes of rewriting a scene for the fifth or sixth time, how can you tell if you’re actually improving it or are you just making it different?”

John: Sometimes you’re just making it different for the sake of freshness and just dealing with people’s egos and needs and situation. You have to be honest with yourself when it’s like, this is not a better version of the scene, it’s just a different version of the scene that starts in a different place, it goes to a different place, it has different words, but hopefully it’s serving the same function.

When you’re actually trying to improve a thing, I think you need to step back and look at, what is the function this is trying to serve? Is it consistent with the tone and the voice and the spirit of the movie, and especially the section of the movie or the section of the storytelling? Is it fresher? Is it more exciting for an audience to encounter? That’s hard. We’ve talked a lot about it in comedy. Sometimes you forget that things are funny because you’re just exposed to them so many times.

Craig: I remember reading about Mozart when I was a kid and how he was able to learn some classical piece when he was seven, and then just sort of extemporaneously create seven versions of it. I just thought, “Well, what are those versions?” Well, turns out if you are a writer, you could do seven versions of something. You understand, then, what versioning is. When you’re in a situation where you’re on one of these deals, you’re usually trying to make one person happy. Sometimes that one person is happy because you’ve made somebody else happy. You’re trying to make the head of the studio happy.

They say, “What would make me happy is if this star agrees to get on the plane and fly there to do the movie. Right now, this is what he or she wants.” Great. How would this do? “Almost, but they want this or they don’t want that.” Got it. What about this version? Really, you’re not writing anything that is expressive of you. You are versioning until someone goes that because you actually don’t know. Nobody knows. You’re just trying to get people to say, “Oh, yes. Okay, that. That’s what I think this should all be.” Then it is useful because then everybody can go, “Oh, we were making Meatloaf, but you wanted Baked Alaska. Okay. Let’s realign.

John: That is the frustration is often they’ll focus on the script because that script is the thing they can control, but the issue isn’t the script at all. The issue is the actor, the director, the location-

Craig: Always.

John: -the budget, it’s all this other stuff. The problem never was the words on the page, but the words on the page are the only thing that can change. That’s what they’re focusing on. You’re getting paid, hopefully well to do impossible things and do the least damage possible while you’re doing it.

Craig: There are, I think, a lot of situations where studios like an idea that is inherent to a script, and they find an actor that means something and a director that means something who also really like the idea of that script. Everybody agrees the script could “use work,” meaning the execution of that idea isn’t thrilling to them. There be dragons because what happens then is a parade of highly paid, extremely competent writers all versioning to figure it well, is it this? Is it this?

John: The truth is there’s no one decision maker. It gets off like a consensus situation. There’s not a king to please.

Craig: There is no king to please. Everybody’s fighting with everybody over it. Everybody wants it to be something, and none of them have the ability to write two words together, not two, and there’s the problem. You go in, as we’ve talked about this before, in those situations, you are a surgeon, you are a mortician. You are also a therapist, you are a diplomat, you are a priest, confessor, you are so many things to so many different people.

It is one of the great ironies of the feature side of our business that those are some of the highest-paid people in Hollywood who are still treated like crap in their own way. It’s like, “Well, we’re not treating you like crap, we’re giving you all this money.” Also, change everything because somebody that shouldn’t have any power whatsoever doesn’t like the word blue.

John: Oh, yes. Their notes are like, “I don’t like seeing people eat on screen.” Sure. I recognize that you’re number seven on the power structure here, but also if I don’t yield on this, you’re going to dig in your heels to the other side. I’m going to need you to fight on my side for something else.

Craig: Also, I’m not going to be here in two weeks. I’m gone, right? One actor, his issue was he just didn’t like dialogue when he was standing. He wanted to be moving. Well, I’ve got a director and a producer who are like, “This is a scene where there’s nowhere to go.” I don’t know. What if? Now, this is the problem I’m trying to solve. This is not a writing problem.

John: No.

Craig: It’s really not. Now it’s just this weird puzzle of like, oh, well, I still want this lovely scene where Vito Corleone is talking to Michael Corleone in the garden and explaining to him the innermost truths of running a mafia family. Let’s say Al Pacino was like, “But I don’t want to sit. I want to be walking.” Marlon Brando was like, “Well, I don’t want to be walking. I want to sit.” Now I’m not doing art at all.

John: No.

Craig: Now it’s Lego.

John: It is Lego. How does it assemble properly? All right. Let’s draw one cool thing. Mine is an article by Cate Hall in her newsletter, Useful Fictions, called 50 Things I Know. There’s an industry out of this newsletter like lists of stuff I’ve learned over the course of the years. They’re skimmable, but I thought hers were really good. I’m just going to hit the first three here, Craig, and see how you respond.

She says, “You are allowed to care about people who don’t care about you and even people who dislike you. The way you feel about someone can be totally decoupled from how they feel about you. In fact, uncovering your capacity to love people who will never fully reciprocate it is the definition of grace.”

Craig: Yes, that’s a beautiful thought.

John: It’s also a good theme for a screenplay. That’s a good dramatic question.

Craig: Yes, it is. The idea of unrequited love implies an unfairness and a wound. Here’s something that changes when you’re a parent. It’s unrequited love. Their love for you is not like your love for them, nor will it ever be.

John: It’s never going to be perfectly reciprocal.

Craig: Never. You don’t really, nor should you really require it to. That’s an example where you just go, “I’m going to care about you.” There’s no quid pro quo. This is how it goes. Yes, there are people that you can do that with.

John: Second point, if you’re unsure how to have better opinions, try just having fewer of them for a start.

Craig: Well, first of all, what is a better opinion? [laughs] I’m not sure what that means.

John: What is a better opinion? I guess you pull that apart. To me, it’s–

Craig: Maybe justified.

John: Justified opinion, yes.

Craig: Instead of just saying stuff because.

John: I feel like sometimes you have this instinct of like, “Well, I have to have an opinion on something.”

Craig: No, you don’t.

John: I don’t have an opinion. No.

Craig: I don’t know, and I’m not sure are wonderful phrases.

John: “The most dangerous people have an exquisitely tuned sense of just how much they can get away with when it comes to how they treat different people, so pay special attention when others have sharply diverging opinions of someone’s character. Lots of variance in opinion about whether an idea is good means there’s a good chance the idea is good. Lots of variance in opinion about whether a person is good is a warning sign. If you’re hearing a lot of diverging reports about a person, that’s a red flag, and that feels true to me.”

Craig: Yes, I can understand her point that people that you would want to treat well are saying, “Oh, this person’s wonderful.” Well, yes, because they’re probably wonderful to you. Then, ‘Oh, these are people for which there is no reward if you treat them well, and all of those people are saying this person’s a monster.” The agent that a big star loves but all the assistants loathe, yes, that’s going to be a person who’s probably not great.

John: Going back to connections, I got a call from a writer who was asking about an actor who I’d worked with, and I could tell him that obviously this should be on a phone call. Don’t text this. Don’t email this. I can say, I had a really good experience with them, and I know that other people have not had good experiences with them. I personally did not encounter that at all. I would say keep asking and check on people, but I also wonder if there’s just a bad mix of personalities and types.

Craig: Yes, qualifying, things like that, all the time. Absolutely. I’m very nervous about saying, “Oh, this person is “bad.” It’s best to talk about your experience with somebody. I try to lead with, I’m just one person. I do think that there are people about whom I’ve been warned who turned out to be great. Then my question is, “What’s the deal with you? You warned me about this person.” There are people who warn you, and they warn you in a careful way.

They go, look, here’s the context. The truth is all of us can be warned about. We all have something that isn’t going to work with someone else. We’re not compatible with everyone. The warning should be not something abusive, horrible, racist, whatever. It’s just these are the ins and outs of this person. If you don’t mind a person like this, great.

John: Those are 3 of the 50 recommendations on Cate Hall’s Useful Fictions. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Craig, what do you have for us?

Craig: Well, it’s fun. We were talking about connections today. My one cool thing is a new game, Pips. Love it. Have you been playing it?

John: I tried the demo and did not click for me. Tell me what’s working for you about Pips in your brain.

Craig: First, let me admire the puzzle that I did this morning. Pips, it’s pretty simple. It’s a dominoes-style game. Unlike dominoes, where every square of a domino has to match up to another one, what they do is they give you a little grid, a little snaky grid, in which to place the collection of dominoes they’ve given you for that puzzle. They’ve created regions inside of the grid that have constrictions. For instance, in today’s, there was an area where the numbers in this one region had to equal 10. There’s another area where a plus sign region had to all have the same number.

I played it on hard because I got to be honest with you, it’s a pretty easy game. It’s a lovely little easy logic puzzle. When it clicks, there’s a very odd satisfaction to it. What I also like is, as much as I love words, there’s a lot of word-letter-based stuff here, connections, spelling bee, Wordle. I do the Sudoku occasionally. Sudoku is just Sudoku. It’s so number, crunchy, simple in its own way. It’s just straight dead logic. This at least requires me to move shapes around, which is not my strong suit. I like the spatial aspect. It’s fun and it’s quick.

John: Their games are quick. It’s interesting because The New York Times games were originally just digital versions of things that could be done on paper and pencil. This is an example of the thing that couldn’t happen on paper and pencil. Wordle couldn’t happen on paper and pencil.

Craig: No. Wordle could not happen on paper and pencil. Now, this is my chance to decry the removal of the acrostics. I don’t understand. I will never understand why The New York Times just– Mike, how much could it have cost to pay Henry Cox and Emily Rathvon every two weeks to bring acrostic? Come on. It was perfect for digital. If ever they were a puzzle made for digital, it was that. I don’t care if 12 people did it. I was one of them. Boo.

John: Boo.

Craig: Boo.

John: It wasn’t bad enough to make you cancel your account, which is why they didn’t do it.

Craig: I know, but I’m still–

John: There’s still time.

Craig: I’m still out here being– you know what? They’ve never encountered a cranky, rigid customer in the top of [crosstalk]. Listen to me, I’m still the most flexible customer I have.

John: That is our show for this week. It’s produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today on the show.

You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We are also scriptnotespodcast on Instagram. We’re posting stuff about the show and the book, and new vertical videos on there too.

We have T-shirts and hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes with the links for all the things we talked about today, and the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to those premium subscribers who make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Lego.

Craig, thanks for a good connections episode.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. We are looking at a vase full of– vase or vase? Are you a vase or vase person?

Craig: I’m a vase person.

John: I’m vase as well.

Craig: That’s a very New York way of doing it.

John: Yes. Full of Lego flowers. Can you describe it for the listeners at home?

Craig: Yes. It’s actually quite beautiful. I’ve made Lego flowers of a more chunky, tulipy kind. These are more delicate. It’s like a lovely bouquet with a couple of orange blossoms, some pink ones, some rose-looking ones. Then they even got that baby’s breath vibe going on and some nice stem work.

John: Yes. My daughter assembled these before she headed off to college this semester. It’s Lego. Things snap together, but there’s no blocks to this. There’s no three-by-two, the classic Lego block, to this all.

Craig: I will be honest, if you asked me, is this a Lego brand thing, I’d have to look close. I know that these little nubs, for instance, are very Lego-y, but this could be another brand of assembled plastic pieces.

John: I want to talk about that a little bit because I love Lego. I’ve loved Lego as a kid. I’ve built some things. I was looking around the office here. I have my Lego R2-D2. I have my Lego typewriter. I love them. Yet, at a certain point, the kits became so specific. The pieces are so bespoke. The flower here is the most recent example of these are not things you could apply to anything else. Basically, the kits are just to resemble this one specific thing. If you were to try to pull this apart and use them in other ways, they wouldn’t be useful. The joy of Lego growing up was just there’s a trash bag full of blocks, and we would just build houses out of them.

Craig: The Titanic does mostly have useful items.

John: Yes. You said on the show that you built a Lego Titanic.

Craig: I built the Lego Titanic.

John: The Lego Death Star, Millennium Falcon?

Craig: I built the Lego Death Star, the Lego Millennium Falcon, the big ones. Those I ended up just breaking down and giving them to my kids to play with.

John: [unintelligible 00:54:47].

Craig: Yes, because they were young and they wanted to. I’m not going to be that guy who’s like, “No, this is my Millennium Falcon.” I’m an adult here. The Titanic is in my office. This is awesome. It’s the biggest Legos out there. It’s huge. Then I built a lot of– this is what I do in prep usually when I go home. I did the Pac-Man arcade one and the Mario on TV, the Nintendo one. There’s a lot of fun things like that. I agree with you when they get too bespoke. For instance, I did Rivendell, the Lord of the Rings setting.

John: Yes, I saw that. It was on your table, yes.

Craig: That one’s a D&D one. The Rivendell one, I ended up breaking down. Like you said, it was too– by the way, it’s why I haven’t finished the D&D one. I just left it on the table because it’s sort of too far into not Lego.

John: There’s the spectrum of– there’s the model kits that you assemble, which are like, growing up, you glue together the thing, and it perfectly forms this one thing, which is exactly the replica of this thing. There was a classic Lego, which is just a bunch of blocks you can assemble any way you want to do. I just feel like we’ve gone so far over towards the assemble this perfectly to this thing.

It is a skill to follow those instructions and be able to do the engineering feats of what these new things can do, like what this typewriter can do, are remarkable. I’m sure it’s good for our visual intelligence, but also I worry that it robs us of some of our– it’s not a new thought. This is in the Lego movie, too, but it robs us of some of our individual agency to build things ourselves. Which is why our friend Phil, who’s just building this giant ship out of just a block seat himself, I’m inspired by.

Craig: If I weren’t imaginative as part of my job, but this is actually a weird refuge from that where I don’t have to create anything. I don’t have to worry about variations. I don’t have puzzles to solve about architecture. My job is to zen out and do something that I can do perfectly.

John: That’s what I miss about standardized tests where actually like there’s a correct answer to things because everything we do in our writing lives, there’s just like, is that the right way to do it? Sure.

Craig: There’s no [unintelligible 00:57:07]. It’s even worse. Sometimes there is a right way to do something, and everyone is like, “Yes, but do it differently,” which is the worst feeling. You want me to do the test wrong.

John: Yes, absolutely. I gave you the right version of the scene. Now you want me to start from the heart. It’s frustrating.

Craig: It’s frustrating. Yes, I still do love following instructions. It’s such a nice, simple–

John: Well, I think it appeals to your puzzle brain, too. There’s an answer, there’s a conclusion, it can be done.

Craig: Yes. Puzzles, the fun part is I have the pieces. I just need to understand how they fit together, whether it’s words, or numbers, or anything. With Lego, I actually am not thinking at all. It’s a way to stop thinking. I’m just obeying in a safe way.

John: This is actually interesting because you hate jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles, it’s ambiguous for a long time, that things click together. While there is that state of completion, there’s no instruction manual. It’s like this piece could be one of a thousand things in it.

Craig: Yes. A jigsaw “puzzle” is a bit like if I said, here is a Lego typewriter, here are all the pieces, here’s the instruction guide, but I’ve jumbled the pages and I haven’t numbered them. Well, let’s look through these pages. Do you think this maybe is where it starts? This is busy work. For what? A picture of a hamburger or a cat jumping over a thing?

John: I will say, building the Lego R2-D2, there were some ambiguous sections. I think the assembly books are really good, but there were some ambiguous situations where I don’t know if I did this right, and it’s going to take 20 steps before I realize if I did it right.

Craig: That is part of the process, is the, uh-oh, flip back and go, “Oh my God, I was supposed to put the dark gray piece and not the black piece. Okay, let’s undo, undo, undo because it must be right.” It drives me crazy. The one thing that I wish Lego would do– so they’re very good in a way now about supplying you with extra bits of little tiny things. The problem is they don’t tell you what the extra bits are. They should say at the end of a chapter, “By the way, we were hoping that you would have these extra bits, so if you do, don’t panic.”

John: So you didn’t make the mistakes.

Craig: If you have two extra bits of something, you probably screwed up. One thing that I know is true is the piece that you need to make it is there. You might think it’s not there. You might be panicking. It’s there. Either you’re not seeing it, or you don’t understand what the shape is, or it’s on the floor, or it’s in the box. It’s there.

John: It’s Scott Frank’s advice. Don’t move until you see it. It’s there.

Craig: That’s Steve Zaillian.

John: Oh, Steve Zaillian. You’re right.

Craig: Yes. Don’t move until you see it.

John: All right. Lego flowers, I guess we’re going to keep them. The weird thing about this bouquet is it’s really pretty from a distance, and it’s actually pretty up close. There’s a middle range where it’s just like, ugh.

Craig: I think I’m in that middle range, and I’m still appreciating it because– you know what? It’s arranged very nicely because I don’t imagine the arrangement was dictated quite that.

John: It’s going to be a different vase for each.

Craig: Right. Your daughter put that together. She has an eye for arranging flowers, so she’ll never be hungry.

John: Absolutely, because there’s always going to be a market.

Craig: People love flowers.

John: People love flowers. I used to buy flowers, and then I realized, this is dumb. I don’t really enjoy having them.

Craig: Or horrible. You know who loves flowers?

John: Elsa. Yes, sorry. I can appreciate watching a Martha Stewart where halfway the flowers are like, “Oh, that’s beautiful, but I don’t want it there.”

Craig: There’s a bunch of vegetables, and then they’re dead within minutes. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’re dead, and they smell. They smell while they die, and then the bugs come.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: What is this– and it’s, “Ooh, look at the sad flowers, they’re all dead.” Yes, that’s why I don’t like clowns either.

John: Oh, flowers die.

Craig: Like, oh, happy? No, no, scary.

John: Which reminds me, I think my daughter has a bouquet of flowers up in her room, which is she’s probably-

Craig: Oh dear God.

John: -going to get rid of because she’s just gone.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: I’ll smell it, so yes.

Craig: That needs to go.

John: Quickly.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: Right. Thanks, Craig.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Thanks, Drew.

Links:

• Scriptnotes Book is now on Goodreads!
• Scriptnotes 700 on YouTube
• Episode 645 with Meredith Scardino
• Vimeo on Demand
• Kanopy
• WGAw Screen Compensation Guide
• NYT Connections
• Pips
• 50 Things I Know by Cate Hall
• Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 700 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we are doing something we haven’t done since 2020, a live show with our listeners on Zoom and on YouTube. Hello, listeners. Like a lot of things about the pandemic, we only half remember what we’re doing. [laughter] While we’re still an audio-first podcast, we are going to be doing some things in this episode that benefit from being able to share screens and look at things.

If you’re listening to the audio version at home or your car and happen to be close to a screen, consider going back and watching some of this later on YouTube because there’s actually images to see. We’ll also be answering listener questions live on air, including a few in the bonus segment for our premium members. To help us celebrate 700 episodes, we are joined by some Scriptnotes champions over the years. Let us welcome to the podcast, Stuart Friedel, our very first producer of the show.

Craig: Stuart.

John: Stuart.

[applause]

Stuart Friedel: There we go. Hi.

John: Oh, my God. Look at that background. Stuart Friedel.

Craig: Oh. Such a good background. Classic.

Stuart: I need a Scriptnotes poster or LP or something to put on the back.

John: Yes. We’re going to release the whole show on vinyl. It’s a lot of vinyl, but it’s worth it. I’m just to have that for that perfect audio quality.

Stuart: It’s a weight. It’s for working out.

John: Absolutely. We have Megan McDonell, Scriptnotes producer. Megan McDonell, welcome back to Scriptnotes.

[applause]

Craig: It’s Megan.

John: Oh, my gosh. We’re so excited to see you.

Craig: Another good background.

Megan McDonell: Thank you.

John: Megan, you were a crucial part of the professionalization, I think, of Scriptnotes because when Stuart first came on board, it was– [laughter] We were just winging it. We were just trying to figure out what it was. We didn’t know how long it was going to go.

Craig: He’s right there.

John: He’s right there.

Stuart: It is true. It’s absolutely true.

[laughter]

John: You were a crucial part of that and also helped me out so much with the launch podcast, which we were, again, figuring out along the way. How are you, Megan?

Megan: I’m great. It’s nice to be here. Thanks for including me.

John: Of course. Drew, do we have Megana?

Drew Marquardt: We do.

Craig: We always have Megana.

John: Megana Rao is the producer who people first heard on the air. I think she was the one who sort of crossed the barrier and became like, “Of course, it’s Megana. She’s talking on the show.” Megana, it is always a joy to have you here. Oh, my gosh, it’s Megana.

[applause]

Megana Rao: Hello.

Craig: Megana, she was really the first star, right? Maybe the only star. I don’t really think you or I qualify, but Megana gets stopped on the street. I’m sorry.

Megana: I hate that you can see my face.

[laughter]

Craig: You look beautiful.

Megana: Oh, I just want to cower.

Craig: You have such great hair. Look at this.

Megana: Wait, where is your beard?

Craig: Oh, I got rid of it.

John: He got rid of his beard and the hair on top of his head. He’s basically just trying to steal my look.

Craig: I did. I do like it when people are like, “Where’s your beard?” I’m like, “Where do you think?” Yes, it doesn’t come off in one piece.

[laughter]

John: Ripped it off. Yes, absolutely. Is this with hair and makeup? It’s back in the van. Megana, thank you again for being awesome on the show and for joining us here today. If Stuart was the originator of the show, he was the one who got the train running. Megana sped it along and got us figuring out a little more stuff. You were the heart, the soul, the smile, the laugh of the show.

Megana: Oh, thank you.

John: Then there’s Drew, but whatever.

Craig: It’s just really hard to work for John. That’s what I’m getting.

Drew: Grinds you down.

John: Now, the very first episodes of the show were edited by either me or by Stuart, but at a certain point, we’re like, “Somebody who don’t know what they’re doing should be doing this.” That’d be Matthew Chilelli. Matthew Chilelli, cross from post-production into production. Join us here on the Zoom as we celebrate 700 episodes.

Craig: Ooh.

[laughter]

Matthew Chilelli: I beamed in somehow.

John: Oh, wow. Yes, Matthew. He had to pipe in a studio background so it would feel really impressive. That’s actually where you do all the work on the show. It’s like this high-tech launch center for the show.

Matthew: Absolutely. It’s so you can’t see my husband working behind me.

John: Yes, there is that.

Craig: I like that Matthew works in a studio that is carefully painted to be blurry.

Matthew: Yes.

John: That’s good stuff. That’s a highly selective focus. 700 episodes, guys. Thank you so much for getting us here. I have to say, 700, Craig will attest to, that was always my goal was to make it to 700 episodes. [laughter] I said that from episode two. It’s like, “My goal is just to make it to 700 episodes.”

Craig: Had you said that, I would have been gone within minutes.

John: Yes. As we talked about in episode 100, I was hoping to make it to 100 and had no instincts beyond that point. It’s crazy that we’re here now. With a book coming out, so many people on this Zoom were so crucial to getting this book in good fighting shape. Drew, we’ve been getting a bunch of people sending in their receipts from the pre-orders. Thank you to everybody who’s ordering this book. It’s out December 2nd worldwide. People should order it now so that there’s enough copies so that everybody can enjoy the book for the holidays.

I have a topic that I want to discuss with this group before we move into other things, which is how do you talk about a movie or a show without spoilers and where is the boundary between, “Okay, this is just a thing in popular culture we need to talk about,” versus, “This is a spoiler and I have to be really careful to discuss this thing.” The specific thing is the movie Weapons, which I really enjoyed, and it went in without any spoilers at all, which was fantastic. I managed to not know anything about the movie.

Yet there’s, I think I want to talk about on the show in a very specific way that I think won’t ruin things, but what is our feeling about talking about a thing without ruining a thing for other people? Craig, start with you. What’s your instinct when it comes to a spoiler?

Craig: I think I’m pretty good about this. There are things that I feel like, okay, if you know this, it actually won’t ruin any surprise. In fact, you’re going to hear about this or find out about it as part of the general setup of the movie or story. I’ve been trying to get everybody to watch Hunting Wives, and it’s worked because it’s the number one show on Netflix, I assume because of me.

John: Yes, absolutely. You are the salesperson for it.

Craig: Yes. When I talk about it, I’m like, “Okay, none of this is a spoiler. It’s going to sound spoilery. You’re going to hear about this as part of the setup.” I feel like setup is fair game. Once you get past setup, then you get into that territory of, “Are you ever going to watch this or not? Because then I’ll just tell you what happens.” [laughter] I keep it inside of setup. I think that’s safe.

John: Stuart, what’s your feeling on spoilers?

Stuart: I think it’s context dependent, and it is dependent on the person hearing to make their boundaries known. If you want to talk about a movie on a podcast that’s educational about movies and how to make movies, I think you just need to tell the audience, “Tune out now,” and then go ahead and talk. Don’t hold back the efficacy of the conversation because you don’t want to offend somebody who had the opportunity to push stop.

John: Now, Megan McDonell, you’ve been working on a lot of shows that are either under NDA, so of course, you can’t talk about those things. Even a WandaVision, you know what’s coming up. You have a sense of what it is. When on WandaVision, did you start talking about– was it only after an episode dropped or after you made sure that people had a week to watch it? What’s your feeling about it?

Megan: Stuff I’ve worked on? I don’t know. I still don’t talk about it. [laughter] I’m context dependent. I’m one of the people that spoilers don’t affect me at all. Like, “Oh, he was dead the whole time?” This does not affect my enjoyment of the movie. [chuckles]

Stuart: What movie would that be?

John: Stuart Little, which is so surprising. I had no idea that mouse was dead the whole time. It was dead?

Craig: That would have been an improvement. No offense to E.B. White, but that would have been awesome.

John: Now, Megana, you and I are chatting a lot about things, and I feel like we have a good shorthand. We have a friendship where you can say like, “Oh, have you seen this thing? Are you going to watch this thing? Can we talk about this?” How about you with your other friends and people around you? How do you communicate about what you want to know and what you don’t want to know?

Megana: I’m like Meg and Stuart, especially working in this industry. Spoilers are just craft. If there’s a big twist coming up and you tell me about it, it’s like then I’m watching it with a different lens, being like, “Okay, how did they set this up? How does this work?” I do try to be respectful for people who don’t work in film and entertainment and not spoil things for them. I feel like as soon as you land at LAX, spoilers are free game.

Craig: Wow.

John: Yes. I also feel like there’s some time limit that happens where Mike hasn’t watched Severance, but it’s like, I might watch Severance. It’s like, oh, well, I can’t talk about anything Severance-wise in your presence. On work Zooms, just for daily office stuff, we do have to have a conversation about like, “Okay, are we going to talk about this thing or not talk about this thing, or people will mute themselves during part of it,” which can be rough.

Specifically, the thing I want to talk about in Weapons, which I really genuinely think we can have a good conversation about without any spoilers, is midway through the movie, a character is introduced for the first time. I thought it was a really smart introduction in that an assistant comes into the office and says, “Your two o’clock is here.” He’s like, “Okay, send her in.” She just lingers a bit to set up, “Do you know who this person is?” This is so strange and weird. There’s a lot of screen time spent on what would just be, you could cut out the scene, but it was so important because it sets up this expectation of the audience.

It’s like, “Who is this person coming through the door?” Without it, we would not have an appreciation for, like, “Oh, wow, that is just so odd.” It made me believe that we out of the world more that like this assistant was like, “This is a strange situation that’s about to happen.” I just really enjoyed that. To me, it doesn’t feel like a spoiler. You’re going to encounter that moment, and you’ll say, “Oh, John talked about that,” but I didn’t ruin anything for you, hopefully.

Craig: Feels ruined.

John: I’ve ruined the movie for you?

Craig: Yes.

Megana: I’m holding back tears now, actually, I really am upset.

John: I’m sorry.

Craig: That’s Megana’s upset?

[laughter]

John: A giant beaming smile.

Craig: Yes.

John: Matthew, did you see Weapons, and do you know the moment I’m talking about?

Matthew: No, I haven’t seen it yet, but I still feel like that’s fine to talk about and also not that this is a judgment at all, but editing this show so many things have been ruined for me [laughter] plot-wise, and then I just keep it inside and turn it off and don’t share with anybody, but it hasn’t affected my enjoyment of movies.

Craig: You just let it out. You just shared it. Now everyone knows. I feel terribly guilty. Here’s why I feel guilty. I never even considered that. I took you for granted, and I’m sorry. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep doing it. At least now, I’ll be guilty along the way instead of just suddenly all at once on YouTube.

John: Yes, there’s two things I’m realizing now that we’re doing this live, is that first off, all the mistakes that Matthew cuts out, and it’s mostly my verbal mess-ups that Matthew fixes that he can’t fix on a live stream, which is great, good for the world. Second, there’s so many cases, not every episode, but every second or third episode, where Craig and I will say, “Oh, Matthew, you have to cut that out. What I just said cannot be in the air.” You know as much stuff that is sealed in the vault. So good.

Craig: Because Matthew’s so good about cutting all this out and you rely on him, what people don’t know is that John and Drew have the exact same thing they do when they do a verbal flub. Matthew, can you do it for us? I know you know what it is.

Matthew: Oh, right, yes. It’s almost the sound of a tape rewinding. As a person, it’s like, you’re in the middle of something, it’s like, “If you don’t put it up, blah, blah, and then you go back to the beginning. [laughter]

Craig: Yes, it’s [onomatopoeia]. It’s like that.

John: I listen to the Slate podcasts, and when their hosts mess up, they must be trained to go, “3, 2, 1,” and they read the line, and so it works for them. Every once in a while, a 3, 2, 1 will make it into the show, and like, love it, oh, just, it so reveals the process behind stuff.

Craig: That’s what lets us know it’s not AI.

John: Yes, before we get to our main topic here, we have two little bits of news. Drew, we have a new video in the ScriptNotes channel. This is on Breaking Bad, it’s Vince Gilligan’s interview, and it’s really well cut together.

Drew: Yes, it’s a really good one. It’s him just talking about how to be a good showrunner and running a room, and it’s really great.

John: That was a great episode. You have a new Weekend Read collection up this week.

Drew: We do, we’re back to school.

John: What are some of the titles in the back-to-school collection?

Drew: We’ve got 10 Things I Hate About You, Big Little Lies, Bottoms, Clueless, Dead Poets Society, Dear White People, Easy A, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Friday Night Lights, Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, Never Have I Ever, School Days… loads. Wednesday.

Craig: Do you have Back to School?

John: The Rodney Dangerfield classic?

Drew: Ironically, no.

Craig: What the?

John: Some of those scripts are really hard to find, Craig. For some reason, there’s not a staggering demand for people trying to find those scripts.

Craig: That script actually is a really well-structured.

John: Oh.

Craig: It’s very well done for like a classic comedy. The structure was actually quite smart.

John: While he’s going to hype up Back to School, I’m going to hype up Bottoms just for folks who haven’t seen Bottoms for whatever reason. It is gonzo, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s why these people are stars.” They’re just so well done. All right, a topic for the group. Since we have a screen that we can all look at together, and our listeners can look at the screen together with us, I wanted to talk about the challenge that all writers face about how we describe the things we see in our head, so that the readers are seeing the same things in their heads.

Today, this exercise, Drew put together this slideshow of images we took off of ShotDeck. These are all from different movies and TV shows, or documentaries, all that we’ve pulled from there. What I want us to do is work together to figure out how would we describe this thing in a screenplay so that our readers are seeing the same thing that we’re hoping for them to see. We’re calling this People, Places, and Things. We’ll start with four different people, and we’ll talk about who these characters are and if this was the first time we’re showing them on screen, what would we talk about?

Because Craig, I know you love to talk about hair, and wardrobe, and makeup, and all those things, and help us get character details. Let’s start with our first image here. For folks who are just listening at home, again, you should really look at the YouTube for this so you can see what the images are, but it is a woman in an office situation. Craig, you’re looking at this. Who is this woman? What are we seeing? What are the details that you think might make it into a scene description for her?

Craig: Depending on where we are, if this is the beginning of the scene, I would probably make a point of saying intentionally whether or not this is how it actually turns out. Medium close on Brenda, 50s, standard office attire, practical short blonde hair, sitting in an office populated by late ‘90s, early 2000 equipment. She looks appropriately tired for a nine-to-fiver.

John: Those are all things I love about that. I love Brenda as a name for her. It feels like it puts her in the right decade. I get what that is for her. There’s something about her expression that I feel is good to sell, and you can give that one sentence. She has a face that she’s always looked like she just smelled something terrible. [laughter] There’s something uncomfortable about her. I like standard office wardrobe, but also, it’s like sort of a fun pattern underneath a blue blazer that she’s trying to inject some spark there under this.

Craig: And failing.

John: And failing, yes. If we were talking about the overall thing, it’s like flat office lighting is doing her no favors. It’s not a glamorous look. Stuart, Megan, Megana, do you have any more suggestions for things we might talk about with this woman if this were the first time we were seeing her on screen?

Stuart: I’d say something like, in a happier life, she’d be a school librarian.

John: I like that. It’s sort of the “as if” or the replacement thing gives her a sense of who she is.

Megan: I might mention something in relation to who she’s talking to. If she’s talking to her main character, maybe something like– and she is not pleased to see this guy.

[laughs]

John: Yes, I like that a lot, because it gives you a sense of relationship to the space around her and to what’s actually really going to happen in the scene. Megana, anything else jumping out for you about her?

Megana: Just a suit jacket that doesn’t quite fit. Shoulder pads that extend beyond the shoulders.

Craig: Maybe that was her look.

[laughter]

John: It’s probably clothes that she’s had for the last eight years. She has a standard uniform and hasn’t updated it with time. That feels fun. Drew, show us what this is from. It’s the Snowtown Murders, written by Shaun Grant. Jenny Hallam is the actor we’re seeing there.

Cool. Next up, we have another young woman in this case. The image we’re seeing, if you’re not watching this, is a young woman. She’s sitting on the grass. The wind is blowing through her hair. She’s looking over her right shoulder. It is a beautiful painted– it feels like a painted backdrop, but it’s outdoorsy grasslands. Who wants to start with this image? It’s so striking, but I want to know if this was the first time we’re seeing this character, how do we describe her?

Craig: If this is the first time, I would say something like, again, medium-close on, let’s call her Anita. I’m going to say late teens.

John: Yes. Age is ambiguous in a way that I think is worth noting.

Craig: Late teens, staring off at everything and nothing at the same time. She sits in a windy field somewhere in the great plains. Her hair blows in the wind, as beautiful, messy as it would be done up.

John: Yes. The wind catching her hair is such a striking thing about this. We have to establish that her hair is long. That feels important. I think we need to acknowledge her race, and as the writers, we can choose what we want to say here, but mixed race. I think we need to acknowledge that she’s not white because there’s that default white thing that happens.

Craig: Isn’t that the default white thing? We didn’t talk about the last lady being white. I don’t know if her race is relevant here. It’s hard to say. I don’t know.

John: Yes. Choosing Anita doesn’t tip us one way or another, but if we could pick a name that would obviously it’s still on race.

Craig: Why did I say Anita? Is anyone named Anita anymore?

John: No.

Craig: No. Possibly it’s cool. [laughter] I don’t know. I just went with Anita.

John: Stuart.

Stuart: You bring up a good point here that I think applied to the last one, too, with era and decade. There is a little bit of context that informs what’s important about the character and what happened at casting.

John: Yes. That’s a great point, too, because we haven’t been talking so much about character here, but I think Craig was noticing that she’s looking off to the side. Basically, she feels like an observer. She’s constantly surveying things. What I see there doesn’t feel like an extroverted character, it feels like someone who sits at the edge of things and observes, as perhaps like a sniper energy rather than a driver. Megan, Megana, other thoughts?

Megan: Back to the air thing, I feel like there’s a little bit of a timelessness about the scenario, which I might mention if it’s worth mentioning.

Megana: There’s something nice about how she’s holding her knees and holding herself together, but seems very comfortable outside with this windswept hair.

John: Let’s talk about wardrobe because of at least what we’re seeing with wardrobe, because I thought it was so helpful with our previous example. She’s wearing a tank top. Megan, Megana, what would you describe that as? At least as far as what we’re seeing.

Megana: A spaghetti strap.

John: That could be jean shorts, it could be jeans. We’re seeing a bit of denim there.

Craig: Jorts. I’ve never typed the word jorts in the script, but I’m tempted. It’s hard to tell exactly.

Stuart: It seems like an outfit that could be like out of any time and any place, but depending on the time and place would inform if it were a hipster getting ready to go to the mall, or like in modern day, or if it was something from the thrift store bin in a small town, or not even a town, in a rural–

Craig: Also, I think in an image like this, one thing I never shy away from is just saying, she’s beautiful. Because I believe that beauty should be an intentional thing. Meaning, we don’t just, everybody, it’s like, okay, there are shows where everybody just happens to be beautiful, it’s part of the tone of the show, I get that. In something that’s a little bit more grounded, not everybody is beautiful. Beautiful people are beautiful, and they’re notable, and so someone like this, I think you need to point it out. It feels relevant.

John: Yes, we’re talking about her and trying to describe her, but if we were describing the overall scene, I feel like I’d also want to call out the watercolor sky behind her. Everything feels painterly, and she feels like she’s in a painting at every moment. Craig, your point about, like, she’s beautiful, especially within the context of this world, is notable, because anybody who would see her in this world would acknowledge that she’s beautiful.

Stuart: It’s a beautiful shot. If it’s the first time we’re meeting her, too, I don’t want to direct on the page too much, but it does feel like a very intentional placement within the frame where she’s looking and where she’s looking back.

Craig: It’s hard to call those things out. It’s hard to call out placement of frame, but what I do think you can do as the advocate for always directing on the page, if it’s important here, John mentioned this watercolor sky, is to say, she’s somewhere in an open plane that stretches on forever. Long lens turns the background into this beautiful watercolor blur.

John: That helps me see what I’m looking at. Drew, show us what this is from.

Drew: This is not the first time we meet her, but I included from the script, the first time we meet the character.

John: The actor is Taylor Russell. This is from Bones and All, screenplay by David Kajganich. First time trying to pronounce that. We have a description from the script. It says, “Maren, 17, mixed race, haltingly plays Sibelius’ Swan of Tuonela. She wears a cardigan big enough to be her father’s and no jewelry or makeup. Sherry, 17, comes in looking more like an American teen in 1988. Oversized top, lip gloss, and bangs.” That oversized cardigan feels right. It feels like it’s not what we’re seeing on screen right now, but it feels like the same clothing vibe.

No jewelry or makeup also feels like what we’re seeing here.
Craig: I was pretty close with Anita. Maren, Anita, very similar.

[laughter]

John: The script did call out mixed race for her, which I have not seen the movie, so I don’t know whether that becomes an important plot point. It very well could. All right, our next example, let’s take a look at a gentleman here. [chuckling] For folks who are at home and can’t see this, we have an older man looking just off center of lens.

Craig: [laughs] Oh my God. What did they do to Scott Glenn?

John: They did a lot to Scott Glenn because it’s not Scott Glenn.

Craig: That’s not?

John: No. That’s Ed Harris.

Craig: Oh, sorry, it’s Ed Harris. You know why I do that? I do this all the time because Ed Harris was John Glenn in The Right Stuff, I believe, and so I just Scott Glenn Ed Harris constantly. What did they do to Ed Harris? They turned him into the Crypt Keeper.

John: Yes, I cannot look at this without seeing Crypt Keeper, and I feel like you’re going to go for it, and why not?

Craig: Just say Crypt Keeper.

John: A very tan bald man with long pale brown hair hanging like a broken crown. You have to describe that he’s both bald and has long hair.

Craig: Crypt Keeper.

John: Yes, exactly.

Craig: It’s right there.

John: It is.

Craig: I would say it.

John: Yes, I think you say Crypt Keeper. The glasses also feel important. He’s wearing almost like Bjorn Borg glasses. They feel like very ‘70s thin-framed glasses. His shirt is specific and wonderful. It feels like a rare find in the ‘80s bin. A lot of it’s just great.

Stuart: I’m always cognizant of trying to match my prose to the tone of the script, so I wouldn’t necessarily say this in everything, but I think he looks like Dave Gruber Allen’s mean older brother.

John: I wonder if we could marry Crypt Keeper and how tan he is. He’s like a South Florida Crypt Keeper.

Craig: Yes, weathered skin, Crypt Keeper style hair flows from his otherwise bald head. He has the strange panache of an aging hippie who is now stuck as a motel clerk in Tallahassee.

John: It’s worth noting that you were able to read Motel Clerk just because, in the background, we see a bunch of keys hanging on a board and just shows how economical you can be in terms of setting up where somebody is and what a place is. Those keys did the job.

Craig: Unless he’s a key maker.

John: Megan, Megana, any other thoughts on our Ed Harris here?

Megan: Not really. There’s something about his eyes that feel worth mentioning. I don’t know if they feel like wet or something, but there’s like a sparkle, maybe that I would mention.

John: Yes, I think that’s a good point because they do still catch the light even though they’re sunk pretty deep in there, and they’re hidden behind the glasses.

Craig: I would also add, even though he’s not Scott Glenn, you can’t help but feel like maybe something about him.

John: A Scott Glenn presence. Also, granted, we know this is Ed Harris, but even though I didn’t know this was Ed Harris, I have a sense of what his voice probably sounds like, which is like a raspy smoker’s voice. You sense the age in it. Show us what this is from, Drew. This is from Love Lies Bleeding, written by Rose Glass and Weronika-

Craig: The great Rose Glass.

John: -Tofilska. All right, our last person. This is actually two people. What we’re seeing is two kids on a basketball court. The one on the right is holding a basketball. He’s walking next to his friend, who is counting something emphatically on his fingers. How do we talk about these boys? How do we set them up individually and together? Let’s assume that they are principal characters in a story, and this is the first time we’re meeting them. All of our attention goes to the one on the left because he’s counting and he just has an energy to him.

He has this purple sweatshirt that feels great and iconic to him. The way he’s counting, making his points on his fingers, he talks with his hands clearly. It feels like a thing you can establish early on about him. He has gold-framed glasses. They both have high and tight hair, so I don’t know if that establishes them well. The one on the left has a rounder face. What else are we calling out about these two?

Craig: On the page, since you have to do this before you get here, right? We have two kids, about 10 or 11 years old, on a basketball court. Let’s call Brian taller, thin, quieter, nervous. Walks holding the ball with his friend. Let’s call him Anthony. Shorter, stockier, constantly talking, emphatic, bright colors. He’s smaller, but he’s the one who stands out.

John: Yes, smaller but a giant personality, a giant presence.

Stuart: Feels like LeBron and Maverick Carter. [laughter] Anthony focuses on the stats so that Brian can keep his focus on the game.

Craig: I like that.

John: Megana, what are you thinking?

Megana: There’s also something about their expression which lets you know that these characters have this conversation or this argument several times a day.

John: Yes, we want to hear that in a scene that follows. The first lineup needs to be from, we’re calling him Anthony on the left, and just him listing all the points of things. It just feels so right. Yes, you can get some of that in the description, but the first bits of dialogue are going to tell us a lot about what their dynamic is. Let’s just show what this is from. This is from He Got Game, written by Spike Lee. I would say Anthony on the left feels like a Spike Lee character. I feel like I see him, and I love to see him in these movies.

All right, so that’s people. Let’s talk about some places. These are some settings for actual movies that have happened. This first thing we’re seeing, they’re islands. There’s cliffy islands in a very blue sea. Let’s be more specific about where we are. If this is a setting that we’re traveling to in the movie, imagine this is a helicopter shot bringing us in here.

How are we describing this? Megan, let’s start with you. If this is a thing that you’re putting into your story as an establishing shot, how might you describe what you’re seeing?

Megan: I would call it like an untouched island in a beautiful blue sea, not a person or a building. I don’t know. I feel like dinosaurs should be here.

John: Yes. It feels super vibrant. One of the challenges with the island is my default goes to survivory desert island, and this is not that. To me, this feels like Greece or Thailand, but high cliffs are what really establish it, that it’s like a forest atop cliffs over this vibrant blue sea.

Craig: I’d probably go for a sprawl of islands just so that we get the sense it’s not just one, because that’s what people go to, sprawl of islands, high-cliffed islands, covered with low, dense clumps of trees. They sit amidst the peaceful blue water. We’re not in the open ocean. I hate describing shots like this, personally. I hate it, it’s just–

John: People skip it.

Craig: Yes, because like–

John: Because nothing happens.

Craig: Right, the truth is, in a shot like this, just looking at it as a picture, because the drone isn’t moving, this isn’t a moving picture for us, but would be in whatever it is, it just feels like a tourist, like a pamphlet cover. If it were moving, then maybe something would be happening, but really, it’s just sort of establishing.

John: Yes, it is establishing. Any more thoughts? Megana?

Megana: Okay, say this is the first shot of your movie, and you are establishing tone through this, there’s something so glossy about this image. It makes me feel like this is going to be like a fun rom-com or a screener sort of thing.

John: Yes, I feel like Meryl Streep is going to be singing a song at the edge of one of these cliffs.

Megana: I was just going to ask, like, how you guys would describe this image to set up the tone of that.

Craig: I wouldn’t. This is not to me, like you can’t set up the tone of a movie with this, because you might as well just say opening, fairly conventional shot of beautiful islands. [laughter] This is going to be one of those. You don’t want to do that, you don’t want to undermine your own cause.

John: Craig, I’ll say, like, if you’re talking though about bright, joy– I don’t want to say joyful sunlight, but a sense of, like, it’s bright and sunny and fun and poppy, that feels like a certain thing. Describing the weather and the tone and the mood, because these same islands in the middle of a rainstorm would feel very different and feel very dark. Establishing the tone of a place, you can do.

Craig: I would want to connect that to people.

John: Yes, I agree.

Stuart: It feels to me like this is the flyover shot before we get to the layer of the bad guy in an Austin Powers, like a parody of a spy movie.

Craig: To me, I feel like this is midway through a rom-com, they’ve arrived at this beautiful lagoon. Then this is the shot revealing how beautiful it is, although there are no boats here. Who the hell even knows? [laughs] I don’t know.

Stuart: In any of those contexts, there are different ways to do a one-line, quick establishing. If it’s a parody of a spy movie, I’d say the craggy cliffs of a Windows default background. If it were a rom-com, I’d say uninhabited seas, we might be the only people for miles. One, it doesn’t even go on the line two, but either way, quick and snappy.

John: Everyone thinks this is something funny or it’s a rom-com. It’s not, it’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Screenplay by Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely.

Craig: This is why we were struggling. This isn’t even on earth.

John: Yes, it’s not.

Craig: This is Narnia, you guys. Really, the way I would describe this is, Narnian Islands in the great whatever sea. Beautiful Narnian Islands.

John: Cerulean seas, yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s Narnia.

John: It’s Narnia, dude.

Craig: Of course.

John: Of course. All right, we’ll be getting back to Narnia with Greta’s new movie. I’m excited to see that happening. All right, next setting. Speaking of villain’s lair. In the shot we’re seeing, there’s a very overcast, a storm, but we’re seeing this, I guess we can call it brutalist, but brutalist modernist building that it’s all concrete and glass. We’re seeing soldiers or police people approaching the front doors of it. How do we talk about this? To me, it feels like a Tetris piece that’s turned into a house. I think you want to talk about the square angles of it all. It feels like some sort of discarded piece of a puzzle.

Craig: To me, this would be all about the movement. A single file line of SWAT team members move guns out, pointed forward towards the glass wall of an angular, concrete, and glass modern home, two stories, sitting in the middle of this absurdly perfect lawn under gray skies. The house is actually not– it’s John Wick house, basically. It’s like a smaller John Wick house. Oh, actually, there’s a whole other row of soldiers. Sorry, there are two lines of soldiers. It’s hard to tell because the other ones were blending into the background.
Yes, I would just say SWAT soldiers in two streaming single-file lines move towards an angular concrete and glass home.

John: Yes. I might also, clad entirely in black. There’s something futuristic about just how black and minimalist the police officers themselves are. Megan, Megana, Stuart, other thoughts on describing this shot?

Megan: I got to go talk about that hedge. It’s extremely perfectly manicured.

John: Yes, it’s all straight lines in this space. All right, let’s show what this is from. Mickey 17, written by Bong Joon Ho.

Craig: They haven’t seen it.

John: Yes, I saw it and it’s a little, I don’t remember the shot in the movie, but it is delightful, and it feels of like a part of the movie.

Craig: It’s on earth. It’s not on Narnia, so it’s fair.

John: This one is on earth, and it looks like– What we’re looking at is a shot of what seems to be a Middle Eastern city. It is all tan, multi-story buildings jammed incredibly tight together. This is a very long lens that is making everything seem incredibly compressed. Buildings nearly fill the frame with just a tiny strip of white sky at the summit of this. Hey, if you put this shot in a movie, we know we’re someplace Pacific in the world. I do like this as an establishing shot. How else would you describe this? What’s interesting to say about this?

Craig: One road, there’s one road.

John: A single multi-lane road bisects an incredibly dense city of all yellow concrete buildings.

Craig: What city is it? That’s what I would do. I would say, da, da, da, and then point out a compact sprawl of hundreds of squat yellow buildings. They all look the same.

John: Yes, the uniformity of it is, I think what’s so striking about the image. What was this from, Drew?

Drew: This is from War Dogs.

Craig: Oh, yes. My boy, Todd Phillips.

John: Do you know what city this is supposed to be, Craig? I feel like this is probably Jordan, maybe?

Craig: I can’t remember, I’m going to guess Middle East. I don’t know where it was set versus where they shot it, but sounds right.

John: Great, but that was fun. We’ve never done that on our show before, and I liked it as an exercise to go through this. Let’s do some listener questions. We have some listeners who have joined us on the Zoom, and so bring them on. I’ll have them ask their question. All right, first we have Eddie.

Craig: Eddie.

Eddie Hamilton: Hello. My name’s Eddie Hamilton from London. I’m a film editor. I’ve listened to every single episode of Scriptnotes since the show started.

John: Incredible.

Eddie: I started around episode 40, and I listened to the back and listened every week. It’s the only podcast to listen to every week. My question is, John and Craig, please, would you briefly discuss your experiences of rewriting and restructuring your own scripts and advising other filmmakers while in post-production? Editing is the final rewrite. Every movie I’ve cut has been refined enormously once the shoot is over, and the editorial adventure begins after the first assembly, and I would love to hear your perspective on this, please.

John: Yes, it’s a great question, Eddie. My experience with movies, specifically in post, where I’ve not directed the thing, generally I’ve gotten them up to production, and then I’ve walked away and done other things. Then I’ve come back, and I’ve seen that first assembly, that first cut or first audience screening, and I find where I’m most helpful is coming in with a set of notes that is really responding to the movie that I saw, that it has a memory of what the intentions were behind those things, but it’s not trying to get us back to the script that I wrote.

It’s really reflecting, this is the experience of watching the movie now. This is where I was curious, where I got confused. These are the opportunities I see, and I try to be the first person with the most clearest notes. I give those to the director or the producer. They agree with what they agree with, and then they bring those to the editor and start working on the next cut.

Eddie: Are you always invited in?

John: I am not always invited in. In the movies that have turned out well, I’ve basically always been invited in to do that function, and I feel like in many cases, like on Go, I was there for every frame shot, but in movies where I wasn’t, like Big Fish, being able to have some fresh eyes was so important because I could have the memory of, like, this was the intention, but this is what I’m actually seeing was really helpful because editors, obviously, they’re finding all this footage. They know what they have and what they don’t have.
I’m just looking at sort of, here’s what I’m seeing. Here’s where I’m engaging. Craig.

Craig: Actually, I was talking about this last night with– I did an event with Tim Good, who is one of our editors on The Last of Us and is yet again nominated for an Emmy, and we talked about this very thing. Once I get into the edit, I’m really trying to work with what I know we have, which is, it’s different. There are times where I will watch an editor’s cut and go, “Okay, this scene, I’m not going to give you notes on this scene. I’m going to give you the script back, read it. Go back to the script now, because you edited what you saw, but the script had more information.”

I want you to go back and conform this, not moment by moment, but feeling by feeling, speeds, adjustments, tempos. It’ll give you a sense of when to get close, when to further back, and then we’ll go from that. Usually, it’s pretty close. What you’re talking about, Eddie, that does happen sometimes, is you will watch and you’ll go, “Okay, structurally, our theory was incorrect.” I’ll give you an example. Our second episode of season two, for which Tim is nominated for an Emmy, initially, there’s this battle that’s taking place at Jackson, and then there’s this encounter that’s happening in a ski lodge.

We go back and forth between them a few times, and what we found was once Kaitlyn Dever says to Pedro Pascal, “I know who you are, and I’m going to kill you,” we can’t leave. We really can’t leave, and so we did some restructuring there, which worked, and there’s a lot of problem-solving to that, and it’s a joy because you understand you’re doing the right thing. You have to be as open to the new possibilities as you can be, and you also have to be as respectful of what led you to that point as you can be.

If you can have both of those in balance, then you are able to steer back towards the plan when needing, and you’re able to steer away into something better when you are needing it.

Eddie: That’s great. When I saw that episode, as an editor, all that intercutting and the structuring of the battle, I could feel how hard that was because I’ve done that on many films, and so I contacted Tim on Instagram. [laughter] I gave him a massive thumbs up and said, “Dude, that episode rocked, and congratulations. Just editor to editor, I wanted to let that your hard work was seen and understood, and appreciated from another post-production expert who’s sharing your pain. When I’m watching that episode, I can feel the amount of work that went into it to balance all the plates.”

It was astonishing, it was really great. The episode that you did about giving notes to producers or producers giving notes to writers applies to editors as well, and I make careful notes. I quite often tell my assistants when they ask me about getting notes in the edit and how to respond, don’t lead with your personal pain, all that stuff you said, Craig, it’s totally valid for editorial as well. If anyone is working with editors, please have a listen to that episode. Anyway, thank you so much for your time.

John: Thank you so much for listening to all the episodes, it’s incredible.

Craig: It’s amazing.

Eddie: My pleasure.

John: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you, Eddie.

Drew: Next question is from Ruta.

Craig: I may be wrong, but I believe we have a Lithuanian in the room.

Ruta: It is true.

John: Ruta, thank you for joining us on this live show. What question could we try to answer for you?

Ruta: Thank you so much for having me as a person with a question on the show. On episode number 626, I think Craig mentioned that accents are a little bit like actor bait, and it can become a trap for them. I was wondering if you know of any production designer baits. Is there anything you’d like designers not to do when bringing your scripts to screen?

John: Oh, it’s such a good question. Man, I could go on for a long time about this. Let me talk about like great examples of production designers who just got it and ran with it. I’m like, “Oh my God, thank you so much.” On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alex McDowell and his team would e-mail me with like, “This is what we’re thinking about for the newspapers on the wall of Willy Wonka’s father’s house.” It’s like, “Great, that’s a thing that I can engage with, I can help out with that.” What you’re showing me is, oh, you really do get, like, who this person is, and that is fantastic.

Where I have had issues in the past with production designers who will take a scene they see in the script and create a whole new setting for a thing that doesn’t exist. Or there was an animated project where I delivered a script, and they were showing me scenes that did not exist in the script. That’s not helpful for me. I think you’re going too far with the world-building. You’re trying to paint way outside the lines of what this project needs to be. Craig, bait for production designers.

Craig: One thing that comes to mind, when you have a script where there is a town, oftentimes it’s a fantasy or it’s science fiction, but there’s some sort of place. What ends up happening is production designers working within the framework of the space that they have in the footprint will often over-design the street. There’s like a street of 12 things, and everybody walks the set and goes, “Oh my God, look at how great this is.” You’re like, “Yes, but what’s down the street? What’s on the next street over? Why is every scene only on the street?”

Suddenly, even if you extend it digitally, the town feels very small. Over-designing portions of a thing that you’re going to be stuck in over and over and over. When we made the Boston QZ or when we made Jackson, I was like, “Let’s not throw all of our resources onto one street.” Give me a little side streets. Give me little alleys. Give me little tiny things that we can do because we’re going to want variety more than anything. It’s more important than the one big “ooh-aah” shot variety. Spread it out a bit and let’s see what we can do.

Sounds like maybe, Ruta, you are a production designer or you work in an art department?

Ruta: That is the truth. I am a production designer, yes.

Craig: Great. You know what I’m talking about.

Ruta: Yes.

[laughter]

Craig: Generally speaking, production designers these days do a very good job of integrating with the visual effects supervisor to work hand in hand with production to make sure that they are building enough practical for the actors to be inside, but also leaving space then for visual effects to complete things beyond that. Poor Ruta knows that everybody in the creative side wants the production designer to build the world, and then somebody from the production manager’s office comes in and says, “You have 12 cents.”

The compromise is always there. That one street B, that’s what I would call it.

John: Last bit I’ll say is that really great production design, and I think the point I was trying to get to in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that it’s specific and that it feels specific to the needs of the scene and who that character is who would live in that space. That is the right instinct. The only danger is sometimes they can spend so much effort to create a character that doesn’t exist or doesn’t sort of mean anything, that you’ve wasted some time.

I would always prefer a specific place rather than a place that is just looks cool and doesn’t actually resonate, doesn’t tell me anything about who the people are who live and work in that space. Ruta, thank you so much for your question.

Craig: Great question.

Ruta: Thank you so much. I love your podcast.

Craig: Oh, thanks. Thank you.

Drew: Next up, we have Caroline.

Craig: Caroline.

****Caroline:**** Hello, long-time listener. I guess since 2020, really.

Craig: That’s a while.

Caroline: Yes, I guess I’ve been doing a lot longer. My question is a bit existential. It’s what do you think of people that leave the film industry? I’ve been working in it for almost 10 years and have found it to be quite detrimental to my mental health and with the lack of routine, low pay, long hours, high-stress environments, slimy, unprofessional producers. I work in posts. I have kept plugging away for the next gig, hoping it’ll be better, but I’m just not sure if it makes sense to keep going on the roller coaster that is having a job in film.

I’m sort of damned if I do. Have you ever had your own doubts about the longevity of having a career in this industry, and how do I work smarter and not harder in this line of work? How do you rationalize it all?

John: Oh, Caroline.

Craig: Ooh, I said brief question. The answer is no, yes, maybe three. The answer is three.

John: First off, this resonates with me because I’ve just been having this conversation so many times over the last few years with people who are like, “I don’t know whether to stay or to go, whether to, what actually makes sense.” What I like about your question is you are trying to face this honestly and look at what is best for you in this moment and what is best for you long-term. You aren’t making assumptions about how things are going to shape up and how it’s all going to be like, that you’re one job away from everything being perfect.

I love working in the film industry, but the film industry and the television industry can suck. Your job is not who you are. Your job shouldn’t be your identity. It sounds like you have other things that probably are considering, at least for what you would do if you weren’t going to do post. It’s worth taking those things seriously. We don’t know what the future is going to hold, but if you’re relatively young in this industry, you’ve been doing this for a while, it’s okay to leave if you decide you want to leave.

You don’t need my permission or Craig’s permission or anybody’s permission, but you need to be able to feel okay about going on because it doesn’t mean that you failed. It means that you recognize it wasn’t for you if that’s a choice you decide to make. Craig?

Craig: Yes, the very first question you ask is, what do you think about people that lead?

John: Hear us. Yes.

Craig: No problem. There’s no judgment whatsoever. The same way I feel about people that were in real estate and decided to make a switch, also. It’s whatever’s– This isn’t like, “Oh my God, she couldn’t hack it.” She couldn’t hack it, would be a thing if you were trying to be a Navy SEAL, I guess?

John: Yes.

Craig: No. This is a business like any other. John’s absolutely right. You can transition to something else whenever you want, as you wish, but I can tell that you– Well, I can’t tell. I suspect that you don’t want to. I suspect that you would like to stay. I suspect that you love it. I suspect that the problem you’re dealing with is the frustration of not being able to do the thing you love in a way that feels good.

We’ve been there, all of us, every single person who does this. That’s in different ways. We have all gotten it in different ways. There’s ways that the business treats you poorly because of your gender or your race. I always like to say like, and then underneath that, because you’re there. A lot of people will just treat you bad because you’re there, which is brutal.

Show business is one of the few things that people are so passionate about, they are willing to bear an enormous amount of bad behavior in order to keep going. What I think is important is that you’ve identified that you have a limit. Setting up boundaries is important. If in your mind, you’re giving yourself permission to go, you will immediately feel quite a bit freer.

See, one of the problems is when we feel trapped, that’s when we feel powerless. You’re not trapped, ever. You can get up and go. Yes, it may mean that you’re not able to do the thing that you really want to do, but you might find that just knowing you can get up and go will give you a little bit more confidence to go, “I’m good at my job. I love being here. This is my boundary.”

What the bullies know is that there are systems in place to keep them from bullying. Those are real. I think you should take advantage of those if those moments come. The difficulty of getting work, that is the cross we bear.

John: Yes, that’s the structural problem of what we’re in.

Craig: That is. I wish I could tell you that there was a moment or an event or a thing where you will wake up one day and go, “Oh, I’m in this business now forever. They’ll never let me go,” which is what happens when you’re good at what you do and you get to that place where suddenly they realize it.

The most frustrating thing is you were you all along. You’re just waiting for them to flip their own switch to get it. In your circumstance, with my guess, I would say don’t quit yet. I feel like you don’t want to. Give it a go as best you can with your boundaries firmly in place. If that doesn’t work, then you know what? There is an unfelt joy that is waiting for you in something else. I do not believe we are meant for one thing in this world.

John: Caroline, one of the things that this is reminding me of is that there’s so many books about, oh, transitioning careers, or moving from this job to that job. They are always focusing on people who show up and go to work at a normal job.

The things that we do, which is scape work and we are imposed or us as writers, piecing together a bunch of different things to create enough of a career, is just so challenging and so different. If you decide that you love this work in post, but you don’t love going gig to gig to gig, it may be worth looking for, like, what are the positions that let you do the things you love that are more like a job rather than this?

You can actually not have to stress about the next gig, the next gig, the next gig. Working at a post house or a place that is like a longer-running thing, so you’re not constantly seeking the next thing, might feel better. I think Craig’s advice, on the whole, I think is really good. Is this resonating with you? Is this helpful at all?

Caroline: Yes, it’s a bit heavier than the other questions. It’s almost quite spiritual in a way, to have to think about this like existential question and to really just be in touch with myself and know what I need.

John: Yes, and listen, there aren’t great career coaches for stuff like this. There’s not an industry for that. I think just having a structured conversation with somebody about, these are my priorities and these are what I’m setting as my boundaries might also be helpful too.

If you can find somebody like that, it could just be a friend, but it’s where you both hold each other accountable for like, these are my red lines, these are the choices I want to make, that could help you as well.

Caroline: Totally.

John: Caroline, thank you so much.

Craig: Hang in there, Caroline.

John: Drew, let’s do one more question, and then we’ll save these other questions for the bonus segment.

Drew: Sounds good. Let’s do– This next question is from Sarah.

Craig: Do you think it’s going to be Sarah with an A or an H? Quick guess– Oh, too late, it’s H. Oh, it could be either. This could be Sarah Hadelman, or it could be Sarah Adelman. I think it’s Sarah Adelman.

Sarah Adelman: You’re correct. Jew, H, you got to go do it.

Craig: Jew.

Sarah: Yes.

Craig: Jew knows Jew. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to our live show. What question can we try to answer for you today?

Sarah: Sure. I’m Sarah. I’m a stand-up comedian and writer, and I finally sent my first feature script to my lit manager, and she gave me really helpful notes. One of the biggest ones will require redeveloping the male love interest for my female lead.

I originally wrote him as a super naive, big-eyed guy from the Midwest who’s intimidated by my spunky female girl. She has suggested that I change him to be a little cooler so we can root for him, a little less pathetic, for lack of a better term. I really want to make this change, but I’ve lived with this man in my head for a year as I wrote the script.

Should I give him a new name and just totally rewrite him? How do I let go of the original person? How do I make sure that I’m not just adding new traits to someone who already existed, so it becomes like a caricature? How do I deal with that I’m going to miss him even though I want him?

John: Who gave you this note? Was it your agent, you said?

Craig: Literary manager.

John: Manager?

Craig: Yes.

Sarah: Sorry, Craig.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s okay.

John: You know where this is going?

Sarah: I know. I love her.

John: Fire the manager.

Craig: No, you don’t have to fire her.

John: Sarah, you think this note is actually the right note for the script. You think it actually will improve the script. That’s all that matters. No matter where it came from. She thinks it’s the right choice for it.

My instinct, Craig, is she needs to rename the character because otherwise she’s going to try to be gluing things onto the existing character that she already wrote. I think she needs to create a clean space in her head for who this new character is. What’s your instinct?

Craig: There’s something about this character that matters to you. There was something about this character that made him your instinct to pair with her. There’s something about her, therefore, that is relevant here. Get to that. Figure out what that is. That something, hopefully, you can preserve. Also, you don’t need to say goodbye to this guy. You’re making a new guy. What’s this character’s name currently?

Sarah: Milo.

Craig: Milo. Let’s say you’re going to make a new character called Adam. Your female lead, her name is?

Sarah: Katerina.

Craig: Katerina goes over to Adam’s house, and he’s just got to go quickly deal with his idiot brother, Milo, who’s there, and who they can talk about and who may– You know what I’m saying? He doesn’t have to go away. If there’s value to him there, then keep it.

I guess that’s really what I’m getting to, is don’t ignore what your instincts were. They were your instincts for a reason. Follow that thread as you do, but also then really do think, hey, who is this other guy, and how can I get as attached to him and as protective of him because of the way his purpose interacts with hers?

John: My suspicion, though, is, Sarah, you will fall in love with this new guy, too. The old guy’s like, oh yes, I learned a lot from him, but this is the right guy to be in this movie relationship now. I think it’s a really smart question, though, because it shows that you’re thinking about what your intentions are, but you’re also thinking about what’s actually working.

That’s the crucial cycle that we’re going through is rewriting it’s really recognizing what worked, what didn’t work, and how to move forward, and not being too precious about the things you loved. Good luck.

Sarah: Thanks, guys.

John: You got this.

Sarah: I love you.

Craig: Thanks.

Sarah: I really love you.

Craig: We love you too.

John: Thank you. Big hugs. All right. My one cool thing is a thing that’s going to seem so obvious, but for folks who are not working in the film industry or theater, you might not know about spike tape. I want to sing the praises of spike tape. Spike tape are these little narrow colored tapes. We use them on film sets and on stage to mark where things belong on stage or on the set.

It could be actors’ marks. It could be where things are placed. You put it down, you take it up. It’s a really stiff tape. It doesn’t leave bad marks, but have some of these around the house because there are things you want to label.

We just did it for, we’re repainting and redoing a bunch of the windows. That’s the noise you hear in the background. We marked this purple tape is for the screens to go in these places. It’s just useful when you need to identify things, and you can write on it. It’s smart stuff. It’s a spike tape. It’s just delightful. You will find yourself using it all the time.

Craig: I had no idea that was– I just called it marking tape because the AC would just come with this marking tape to mark stuff.

John: I’ve always called it spike tape.

Craig: Spike tape.

John: I find it just incredibly useful. I love it.

Stuart: A store on Magnolia and Burbank that has the rainbow of every imaginable color.

John: That’s what you want. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the cheapo Amazon version. I love– God, Megan, I remember when we went to the– We had to get a special light for one of our live shows.

We had to go set up an account to get a light for one of our live shows. It was so fun to be in a place that just had like all the film stuff you could ever want. It’s so great. All the supplies.

Craig, what’s your one cool thing?

Craig: My one cool thing this week is Bridge Base Online. I don’t know if any of you play Bridge.

John: I don’t. Tell us about Bridge Base.

Craig: I’ve played Bridge in the past, and I loved it. My wife and I would play with her parents. We can’t play with them anymore because they’re dead.

John: Yes, it’s hard.

Craig: It just doesn’t work well. They were great Bridge players. They were competitive Bridge players in New York in the 60s, like ranked and everything. They were really good. Melissa and I were more like, we learned in college, and we would play. There was like a bunch of people in our little eating clubs, which is a stupid Princeton term, that we’d play Bridge.

I played easy Bridge. I learned quite a bit playing with my in-laws. Melissa and I haven’t played forever. The thing about Bridge is you need four people. It is a fantastic game. It’s a game that is very simple to understand in terms of the rules, but all the complexity and joy is in the bidding and the strategy.

There is a website called Bridge Base Online that is just this massive venue for, you can play against the computer, you can play 1,000 hands, you can do practice sessions, you can learn bidding conventions. You can also play pickup games with about 14 trillion people. The reason I started looking back at this is because Melissa’s been playing a lot herself on her phone.
Then our friend, Dave Shukan, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, puzzle master, lawyer extraordinaire, and exceptional bridge player, no surprise, had been talking to us. He’s been playing quite a bit himself. If you are interested in learning how to play Bridge, or you just feel like doing a little solo practice, bridgebase.com.

John: I love it.

Craig: Yes.

John: That is our show for this week. It’s produced, as always, by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Oh, thank you, Matthew Chilelli, right there. Matthew, for this week’s outro, pick one of your favorite ones from the past, one of the ones you’ve done, and let’s play that again.

Craig: One of yours.

John: One of yours. It has to be one of yours.

Craig: Yours.

John: If you have an outro, you can send a link, blah– See, that’s what I did.

Craig: See, that’s it.

John: Blah, blah.

Craig: That was it.

John: That’s what I did.

Craig: I’m so glad it happened.

John: It happened live. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes. We have t-shirts and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about in today’s episode. With the email, you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Oh my gosh, thank you to all our premium subscribers. We sent out the notice to them about this live show. Drew, how many questions did we get in from those?

Drew: Hundreds of questions. I woke up with hundreds in my inbox. They were all great. It was so hard to pick.

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, at least one of them was bad.

Drew: Not a single one.

Craig: Mmm-hmm.

Drew: Mmm-hmm.

John: We’re going to be answering a few more of those live in the bonus segment for premium members. We’re also holding on to those questions because so many of them were so good, we’ll save them for future episodes.

The one coolest thing, so at least four of the coolest things are already on this Zoom right now, which are our previous Scriptnotes producers and our editor, Matthew Chilelli. Megana Rao, Megan McDonald, Stuart Friedel, Matthew Chilelli. Thank you so much for all your hard work on this.

Drew, thank you so much for your hard work every week on this show. You guys are the best. Thank you everybody who watched us live on YouTube. That’s so exciting. Bye, guys.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Let’s answer another question, if we can.

Craig: Yes.

Drew: Okay. We have Ben Adams coming up.

John: What a great name. Ben Adams.

Craig: Ben Adams.

John: It feels like a founding father, a merged founding father.

Craig: Founding father’s ne’er-do-well brother.

John: That’s what it is.

Ben Adams: That’s exactly right. Funny, because I always get picked for jury duty with that name, because I’m like a founding father’s name.

John: Yes. That’s good stuff.

Craig: I’d pick you.

John: Ben, what kind of question might we be able to answer for you today?

Ben: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m so thrilled. My question is, a little preface here, I’m going to be shooting a short film rom-com next month with some friends. My script, I feel like, is ready, but I keep hearing things about having alt lines or alternative lines on set.

I have so little experience with that, and so I want to know how many alt lines are good to have for jokes. How many is too many? I want to give my actors room to improvise, but at the same time not lose the meaning of the scene. I just am trying to figure out a good middle ground of how many to have on set.

John: That’s a great question. We had Brittany Nichols on the show a while back, and she was talking about Abbott Elementary. They do come to set with like a whole series of alt lines they’ll go after they’ve gotten through a take, and they’ll practice other things for specific stuff to replace.

I think it’s good for you to have those in your back pocket. I wouldn’t share them with your actors ahead of time. I would say really look at what’s happening in front of the lens in the moment before you change setups, and then see what feels good to explore.

That’s a chance for you to, okay, here are some things I’m thinking. Let’s see if any of these work or land, and then that opens the door for them to try some different things themselves, in the Apatow sense of, you shoot a couple clean and then you get messy. Craig, what’s been your experience with alt lines?

Craig: Never wrote them for the comedies. When I was working, like for instance, on the Hangover movies, Todd and I would write the lines we wanted to hear. Then on the day, first of all, you’re going to have funny actors, and you’re also going to feel things, right?

You may feel in the moment like, eh, it’s not quite working, is it? Then you just do a little powwow. What would be better? Or why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try that? An actor may just toss something out in the moment. You’re like, “Ooh, that was great.”

Todd and I used to have Zach Galifianakis repeatedly would come up with the best lines after we had turned around and the camera wasn’t on him, and we’re like, “Zach, got to go do this, too, when the lens is pointing at you.”

Also, a guy like Zach, it’s every take, he could have a new line that’s amazing. You find those there. There’s something that is so wonderfully spontaneous about those. If you prepare them– First of all, you’re inviting people to go, “Well, I don’t want to say this, but I will say that.” Remember also, lines interact.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: If somebody is going to get an alt here, the response is going to be different. We would let that happen on the day.

John: Here’s what I think, going back to the Abbott Elementary example, when she has alts for things, when a person has a funny name for a thing or a funny thing they call the other person, having alts for that snipers those comments, because then, it’s not inviting a different response back on the other side.

It’s a little more clean. You can see what works. I would say on your list of priorities for what you should be thinking about going into this rom-com shoot, it’s pretty low on that list of priorities. Really think about all the other stuff and making sure that you have all the materials to make the best possible scene.

Craig: Agreed.

Ben: I have my shot list, my storyboards, my script. I have all my actors, and everyone agreed to do it for zero dollars, which is great. I have good friends. I called in all my favors. Really quickly, I invited my friend, Tom, who’s now a SAG actor. He was starring it, but he’s like, “Sorry, you got to pay me now.” I go, “Oh, do you still want to come on set and be funny?” He goes, “Sure.” He’s going to maybe help me riff. Do you recommend that? Is that cool?

John: There are people who that works out great for. Behind the scenes on a lot of the Apatow movies, they were just finding people around who just did stuff. If your friend’s helping you, great. If you’re finding it’s not actually helping and it’s slowing stuff down, you can send your friend away, or you can go grab pizza or something.

Craig: That said, ethical point of view, if he’s in the Writer’s Guild, no. If you’re a Writer’s Guild member, you can’t work for free. You can’t work for free.

Ben: Okay. Got it. Yes. As far as I know, he’s not. He just got his SAG card, and this was like– We were talking about doing it together. Then he said, “Hey, sorry, I got this feature,” and I’m like, “Oh, okay, cool. Let’s do it right.” I’m still figuring that out because I’m new. Thank you all so much. This was such a thrill. This kind of thing makes me a guest, right?

John: Yes, you’re now a guest on Scriptnotes.

Craig: Yes.

Ben: All right. Thanks, all. Appreciate you.

Drew: Two more. Next one is from Katie. Hello, Katie.

****Katie:**** Hello. Hi. Thank you guys for having me on.

John: Thank you very much for coming on and for waiting to ask your question. What can we help you with?

Katie: I was wondering, how do you guys, with your fingers in so many pies being projects at once, how do you handle working on multiple projects? Whether you have something that you’re pitching while you’re working on something being developed while you also are in production or even distribution on another project, how do you find brain space to not forget about one?

John: It’s a great question. Increasingly, I’ve had a bunch of stuff recently that I’ve had to. On a given day, I may be pitching on one project, having a meeting about a different project, and writing the other thing that I’m writing. It can be tough to switch gears, except they’re all in clean lanes.
I try to prioritize, this is the thing I’m writing, I need to block out this time to actually do productive work. The stuff that I’m pitching on or meeting on, I find in the half hour before thing, I can get my brain back up to speed on what that thing is. I’ll go back through the notes, find the stuff, and get myself there.

I’ve said this on the podcast many times, I’m sure, over the years, but with a new project, I’ll try to make myself a playlist in music for, like, these are the songs that remind me about it. Sometimes playing that will also get me back in the mood for something.

There’s times where it’ll be like two months since I’ve thought about this thing. Hearing those tracks gets me excited about it again and reminds me like, “Oh, that’s right, this is what this project feels like.” Craig, you’ve had to do this.

Craig: Sure. There are some people who really are producers at heart, and they love working on lots of things at once, because there is an entrepreneurial aspect to their character. There are other people who are a bit more monk-like, I think.

John: I think you’re monk-like, I’m more produce-y, yes.

Craig: Yes. I’m a full focus-on-a-thing guy. I do still– There are things that I help develop with other writers and filmmakers. When it comes to what I’m doing, I can write one thing at a time, really, because I put everything of myself in it, 100%, all the way tunnel vision-y. That’s just one of the ways that our mental architecture is expressed, and everybody’s is different.

If you find yourself really struggling to do that, it may just be that your brain is attuned to the narrow lane. There’s nothing wrong with that. You just follow the path of least resistance because it’s hard enough. Why make it harder by moving against? If you’re a righty, don’t throw a ball with your left hand.

John: It’s such good general advice, is so much of this is recognizing what are your patterns and not trying to label those as bad habits or something like, no, this is just how stuff works for me. The first couple of projects you’re writing, you’re still learning what actually works for you.

Sure, try some different things, see what– Maybe you write first thing in the morning, maybe you write last thing at night. Maybe you are a person who can juggle a bunch of different stuff, and you enjoy that. The cross-pollination between the things is helpful for you or it’s not. If you recognize what works for you, then you can really pursue that.

Katie: Awesome, thank you guys.

John: Katie, thank you so much for the question.

Katie: As a Tallahassee native, love it being thrown out there. Thank you, Craig.

Craig: Felt good, felt good.

John: All right, last up, we have Kathleen, yes.

Craig: With a K.

John: It is with a K. It’s very rare to see a Kathleen with a C. It’s not impossible, but I’ve seen very few.

Craig: Yes, there’s not a lot of Cathies. Kathy, you’ll see.

John: Kathy, a lot, for sure.

Craig: Yes, but no, Kathleen, I agree.

John: Hello, Kathleen with a K.

Craig: Hi, Kathleen with a K.

Kathleen: Hello from the Jersey Shore.

Craig: Hey, what part, where?

Kathleen: I’m in Ocean City right now, but–

Craig: Nice.

Kathleen: Yes.

Craig: Freehold.

Kathleen: Thank you, guys. I’m a longtime fan of the show.

John: We really appreciate you being here. Thank you for joining us.

Kathleen: Thank you for having me, John. I appreciate it. This is a question I have about options. I’m a novelist. I’m not a bestseller. I’ve had a couple of projects optioned in the past. I never expect anything to get made. I’m just happy to have interest from Hollywood. My last project was optioned in 2022 for about two years.

Then, around the same time, Netflix was developing pretty much a very similar show over the same period of time. It came out last month. It was our number one show. It’s already renewed for a second season. Then I was told by people in the industry this happens all the time.

I know ideas are not copyrightable. I’ve heard that from you guys many times, and I’m totally in agreement with that. I guess I’m wondering, do studios option projects just to kill them if they’re very similar? Is there a line that’s crossed?

Craig: Not really.

Kathleen: Is it–? Not really.

Craig: Not really.

John: No. It’s not one of those sorts of like catch and kill situations with like sexual harassment lawsuits or anything like that. It’s not like, “Oh, that’s the thing out there. Let’s take that off the market.” I genuinely believe that does not happen at all.

In your situation, I think one of the things that is exciting is that you wrote a book that’s like, “Oh yes, that should be a series.” Everyone’s like, “Yes, that should be a series.” There’s now evidence that would be a great series. It may mean that what happened was too close to this other hit series that people aren’t going to want to adapt your book.

I got to feel like it helps put you on the radar. I don’t know whether your Goodreads reviewers and folks who are enjoying your book are pointing out that this book existed before this, and it was effing great. People should read this if they want a book in the same spirit. I would take it as a win if you can find a way to take that as a win.

Kathleen: Yes, I think I’m trying. I think it’s my family and friends who are watching it and saying, “This is so close, this is pretty much your book.” Then they’re saying, “If you litigate, that costs so much money. Do you reach out and just say, what’s the deal here?” It’s always my time to sit back and do nothing, but–

Craig: Of course, we have to guard against, a sense of passivity or doormatism. We don’t want to be a doormat. I don’t know the book, and I don’t know the series. We don’t know the details. All I can tell you is that, no, Hollywood generally does not option material to not make it, or because it’s too close to something else.

They’re not worried about something that’s too close when it’s fiction in particular. There’s already been something that’s been a series like that seven years ago, and there’s going to be another one eight years from now. The similarities will occur, particularly if you’re writing in a genre space.

Yes, family and friends who love you have a focus bias because they’ve read the book carefully, and now they’re looking for comparisons, and they will find them. When you read a lot of the lawsuits that get filed, it does consist of a lot of like. “This is almost the same. All they changed was this or this,” which you can do.

I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t seek legal advice. Since you’re asking what our instinct is, our instinct is almost always no, that people are not looking to steal your book at all. Was it the same producer that optioned the book and made the show?

Kathleen: It’s the same studio, so it was under.

Craig: In particular, if it’s Netflix, they make 14 million shows. There’s probably 12 other novelists who are like, “Hey, you know, that’s not–”

John: Kathleen, I want to focus on this win you have. I bet there’s a bunch of people who’ve written books who are like, “Wait, she’s had multiple things optioned? I’ve never had anything optioned. That seems pretty great.” What have been your conversations with those producers?

I have to feel like they must feel some validation of, not only was our instinct right that this was a good thing, I want to see what her next thing is. Second question is, they optioned it, but was there ever a script? Where did it get to? Were there other writers? What happened on that front?

Craig: Yes. Was there a script?

Kathleen: There was a script. I opted not to be involved in writing the script because I don’t like to get in the way of something being adapted. I was like, if it’s going to get made, then I’ll stay out of the way. There was a script. There was a team attached to it. There was a showrunner.

John: Oh, so, Lord, they did not kill it. They spent some serious money. I’m sure those people are all heartbroken, too, that the series didn’t move forward. No, they were intending to make that show.

Craig: Yes. If, for instance, they optioned a novel for a low amount of money. Let’s say they get away with like, hey, what, we’re making a show, but there’s this other novel out there, and you said it wasn’t a bestseller.

Right off the bat, if it were a bestseller, maybe they’re like, “Oh my God, we’ve got to go get that out of the way.” Then they would have to spend a lot of money on the rights alone. For something that’s a smaller amount, why would they spend a dollar more?

John: Here’s the scenario that I feel is plausible, is that we want to make a movie in this space. They’ve read your book, and they’ve read something else, or whatever the other project was. Let’s get some R&D, basically, and do this stuff.

They’re like, “Okay, we have two things we can do. Which of these two things are we going to do? Who do we like the elements of better? Which one has more momentum?” That’s the one they picked. It sucks when it’s not yours, but you’re talking to two folks on this podcast who’ve had 60 movies not made. We can tell you that it’s par for the course.

Craig: There was a WGA writer writing a script. The WGA also is careful about chain of title. For instance, if there were some sort of co-mingling or shenanigans, then the Writers Guild, the writer of that script, based on your novel, would be like, “Excuse me, you guys took my stuff, clearly.” Then the Writers Guild would say, “Yes, you guys have co-mingled two chains of title, and now you have to deal with credit issues.”

John: The producers who are different producers would also be fighting over that. It would be a bigger mess.

Craig: Everybody would be fighting.

John: Yes, it wouldn’t just be your fight.

Craig: Yes. I think you can tell your family and friends, “Thank you, I love you, I appreciate you guys looking out for me.” It sometimes feels worse when people are trying to convince you that you’ve been done dirty.

John: Yes.

Craig: You can start to feel like a doormat. You’re not. You’re a professional. You went through a professional process. The outcome that occurred is common. You keep moving forward. Your job is to write books.

John: Yes.

Craig: Not to dwell. You keep writing books.

John: Kathleen, it’s a great question. I’m really glad we sort of had this discussion on it. It was great. Congratulations. It’s–

Craig: For real.

John: I’m not just waving it away. For any novelist to get their feelings, not just optioned, but they went and hired people and got a script, and they got a show together, that’s really far down the process and the pike, and will set you up for the next time because I think you’re on more people’s radar because that book went that far.

Kathleen: Okay. That makes me feel better. Thank you.

Craig: Good. Good.

John: Thank you all. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, everybody who listened to the live stream. This was really fun.

Craig: -and watched.

John: and watched, and watched. Drew, thank you for putting this together. This was a lot of new, first-time things for you, so thank you for doing it.

Drew: Thank you, guys.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. This was really fun.

Drew: Thank you.

John: Last time we tried to do this in 2020, man, it was a scramble. This felt really good.

Craig: This was great. We’ll do it in episode 1400.

John: Yes. Perfect. Established. Whoever’s taking notes–

Craig: I’ll be so withered.

John: You’ll be at Harris with a cryptkeeper.

Craig: I could theoretically do it.

John: You could totally do it. Honestly, either one of us could do it. We just need to get the wig appliance.

Craig: Actually, you can do it. I think your hair–

John: I got that base.

Drew: It would work.

Craig: Your hair grows straight.

John: Yes, it does grow straight. It’s true.

Craig: I would just get some sort of curly. It would be very Hasidic.

John: Yes. All right, guys. Thank you both. Bye.

Craig: Bye.

Links:

• Watch episode 700 on YouTube!
• Stuart Friedel, Megan McDonell, and Megana Rao
• Weapons
• The Hunting Wives on Netflix
• Vince Gilligan YouTube video
• Our Back to School collection on Weekend Read
• Play along with People, Places and Things: Woman one, woman two, man one, kid duo, oceanside, house, and city.
• Scriptnotes Episode 399: Notes on Notes
• Spike tape
• Bridge Base Online
• Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.