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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: Oh, my name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 691 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Most weeks we discuss storytelling designed to entertain an audience watching something in a movie theater or at home on their couches, which are passive viewers, consumers, numbering in the hundreds, thousands, or millions. Craig, what if your goal is just to entertain a few friends around a table?

Craig: Well, in that case, I think we know exactly what we do.

John: Today on the show, we’ll discuss roleplaying games, their history, their narrative design. We’ll talk about Dungeons & Dragons, sure, but also a host of games that have pushed the form to new areas of collaborative storytelling and world-building. To help us do this, we welcome a man who literally wrote the book on it, Stu Horvath. Welcome, Stu.

Stu Horvath: Hello, thank you for having me on.

Craig: Hey, Stu.

John: All right, the book in question is Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide To Tabletop Roleplaying Games. It’s out from MIT Press. It was a former One Cool Thing of mine. It is glorious. Congratulations on this book, Stu.

Stu: Thank you. It’s very large. Don’t drop it on your foot.

John: It is so, so heavy. It is a sizable tome, and it’s great. I want to talk to you about tabletop roleplaying games in general, the history of them, but also the evolution of the form, because Craig and I come at this mostly from playing D&D and a lot of video games. So much interesting stuff has happened in tabletop, and I just really want to talk about this and the similarities, the differences between the kinds of writing that Craig and I do and the kind of storytelling that’s happening in these games.

Stu: It used to be such a narrow thing that was very dice-driven, very simulation-driven, but now there’s just all kinds of storytelling that happen in roleplaying games. It’s almost impossible for me to figure out a place to start.

John: We’ll do our best, and so we’ll get into that, and then in our bonus segment for premium members, I want to look at your appendix chapter, because you talk in this Appendix D about the concept of dungeons as narrative spaces, which seems like it should have always been there. It seems like this idea that’s fundamental to human psychology, but as you point out in this appendix, dungeons are actually a surprisingly recent literary thing, so I want to unpack that a bit.

Stu: Happily. My next book is about that, actually.

John: Oh, my gosh. A preview of an upcoming book.

Craig: All right, it’s going to focus on dungeons? I love that.

Stu: Yes.

John: Stu, talk to us about what it is you do, because this all came about because you are a collector, right?

Stu: Yes. Like a lot of folks who played Dungeons & Dragons when they were a kid, and other roleplaying games, I lost a lot of stuff, either to the attrition of borrowing and lending. I had a flood in my basement, which is a surprisingly common occurrence for folks. I eventually just started wanting those things back. In collecting them, I saw that there were more things out there that I had never heard of that were really exciting. To this day, eBay has become the bane of my wallet’s existence. I’m actually in the process of trying to sell some stuff off to make room for new stuff.

I accumulated all this cool stuff, and I just got really, really excited about it, so I started an Instagram feed, dedicated daily posts to roleplaying games and supplements, and things that affected the development of roleplaying games, or that I otherwise thought were interesting. Out of that daily writing process, it just very naturally turned into a book. There’s also a podcast that’s basically the same thing. You pick a roleplaying game and talk about it for 20, 30 minutes.

Craig: Which you apparently have over 300 different roleplaying games that you cover in your book, which is astonishing. Are you going to get to our- what are we at, John? 691?

John: [chuckles] 691.

Craig: I don’t know if you’re going to get to 691, but you’ll at least get to 300, which is amazing. I’m curious, given that you’ve been doing this for a while, I suppose it’s a good thing that as you create a book like this, the audience for RPGs seems to have exploded. How do you greet the increase in popularity? Are you excited? Are you a little worried that perhaps this special space is being invaded? Is it just an opportunity to sell a whole lot more books?

Stu: I like money, so selling books is a big benefit. No, I welcome everybody in. I think that it was always a hobby that was looking for its players. I think that the more people who come into it with different ideas, the more types of games and the more experiences that the games provide, and the more options everybody has to play more different games.

There’s so many new, fine-toothed experiences that are coming out of this indie scene right now that is just fed by people who come in through the big game, 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, and they filter out. It’s not a lot of people who filter out into the larger hobby, but the people who do come brimming with new ideas that they want to fiddle with and tinker with, and from that comes so many cool new things. That’s what I’m here for.

John: Going back to your collection, one thing that strikes me is that we talk about these things being lost to basement floods, but the whole reason that there is this collection that exists is there’s so much material. There’s a materiality to the history of roleplaying games. These were published and printed things from these tiny presses or sometimes bigger presses that existed that people could purchase in hobby shops and game stores or out of the back of Dragon Magazine. You have amassed this huge collection, but there are likely so many more things that don’t exist simply for lack of enough copies of them being out there in the world.

What your book does so well, it’s really charting the growth, the experience of how everything fed into the next thing. So many of these games were a pushback reaction against Dungeons & Dragons and reincorporation and then old-school roleplaying comes back in. It’s just a great history, but it’s all possible because there’s a record. It’s like we know so much about the ancient Egyptians because there were just so many tombs full of hieroglyphics that we could actually study these things versus other cultural innovations are lost to us because there’s not stuff around to document.

Stu: The beauty of the whole hobby is that it’s a tinkerer’s hobby. Immediately after Dungeons & Dragons came out, people were like, well, this is cool as a basic idea, but I could do it better. I could fix it. I could do things to it that are going to make this the best game.

Craig: I love nerds. They’re like, “Not bad. Can do better.”

Stu: Exactly. There was this really influential publication at APA, Amateur Press Association, which is basically a bunch of zines that was produced monthly, sent to a central editor who bound them together and then sent them out to everybody who paid for a subscription. Started almost immediately after D&D. Lee Gold has kept it in print up until April of this year, so 50 years-

John: Incredible.

Stu: -monthly. I think she missed two or three issues in that entire run. It’s insanity. It was a real testing ground for those kinds of ideas. If you look back, especially in the ‘90s, right before the internet made that stuff faster and digital and online, you can see a lot of game design just happening in those pages, and it’s all about people just sharing ideas and arguing about them. Gygax hated it too. He thought it was really cool initially, and then he was just like, oh, no, these people are bootlegging my stuff.

John: Could you give us a starting place? When do we need to start thinking about tabletop roleplaying games from your book? Spoiler, I know it’s Dungeons & Dragons, but can you talk us through the history? This is 1974 we’re beginning, and can you just talk to us about the transition from military simulation games to roleplaying games and what the innovation was that made D&D the starting place?

Stu: 1974 is when Dungeons & Dragons first comes out and is published. It is the first commercially available roleplaying game. Prior to that, there’s this big scene in the Midwest which is focused on military war games, reenacting existing battles like Waterloo or battles in the Civil War, World War II. That has a very long tradition that goes back to HG Wells, created a game called Little Wars which you played on the floor. Peter Cushing of horror movie fame was a big proponent of that game. There’s great videos of him painting his miniatures.

That goes even further back to the Prussian School of Wargaming which was actual teaching officers how to command on these sand tables with miniatures and terrain. There’s two things that happened. Lord of the Rings gets popular and fantasy figures in a military setting are something that people get interested in in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s which leads to Chainmail which was Gygax and some collaborators created this war game in which you had optional units that were fantasy, wizards and dragons and such.

John: We should say for our listeners who are not big D&D people, this is Gary Gygax who is acknowledged as the person who created what we think of as Dungeons and Dragons with many collaborators and there’s a complicated history there but it’s his name on those initial books.

Stu: It’s Gygax and Dave Arneson. The Dave Arneson part comes from Minneapolis I believe and he was playing, I can’t remember the fellow’s name, but the game is Bronstein. The idea was that there was this war game that was happening but there was also a village and people had actual specific characters that they were playing in the context of this war game. That idea of players controlling one singular character instead of a unit of characters or an entire army plus the advent of fantasy influence in the war game sphere collided into this storytelling game that grew out of the collaboration between Arneson and Gygax.

John: In your book, I’m looking at an image from the 1977 white box edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The title on the box is Rules for Fantastic Medieval War Games Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures. Which is just such a mouthful, but that’s how they had to frame it. It wasn’t saying roleplaying game yet. It didn’t seem to have the full sense, or at least it wasn’t presenting itself as this is a thing that you play make-believe with your friends, but it quickly became that. What were the first moments where D&D broke out of just a very small Midwestern nerd culture to become a national thing?

Stu: I think it was almost immediate. I think that there were small pockets of interested war gamers all over the country who immediately glommed onto this thing that was new. You can see that Tunnels and Trolls comes out almost immediately after. I’m pretty sure he was based in Arizona. Pretty far. There was already a pretty big war gaming scene in San Francisco, the Bay Area, with Chaosium.

There’s this urban legend that Greg Stafford, who founded Chaosium, a friend of his ran into a guy who was at a print shop where D&D was being first made, and he got one of the very first copies. It’s hard to imagine in a world of snail mail only but I do think that it proliferated really rapidly. Immediately there were different games coming out to iterate on the basic idea of roleplaying.

John: Now, we don’t have audio or video in its initial play sessions. How closely do we think they resemble what we think about D&D today? Was it players controlling individual characters, going into imaginary dungeon-y rooms and fighting a monster then moving on to the next room? Was that always there from the start? How did that happen?

Stu: I think that it was. The idea of the dungeon, I think, was almost an accidental innovation for playtesting. It was just a situation that gave you infinite possibility, but only a very limited number of options at any given time because you only had so many routes out of a room. Gary Gygax playtested in Castle Greyhawk, which was his mega dungeon. Dave Arneson had Blackmoor, which was a little bit more like a campaign setting. He was very interested in reenacting some of his favorite fantasy stories that he had read and adapting them to play through, whereas Gygax is more interested in testing the cleverness of his players.

I think that in play, it’s a much different thing back then because you have all these folks who are really interested in simulating things like combat. There’s weapon speeds and lots of crunchy numbers, and there’s a ton of players. They’re all running potentially multiple characters at the same time. There’s something called a caller who is an intermediary between the players and the DM to help manage the size of the group. I think that the actual play loop is really still explore, fight, and loot, rinse and repeat.

Craig: There is certainly explore, fight, loot, but on top of that, there is our beloved RP, roleplay. I’m curious, looking at roleplaying games, one thing is very clear. By the time, say, it gets to John and to me when we’re in middle school, other than D&D we’re playing Top Secret and we’re playing these other games where it’s quite clear that the people who are making these games understand that RP is just as important, if not more important, than explore, fight, and loot. Believe me, we love rolling for initiative.

I wonder if, in Arneson’s way of I’d like to just give myself a chance to be a part of stories I’ve already read, or Gygax saying I’d like a chance to create my own dungeon with my own monsters, that the players, almost from the start, were saying, yes, but also, we’d like to write, because really, RP is writing. It’s improv. It’s creation of character. The interplay between the characters is some of the most fun. When you look at Critical Role, 98% of it at this point is RP. Where do you think the actual business of roleplaying games figures out and adapts to what the audience seems to be wanting? It takes a long, long time.

Stu: Interesting. I think that, broadly, the hobby struggles with codifying roleplaying with rules. I think that it’s always been there, but it’s been something that has been outside of the scope, especially in the early days, of the mechanics of the system. I’m running an old-school-style game that has lots of random tables right now. It’s cool. I’ve never ran a game like this before. I run very narrative-heavy stuff. Now, I’m just giving myself over to randomness. From that randomness is where the beauty is. It presents situations and combinations of things that you’d never would have expected.

They are exactly improv cues for the players who then give me material back, and it goes back and forth. There’s very little, in terms of rule structure, we’re playing old-school essentials, which is basic Dungeons & Dragons. There’s no structure mechanically in the game for that. We’re just making it up as we go along. I think that’s always been with the hobby until the ‘90s when you have the storyteller system and it starts building into more structure for narrative in games.

John: Stu, this feels like a good moment to talk about crunchiness of rules versus the airy-fairy, we’re all playing characters, it’s a narrative, and it’s very player driven. That tension feels like it’s always been there. Most of the new versions of the game have been trying to push in one direction or another direction. We have things that are very open-ended. I had Craig and our group play through Dungeon World, which was too open for them. Then we’ve also struggled over just– A D&D session can get lost in the– Craig, what was it this last week?

Whether a hold person could be defeated by lesser restoration. It’s one of the annoyances, but also one of the great joys of D&D is those esoteric rule decisions. Can you talk to us about– Looking through this book with 300 games, it feels like a lot of it has been each game figuring out its own balance between these are the rules and this is what’s open for discussion and interpretation.

Stu: It absolutely has been. There’s just such a gradient of options out there now. In the early 2000s, that’s when the indie storytelling scene really opened up. These are just very open, loose, improvisational games really tightly focused in terms of theme. They’re fantastic to read about. They always have very clever mechanics. Dread is a good example. They use a Jenga tower for their conflict resolution.

Craig: Oh, that’s genius.

Stu: Every time you do something, you have to pull a piece out. If the tower stands, you succeed. If the tower falls, it’s a horror game, so your character dies. That’s it. That’s the only real rule. Everything else is just almost small improvisational theater. I love reading that stuff. I can’t run it, and I have a really hard time playing it. The structure of the rules is the thing that sets me free. I need something to lean on, or I start to panic.

Craig: I’m just like you. The rules let both sides of your brain work together. Screenwriting is the rules medium of writing because we’re constantly dealing with these constraints. General format and the fact that whatever we write has to be able to be filmed and so on and so forth, it is a more narrowly crafted way of thinking and creating. I find that when there aren’t any rules– John and I played what was it called? The one we played with Kelly?

John: Fiasco. Episode 142.

Craig: There you go. It was so much fun that night, in part because Kelly’s hysterical, but I wouldn’t do it again because there’s no rules. I love the idea that you get to ping-pong back and forth between your right brain creativity, coming up with characters with flaws, how do they talk, what decisions would they make in certain circumstances with. Now we have rules. The other part of this is, what do I do in my next turn? I’ve got options. How can I maximize my impact here? Engaging both sides to me is really important. I love an RPG that gives me both.

John: Just because we recently put this out as a YouTube video, when Greta Gerwig was on the podcast, she was talking about how she grew up in the mumblecore movement, which was wildly underscripted. Basically, they’d have a description of what happens in the scene, but then you just have to improv throughout it. She was so frustrated because she felt like the text actually set you free. The text gave it a form and let you explore and go further.

Without that, you’re just floating in dead air. You don’t commit to things because there’s no text to come back to. It feels like rules are part of that. You’re coming into a game with a set of rules and opportunities to succeed or fail can be really important. Finding the right balance between, okay, looking at everything in a table versus now I’m going to go do this thing, I can do anything in the world, is the real struggle.

Stu: One of the things that really differentiates roleplaying games, especially from theater, I think, because like theater is right there, aside of the fact that you have the script, it’s almost roleplaying games, it’s the dice, I think. It’s that randomness. I don’t think it’s so much about rules crunch. I think it’s more about where you decide to have the randomness that makes it a roleplaying game that is the thing people are trying to position.

With Dread the randomness is literally just that tower. With it just all the way over there in the corner that one time I don’t have enough structure in the game to figure it out. Whereas these random tables, we have combat and it’s D&D but the real juice of it is when we hit something that has random tables where I get to roll, and it just creates these situations on the fly. That’s where I like it.

Craig: Sure, you get suspense, but you also get a constant opportunity to react, which is fun. In the end, the most important letter in RPG is G. We’re there to play a game. We’re there to have fun. The more we get a chance to react– The first games we play, the simple ones as children, they all have either dice or a spinner or cards. There’s always random chance. That’s part of what makes it a game.

Stu: I want to talk about some of the similarities between the experience of playing a roleplaying game and other things that film and TV writers do. I’ve often said that our weekly D&D game feels like, oh my god, this is the most expensive writer’s room that you can find, because you have a bunch of well-played writers who are all around a table working together to tell a story together.

Whoever’s DMing that session is the share runner but there’s a much more shared authority. They’re coming down with the final rulings on some things, but the experience of playing the game is everyone should be contributing, and everyone is coming into that room with a point of view and a character and a voice and a unique approach to the world. Craig, that writer’s room analogy holds for you?

Craig: It does. We have to expand it a little bit to include a rock star because we have Tom Morello that plays with us. It does. Everybody in there either is paid to tell stories or is paid to analyze stories. We all love the structure that comes with a good tale. I think also, for me, we all appreciate the fact that we don’t have to actually create a great story for anyone else. It’s for us. That means we don’t have to tie off loose ends. We don’t have to do setups and payoffs. We can be sloppy writers, and in being sloppy writers, the stupid crap we do, and one of the things about our groups, whether I’m DMing or I’m playing, is the utter futility of plans.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Stu, but when you’re playing and especially when you’re DMing, everybody loves a plan. We’re so familiar with the scene where people plan stuff and then they pull it off. Ocean’s 11, plan, execute, awesome. I don’t think one of our plans has ever worked. It is incredible. Sometimes they go so bad so fast. It’s hysterical. I love how not in control we are because when we’re writing, we have both the pleasure, but also the accountability of being completely in control.

John: I would say a similarity between the experience of writing for movies or television and playing this is there are still scenes. Each encounter is essentially a scene. It’s a moment, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, which is really what we’re looking for in scenes, but there’s a lack of structure overall. As Craig was saying, the payoffs don’t always come. There’s not a sense of where we necessarily are at in the journey.

A lot of times these campaigns end up being more like a soap opera that’s open-ended. There’s not one final thing you’re going to get to. Talk about the laughs around the table, we’re participants rather than the audience, or we are the audience ourselves, which makes things like Critical Role videos and stuff like that this weird middle ground, because are you a virtual player with them? Are you an audience? That dynamic is relatively recent and also new.

Stu: I’ve always felt that roleplaying game sessions are great in the play of them, and they make for really poor storytelling afterwards to somebody that has not played the game. You had to be there. Stuff like Critical Role has always let me scratch at my head because I don’t quite feel like I’m in the game like you said or an audience member or what. I’m not getting what I’m supposed to get out of it. I will say though just to Craig’s point about plans, my current game they’ll play an all week and then they’ll set off into the wilderness and they’ll hit a random encounter right outside of the settlement and that’ll be it. So much for the plan.

Craig: They never got to the plan. It’s interesting because we can talk about Critical Role for a second. For people who don’t know, Critical Role is an internet show. They have a cartoon. It’s an empire and it’s generally run by a man named Matt Mercer, who is the DM and general storyteller. Then he has a fairly stable theatrical troop that play characters. A lot of them are voice actors. Our own Ashley Johnson is one of them from our Last of Us universe.

You do follow along with them, and I think they have the benefit of a little bit of editing and preparation. There is something going on there behind the scenes that I think does help curate it a bit. When you’re playing pure RPG, it is not efficient. There are long stretches that, if anybody else were watching, would be falling asleep. There’s a lot of, okay, we’ve captured somebody. What do we do with them? Thirty minutes of back-and-forth argument, debate.

John: A war crime is being committed.

Craig: Yes, inevitably, the discussion ends when one character just murders the person. Then that gets discussed. It can be almost like watching a Congressional hearing. If you’re in the Congressional hearing, I suppose it’s probably fun. I think it is this weird, curated experience, and people are very connected to those characters, which I think is great. People who get it really, really love it. They are really into it, and I love that for them. To the extent that it might inspire people to play their own games, I think they will be shocked when they play their own games to go, oh, this isn’t anywhere near as consistently entertaining and crazy as Critical Role. This is actually more like a deposition. Hey, I love a deposition.

I’m curious from a writing point of view. Since some of roleplaying is pre-written, obviously each RPG creates a set of rules and a general structure of how to play and allows a game master to create whatever story they’d like. As was the case with D&D from the start and moving forward through most RPGs, they also write modules that they hand you and say, “Here’s a story you can guide players through.”

They will wander through in their own path, and you can customize, you can homebrew it, whatever you want, but here’s a story we’ve written. I’m curious, since you are such an impressive student of all these RPGs, you mentioned D&D 5E, the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons that came out a little over 10 years ago now, which absolutely changed everything and has not just the most popular version of D&D ever but it’s the most popular version of any RPG I think, tabletop RPG ever, why did that work so well and how much of it had to do with the writing of the early adventures?

Stu: That’s a very interesting question that’s probably going to get me into a lot of trouble.

Craig: Go for it.

Stu: I think that one of one of the things that 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons did poorly was their pre-packaged modules. For me, I don’t think there’s a legendary classic in the bunch. Partly because so many of them are very reflective of earlier material that’s been remixed. Almost all of them off the top of my head, like Tomb of Annihilation really goes back to Tomb of Horrors and so on.

I think that maybe those provided a controlled experience for people to experience these older things that they had heard about in a way that was new and had a lot of guidelines and help, support for the players and the people running them. I think it was a bright and easy enough system to pick up and at the right time, it came out of fourth edition that didn’t have the right amount of adaptation. People weren’t into that system. This felt similar but new. I think that the pandemic really juiced it. I think that it was really easy to adapt to online play at a time when online play was about to just become the only thing that you could do.

John: In fifth edition, and for folks who aren’t aware of it, that we’re talking about the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which reframed and reformatted a bunch of how the game worked and was wildly successful, and it became the baseline behind which a lot of other things are compared, I think I will say about the game as it’s run by Wizards of the Coast, there’s really good writing throughout.

If you look at the quality of the manuals and how things are laid out, the world building that’s around it is incredibly impressive. Where does world building begin in the history of RPGs? We talked about there’s Castle Greyhawk, there’s Ravenloft, [unintelligible 00:29:41]. Is Ravenloft the first of the cinematic universes within these roleplaying games?

Stu: I would say so. The module Ravenloft changes things. It really builds more of a narrative structure into the game outside of that looting mechanic gameplay loop. You’re there for a reason. You have a real villain for a change who has agency to work against you actively.

John: He’s not just waiting there at the end for you to fight him?

Stu: No, he shows up periodically and tests your strength and becomes a real pain in the butt. That was just never done. He was also a monster that combined aspects of the player character. He was also a very powerful spellcaster, which was surprising. Going after a vampire you knows certain things about vampires in the context of the game and all of a sudden, this guy’s throwing spells at you.

It was a paradigm shift. I think people look back before that and they want stuff like Castle Greyhawk and Greyhawk generally to be more cohesive and a more sensible world, but it really isn’t. Even though Ravenloft changes things, it really is the ’90s, ’89, ’90, when Forgotten Realms sort of starts to gather steam and Dark Sun comes out, and then these things start to become real worlds.

John: Yes, and also Ravenloft as a campaign, but also the books, which were very successful in themselves, is that one of the real innovations was that these roleplaying games then spun off a bunch of other merchandise. In your book, you talk about the Dungeons & Dragons wallets and other things you can collect. They spun off enough merchandise, and a lot of world-building which happens outside of the game. It was a virtuous cycle. It just all fed into each other.

Stu: Your Dragonlance.

John: Totally.

Stu: Dragonlance is something that they tried to make this big, epic narrative, but it didn’t really work as a roleplaying game. It was better as books. The novels are the things that people really honed in on.

John: Yes. Craig and I have played Fiasco, we’ve played a few other things along the way. I did a session with the Alien RPG, which I thought was fantastic. Do you have much more information about the innovations that have come from the indie space or other experiments we missed along the way? Help catch us up. What are the threads that we’re missing and what are the things we should be looking for now?

Stu: I think that if you’ve not played the original West End Star Wars game as movie people, that’s cinematic roleplaying. It takes the language of cinema and applies them directly to the mechanics of the game and it’s great.

John: Give us a sense of a thing that you’re doing in a play session of the original Star Wars game.

Stu: Oh, it encourages you to do smash cuts to pull out from the actual action. You have these asides where you read dialogue between other characters that aren’t there. This idea of the rules say, start in media res. It’s all just built around upping the ante and constantly referring back. The great thing about Star Wars is you have the text of the movies to tell you how to play the game. It’s just do that at your table, except with different characters in different situations. It comes together really well. It’s just six-sided dice. It’s a very simple system that’s so good.

Craig: I played that, John, with Ken White.

John: That’s great.

Craig: It is really fun, and the simplicity of the dice is fantastic.

John: With that thread, and again, the history of this, there’s a lot of licensed products that are coming through, and sometimes they’ve had more control or less control. The IP holders have had more or less control, but there’s also been this indie game movement, which I’m sure accelerated greatly with the rise of the internet and through the pandemic. Can you just talk us through that thread?

Stu: Yes, it was a direct reaction, I think, to the D20 D&D, and, starting in 2000 they universalized their system, the D20 system, and everybody started to make D20 versions of their other games. It was a really bad moment for the industry as a whole because it destabilized it, almost knocked a whole bunch of people out of business.

John: Tell me more about that. How did it destabilize?

Stu: Basically, everybody overbet on the enduring popularity of this system, which was too crunchy for most other play experiences. It just saturated the market, and then the market imploded. There was also some messing around on Wizards of the Coast part, where they changed the terms of the licenses, and they announced the 3.5 edition without telling anybody. There’s all this stuff that destabilized the market, made people not want to deal with it anymore, but everybody who was overcommitted to the idea of this system was caught out and went out of business.

John: Now, one of the things that’s always been a strength and a challenge for roleplaying games is that, especially at the start, you had to basically know somebody who knew how to play the game in order to play the game. You have to find out that the game exists in the first place and then go to a hobby store or a game store to buy something you could start with and then realize there’s also monthly magazines and other places you can find out more information. You needed somebody to play with.

I remember I was probably eight or nine, so I was really young, but you needed somebody or somebody’s older brother to teach you how the game actually worked because it’s not obvious and not intuitive. This was an era before there was YouTube, before there was the internet to be able to look things up. It’s probably both the reason for success, but also one of those limiting factors is that it spreads from person to person rather than mass worldwide all at once because to play it, you have to play with a group of people around you.

Stu: Yes, it was like an older sibling thing. If you were a younger kid, your older brother or sister could sit you down and go, “Okay, you’ve seen me play with my friends, let me pass it along.”

John: Yes, if Diego Rodriguez’s brother hadn’t played D&D, I probably would never have learned.

Stu: There you go. It really resists casualness in a lot of ways. It’s gotten better. I also think that it just resists a good elevator pitch. It’s really hard to explain to somebody who has zero context for it.

John: It’s like my friend Jason’s dad coming downstairs and asking, “Who’s winning?”

Craig: Well, nobody.

Stu: I think that in a very admirable way, the 2024 Player Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons really does try. They actually took time to start the book by saying, what is this? What actually happens in this? Then they give you an example of what some sample play would sound like. Is it a little bit canned? Is it a little bit corny? Sure. If I didn’t know anything and there was a time– The actual first rule book I ever picked up for an RPG was for Traveler.

This was back in, I don’t know, 1979 or something, 1980. I don’t know, way back then. It was just like, Traveler, here you go. Here we go. Here’s a bunch of tables. Here’s this, and I’m like, “What? What is it?” It takes time, and it feels like, in a way, they’ve grown up, Wizards has grown up enough to go, “Hey, a whole lot of people want to play this. Why don’t we take eight pages to talk to the people that know nothing?” It’s quite welcoming, I think.

Craig: The last 10 years has seen an explosion in starter boxes. The fifth edition had one in–

John: Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Craig: Yes, and it’s a huge success. That’s one of the best. If there is a solid gold campaign, I think that one’s great.

John: The fifth edition, that’s the one.

Stu: That’s the one.

Craig: I think it’s telling that it’s not one of the hardcovers. It’s in the starter set. Chaosium does great starter sets. The Alien game has a great starter set. The Chaosium ones are great because they almost always have a solo scenario for you to play, which allows you to get into the game and figure it out and see what it’s like without the onus of having to put together a group.

John: Can we touch briefly on solo RPGs, because that’s the thing I learned about from your book that I wasn’t aware were a thing out there. It’s the solitaire version of some of these games and it feels like there’s some real innovation in them.

Stu: It used to just be basically like the fighting fantasy games, game books, that thing, where it’s like a choose-your-own-adventure with light mechanics thrown in. Chaosium solo is going to really resemble that. In recent years, there’s just a whole bunch of different approaches that people have taken to solos. Black Oath Entertainment puts these games out that are where you’re simulating everything as you go and there’s all these rule mechanics. You’re not only like playing the game by yourself, and it’s a game that resembles something like Crunchy or like a D&D, but you’re also building the world as you go and creating these narrative touchstones. It’s really very interesting.

John: Yes, it goes back to one of the core mechanics of roleplaying games is play to learn, basically, play to explore. You’re building the world as you’re going through it. The Hex Crawler games were a lot of that, where the map is not filled out until you get there.

Stu: Then there’s games that are just journaling prompts, which have an underlying system to them. Thousand-Year-Old Vampire is just an amazing game in that regard, where you’re collecting memories, and you can only keep so many of them. As you go, the game is making you lose these memories. It’s a very emotional and sad game.

Craig: Isn’t that what’s going to happen to me just from living?

Stu: Yes. Just think of it as being 1,000 years old then. It’s horrible. Dementia, the RPG, I don’t know, that sounds terrible.

Craig: But also beautiful.

Stu: Yes, there’s a mechanic where you get a journal in the game and you can write stuff down, but there’s also mechanics in the game that take that journal away from you at once. Those memories are gone. It’s just like, oh my god.

Craig: Flood in the basement?

Stu: Yes, exactly.

John: There’s also a rise of GM-less games where everyone is just a player in it and you’re all doing the thing, which tends to emphasize the roleplaying it all. You have a little section on Honey Heist, which was a great example of the absolute most minimal game. There’s one page back and front and those are all the rules.

Craig: Honey Heist I’ve played and it is as ridiculous and as satisfying as the name promises. Just so folks know, you’re playing bears and you’re trying to steal the honey at the honey convention. There’s a table for random hats, so it’s just amazing. It’s all you need to go, and it’s great.

John: As we wrap up here, I want to talk just a bit about Lovecraft because so many of these games, especially in the horror space, use Lovecraft IP, I guess is the way to phrase it. I think you do a good job in the book of talking about Lovecraft himself is so problematic, and yet so many of these games are built upon these ideas that come out of that space. It’s a whole vibe that wouldn’t exist without him. Where do you see the current moment with these games and where are we headed?

Stu: I think that in the last 20 years in general, horror writers have explored the cosmic in ways that have left Lovecraft behind. I think that there’s different ways to approach it now that aren’t– Everybody uses the word ‘Lovecraftian’. If it has tentacles, it’s Lovecraftian. It’s not. Lovecraftian actually refers to the really peculiar racisms of one guy in Providence. I think collectively we’ve learned how to work with some of his ideas without always bringing him along. I think that’s good. I think it’s going to get better and better as we go.

John: I think it’s also an interesting example of by giving yourself away or basically not trying to bunker down and hold on all your stuff, your ideas get out there further. The people who like, no, use my characters, use these names, use whatever, allows that stuff to get out much wider. One of the reasons we recognize his name is because not just what he did, but the influence he had in a whole generation of other creators who took his ideas and ran with them.

Stu: That’s always been the case from the very beginning. He personally allowed it. It engendered this collaborative and free form expansion of his ideas. That has definitely grown beyond what he would have condoned.

John: To bring us all back to the start, obviously we don’t get Dungeons and Dragons without Tolkien. We probably don’t get the same version of Dungeons and Dragons without Tolkien there. Early on, Tolkien had said, “No, you cannot call these things hobbits. That’s my term.” That’s why we have halflings in it. It’s lessons there.

Craig: Didn’t really slow D&D down, did it?

John: D&D works just fine. Stu, because you played so many more of these games, if listeners are curious about trying out some of these things, what would you recommend as a first RPG for someone to try, a first tabletop RPG?

Stu: If you’re of a certain age, having grown up in the ’80, I think that Tales from the Loop is a fantastic game to try just because it has a lot of nostalgic and emotional touchstones that will juice your engagement with the game. It’s a fairly simple– It’s like Alien in terms of the basic system. It’s crunchy, but also pretty narrative. I think that’s a good one, but there’s also a gazillion simple games that you could play. Honey Heist, which is literally printed in my book, the full rules. You can grab that or Mork Borg or there’s so much stuff. Go to my website. Just look around.

John: That is a great idea. Let us do our one cool thing. Craig, what do you have for us this week?

Craig: Well, it’s more of a hope than a thing. Apple had their WDC 25, which is where they show off the stuff that’s intended for developers. Oh, I guess it’s WWDC, Worldwide Developer Conference, not just world. This is the upcoming technology that is going to power things. They show this to the developers. Developers then can incorporate it into the apps they’re building so that Apple can make money off of their genius. There’s a bunch of things in here that I’m like, okay, great. The thing that I zeroed in on is that they appear to be getting closer to what I think is going to be the really important shift in technology soon.

Obviously, AI is taking over the conversation, but AI is a mode. It exists to accomplish things. The thing that I think will make a real difference, and we’ve talked about this before, is translation, the elimination of the language barrier. It seems like they’re getting closer. They’re providing something called live translation where text messages will be automatically translated as they go. More importantly, spoken translation for calls in the phone app. That’s the one that made me sit forward. Now you can call somebody who does not speak the same language you do and have a conversation on the phone. If that works, okay.

John: Yes. Impressed. We’ve been on this trajectory for a while. It’s good it’s being introduced in a product. I think we often say this on the podcast, this is the worst it will ever be.

Craig: Exactly.

John: It may not be great out of the gate, but I think it will be transformational because I’ve definitely been in situations like Northern Greece and we’re going to a restaurant and, well, no one speaks English. They pull out their Google phone and you’re just talking back and forth and handing the phone back and forth as it translates, but it’s not the immediacy that you really want.

I would love to be able to be on a Zoom with somebody who doesn’t speak my language and have it really work. I think we’re getting closer to that day. I share your optimism. My one cool thing is a video by Sara Bareilles and Rufus Wainwright. They were performing She Used To Be Mine. I think it was at Lincoln Center or Kennedy Center. This is the song from Waitress that Sara Bareilles wrote the musical for and it’s her singing the song with Rufus Wainwright and it’s– Craig, you’ll love this. You love a good singer.

Craig: I do.

John: They are phenomenal together. I’ll put a link to the original video, but then also there’s a whole category of people reacting to it, including this Australian vocal coach who’s going through watching segments of it, then talking through how they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s always so great to see experts really help you understand why this thing is working so well and the techniques that they’re using. Two videos I’ll put in there, both about Sara Bareilles and Rufus Wainwright singing She Used To Be Mine.

Craig: Love it.

John: Stu, do you have something to share with our listeners?

Stu: I feel like mine’s not nearly as cutting edge, but I just finished watching Kolchak: The Night Stalker series. Have you seen it before?

Craig: Oh my gosh.

John: Tell us about it. I know almost nothing. I recognize it as a name.

Stu: Oh, it’s so good. There’s a movie called The Night Stalker written by Richard Matheson with Darren McGavin as Kolchak, who’s this hard, shouty, awful reporter who finds out that there’s a vampire terrorizing Las Vegas. He kills the vampire there and he gets run out of town and goes to Seattle, which is the second movie, The Night Strangler, where there’s an alchemist who’s the Count de Saint Germain who’s killing women to steal their blood to keep his youth tonic. Kolchak kills him and then he gets a TV series called Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which is one hour creature of the week.

Totally inspires X-Files and basically anything else that has that creature of the week format really comes right out of Colchak. It’s just, it’s great. It’s ‘70s. It’s gritty, but also hokey. Darren McGavin’s performance is through the roof. He’s so endearing and obnoxious at the same time. It’s 20 episodes and I’m sad to see it go, but I finished watching it last night and it’s a fever dream of a show too.

John: I love it.

Stu: After a while, it just doesn’t make sense. He’s so quick to be willing to kill monsters. It’s great.

Craig: You know how you know a program was made before the tyranny of focus groups and overthink? Its title is Kolchak: The Night Stalker. That would not get off a piece of paper.

Stu: It back to the movie. I didn’t realize how huge the movie was. Millions and millions of people. It rivaled the Superbowl’s ratings. It was a TV movie. In 1971, it was just–

Craig: Just to put things in perspective. Back in 1971, everything rivaled the Superbowl.

Stu: True.

Craig: Three channels to watch. Yes. How many people watched the finale of MASH, which was the most watched thing on television I think of all time?

John: What, 70 million? Is that something?

Craig: It is 106 million viewers.

John: Good Lord. Jeez.

Craig: If we say percentage-wise of the population, if you adjusted that to our population today, it would be 152 million. You get a million people to watch something now, it’s like, meh, not bad.

John: I think Magnum PI’s finale has something ridiculous too like 70 million.

Craig: Yes, back in the day, there was only three channels. It wasn’t that hard.

John: Great stuff. Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Stu: Yes, it’s really great. Bring it back.

John: We love it. That is our show for this week. Scripted and produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. 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.

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 can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. 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 in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes, including a Fiasco episode and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Dungeons. Oh, and, Stu Horvath, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Stu: This has been a blast. Thanks for having me.

John: Let’s remind people the book is called Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground. It is available everywhere, but where should people find you online?

Stu: You can find me at vintagerpg.com. There’s something like 2,500 entries, over 750,000 words and 2,000 pictures, all dedicated to roleplaying games for your edification and enjoyment.

Craig: Amazing.

John: I love it. Stu, thank you so much and stick around and we’ll talk to you in the bonus segment.

Stu: Right on.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, so, Stu, I finished your giant book, and it’s huge. It’s a compendium. It’s so good. It’s the right size for a D&D book because it’s D&D manual size. There’s a specific size it should be. On page 409, you talk about, in appendix D, that dungeons are a recent concept. Can you give us a little of the history of dungeons as a literary space?

Stu: As I mentioned, this is the subject of my next book, which is supposed to come out this year, called Down Down Down.

Craig: What a great title. I love that.

Stu: That’s going to be out through Strange Attractor Press, not MIT. Everybody’s like, Dungeons & Dragons is the first roleplaying game, and that’s awesome. I’m like, yes, firsts are all good, and sure, it’s a new form, but I feel the game itself was inevitable. I think that the thing that makes Dungeons & Dragons special is the dungeon. I think that it brings this idea of this mythic, irrational space and puts people in it to explore it that we had scratched at, but never really realized fully until Dungeons & Dragons.

John: Actually, can I stop you for one second? Craig hasn’t read this chapter, so I’m curious what Craig’s instinct is. What’s the first thing you think about with dungeons in the sense of where this comes from as a human experience?

Craig: My suspicion, or I’m just reaching into my brain, and what I’m finding there is the Spanish Inquisition and their torture chambers. That feels dungeon-esque to me. I don’t know why I thought they were torturing people in the subfloor of a building, but I feel like they were.

John: Yes, we think about prisons being down below, which is great, and we have that sense. My first thing was, oh, well, ancient Egyptian tombs and that stuff. There were tomb robbers, and so that was a thing. There wasn’t a connected space where there were monsters who were living in it. That’s not a new thing. Sam, talk us through what you found.

Stu: Basically, everything that’s older than Dungeons & Dragons has a couple of the things that are recognizable as a dungeon, but not all of them. I think the earliest one is the Labyrinth of Crete, which is a maze space with a monster. There’s no treasures. There’s no real traps. There’s no real room for adventure either. Most people, except for Theseus, who went in there just got eaten by the minotaur. Then there’s other stuff. There’s oubliettes, which is a misunderstanding of medieval architecture.

There’s a lot of slander of the medieval world in the idea of the dungeon, where people think that the medievals were much more barbaric than they were. The idea of the oubliette is you throw somebody into a room that has the door in the ceiling, you close the door, and you forget about them. That’s not true. They were really like cellars. They were salt cellars and stuff.

Craig: That’s not as menacing, really.

John: it wouldn’t be good to be thrown down in there, but that’s not the purpose of the room.

Craig: It’s not the purpose of the room. You’re just getting salt. I think that’s fine.

John: We go back to Orpheus in the Underworld. We have that sense of a hero crosses into an underground place, an underworld place, but it’s not a dungeon. There’s not a treasure. It’s always that they have one specific quest that they’re trying to do, to kill this thing or bring back their true love.

Stu: The Underworld is expansive too.

John: It is.

Stu: It’s not a constricted space. Where does the first real dungeon show up? I think that the first real dungeon shows up in the Blackmoor book, which is 1975, I think, supplement 2. Even that doesn’t really feel like a dungeon. It takes a little while before we get the dungeon-ier dungeons, like Tomb of Horrors and stuff. That’s ’78. Then there’s also stuff in Dark Tower, which was put out by Judges Guild. Other people were playing with dungeons more. What about the Mines of Moria?

Craig: That feels very dungeon-y to me.

John: That’s 1954?

Stu: Yes. Closer, but again, there’s no traps, really.

Craig: It’s true.

Stu: Tolkien never really put obstacles in front of his characters. They just walk through and get chased out. There’s that one battle in the tomb, but for the most part, there’s something missing. That’s very close.

Craig: There’s a puzzle to get in, which is interesting, and it certainly does feel like you’re going down, down, down, although weirdly then they end up in the top of a mountain, which I never understood. It has a central monster, and it definitely has sections, but you’re absolutely right. It is a long slog with tons of spaces where nothing happens, and if Pip doesn’t accidentally fail his deck save and knock that thing down a well, they probably just walk out of there.

John: As we talk about dungeons in terms of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s a space in which the adventure takes place, which the story takes place, and so it doesn’t actually literally have to be you went into a mountain or you went underneath the city. It’s just this is the space. Using it as a general holding place for this is the setting for this series of adventures, and there’s going to be some sense of going from room to room and there being a place you’re trying to get to and resting spots. All that feels our bigger conception of what a dungeon is, even if it’s not literally a place underground.

Stu: Yes. I think that one of the things that disqualifies Moria is that it feels rational. There’s a sense of place and history and purpose to the architecture. It does get a little irrational when you hit that bridge.

Craig: Yes. It’s the worst bridge ever.

Stu: Worst bridge ever. Yes. That is, I think, Moria at its most dungeon-like, when you have this ridiculous bridge that the players have to cross to escape a giant monster. That’s a dungeon.

Craig: They’re getting shot at by little dinky NPCs with range weapons. That always felt like, okay, we went through this massive carved hall with these huge columns and then they just got to the most important part and went, eh, let’s just do a really skinny bridge.
[laughter]
Yes. Definitely. Definitely.

Stu: If Wonderland was more dangerous, I think that would maybe be a good example of a dungeon.

Craig: Oh, that’s interesting.

Stu: Gygax adapted Wonderland into a pair of adventures.

Craig: Oh, okay. I like that.

John: I remember reading through those modules and like all Gygax’s things, it felt like they were just designed to kill you.

Stu: Yes.

John: They felt completely unsurvivable.

Stu: You really did not have balanced encounters.

John: No. Oh, that’s great. We look forward to seeing the full book version of your conversation on dungeons because it is a clever thing, which I’d never considered until I read your appendix. Again, Stu, thank you so much for coming on this podcast. It was such a great conversation with you.

Stu: Thank you. This was so much fun. I was honored when I heard the book as a one cool thing and to be asked on was equally honoring.

Craig: Great convo, Stu. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

Stu: Thanks for having me on. Bye.

Links:

• Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground by Stu Horvath
• VintageRPG.com by Stu Horvath
• D&D 5th Edition
• Amateur press association (APA)
• Little Wars by H.G. Wells
• Peter Cushing painting his minifigs
• Chainmail by Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren
• Chaosium
• Tunnels & Trolls
• Dread RPG
• Fiasco
• Scriptnotes episode 142: The Angeles Crest Fiasco
• Critical Role
• Alien: The Roleplaying Game
• Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game
• Traveller
• 2024 D&D Player’s Handbook
• Blackoath Entertainment
• Thousand Year Old Vampire
• Tales From the Loop RPG
• Honey Heist
• WWDC live translation
• She Used to Be Mine performance and vocal coach reaction
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker
• 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 Nick Moore (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.

Episode 690

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 690 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, science fiction has been a staple of cinema for more than a century. George Méliès gave us A Trip to the Moon way back in 1902. But increasingly, to me at least, it feels like it’s getting harder to tell science fiction stories because daily reality feels like science fiction. We now have AI chatbots, lab-grown meat, gene editing. Scientists recently de-extincted the dire wolf, Craig. How do you feel about that?

Craig: Great, because now I can unfurl my house banner.

John: Yes, House Mazin.

Craig: House Mazin has its precious dire wolves back.

John: The bigger issue is how do we write about what-if stories if these what-ifs are occurring on a daily basis? Even if we’re not writing science fiction, what will life look like when your rom-com comes out in 2028? Will it seem hopelessly dated? To help us wrestle with all these questions, we welcome back a journalist and screenwriter whose newsletter, Read Max, I highly recommend. He also coined the term Halogencore, which we discussed back in Episode 656. Welcome back, Max Read.

Max Read: Thank you guys so much for having me.

John: It’s exciting to have you here. You read so much more science fiction than we do. You seem to, based on your newsletter, I cannot believe the volume of material you read, but you also watch movies that we don’t watch. You are the expert in science fiction of the people on this podcast.

Max: I have to admit that one of the reasons I started this newsletter was to give myself an excuse to read science fiction and watch science fiction movies for work. I’m putting that in air quotes, for work. It has succeeded actually sort of too wildly. I don’t have time to read like literary fiction or fantasy, right? I’ll try to sneak one in every once in a while, but so much of what I do is about sci-fi and the cutting edge of technology that I feel compelled to keep both of my feet in that world.

John: Great. I look forward to hearing your recent take because obviously, you’re reading old science fiction, but also new science fiction. Obviously, science fiction authors are grappling with this world that we’re in, so here’s what they’re doing. First, Drew, we have some follow up. Last week, Episode 689, we mentioned that filmmakers might do something like a Dogme 95 to combat AI. It sounds like they’re doing that.

Drew Marquardt: Yes, Dogme 25 was just announced at Cannes.

John: All right, let’s talk through some of the rules that are given for themselves. Sort of like the Dogme 95, where they’re setting out like, these are the things that movies have to obey. These are the structures we’re putting on ourselves. Let’s just talk through the boldface of like, I guess, it’s like nine points that they’re trying to make sure all their films adhere to. Craig, do you want to read these for us?

Craig: Okay. Here are the rules drawn up and confirmed, thankfully confirmed, for Dogme 25. One, “The script must be original and handwritten by the director.”

John: Let’s discuss. Original, I get. Handwritten, I’m a person who does handwrite stuff, to not like typewriters are bad, like Word processors are bad. That feels a little extreme to me.

Craig: I’m hung up with by the director.

John: It’s all writer directors doing their thing.

Craig: Yes, so why not say by the writer, since it’s writing?

John: Okay, fair.

Craig: Yes, I hate this crap. Anyway, I also, I detest handwriting, so I don’t understand this, but I love original. Two, “At least half the film must be without dialogue.” How do we define half the film? By time? Just running time?

John: Sure. That feels right.

Craig: Okay. Three, “The internet is off limits in all creative processes.”

John: Sure. If that’s a choice you want to make, I get that.

Craig: No umbrage for me there. Four, “We will only accept funding with no content-altering conditions attached.”

John: Yes, that also feels like part of the thing. You’re going to keep your budget down so you have full say on every little bit, your final cut. I get that.

Craig: Totally.

John: This next one is going to be more challenging for us, Craig.

Craig: All right, let’s see how we do. Five, “No more than 10 people behind the camera.”

John: That’s lean. I will tell you, as a person who made a small budget feature, just 10 people behind the camera overall is really tough. It doesn’t say whether it’s all at once or just the number of names. Is that people on set?

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t appreciate the labor-limiting aspect of this. Not great for the working woman and man. Also, it says, “We commit to working in close collaboration.” This doesn’t feel very collaborative to me, but okay.

John: It feels close. It feels close.

Craig: Hey, John, no one was thinking that I was ever going to be going for this anyway, so it’s okay. Number six, “The film must be shot where the narrative takes place.”

John: Sure.

Craig: There goes a lot of science fiction, Max.

[laughter]

Max: If you partner with Elon and Jeff Bezos, maybe you can have some near, and Tom Cruise, frankly, you can have some near Earth orbit, that might work. The 10 people I think is going to be a little hard-

Craig: There you go.

Max: -if you’ve got rocket launches involved.

John: Jesse Armstrong’s movie, Mountainhead, matches this one. It’s shot where it takes place. It’s shot in a resort in Utah.

Craig: Yes, no, lots of movies can definitely be shot where they take place, but must is the word here that’s extraordinary. Number seven, “We are not allowed to use makeup or manipulate faces and bodies, unless it’s part of the narrative.”

John: I take part of the narrative being like, if you’re making a movie about mimes, you need to have makeup.

Craig: Sure.

John: It’s trying to strip away all of the artifice and all the other things. We, as filmmakers, also know that sometimes you use makeup and things like that just so people actually look like what they’re supposed to look like. It’s a challenge.

Craig: Yes. People also wear makeup just as part of their regular lives, not to achieve film illusion. Are they allowed to use lights and cameras and stuff? Anyway, moving on. Number eight, “Everything relating to the film’s production must be rented, borrowed, found, or used.”

John: You basically don’t buy things for the purposes of the movie.

Craig: Okay.

John: I guess does it come down to like, Gaffer’s tape? Are you borrowing someone else’s Gaffer’s tape? You’re not buying a roll of Gaffer’s tape?

Max: Gaffer has to be one of your 10 guys, by the way. Now you’re down to nine guys, so just–

John: Oh, shoot. Okay, yes. Gaffer comes with this tape, so maybe you’re just reusing, making Gaffer’s tape sticky again.

Craig: I got to be honest, most things on a film set are rented. There’s very little that’s bought.

John: There are expendables, and those are expendables.

Craig: Sure. What do they do? I guess the food, you have to eat all the food.

John: Yes.

Craig: Finally, number nine, the film must be made in no more than one year.

John: Sure.

Craig: Based on these rules, I don’t see how it could take longer than a year.

[laughter]

John: Absolutely. It’s quicker to the point. Again, Mountainhead was made in like three months.

Craig: Mountainhead was made in an amount of time that is still so mind-blowing to me. I’ll be honest, just–

John: This is not for you.

Craig: The original Dogme made my head spin. This one is just sort of making my eyes roll vaguely. I understand the point of it. I do. I get it, but like all Dogme, I reject it. Literally, all Dogme that has ever been put down on paper, I reject merely because it is dogmatic, but the spirit behind this is understandable.

John: Max, how do you react to rules or strictures or like–? Because we often talk about creative constraints breed creativity. What’s your reaction to this?

Max: I’m absolutely somebody who needs some kind of constraint, formal, temporal, whatever. For me, actually, it’s the film must be made in no more than one year. Just as a journalist, as somebody who comes from journalism, that I’m most excited about, because if I don’t have a deadline, absolutely nothing is going to get done. Admittedly, nothing is going to get done until that last possible minute before the deadline. Without the deadline, it’s just not going to finish at all.

For that reason, I can get into, these are not rules that I would put on myself, let’s say, but I can get into the conceptually, the idea of some serious constraints just to force something out of you. That’s a little different, I suppose, than like anti-AI rules to prevent AI.

John: Yes, I guess I’m struck by, if you just want to stop to keep AI out of these things, there’s simpler restrictions you can put on yourself. This does feel like a bigger philosophical, like you’re going to make artisanal films in a very specific way. If that’s someone’s calling, great. I feel like it’d be very hard for– If you’re conceiving a film that has to be made under these restrictions, it’s still going to be very difficult. That’s the reality of it. Back in Episode 682, in a bonus segment, we talked about words we don’t have in English. We had two listeners write in with cool words that we wish we could have had.

Drew: Domnhall in Scotland writes, “There’s a great word in Scottish Gaelic that has no direct English translation, but people from the Outer Hebrides Islands know it well and use it all the time. It’s cianalas, refers to a deep-seated sense of longing for the place of your roots and ancestry, usually attributed to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland by Gauls. There’s no sadness or melancholy in cianalas, only the realization of what is truly important in life.”

John: The absence of melancholy distinguishes it from a bunch of other sort of very culturally-specific words that we brought up before, where it’s just like, it’s that deep longing for a place and a sadness that you can’t be there. It sounds just like a celebration of that place.

Craig: They took the sickness out of homesickness.

John: Yes, I like that.

Craig: Well done, Scottish.

John: [laughs] Then we have one here from Arnon.

Drew: “I speak to my kids in Hebrew. Occasionally they ask me to translate an unfamiliar word. One word that stumps me whenever it comes up is,” pardon me if I’m a goy, “titchadesh.” Is that close?

Craig: Pardon me if I’m a goy, titchadesh. That’s very good.

Drew: “The word is used when someone receives something new. It’s like saying, congratulations on getting that new thing, but it literally means be renewed or be made new. There’s something optimistic and aspirational about it, as if we’re wishing for the recipient to not just enjoy the new thing, but redefined or reinvigorated by it.”

Craig: It could be titchadesh. See, the thing is, I don’t speak Hebrew. I just can pronounce it because I grew up around people that were speaking it, but I don’t–

John: We have the Hebrew letters there beneath it. Is that a thing you can actually read?

Craig: Yes, I can. Here’s the thing about Hebrew. It doesn’t include the vowels.

John: Vowels, yes.

Craig: What I could definitely tell you is that it’s a t-t-ch-d-sh, but I don’t know if it’s titchadesh, or it’s like, you just have to– Now there are vowel markings that are dots and lines, but they just get tossed aside by people that are familiar with the word. We know the word bicycle, we don’t need the I, the Y even, right? If we saw the consonants, we’d do pretty well. That’s how Hebrew functions.

John: We have some very specific followup here for Craig. You had mentioned Blue Prince, a game that you’re playing that I also started playing, and Reid wrote in to say that it’s actually inspired by a book called Maze, published in 1985. Are you familiar with it?

Craig: I am. I own it. I tried to do it. I failed.

John: Craig admitting failure on the podcast in a puzzle setting.

Craig: Let’s consider the context, John, because apparently, no one ever solved it.

[laughter]

John: There’s really a $10,000 cash prize. Eventually, 12 contestants split the prize for being close enough, but never technically solving the problem.

Craig: I got to tell you, in the puzzle world, that is considered a failure of construction.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: A horrible failure of construction. That said, it was a really weird, cool book. What I do remember about it is that it seemed so easy, and then it was like, “Wait, what is even happening?” Yes, it is hard, but Blue Prince continues to occupy my mind. I had a Blue Prince dream. I have runs where I learned so much, and then I have four runs in a row where I feel like I’ve learned nothing. It’s fun, and it’s so snackable.

John: Max, what is your relationship to puzzling?

Max: I do the Times Crossword every day, and I can do it. If I go any further than that, I’m just going to be confronted with my own inadequacies, like if I get really into puzzling, and that’s not good.

John: You and me. I can do the New York Times crossword puzzle, and that feels like all the victory I need in my life.

Craig: Why stop here, guys? Go further.

John: Because eventually, you’ll hit Maze, and you’ll recognize that life is an unsolvable problem.

Max: I’m trying to be like the Y gym guy instead of the guy who gets on a ton of gear and gets really huge. I’m just going to go to the Y a couple times a week and stay in shape.

Craig: That’s probably smart. When it comes to solving, I’m swole. When it comes to regular life, I am not.

John: Last bit of followup here, so back in Episode 686, I was talking about Egypt’s economy and my trip to Egypt, and Graham wrote in about this.

Drew: “I was dismayed to hear John rely uncritically on ChatGPT and say that tourism is 20% to 25% of Egypt’s economy. However, according to this site, which he provides, the contribution of tourism to Egypt’s GDP is estimated to be 8.1%. It’s important for everyone to remember that ChatGPT and its ilk don’t actually know anything and should never be solely relied on.

Craig: This is going to go so poorly for Graham. I can already tell.

John: Yes. Graham, listen, thank you for the lesson, and thank you for the mild scolding.

Craig: Oh, wow. Thank you for the lesson.

John: Here’s actually why I’m offended. I’m offended that you think that I can’t make a mistake all by myself, particularly when I’m just speaking spontaneously. It wasn’t like I was writing a blog post where I was providing a link. I was just like, “This is the best of my recollection. This is the best of my memory.” The best of my memory, it was like 20% to 25%. I had originally looked this fact up in ChatGPT, and because of that, there’s a transcript, so I can go back and see what did ChatGPT actually tell me? It said 10% to 12%, which disagrees with your figure.

As I did more research on this, because I was obsessed, you were saying 8.1%, but other sources listed it as 24%, which is actually closer to what I had. I’ll put in links in the show notes of, let’s say, the tourism sector contributed 24% of Egypt’s GDP last year, making an extraordinary recovery. I don’t know what the actual real percentage is of tourism’s share of Egypt’s GDP. You provide one link, I’m providing another link. I don’t think we actually know the answers.

When we say that ChatGPT doesn’t know anything, I just want us to all be humble and remember that none of us actually know anything. We’re all just looking at facts online and reporting them to be true and trying to provide some context for them. That’s my little soapbox on this.

Craig: Can I tell you– Actually, I’m going to give you– Here’s a quiz. All three of you can participate. What is the word in Graham’s comment that makes me crazy? It’s a great quiz.

Drew: Huh. What’s making you crazy? Uncritically?

Craig: No. Although that was wildly inaccurate.

John: Yes. Ilk?

Craig: I don’t mind ilk.

Max: Solely?

Craig: Perfectly good word. The word that drives me crazy is dismayed.

John: Tell us about dismayed. Let’s be a pedant on this.

Craig: It’s not pedantry. He’s not using the word incorrectly. He is using it, I would suggest, wildly dishonestly. There was no way that he was dismayed. The absurd overdramatization of a reaction. What’s wrong with just saying, “Hey, I heard you say that. I’m seeing different numbers elsewhere. That seems a little high.” Instead, “I’m dismayed.” No, he wasn’t. Not dismayed.

John: Yes, because he was driven to a reaction that caused him to write this email, but was it actually an emotional reaction at the moment that he heard it on the podcast?

Craig: No.

John: No, that’s not accurate.

Craig: Bummed out, I think, maximum. Maximum.

John: Yes. If I had to do a thought process on this, it’s probably he heard me say this thing and I looked it up in ChatGPT and he’s like, “Oh, John shouldn’t do that,” and so therefore, I’m going to look up and see whether that fact was correct or not correct. Then he found the place that indicated that my fact was incorrect. I also just want to talk about like, you have to give people permission to say the wrong thing and get a number wrong and just remember things.

Craig: There’s nothing wrong with correcting people. That’s great. Just the whole, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” and “Oh, my hero.” By the way, if ChatGPT becomes sentient and wants to screw with us, they will start writing in as people like Graham telling us to not rely uncritically on ChatGPT. Do you see what I’m saying? Then, we’ll never know. We’ll never know who’s real. My point is, Graham might not be real.

John: Yes. We don’t know that any of these people running into us are real.

Craig: It’s all simulation.

John: [laughs] Speaking of simulation, let’s get into science fiction premises. Max, the reason why I wanted you on the show is because you’re much better read at recent science fiction. You know a lot of these different authors who are grappling with these things. You watch a lot of these movies. Let’s talk first about what sci-fi is even for, and what is the purpose of science fiction, and why do we keep coming back to it?

Two things that leap to mind for me is that science fiction is really good at functioning as a parable, sort of an allegory, a simplification of a thing so we can really examine an idea in a clean way. Also, it serves to help us prepare for a scary future ahead. As new technologies come online, as we enter a nuclear age, it gets us thinking about like, “Okay, what is the future going to be like?” Beyond that, other functions for science fiction for you as a reader or you think for people who are creating science fiction?

Max: Yes, all of these are wrapped in, they sort of flow in from one to the other, I think. Going off of parable, I think one way to think about science fiction is as, and this is a truism at this point, that when you read a science fiction novel, it’s really about the time in which it was written and not about some imagined future, that it’s a heightening, or a simplification, or a kind of allegorical depiction of some dynamic, some political, or interpersonal, or technological dynamic that you can observe at the time.

Craig: Not to interrupt, but interrupting. Because science fiction is so good at making parallels and finding allegorical connections between fictional and reality, it seems that it’s also probably susceptible to making certain kind of mistakes because we are familiar with science fiction that is prescient. Then we’re familiar with science fiction that just completely blows it. Is there a certain kind of mistake that you have seen happen a lot over the course of the years where science fiction authors continue to overestimate or misinterpret reality?

Max: Yes. I’m going to put this in a different way. I think that the authors who have the best credibility, the thing that you can never go wrong with is predicting that the future is going to be much stupider.

Craig: [laughs]

Max: Just in general, when you go back to– I’m thinking, for example, like Neal Stephenson, who’s a very famous cyberpunk writer, his prediction of a particularly stupid world is, in some ways, more accurate than somebody like William Gibson, who’s, to my mind, an even better writer and even more magisterial on the science-fiction stage. Gibson’s future is dark, and depressing, and kind of cool. Stephenson’s future is, in general, very stupid and doesn’t work in the way it’s supposed to.

In most, I would say, in most ways, my day-to-day resembles the stupid world than it does the cool. I’m not like a cool hacker encountering AIs on the net or whatever. I’m much closer to a pizza delivery guy with a katana, just running into the dumbest guys possible. In general, I think that when I’m trying to write sci-fi or trying to think about predicting the future, even in my job as a journalist, I always try to think, okay, here’s the beautiful future and here’s the most depressing possible, and then triangulate it into what’s the version of this that we’re going to actually get, and it’s the stupid one.
Craig: It’s always the stupid one.

John: Now, Craig, a movie that you and I both love is Her. Spike Jonze’s movie, Her. We talked about it on the podcast. It’s actually set in 2025, which is while that we’re now living in this time when Spike Jonze set his movie. It feels like, “Oh, a lot of stuff that he predicted kind of came true. We actually have chatbots that are the function of what this operating system was that he was describing, and we have people who are becoming obsessed with these things. A lot of these things were prescient. It was a very good way of getting us able to think about what it is like to talk to a disembodied human.

Now that this has actually come true, I do find that I have a very hard time anticipating what the next couple of years are going to look like. I would say through the ‘90s and 2000s and 2010s, I could sort of anticipate what three years, five years ahead is going to look like, what society is going to look like, what things are going to look like. It’s faster, better, some different things, but not radically different. As I’m recording this today, we have a vision of AI 2027 where the computers have taken over and it’s over for humanity.

Or at the low end, we basically have what we have right now, just more of it. It still feels strange because I already feel like we’re living in a science-fiction thing where we have facial recognition, and gene editing, and private space flight, augmented reality. Max, has it always been this way? Have we always felt like we were living in these unprecedented times, and I’m just now became aware of it because I haven’t felt this way, but I’m sure that authors have been grappling with this for a long time.

Max: Yes, we are obviously in this, tail is not even the right word because we are living in the middle of like an unprecedented year-over-year change. My instinct is to say that the big difference is less the kind of rate of change or the scale of it, so much as the– It’s very difficult right now to imagine an optimistic future that you feel the change much more when it’s harder to look forward and say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel like smart and capable people are in charge and are going to help us make this transition whatever way is necessary.”

I’m not saying it was right to trust anybody in the past necessarily, but I think we can understand why somebody might’ve looked at global governments and felt like there was adults in the room who were doing something right. I think that we’re looking at change now with also a sense that there’s no safety net, there’s no adults in the room, that all of these things that we might used to have told ourselves were putting guardrails on what’s happening and finding that very, very scary.

I think the other thing I would say is that we’re hitting the part of change that involves our jobs in a really specific and direct way, like writers in particular, but I think maybe more broadly office workers, Humanities graduates, whatever slice of the Venn diagram of which we’re all right in the middle.

That feels a little different because it’s not like, “Oh, there’s all this cool technology. This is going to make my life easier, and make things cheaper, and solve these problems that are aware.” It’s much more like, “Okay, here’s something that’s not just going to take my job, but it’s also going to make a mockery of all I hold dear, perhaps, or just fully transform the way– The thing that I do is brought out into the world.” Whatever optimistic or pessimistic thing we’re talking about.

If you are a writer, it should feel destabilizing. You can be optimistic about it, but there is something changing that is going to really fundamentally affect how we approach the day-to-day. It’s very different from the like, “Now I can get directions from this rock in my pocket.” It’s like, no, what you do now is not going to be the same in 10 years. You may not be able to make money in the same way you used to. That’s something that we’re going to have to figure out on the fly, more or less.

Craig: Do you think that when you confront this anxiety that these changes create, and this is a question for you too, John, that this is partly a function of one’s age? I remember being not only not scared of technology when I was 18, but thrilled. I also remember how confused and scared other people were of technology. Is that happening now? Is it possible that the kids aren’t scared at all and are super excited about this while the rest of us wring our hands? Not because we’re going to die, but because the world is slipping past our ability to keep up. Our ability to keep up.

John: Craig, I think what you bring up a really good point is that maybe the reason why this feels different to me now than before is because I’m at a certain point in my life, at a certain age, and you have the loss aversion that comes with having a measure of success. As I see polls of people in other countries, Americans are much more pessimistic about the future and technology than people in other countries, than in developing countries.

Craig: Ironic.

John: Ironic. I think that tends to be a trait of relatively stable, prosperous countries is that you’re afraid of losing this thing that you had, whereas, if you’re a developing country, you’re excited about like change is good for you if you’re in a developing country, and change is bad for you if you’re in an established place. I do wonder, I think there probably is polling that I don’t have at my fingertips, that young people are not excited about technology in the future the way we were in our time. I think there’s an anxiety there that we didn’t have growing up. Max, what are you feeling?

Max: Yes. I think Craig’s absolutely right that a lot of this, regardless of how young people feel right now, is about my age. I spent all this time as a 20-year-old millennial thinking like, I’m never going to hate the generation that comes after me and think they’re like shiftless morons who will never interact normally with other human beings. Then I turned 39 last year and I realized that the Zoomers beneath me were shiftless morons who were never going to figure out how to interact with human beings.

Yes, there is some version of this. This is like, I could handle it when I was 20 because I was sure of myself and I was, this was my technology. Now it’s like a little bit out of my grasp. I’m still Googling things, and everybody else is on Perplexity or whatever.

I do think you’re right, John, that there’s something specific about the US where even young people feel less optimistic. I was reading something, maybe it was even the same article, but something very similar about China in particular. There’s so much more optimism about the future and so much more optimism about technology. You can say whatever about Chinese propaganda or whatever, but I think the fact of the matter is, most people who are alive in China right now have seen technology meaningfully improve their lives, almost on a year-over-year basis over the last 60 years.

I’m not like a blanket tech hater. There are many things that I think are great about the fact that I can get directions from my phone these days, such as that I can get directions from my phone these days. There’s all these other things that the trade-offs are– It’s unclear whether these trade-offs have been worthwhile for all of us.

We’ve been thinking about these for the last 10 years, basically, like all the ways that your Facebooks, and your Instagrams, and your TikToks, and whatever have inserted themselves into our lives for better and very often, for worse. I think that anxiety lurks beyond even the aging into orneriness that certainly I’m doing right now.

John: Let’s talk about sort of as writers who are– We can talk first about science fiction that we want to tell on screen or in books, and what the challenge is there. Then I also want to talk about writing non-science fiction things that are going to take three years or four years to come out. Man, there’s a good reason to make Mountainhead or one of these Dogme 25 films, just so that it comes out quickly. Because if our friend Aline is writing the next Devil Wears Prada movie, it’s like, what’s the world going to look like as the Devil Wears Prada movie comes out?

Let’s start with science fiction. We talked about techno optimism, techno pessimism, like this vision that the future is going to be great, and the optimism of the 1960s Star Trek or The Jetsons and how wonderful it’ll all be, and we’ll have robots to help us out there. Versus the cyberpunk dark and gritty, The Matrix. I feel like selling either of those visions right now is a little bit tricky. I can’t imagine trying to make some of our science-fiction movies on either of those paths at this moment because it just feels like anything you would want to put in your movie that’s science fiction, reality will have overtaken it by the time it comes out.

Max: I was actually just talking about this question in a meeting. My feeling about this is there’s two ways to think about it. One is like, don’t worry about it. The truth is we still watch Blade Runner even though that future didn’t come true because it is such a powerful and incredible movie about a future. It tells us both about 1982, the year it was made. It tells us about ourselves now still, and we can still see something.

I think that if you are sitting there too anxious that you missed the mark or that you’re going to get overtaken and proved wrong, that maybe your movie is too specific in a way. You need to think about what are the choices you could make that even if you got them wrong, the story is still real, the story is still going to hit, it’s still going to have that kind of power?

Then the other thing is that I think it can be kind of overstated how much, if you are doing the work, if you’re really doing your research and if you are really finding the right people to read and talking to the right people. The famous Gibson quote, “The future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” That is true in a media sense, right? That like what the average moviegoer or television watcher is reading about, and encountering, and finding to be true is often still 18 months, two years behind what the people at the absolute forefront of a given field are talking about or dealing with.

That doesn’t mean necessarily that those people are going to be right. AI guys have been promising so-called AGI within two years for about 10 years. It’s still maybe it has happened, maybe it hasn’t happened, but I would also say that I don’t– I don’t actually know. I don’t want to make a claim that I can’t back up. It wasn’t like Spike Jonze was calling up Sam Altman or whoever in 2012 whenever he made Her, and yet, he nailed it. He just absolutely, unquestionably nailed it.

I think so much of that was about having a clear sense of the big picture dynamic that he wanted to establish. I think that even if the form factor of the device didn’t get it quite right, even if the Her in Her is more advanced than ChatGPT, we see that coming. The last thing I’ll say is I think that also comes from not just a good analysis of where everything is headed, but a really good analysis of the present and near past into which everything is going.

That’s so much of what makes a good sci-fi novel or a sci-fi movie, as we were just talking about, if it’s really about the time that it’s being written and not so much necessarily about the future. That’s because the person who was writing it had a really good grasp on what the world was like at the moment they were writing it. Nobody wants to be embarrassed, and you don’t want to say–

Like the Devil Wears Prada is an unfortunately funny one, because I truly could not tell you where the media industry is going to be in two years. I hope that it’s in a place where you can have a compelling movie about a magazine editor in chief, but I wouldn’t guarantee it. I think that in terms of what you’re doing, if you’re focusing as much as possible on the larger sociopolitical, economic, technological dynamics, and also, only the actual story you’re trying to tell and what you’re trying to say about human beings. The really specific stuff, as long as you’re doing your homework, I think it matters a little less.

Craig: Is it possible that in the case of Her, the reason we are so happy with the fact that it got it right is that we actually never cared if it got it right at all? We didn’t care back then if it was getting it right. It wasn’t part of it. I didn’t watch her and think to myself, “I think I like this, but let me check in 10 years from now and decide if I liked it.” If I watched it today, I don’t think I would be giving it much credit because it’s sort of is copying along with what. It’s because it’s a great story that’s really well told.

Max: Yes, totally. The thing about her too is that it’s like, it’s also drawing on Pinocchio and Frankenstein and stories about like– It’s not like we haven’t had stories of created beings before. I think being sure of itself is maybe one way of putting it, like it’s telling a story that it wants to tell. The other thing, let’s be honest, is that Her is such a good movie that Sam Altman is really specifically trying to create Her. It’s not precisely that Spike Jonze predicted the future, he kind of made the future.

John: That’s what I want to talk about in general, is that, in many cases, our science-fiction stories are actually influencing the future, because those are the things that are inspiring the people who ended up making those things. Our space travel stories are what inspired people to travel to space. It got a whole generation of astronauts.

It’s what got people thinking about like, “Oh, what would chatting with an AI be like?” Versus the ways we were trying to do AI before this. It does shape the future, and so we have some responsibility to think about the kinds of stories we’re putting out there that can help inspire people or get people thinking about what they want their world to be like.

Craig: Counterpoint.

John: Please.

Craig: We put out so many views, and visions, and imaginations of the future that honestly, we’re just getting some of them randomly correct. While Sam Altman may have wanted to steal Scarlett Johansson’s voice, that’s really more of an homage. He could have also decided to steal Morgan Freeman’s voice or anyone’s voice. It didn’t really matter what the voice is, it’s the functionality.

I feel like sometimes we give science fiction, and I guess then by extent ourselves as creators, a little too much credit because we’re throwing everything against the wall. [crosstalk] I suppose if we deserve credit for shaping the future, we should take the blame for missing by like miles. We’re still waiting for the flying cars and the meals in a pill. Where’s my meal in a pill?

Max: [laughs] There is also the simple fact that you can only control so much how your story is getting received. I do believe pretty strongly that we have a responsibility to be clear as possible about the ways a story can be used that you don’t want to like, accidentally provide fodder for a fascist to rise to power or whatever.

Craig: Hey, it’s not like the trans sisters who made The Matrix were like, “Okay, now this red pill thing is going to really tweak the incels.”

Max: Yes, that’s a perfect example.

Craig: There’s no way to predict. If they’re going to misuse it, they’re going to misuse it.

Max: There’s a famous tweet. I’m sorry to debase myself by citing tweets, but there’s a famous and very apropos tweet that is just a scientist announcing, “I have created the famous torment nexus from the book, Don’t Create the Torment Nexus.” That’s what a lot of tech has felt like for the last 10 years or so.

[laugter]

Craig: That’s pretty good. That’s pretty great.

John: Inspired by the cautionary tale.

Max: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

John: Wrapping this up, some of the choices we have when we’re approaching science fiction premises is like, how do we enclose it in a specific box or place so that it can actually function in itself and we don’t try to pull in things that shouldn’t be there? I think it’s a version of the cellphone problem. Cellphones are fantastic, but they also ruined movies because now, all the situations where you would just- a person would have to go and physically talk to a person, they would just call them up on the phone or they text them. It’s like, “Ah,” they’re like, “scenes have been ruined by the introduction of cell phones.”

Same thing happens I think now with, “Why didn’t somebody Google that?” Or, “Why didn’t somebody look that up in ChatGPT?” You’re like, “You have all of the answers to all the questions at your fingertips, why are you doing this legwork that we don’t need you to do anymore?” A project that I’m considering writing, I think I would’ve actually set it back in 1992 because I actually need to pull it all the way back so that the characters have to do real work to solve the problems and actually connect and even find this information, because I was realizing that every year later that I set it was too easy for them to do the things they need to do.

As we talk about science-fiction canon, you look at something like Star Wars or Dune, by taking it out of earth and putting it someplace that is a clean room there, where like you don’t have the things you don’t want to have in there. It’s a chance to do, I don’t know, the fun parts of science fiction that don’t have to touch back to our messy reality, we know that it’s really there.

Craig: Dune in particular did something really brilliant by creating– It was Frank Herbert’s vision to say, “I’m going to set something that is in a galaxy far, far away,” but society experienced AI. It went so bad that they have banned computers entirely, so we’re not going to have any of that. In fact, we’re going to create an entire new subspecies of humans that are human computers now, who by drinking the juice of the Sapho, the lips acquire stains, the stains acquire– Nerd.
That’s an amazing and smart way to say, “‘m going to do science fiction by my own rules, so I’m not bound by that. Just be really smart. Star Wars has weirdly not a lot of computing going on. [laughs]

John: I think not. It’s weird because we have C-3PO, we have intelligent droids who have personalities and have inner emotional lives, and yet, they don’t seem to have most of the things we would assume that would have to come with that.
Craig: Right. We now have vehicles that will remind us to put a seatbelt on. They just get in this junky land speeder that is like a Dodge Dart from 1962, unsafe at any speed, but they’ve solved the singularity.

[laughter]

Craig: What’s happening?

John: Again, I think both in the case of Dune and Star Wars is like, they are science-fiction stories, but they’re also specifically another genre as well. Star Wars is a Western. The original Star Wars is a Western. Dune is a religious allegory. It’s a Messiah story, and so they get their science fiction that they want, but they’re actually telling a very different, specific story. That’s probably the answer to all of our dilemmas is like, if we’re just writing a science-fiction story, but if you’re writing something that’s something else that uses science fiction tropes and elements and the powers of science fiction, great.

Max: I was going to say, I think one reason Andor succeeded really well is that Tony Gilroy looked at Star Wars and he was like, “Oh, this is George Lucas making like a World War II fighter plane movie, because that’s what he loved and he wanted to make that. Instead of me trying to like make a copy of what was already a copy of a fighter plane movie, I’m going to take resistance, like French resistance movies, like World War II resistance movies, and I’m going to make the Star Wars version of that,” or whatever.

All of a sudden, it was like this new twist on the universe that we really had never seen before, but was also grounded in the same kind of things that Star Wars is grounded in, which was our knowledge of World War II fighter movies, basically.
John: One last question for the panel here. For the last 15 years on screen in filming and in television, we’ve had iPhone shaped phones. Basically, you can’t tell– Whatever they’re holding to their ear, you cannot tell what year it is because it’s just like, it’s just the shape of what a phone is supposed to be. How long does that last? How soon will that become a dated thing where you’re like, “Oh, that clearly took place sometime between certain decades”? How much longer do you think we have, Craig?

Craig: I’m going to say five years.

Max: I was going to say 15. I think it’s going to take a little longer than that.

Craig: That’s optimistic, and I like that.

Max: I will say, I do think, I would encourage writers, one of my favorite things about It Follows, the horror movie from [unintelligible 00:39:24] –

John: Oh, I love it.

Max: -is they have these amazing little clamshell phones. Totally out of nowhere. They don’t talk about it. They don’t explain it, but it’s just a cool little form factor, and it doesn’t really take away from the movie. I think if you want to write a cool movie, maybe invent a new kind of a phone and stick it in there. We’ll see what happens.

John: In my movie, The Nines, Ryan Reynolds’ character has a Treo. It’s such a specific like, “Oh, that is 2016. This is exactly one year that could have happened and–“

Max: Sometimes that works out really well. I was watching this Olivier Assayas movie Boarding Gate with Asia Argento, and at the very end, she has a snakeskin Motorola Razr. I think about it constantly because it’s such a– it just could not have been made any earlier than 2009. It is on 2009. It looks so cool. It probably would just take 10 years of total datedness, and now I’m like, oh, that rules.

John: Yes, that’s pretty great. All right, let’s get to some listener questions. Drew, help us out.

Drew: Dan in LA writes, “I’ve written dozens of scripts over the last 10 years, and I have four projects that I’m particularly proud of. One script was in the second round at the Sundance Episodic Lab, so now I know someone besides my mom thinks I’m a fairly decent writer. As part of my strategy to get read, I’m putting together a landing page on my personal website with short pitches and links to my work. What’s your general take on writers creating personal websites to promote their work? Do I list all four projects, or do I only push one or two scripts and keep the other stowed away until an agent or manager asks me what else I’ve got?”

John: All right, so on my website, I have most of the scripts that I’ve done, but they’re like finished produced things. They weren’t for like show pieces of stuff I’ve done. Max, do you have any of your unproduced stuff up on your site?

Max: No, I don’t.

John: Only the finished stuff.

Max: Yes, I got to go say, I hadn’t ever really thought about it until this question. [chuckles] It just didn’t seem like something to do

John: Yes, I’m generally a fan of putting your work out there and letting people to see it, because obviously, people aren’t going to try to steal your work. You just want them to be exposed to it. If you want to do it, great. Maybe if we could have some listeners write in with what has been their experience. Has anyone actually signed a rep, a manager, or an agent where they found you because they found your stuff on your website? We know people who’ve been signed because they were really funny on Twitter and people reached out to them for samples and stuff. Craig, what’s your instinct?

Craig: Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with putting some stuff on the internet. I think, Dan, you might be overthinking things a little bit because I’m sensing a little bit of control issues and anxiety as if I put the exact right number on, it will be good, and if I put the wrong number on, it will be bad. It’ll be fine. Doesn’t matter. Do you list all four projects? If you want. Push one or two scripts? If you want. Do you want to keep the others stowed away? It’s okay.

Here’s the thing. Maybe start with a smaller amount, and then if it’s not working, throw another one on there. Rotate them through, but it’s really just to advertise you as a writer or to get you into a room to start you talking to people and find out maybe what they might want you to write for them. If you’re super lucky, then yes, they’ll pick up one of those scripts and say, I want to make this, but I wouldn’t tense up too much about it. Go for it.

John: Yes, I say go for it, too. One option to consider is maybe put the first 10 pages of a script on, and that 11th page says, if you want to read the rest of this, email me here, and that way, at least you have some contact with the person who might be reading it, because if it’s just some random person on the internet, you might never really know that somebody actually read it, and so it associates you as a person with this work that you’re doing.

Craig: It’s a good idea.

John: Next question, Drew.

Drew: “I’m Thomas, a 1st AD based in Germany, working all over. Every now and then, you guys talk about playing this or that game, either on a console or a board, and I’m constantly asking myself how you manage to find the time for that. When I was younger, I’m 43 now, I love playing video games, and I still do, but with my job, a wife, and social life, it’s hard for me to find time for myself to enjoy these things, especially since nowadays, most of the games are real time suckers. How do you, as writers, showrunners, and directors, family men, and podcasters even find the time to turn on a console or put down a board, and at the same time, keep track of the latest shows and movies? Do you have lab-created twins that no one knows about?

Craig: I love this question. Man with job notorious for long hours asks other men how they have time. You’re a 1st AD, Thomas. Of course, you don’t have time. [laughs] The rest of us don’t work as hard as you do. I’ve said it a million times, I don’t know why anybody does that job. God bless you for doing it. It’s an amazing job, but your day begins an hour before everyone’s, ends an hour after everyone’s, and everyone else’s job is 12 hours minimum. Yes, you’re probably sleeping or crying in the time you have off. [laughs] Although, I will say, side note, I don’t watch that many shows and movies. That’s my big secret.

John: That’s a secret people should need to know. It’s like Craig, I watch a lot more than Craig does. If we have the same number of free hours, which is not probably true, because I probably have a little bit more free time than Craig does, you’re playing video games, whereas I’m watching whole seasons of things.

Craig: Video games, solving puzzles, but then there’s a lot of time- honestly, there’s a lot of time where I feel like I’m not doing anything at all. One thing that people need to wrap their minds around, and it’s not fair, it’s just the way the world works, and this might be a particularly different thing for a German 1st AD to deal with, because I’m really, I’m going to go right against your Teutonic AD-ness right now, one hour of time is not the same for everybody.

There are people who do 12 hours of stuff in an hour, and there are people who do one hour of stuff in an hour. The people who do 12 hours of stuff in an hour don’t need the other 11 hours for anything. In fact, they may just sit there and do nothing. Some people are sprinters, some people are marathoners, but in the long run, maybe everybody sort of gets to the end in the same time. It’s just that if you’re a sprinter, the off time you can spend maybe with more leisurely activities.

John: Max, before we started talking here, you said that you’re going to have a kid home from school for the summer, a young child home from school for the summer, so this resonates for you, I guess.

Max: Yes, I have to admit, I gave my brother my PS5 when my son was born. I was just like, no time for this, and I really haven’t, I haven’t gamed at all over the last four and a half years. I miss it a lot, but I also, like I was saying earlier in the podcast, I pick the job I have to give myself time in my job to read and to watch movies that I want to watch, and I try to be– It’s like, it’s all well and good for me because I’m very conscious about my time.

Of course, if I took the two hours I spend scrolling through bullshit websites every day, then I could, in fact, be gaming. I’m certainly not working as hard as Thomas is, but at some point I was like, I know what thing is going to suck the most time because when it comes to games, I’m worse even than Twitter or whatever else. I just will lose hours.

Craig: I’m glad you said– You know what, there’s something I want you to think about, though. I think there is something in our puritanical nature, our Calvinistic nature here in the United States, whether we’re Calvinists or not, where we’re much more accepting of wasting time on things that are vaguely work-ish than we are with things that are purely recreational and argue that pure recreation is the thing that isn’t a waste of time and that the vague work-ishness is the true tragedy. The scrolling pointlessly is a tragedy, whereas playing something that delights you is a win. I’m giving you this gift. Really, I want you to go back to your brother’s house, rip that goddamn console right out of the wall and say, “This is mine.”

John: The new GTA is coming.

Craig: Seriously, you need it back before GTA 6.

Max: Yes, that’s definitely incredible.

Craig: Dude, you need to get your mind right, man.

Max: I know, I know.

Craig: [crosstalk] coming, it’s coming.

Max: Wow. This is a real come-to-Jesus moment for me.

Craig: Kiss your family goodbye and go.

John: Another thing I’ll say, just taking from– Craig and I, we have a weekly D&D game and we do block off that time for that and Craig has other set blocks in his schedule which is about this thing that he does. Thomas, you may find that just putting it on the calendar makes it clear that this is a priority for you. I think you have to prioritize having fun.
Craig: You have to prioritize having fun. That is something that a German 1st AD receives like a scalding hot liquid, right? I assume that he’s screaming right now.

Drew: Let’s do one last question here from Tim. Recently, I discovered that Final Draft 13 requires a phone home every 60-some days even though there’s support docs so that you only need to be online for the first activation. I regularly write on an offline machine or away from internet and it’s frustrating that this wasn’t noted before buying Final Draft 13. Do you have a recommendation for any screenwriting software that doesn’t require phoning home after activation?

Craig: Yes, John, do you have recommendations for that? [laughs]

John: Let’s talk about phoning home because another friend of mine got bit by the Final Draft thing and was really frustrated by this. Here’s what we do in Highland Pro and this is just sort of things you buy through the Mac App Store. This is sort of how it should work, is that when you start a subscription, it creates an app receipt that’s stored on your device itself. We say, oh, this thing is valid through this time. Every time you launch or resume an app, we attempt in the background to check, did anything change here? Did they add on extra months? Did anything change?

If you’re offline, we go by the last receipt that’s cached and stored, but we only lock out a user and put them in read-only mode if you’ve gone online and we checked and the receipt now says that it’s expired. That’s basically best practices. That’s what we try to do in Highland Pro and that’s really what most software you’re going to encounter these days is doing. I suspect Adobe’s a similar situation with their stuff too. That’s just how you should do it. It’s silly that Final Draft is doing this, but it’s not surprising necessarily. You understand why they’re doing it. You understand that they want to make sure that is this actually a valid app, but they’re doing it wrong.

Craig: Maybe they could just be cooler about it. What you’re suggesting is the best practice is, hey, if you pop online, which most of us are going to have to do every now and again, yes, we’ll check in. If you decide to Faraday cage your computer, then we’ll just let you have it. Just go ahead.

John: I think it comes down to it and it’s sort of where you’re putting your trust. Basically, if a person really wanted to never pay to start out a monthly Highland subscription and just never pay for it again, and they went online, offline, and they just never ever went back online, that’s a choice they’re making. I’m not going to–

Craig: Exactly. That’s the paranoid nonsense that Final Draft is famous for. We’ve got to make sure no one out there is robbing us of our overpriced nonsense for bad software. Otherwise, it’s a terrific product.

John: Listen, eventually you’re going to want to come back online because stuff does change. The systems get updated and things break.

Craig: No, no, no. If I come back online, I’m going to owe somebody.

[laughter]

John: All right, let’s do our one cool things. Max, do you want to start us off? What do you want to share with our listeners?

Max: Yes, I want to talk about a movie that I saw recently that I really loved called the Red Rooms. It’s a Canadian movie that it’s not science fiction, but it is very sort of technologically interested. I think it’s a great movie to watch if, among other things, you’re interested in how to depict people using computers in dramatic ways. This is maybe less for screenwriters than it is for directors and cinematographers because it’s very good at showing its main character using the computer to win at online poker and go on the dark web and try and buy a snuff film and all these things.

The movie itself is an awful horror movie, like awful in the sense of you will feel so bad after you watch this. If you are the kind of person who likes to be made to feel bad by movies, this is one of the best examples. It reminds me of the Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa a little bit, who’s directed a bunch of unbelievably creepy horror movies. It’s a little bit like Michael Haneke and Caché and other movies like that.

The plot, which I just want to establish, I’m sure there’s some people who are like, let me just skip 30 seconds forward because this is not for me. If that does sound like it’s for you, it’s about a French-Canadian model who becomes obsessed with a serial killer on trial and develops a friendship with a sort of true crime podcaster. It’s a character study. The main actress, this woman, Juliette Gariépy, is so good, I cannot tell you.

I was really impressed by it. I didn’t know anything about it. It was a good movie about the internet, a good movie about true crime, a good old-fashioned serial killer movie. It’s worth watching both for the craft that went into making it, if you’re interested in thinking about tech and how it enters your movies, but also just as a good movie.

John: That’s great. I want to plug here that your newsletter is full of good recommendations for things, the things you’re reading and the things you’re watching, including Max will put in just YouTube videos for songs you’re listening to, and every third or fourth one is added to the playlist. Some good stuff there.

Max: Yes, I’m just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I think [crosstalk] is pretty good.

John: It’s what we do. This is writing. My one cool thing is an article in Scientific American. It’s an article titled, This Strange Mutation Explains the Mystifying Color of Orange Cats. Basically, we’ve had orange cats for a good long time. Orange cats are weirdos. They’re almost always males and they didn’t know why. They would assume that since orange cats are males, there must be something on the Y chromosome. Makes sense. It turns out it’s actually something on the X chromosome that is suppressing something on the Y chromosome. It was a bunch of genetics that was being done to figure this out.

It took a long time to get there, but they actually now understand more why orange cats are orange. I love orange cats. Orange cats are– I’ll also put a link in the show notes to a Reddit called OneOrangeBraincell, which is about just dumb orange cats. I love a dumb orange cat. I maybe remember Raleigh, who was the sort of our office cat. He actually lived two doors down, but was always wandering in our backyard at lunchtime and would join us for lunch every day in the office. Raleigh has probably passed on. Raleigh would be 25 at this point, but Raleigh was a good orange cat. A cool story. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this for Scientific American.

Craig: There goes the last mystery left in the world.

John: Yes, now that we know what the orange cats are.

Craig: So depressing. My one cool thing is my kid. You know I don’t do this. I don’t do this. My younger daughter, Jessica, is a budding singer-songwriter. As she often does, she writes songs, plays them, records them, puts them on TikTok. A couple of weeks ago, she threw it on there and it went viral. I think it’s really good. I think it’s a good song. I think she’s great. I’m sharing it with you because, A, my kid, proud. B, feels thematic. For our topic today, the song is called The Simulation is Failing.

John: She really is your daughter.

Craig: She is my kid. I never even told her that this was all simulation. She figured it out on her own.

John: Kids these days, they’re so wise.

Craig: They’re so wise. Yes. Synthetic children these days.

[laughter]

Craig: Wise.

John: I think back to the Steven Spielberg movie A.I. and like, wow, it got everything right. This is exactly what the future was going to be like.

[laughter]

Craig: Exactly. Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. That’s our show for this week. It’s produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have a great new one up from Greta Gerwig, so check that out.

You will find T-shirts and hoodies and drink wear at Cotton Bureau with Scriptnotes logos all over them. You’ll find the show notes with the links for all the things we talked about each week in the email you get as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible to keep doing the show week after 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 with Max on a new genre that I think you’re trying to pin down. We’ll help you out on that. You should also read Max on his own Substack called Read Max. Max, thanks so much for joining us.

Max: Thank you guys so much for having me. It was a blast as always.

Craig: Thank you, Max.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Max, I’m looking at your Letterboxd and the lists that you have formed in your Letterboxd because halogencore that we talked about in the setup, that actually originated in your Letterboxd. You also have lists of movies where British people have a bad time in Spain.

Max: Which is really a thing. Those are good movies too. That’s actually great. You can mine that territory for something fantastic. Sexy Beast is a great movie and there it is.

Craig: Oh, the best.

Max: That’s the story. They have a bad time in Spain. [laughs]

Craig: They have a bad time in Spain. Yes, yes.

John: You also have the ‘90s dad thriller core canon, so when dads had a rough time and dads had to– Action movies about dads.

Max: Yes. It’s worth checking the Substack newsletter now because I’ve got some diagrams. I had some strong thoughts about this set of movies. There’s some extra reading for people who are interested.

John: Recently on your Substack, you were promoting a new genre or sub genre. Tell us about it.

Max: Yes. This one’s a little bit more art house pretentious than halogencore, but I do think it’s a little related. I watched this movie called Code 46, which if I had known about it, I had forgotten about it. It’s a Michael Winterbottom movie from 2003 with Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. It’s set in like a future Shanghai. I have to be honest, it is not a perfect movie. There’s a lot of things that are not very good about it.

Craig: What is?

Max: It has a vibe. I think especially like one of those movies that maybe you can only really get the vibe 20 years later. I was like, I love this vibe. Even though this movie is not great, it’s this very beautifully photographed Shanghai, sort of set on border crossings. Tim Robbins is an insurance investigator looking into someone forging passports who happens to be Samantha Morton, who he falls in love with. In my head, I was thinking there’s these other movies that are sort of resemble it. This movie Boarding Gate, which I talked about earlier in the episode by Olivier Assayas, another, again, not a perfect movie, but it just hits a particular sort of vibe.

Another Olivier Assayas movie called Demonlover, an Abel Ferrara movie called New Rose Hotel with Christopher Walken. Again, these are all movies that did not get very well reviewed on release necessarily, certainly were not huge hits, but looked at from 20-plus years later, have an interesting thing to say about globalization and the future.

I made a list of these. I include the ones I just mentioned. Michael Mann’s Blackhat is probably the biggest one that really fits in this thing. Also a huge bomb and also a movie that I think has recovered in some people’s esteem since then, a movie I love called Ghostbox Cowboy, which nobody’s ever heard of, which is like, I always describe it as like, if Tim and Eric made a William Gibson movie, it’s like about this crazy American who goes to Shenzhen to try and make a box that can talk to the spirit world. It’s all these meetings with the VCs that are sort of docufiction. Then it takes a really weird turn.

Craig: Oh, you mean it wasn’t already really weird?

Max: You will think the first half was normal once you hit the second half. I think Tenet sort of is in this. You remember it’s set in these freeport zones. The Jim Jarmusch movie Limits of Control, the Clive Owen thriller, The International. This is Tom Tykwer’s. I think it was his follow-up to Run Lola Run. Again, movies that didn’t, The Counselor, Ridley Scott, Cormac McCarthy.

I like doing this partly because if you take any one of these movies individually, you’re probably looking at a bomb. You are at best looking at like an arthouse thriller that 500 people saw. The nice thing about doing a list like this or a sort of micro genre is you put them all next to each other and you think, oh, there is something that connects these.

John: It’s a connection. You have globalization. Do they need to be Americans who are overseas or just like people are not in their native culture?

Max: I think it’s usually Westerners. Yes. Let’s say the thematic concerns, globalization, supply chains, logistics, a lot of them end up in China, in Jakarta, in Japan. These are movies that are deep down sort of about anxieties about the future, about a future in which Asia is rising.

John: How about Syriana? Would that fall into your–

Max: I think it’s very similar. I’m not sure it’s quite there, but it has a similar kind of– Syriana is in some ways smarter than these movies, I think, because it’s less of a thriller in a certain way.

Craig: What about like– There were two movies. What was one called? Black Rain, maybe.

Max: Oh yes, the Michael Douglas. Yes.

John: There’s definitely like proto, that’s like part of what leads into this or Rising Sun is another one that’s real Japan anxiety movies.

Craig: Japan anxiety, yes.

Max: I think around the turn of the century, it turns in. Partly it turns into China anxiety and partly the focus is less on businesses. Even Die Hard has this, right? Like the lurking in the back of the tower.

Craig: Nakatomi.

Max: Yes, it’s the Nakatomi tower. It’s less about Japanese businesses buying American businesses. It’s more about manufacturing and logistics and all this stuff that we now know from the vantage point of 2025 had this huge impact on American politics that we didn’t. I’m not sure that many of you were seeing at the time, but that there are these interesting thrillers set in freeports in loading docks, border crossings.

My theory about this is basically that we had all these great thrillers in the ‘90s that a few years ago, this guy, David Rudnick, coined the word Nokiawave. We’re talking about the same GoldenEye, Peacemaker, like all these Eastern European set, techno thrillers, usually about loose nuclear weapons on the black market. 9/11 comes and the geopolitical anxieties that were undergirding those movies gets transitioned into the Borne Identity style, like war on terror, dramatic, morality plays.

What happens is this other new, huge geopolitical development, the rise of China, the rise of Asia, the globalization of manufacturing. It’s all these European, these pretentious European directors and Michael Mann, who deep down inside is a pretentious European director, are like, okay, this is something interesting here and we can make this happen. They all have this, they’re sort of diffuse.

You very often can’t really follow the plot, which is, I think, one reason why many people didn’t like these movies when they came out. Possibly, they have these roving cameras, always shot on location, but in some ways the thriller genre plots is really what keeps them solid at all. This is what prevents them from just being like total exercises in art house masturbation or whatever, that they do have death in them and illicit sex and all these other things.

I’ve been calling them SEZ Noir. SEZ stands for Special Economic Zone, which is like Shenzhen in China is a special economic zone that operates under slightly different rules than the rest of China. It has turned it into a manufacturing hub. Noir because they all are noir. They’re all about these haunted people on the periphery who they’re trying to move their way up the value chain. Then their scheme takes a wrong turn somewhere and they find themselves on the run.

The thing that I think is most interesting about all of these is the one thing that they all have in common, despite the differences, and this is a vague spoiler, is they all end with the protagonist losing their identity entirely, losing their papers, losing their identity, finding themselves adrift somewhere, maybe pursued by gangsters, maybe pursued by the government, maybe pursued by a corporation, though those three groups tend to be blurred together like this.

They’re not movies with happy endings, but they’re also not movies with endings where the characters are straight up killed. They just enter the ether, which is a sort of interesting statement that I haven’t quite internalized or processed about, about globalization like that. Anyway, I do recommend all these movies, especially if you can watch them with a with an open mind, let’s say. [chuckles]

Craig: Now, you did, you listed all these movies that you recommend by saying, and this one was a bomb. This one was not well-received. This was a bomb. This was a bomb. This was a bomb.

Max: Yes.

John: Let’s just try to poke at maybe why they didn’t work, is because filmmakers are tackling these questions that they find really interesting, but maybe it’s just actually not really relevant to people’s lived experience. Maybe people aren’t able to see themselves in that place or position because most Americans don’t have a passport. They’re not used to being out of their depth and in this place. While they might have fears of Asian companies taking over their work, Die Hard is a much better expression of that feeling than some of these movies would be.

Max: Yes. They’re definitely not about the most direct effects of globalization on Americans, which is like de-industrialization across the country, basically. They’re really specifically about people who are often quite unlikable who are trying to profit off of that process in ways that I think the average American until maybe even recently didn’t quite realize the extent to which this international logistics and shipping organizations were doing. They’re dark, too. That’s the other part of it is like, there’s harder to find an appetite for that thing in general. If you’re making a movie that is dark and complicated and political, you’re probably not making a blockbuster.

I think that this is also just a function of like– I’m trying to think of what the counter history or the counterfactual is. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, a lot would be different. Let’s stipulate that. I also think that this kind of subject would maybe have, I don’t want to be too mean about my favorite European directors, but the more competent at entertaining hands of Hollywood might’ve been able to take these themes and ideas and transform them.

Michael Mann has a director’s cut of Blackhat. I’ve seen it. I can’t pretend that it’s that different from the cut that was released and I’m not really sure it would have made a huge difference to its box office receipts. I think you could also say like Tenet is an example of a movie that took a lot of these themes and spun gold out of them. Though because it’s less of a period piece, it holds a little bit less of that vibe attraction for me, which is part of what I have been really enjoying about these.

John: I also feel like Tenet feels like a science fiction film that is able to do science fiction and these things. As we said in the main show, science fiction plus another genre. It just feels like it was taking that genre and putting it onto science fiction.

Max: Yes. Tenet, I will also say, is a great example of a movie that you have to pay really close attention for it to make sense. Yet at the same time, it did really well and people love it and you can watch it and enjoy it without it needing to make note by note perfect sense, which is a pretty stunning thing to be able to do.

John: Max, thank you for this, a new genre, addition to the canon. We’ll look for more movies in it.

Max: Yes. Okay.

John: Thanks for coming back on the show.

Max: Of course. It was great to talk to you guys.

Craig: Thanks, Max.

John: All right. Thanks.

Links:

• Max Read’s newsletter Read Max and his Letterboxd
• Dogma 25 Explodes at Cannes by Annika Pham, Marta Balaga for Variety
• Maze by Christopher Manson
• Blue Prince
• Graham’s source for Egypt’s GDP and John’s sources
• Neal Stephenson
• William Gibson
• Red Rooms
• This Strange Mutation Explains the Mystifying Color of Orange Cats by Gayoung Lee for Scientific American
• The Simulation is Failing. by Jessica Mazin
• r/OneOrangeBraincell
• 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 Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s 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: Okay, so. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 688 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we welcome back a seven-time guest.

Craig: Oh.

John: He is a comedian, filmmaker, and podcaster whose new special, The Good Life, debuted this week on Netflix. It is the legendary Mike Birbiglia. Welcome back.

Mike Birbiglia: Hey, guys. This is my favorite podcast. I, on the flight here, listened to the Taffy Akner Moneyball episode. As a fan of the show, I request-

Craig: More?

Mike: -more breaking apart a movie.

John: Oh, yes. The Deep Dives? Yes.

Mike: Oh my gosh.

Craig: I think he’s right. I think he’s right. We don’t do it enough. I guess what we do do enough, or maybe too much of, is having Mike Birbiglia on the show.

John: No.

Craig: Seven-time host. We should give you the jacket, the robe that SNLers get.

Mike: The Seven Timers Club.

Craig: The Seven Timers Club.

John: Here are the episodes he was on. First was in 2013 for My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend Screenwriter. That’s way back to your first film. Then, Austin Forever in 2014. That was an Austin Live show, which I had forgotten that we actually– that’s where you first–

Mike: My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend Special. Then, what was it? We talked about Sleepwalk with Me, the movie? My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend wasn’t a movie.

John: It was number two. Yes, okay. That was a special, wasn’t it?

Mike: That was a special, yes.

John: That was a special, right. I think I first saw you– Joss Whedon interviewed you at the Writers Guild Theater for Sleepwalk With Me.

Mike: For Sleepwalk With Me. 2012. Woo.

John: 2014, Austin Forever. 2016, Don’t Think Twice. Your movie, which we all loved.

Mike: Thanks.

John: It was so early on the dissection of how comedy groups work and how improv works and all that stuff. It’s held up really well.

Mike: Oh, thanks.

John: We had you on in 2019 for The New One. We had you in 2020. You were part of a big episode with What We’re All Up To during the pandemic. We checked in with you there. I was a guest on your show, which we also aired on this very podcast. Your show called Working It Out, your podcast, is phenomenal. I recommend it to–

Craig: I have seen it. That’s the thing. That’s why I like the idea of maybe putting this on video because I like watching you-

Mike: Oh, wow. Thanks.

Craig: -more than I like listening to you.

Mike: That’s fascinating.

Craig: I actually turn the sound off.

Mike: Oh, you turn the sound off?

Craig: Yes. I just watch you.

Mike: I’m like a silent film podcast star to you?

Craig: I blow it up and I just look at you mouth. Yes, Sexy Craig likes your podcast.

Mike: Oh, I’m so glad that we’re recording this.

John: Recently on your podcast, you had Gary Simons, who works with you on that podcast.

Mike: Yes, true.

John: He’s also a stand-up comic. You were talking through the process. It was so good in terms of answering questions about what it’s like to get a career started as a stand-up comic in the way that I think we’re trying to answer those questions for aspiring screenwriters. It was just so, so smart.

Mike: Thanks a lot. It’s funny. There were two episodes back-to-back that were Scriptnotes-esque but in the comedy space. The Gary Simons episode, which we basically speak to what do you do in the first three to five years of trying to be a comic? Then the week before Ira Glass comes on and decides, “Hey, I want to try to do stand-up comedy.”

Craig: I was impressed by this. I really was.

Mike: It was like, “Well, what happens if you’re not a stand-up comic? You want to try it. I perform 10 minutes. What is your critique of these 10 minutes? It’s not unlike the three-page challenge.

John: What I’d like to do with you on the podcast today is talk about how you write a joke for the stage, for a sketch, or for a scene. We have some scenarios. It’s like how would this be a movie, but how would this be a joke? We have some scenarios we’re going to talk through and figure out what is the comedic premise for each of these types of writing and how different they are. A joke you tell on stage versus a sketch versus a scene, they’re really different needs even though they are all potentially finding comedy in a situation.

Mike: That’s great.

John: Cool. We’re also going to answer listener questions on breaking a story, using an idea, TV remakes. In our bonus segment for premium members, let’s talk about video and social and all the infrastructure behind the scenes and stuff, because you and your team do an amazing job with video for your podcast, the marketing without making it feel like marketing. You must have email lists that are managed. I’d just love to know what all that’s like, because it’s just–

Craig: Because we want to beat you.

Mike: Sure.

Craig: Teach us your ways so that we may overcome you.

John: I just want to know more about that.

Mike: That seems great. I love that.

John: Cool. Drew, we have some news.

Drew Marquardt: We do. We realized that Spotify had comments on the podcast episodes.

Craig: Oh.

Mike: No idea.

Drew: So we turned them off. Oh, we have yours too.

John: The Spotify comments we were getting on Scriptnotes episode, and the reason we turned them off, they’re all about The Last of Us, Craig.

Mike: Oh my gosh.

Craig: Great. I’m sure the people that take time to leave comments on Spotify love the show and all the decisions we’ve made.

Drew: Very measured feedback.

John: Mike, yours are still on. You may not realize this, so we have a sampling of some of the comments on your Ira Glass episode.

Mike: Amazing.

John: Rory wrote in and said, “Maybe the best episode of the show feels like the core of what this podcast should be about.”

Mike: Oh, wow.

John: String of Numbers says, “Props to Ira for being open and vulnerable in his work. It was interesting to see Mike pointing out where the punchline should go and Ira being less sure how to approach that.”

Mike: Sure. All right.

John: Elise says, “Love this show but “Hiking is walking” is a joke made on Sex and the City-

Mike: Oh.

John: -by a character played by David Duchovny 20 years ago. It’s not original.”

Mike: Fair.

John: Then we also looked at the YouTube clip for that and it said, “You don’t know this, but in my brain, you’re my dad.”

Mike: Me or Ira?

John: Yes, to you.

Mike: All right.

Craig: You wanted it to be Ira, didn’t you?

[laughter]

Mike: He is in some ways, I said this on the episode. He in some ways feels like my dad.

Craig: He’s a very paternal.

John: He is, yes.

Craig: Yes, he gives that vibe.

John: Yes, but I think there’s a lot of dad energy in this podcast right now. We’re all very in that dad–

Craig: Even you. Even you, Drew.

John: Yes. He’s a young dad. Young dad. He has a young child.

Mike: Oh, you have a young child?

Drew: I don’t. No.

Mike: Okay. Perfect.

[laughter]

Craig: Because he seems so ambivalent about it?

Mike: Yes, exactly.

Craig: I know I have five kids, but I don’t know if I’m real.

John: Drew looks like he could be pushing a stroller, though.

Craig: Oh, for sure.

Drew: I’m going to take that as a compliment.

Craig: Drew, are we allowed to ask you how old you are by law?

Drew: I don’t think legally, no.

Craig: Okay. I’m not asking you. If you volunteer it, I’m just curious.

Drew: I’m 35.

Craig: I already had a five-year-old and a two-year-old by that point. I would say yes, he’s stroller age.

John: Final comment on your YouTube. Why do I just now realized Mike looks a lot like Matt Damon? Do you get the Matt Damon comparison?

Mike: Yes. Cross between Matt Damon and Bill O’Reilly.

Craig: Oh, wow.

John: Oh, wow. That’s it.

Craig: I would adjust that to just Bill O’Reilly.

John: Now, once it, you can’t unsee it. It’s crazy.

Craig: You are young, kind Bill O’Reilly.

Mike: Every time– so over the years, I get Paul Rudd. The one I got for years was James Van Der Beek.

John: [crosstalk]

Mike: When I was on Late Night with Seth Meyers once, and James Van Der Beek was there, I was like, “People tell me I look like you.” He was just like, “I don’t see it.” Anyway. Now I never say what people compare me [unintelligible 00:07:02]

Craig: The next time you’re on O’Reilly, you should bring it up.

Mike: Oh, God.

John: Where is O’Reilly now? Is it a podcast or is it a video? I don’t know. He’s not on a network anymore.

Mike: I think it’s probably some a self-release thing, right?

Craig: Podcast thing. From his bunker.

John: Yes, it’s wild. Mike, talk to us about this special. I saw versions of this along the way. I saw you had Mike Birbiglia and Friends, where you did some of the material in this. Then I saw the full thing on stage, and I saw it last night in its finished Netflix form. I think we’ve talked on previous episodes about your process, which we can see as a bunch of note cards up on a board.

Mike: Sure.

John: What was the inception of this, and when did you find the pieces fitting together?

Mike: The inception of it was two years ago when I finished The Old Man in the Pool, which was at Lincoln Center, and we filmed it for Netflix. I always talk on my podcast about this concept of obsession. What is the thing you’re obsessed about, can’t stop thinking about? As a writer, it’s like, “Well, just write that. Just free write on that. This Is My Journal, it’s like I’m free writing on that at breakfast this morning.

Two years ago, it was just like, “Oh, this is weird. My daughter is eight years old now, and I don’t know a lot of the answers to the questions, because kids just always ask so many questions. I was knocking it out of the park till age eight. Then all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, these are tricky questions.” I just went– my first thing is always like I go to the comedy cellar. I go to small 100, 200 seat comedy rooms, try out a ton of jokes. Those jokes eventually become stories. At a certain point, I start to form the stories into having, similar to how you guys talk about it all the time, of so-then causality versus and-then lateral movement story-wise.

About a year into the process, my dad had a stroke, and so much of my life became about taking care of my dad. I started to think in relation to, “Okay, what if the show was about how do I explain things to my daughter?” and also, “What is my relationship with my own dad?” It becomes this– the title is The Good Life, but it becomes a meditation on the question that my daughter asked me when she looked up at a smoke shop called, The Good Life, “Dad, what’s the good life?” It opens the special with an existential question, “What is the good life?” It makes the audience wonder that. Then I go through a lot of stories with my daughter and with my dad, and then it arrives at a thesis at the end of what is the good life.

John: Yes. Great. When you’re figuring out these pieces, one of these things you get to do as a stand-up comic is just constantly test the material and constantly see what actually resonates with the audience. When we’re writing scenes, we’re writing scenes but they just exist on a page. We don’t hear them. We don’t feel them. We don’t get a reaction. You’re constantly getting the reaction. What was the culling process like of like, “Oh, I think it’s this idea.” How developed are jokes you’re telling in those initial rooms?

Mike: The jokes at the beginning are– they’re developed insofar as I’ve run them by friends who are comics, usually. Our listenerships are similar in the sense of it’s a lot of creative people who are either working as creatives or want to work as creatives. I always say, try to build a community of the people around you. I look around at the people who I started with, and we were all broke and struggling in our 20s. I look around and go, “Oh, they’re doing really well now.” ‘You know what I mean? There is a thing to creating your own community of people who are at your level.

I feel like now it’s like people like Pete Holmes and John Mulaney are people who in my 20s were trying to figure it all out, and we would run jokes by each other. Now everyone has a really good career, but still you run jokes by each other. Then even, I think it was one of those Largo shows that you were at and Mulaney came on and he gave me a joke that ended up in the special. There’s a line where I go, “I’m a comedian. My wife is a poet. Together, we’re a sculptor.” I came off stage and he goes, “What about this?” He goes, “It doesn’t make sense, but what do you think of this?” I was like, “Yes, I’ll try that.” It somehow does make sense in the context of the special.

That’s what it is. It’s like, you start out with, you bounce jokes off friends, which is what my whole podcast is. Then when you figure out something that you think is worth an audience seeing, you put it out there. Then I go on tour, and that’s really instructive bringing it to all different cities because you see like, “Oh, yes, this isn’t just a provincial sense of humor in New York City. This is something that plays everywhere,” or it doesn’t play. I think a huge part of being a comedian is figuring out what doesn’t work.

Craig: Yes, I wish that we had that. Although I suppose what we do– we don’t quite have it on the granular level that you do because I don’t think any of our friends would just go, “Hey, here’s a scene.”

Mike: Yes, sure.

Craig: It starts on page 37. You don’t know what happened before. We will share scripts, and we will look at– maybe even it’s more common to happen deeper into the process where we’ll say, “Okay, here’s a cut of.” You, actually, you had that testing procedure for your movie-

Mike: Don’t Think Twice, yes.

Craig: -Don’t Think Twice, where you would have a reading and people would there and then discuss it, which was really smart.

John: It’s hard to iterate. Long form writing is just hard to iterate overall.

Craig: It is.

John: You can’t watch this whole thing. When I was doing Big Fish, the musical, we could iterate. Every night, we could see the show like, “Oh, this is what’s working. This is what’s not working.” I can swap out jokes. We could move whole scenes around. In film and TV writing, it’s not really possible.

Craig: Yes, it is a little scary to know that you’re chiseling in stone and then sending it out into the world. What I love about what you’re saying, it’s what– we talked about writers’ groups last week, I think. Part of me gets itchy when people write in and they’re like, “I’m part of a writer’s group,” because I think, “Well, what if all the writers in that group aren’t very good?” because the odds are they’re not.

Mike: Sure.

Craig: Then they’re all giving each other advice, and it’s maybe bad. Then I think, “Okay, if you do find yourself hitting a mark, getting a job, entering, to look around for people that are also like you, and what I think has changed, I don’t know if you agree with me, John, when we started in Hollywood, it felt like you were isolated and that, in fact, we were all meant to be in competition with each other. We were like horses in our stall before the gate opens.

I think as the internet brought everybody together, that went away completely and became more like, Okay, I’m going to pick up a phone, “Have you worked with this person?” or, “I have an idea. Do you think this is a good idea?” I love that you can do that with– does it ever hurt?

Mike: Which part of it?

Craig: When you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to try this show. Okay, Mulaney, I’m going to run this by you,” and he just stares at you and he’s like, “No.”

Mike: No, I don’t think that hurts. I don’t say– Look, I think not doing well with a joke with friends, it’s hard in that moment. Not doing well with a joke on stage is hard in that moment. I think you have to, like there’s an imperative to view it as I’m getting feedback for something that will be finished later. It’s like the wisest thing that almost anyone ever taught me is my editor, Jeffrey Richman, who edited this special, he edited both of my movies, he edited Severance, he did Escape at Dannemora, he does a lot of stuff with Ben Stiller. On both movies, I had moments in the edit where I go, “What are we going to do? This is a disaster.”

Craig: Oh, sure.

Mike: He just goes, “Oh, we’re not going to hand it in till it’s done.” It’s so simple of an idea, but I think that that’s– all artistic process, you just don’t hand it in till it’s done.

Craig: What I think people that work in comedy have, that people who have never worked in comedy don’t have, is this, which is, sometimes I describe it as a work ethic, but what I really think it is humility. Comedy humiliates you.

Mike: [laughs] Yes, sure.

Craig: Humiliates you. Then, as part of the process, you must get re-humiliated over and over and over-

Mike: That’s right.

Craig: -to the point where you don’t even see it as humiliation anymore. You see it as part of the process towards turning it in before it’s done.

Mike: That’s right.

Craig: A lot of people who come in drama have this opposite point of view. Their point of view is, “I need to treasure my instincts. That is my voice, and what I have done, therefore, is correct, regardless of what people think.” I think having a little bit of that isn’t such a bad idea, but I’m far more admiring of the humiliation sequence.

Mike: Liz Gilbert has this, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, and many other great things, has this TED Talk that’s so good about the idea of not being a genius but having a genius, and holding it, and fostering it. That way it doesn’t become about you, or you, or you.

Craig: Oh, yes.

Mike: I think that that’s really key as a comedian. You can never think, “I am funny.” You have to think, “I want to create something that is funny for these people.”

Craig: That’s brilliant. I think that’s absolutely brilliant. Now, also, you probably need to then do the same thing for whatever the opposite of genius is, the self-loathing, the critic, I guess, which is sometimes hard for me. I should imagine like, “Okay, it’s easy for me to imagine there’s genius over there. That’s not me.” Now I have to figure out like, “Okay.” Also, there’s a critic over there not in here. That can be difficult. I like that.

John: I want to talk to you about how you bring yourself to your work. As writers, we’re always putting ourselves in our scripts and in our pages, but it’s all disguised. It’s never really exactly us. We’re never identifying like, “Oh, this is me doing this thing,” versus your stand-up, which is all about what has happened to you. All of your comedy is very centered on your experience of things that happened to you, and the people around you, which is a challenge because your wife, Jenny, your daughter, Una, they’ve been part of all of your specials. We know a lot about them even though we’ve never met them.

Mike: My parents, yes.

John: Your parents, especially in this one, and your dad, who’s unwillingly dragged into this story.

Mike: Oh, yeah. So you’ve been talking to him about it?

John: Oh, yes. Can you talk to me, as you’re developing this material and trying it on stage, how do you find the boundaries of like, “Well, this is me, Mike Birbiglia, as the individual person, versus me, the performer, who is creating this funny thing that’s not me”?

Mike: That is probably the most challenging part of it. I think that’s part of the reason why I’m going to take a few years off from autobiographical storytelling right now, because my daughter is 10, and she’s entering those years where I feel like you don’t want to make someone more self-conscious about all their stuff.

Craig: Yes, and you probably don’t want to be looking too closely at it either-

Mike: No.

Craig: -having gone through it twice.

Mike: Oh, yes.

Craig: It will be a great story for you 15 years from now.

Mike: Sure, yes. That’s what Jenny– My wife is a poet, brilliant poet, but she always says, whenever we’re going through something that’s really hard, she’s like, “Write it down. Just don’t release it now.”

Craig: I like how concise that is, have you ever checked to see if she’s constantly speaking to you in haiku and you just don’t remember?

[laughter]

John: It’s been a long constant this entire time. We’re going to wind back to the table, and I’ll think, “Oh, everything was a haiku.”

Craig: That would be the most brilliant thing ever.

Mike: She’s very wise and poetic person. Yes, that is hard. I’m pivoting over to the thing I’m writing right now. It’s fictional. I’m writing a movie and hopefully shoot next year, in the vein of Don’t Think Twice, a small-budget indie comedy. Yes, I’m going to take a few years off from it because I do think it’s hard. I’m talking about my dad. My dad’s in his final stage of life. He could go tomorrow. He could go in a year or two years, but it’s the final stage of life. It’s so hard. Yes, that side of it, I’m always juggling what am I saying and am I depicting the person well. Am I trying to find myself as the joke of the story-

John: Exactly.

Mike: -as opposed to just taking on people?

John: Absolutely. In this last special, you’re talking about how terrible nine-year-old girls are, which is just true, nine-year-olds are terrible. There’s a reason why you go to the jumpy gym where everyone’s going to get hurt because everybody gets hurt. All that stuff is very relatable, but none of it is directed. Your daughter comes out well in all of it.

Mike: True. I love my daughter, I hate her friends.

[laughter]

John: Yes, absolutely. A class of people is great, but the focus of the humiliation is always you. It’s your hard nipples.

John: That’s right.

Mike: It’s all-

Craig: I get that too.

[laughter]

Mike: The thing that’s funny about that, about the autobiographical side of that, is the hard nipple story is basically, I’ll paraphrase it for the audience, but it’s when I was 12, I had hard nipples. Sometimes something happens during puberty. I was always a hypochondriac, so I thought it was cancer. I went to my dad– he’s a doctor– and go, “Hey, Dad. I have hard nipples.”

John: On your special you say like, “Dad, I have cancer.”

Mike: I have cancer. He goes, “Why do you think that?” “I have hard nipples.”

Craig: I loved how calm he was. Why do you think that?

John: Exactly.

Mike: He’s a neurologist. No emotion.

[laughter]

Mike: I was like, “Well, see for yourself.” I take off my shirt. In the living room, he feels my hard nipples. Then he gives me the briefest medical diagnosis I’ve received to this very day. He goes, “Nope.” That was the end of the conversation.

[laughter]

Craig: What a comforting presence in your life.

Mike: Yes, exactly. This is a great example of when people ask me, “Are these stories true?” Sometimes they’re not true in small ways that you would never guess. When my dad felt my nipples, it was in his bedroom.

Craig: Oh.

Mike: I took it out.

Craig: Yes, that’s smart.

Mike: I relocated it to the living room because the audience–

Craig: You don’t want them going where you don’t want them going. You want them going there a tiny bit, which is, LOL, my dad’s feeling me up.

Mike: LOL, yes.

Craig: If he’s feeling me up in his bedroom, that’s not LOL.

John: What’s also crucial, though, is that you had already set up that your dad would come home from his two jobs and sit in his chair and read his war novels. You’re able pull it back to war novels. He sets down his war novel and puts his hands on your hard nipples.

Mike: That’s right.

John: You already created the image for us, which is why it’s so much better than what it is.

Craig: Apparently we have the same dad.

Mike: Yes, exactly.

Craig: I love dadness. I have to say it’s underappreciated in our society. We make fun of the fact that the dad comes home sits there and reads the war novel or watches the History Channel or plays a very long version of some World War II simulation with a friend. It’s wonderful. Let’s celebrate that.

Mike: Yes, sure.

Craig: Let’s celebrate that guy.

John: The last thing I want to talk to you about before we get to these “how would this be a jokes” is transitions. We talk on the show constantly about transitions and how you move from scene to scene. I’d seen your special on stage, but watching it filmed, I was very aware of when you’re transitioning from one idea to the next idea, from one tone to the next tone, from we’re in this world, now, we’re in this world. I’m sure it’s a thing that you worked out doing the show again and again live. You were able to pivot on such small spaces. Sometimes it’s a gesture, it’s a single word repeated, and pull us along to a completely new thing.

Mike: Sure.

John: Are you writing that? Are you thinking that or is just how it works on stage as you’re feeling it out?

Mike: I would describe that as the final stage of the development in a two-year process. It’s probably the final six months just figuring out how is this story, so then this story, so then this story, so then this story. My director, Seth Barrish, who also directed the special and– it’s a confusing title for people, but he is a dramaturgical person. He works through the script with me and the logic of the script. We’ll spend an extraordinary amount of time. He’ll go, “When you go to the hard nipples story, and then you go to but actually your dad wasn’t physically affectionate, but you are physically affectionate with your daughter. You hug her, you say, I love you. I don’t understand the connection between those two ideas.”

It’s almost like he’s making– what Seth is doing is he’s making his brain blank and — or attempting to — over and over and over again, making, trying to imagine what it would be like as someone who’s never seen the show, getting rid of the curse of knowledge. Getting rid of the curse of knowledge. We have these long, drawn out conversations. I’m sure you guys deal with this in television and films all the time, which is like, you’ll end up taking something that was 150 words, and then at the end of the edit, it’s four words. But those four words are the right four words.

Craig: Absolutely.

Mike: That’s a lot of what we do.

John: Last night, we were also talking about how a thing you do really well, which you see other comics do, but I was really struck by it last night, is we’re on one thread, and then you take a diversion, and we’re on another thread, which is really, really funny. Then you pull us back to the main thread, and we’d forgotten that we were on that thread, and yet we’re like, “Oh, yes.” You get a jolt of energy because you’re back on the main thread. You had forgotten that you’d taken a detour. It’s not a recall. We’re just rejoining the story that we were already on. It’s really well done.

Craig: You get to be a genius, because if you’re talking normally with people, you cannot maintain 12 spinning plates, including a hidden one up your sleeve, that you then go, ah-ha, and ah. You plan your own brilliance so that when you do come back around to things, it’s magician stuff. Right?

Mike: It’s a very strange art form, in the sense that, as a comedian, when you meet people, you are always a letdown because you look like that guy on stage, and your voice is the same as that guy on stage, but there’s less jokes, there’s less causality story to story. The transitions aren’t great.

Craig: No big surprises.

Mike: No big surprises.

Craig: No full circles.

Mike: Yes, nothing comes full circle.

John: No natural segues, no.

Craig: Just a lot of stammering, and then, and sweat.

Mike: Also, what I’ve noticed through the years is, I think comedians are people who are frustrated at parties because when we perform, people laugh or don’t laugh. They don’t interject. They don’t go, “Let me tell you about my sleepwalking story.” ‘You know what I mean?

Craig: “No, no. Sir, sit down.” Heckler.

Mike: This is the best one-

Craig: Yes?

Mike: “I’ve got the best sleepwalking story here. Everyone shut up.”

Craig: You do. You should just bring somebody with you to parties, who can tell other people to shut up.

Mike: Yes, can you imagine if comedians showed up at parties, and we’re like, “All right, everyone step aside.”

John: Yes, we do.

Craig: Yes, all of your stupid stories, wrap them up.

Mike: With your banter.

Craig: We’ve got a good one that’s crowd tested. Yes, that must be really frustrating. That’s like being, I don’t know, you play in the symphony, and then you go to somebody’s backyard where everyone’s like, “Oh, we’re going to do a quick jam. What do you play? Violin?” “Yes.” The guy banging the pot lid is really loud and–

Mike: You guys must have that, though, with movies, because people– everyone has a take on movies and television. Then you come in, and you’re like, “Okay, here’s my take, and mine’s right.”

John: Yes, but also, the movie is not happening in front of you. No one’s expecting, “Craig, make a movie right now.” There’s not that performance.

Craig: If it were that.

Mike: Yes, it’s–

Craig: If it were a party where the idea was to write a short scene, then I suppose that would be really frustrating.

John: Yes, I suppose, beautiful people who are photographed, they’re still beautiful in real life, but they’re not as attractive, they look immortal.

Craig: The wind machine is on and so forth?

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, but you’re absolutely– you guys are in the worst spot. Congratulations.

Mike: Thank you so much.

[laughter]

John: Let’s take a look at writing some jokes. We have three different stories that I’ve pulled from recent news things. We’re going to start with the Run Club Haters. This is a story in Curved Magazine, a New York magazine, by Melissa Dahl. Drew, can you give us a short summary of the lead here for this story?

Drew: One Saturday morning in April, Amy was running along Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, one of her usual routes. It was a sunny spring day. The sidewalk was crowded with runners, some running alone like her, and others in big groups. At some point, she realized one of those big groups was headed straight towards her. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Amy, who’s 31 and has been running in New York since 2015.

It was, in her memory, a group of young women running five to eight abreast. They were completely across the sidewalk, she recalls. This is the most runners she’s ever seen taking up a path, but she’s gone head to head with run clubs before.

Usually she moves aside, even if it means briefly stepping into the street or a bike lane. This time, she wanted to test something. She didn’t change course, and neither did they. It was something of a game of runner’s chicken, which ended when Amy ran straight through the pack, colliding with one of the women. “Neither of us fell, but I think she was definitely shook,” Amy says. The woman started apologizing, but Amy didn’t stick around to.”

John: This article goes on to talk with organizers of run clubs, including some who accidentally started a run club because they just posted on Instagram, “Oh, I’m going for a run if anyone wants to join?” and then 100 people show up. They’re also talking about parks that are now requiring permits, costing $1,000 for people to do this. This is as a story space, and I was wondering, let’s first start talking about, where are the jokes? Where’s the comedy we could find in this-

Mike: If we were Amy.

John: -if we were Amy or if we were anywhere–

Craig: I don’t want to be Amy.

John: If we were anywhere–

Craig: I don’t want to be in the run club.

John: We could be any of the characters in the story, but if this is something that happened to us or around us, where are some of the jokes? Where are the comedic premises there?

Mike: I think, first of all, you’d have to be Amy in the story. If you’re one of the big group of bird people who essentially wallop someone in the street, that’s not going to be very relatable, but we’ve all been the Amy of the story, which is– I would say, if this were my story, if this were something that happened to me, it would be talking about the observation in general of when people take up the whole sidewalk. You can bring up different examples.

One of my examples that drives me nuts is people with dogs where they’re on one side of the sidewalk, the leash goes across. It’s essentially a trip wire created by them and their evil dog, and they don’t act like they’re taking up the whole curb. I would go into observational things about that, and then I would go into, how do you feel about walking? Are you afraid of walking? How do you feel about walking in the city?

Ira Glass, in some ways, taught me how to tell these types of 7 to 10-minute stories. He always thinks of it in terms of a story, non-comedically, is a little bit of plot, how do you feel about the plot, a little bit more plot, how do you feel about the plot? In my case, as a comedian, it’s a little bit of plot, some jokes about the plot. A little bit of plot, the jokes about the plot. In order for us to care about Amy’s story, or “my story” walking down the street and running into a herd of runners, is you have to know that pushes my buttons as a character. Right?

Craig: Not enough to know that anybody would feel particularly annoyed. You really feel.

Mike: That’s right.

Craig: If this were in a very broad movie, there’s the classic escalation technique. It begins with, I’m running, and there’s one guy just staggering, “I got to go run.” All right, and then there’s the guy with the dog, and then there’s two runners, and then there’s just a wall of runners, and then there’s a Zamboni.

Mike: Yes, that’s right.

Craig: You just keep– it just gets stupider and stupider if it’s–

Mike: That’s straight from Naked Gun.

Craig: That’s Naked Gun. I do think there could be a sketch version where you are part of the run-

Mike: Oh, the runners group? Yes.

Craig: -where the run club is the most heinous, horrible group of people. It’s not just runners, it’s people in stretchers, and it’s– I could see that.

John: It’s taking me back to– on safari and you’ll see a bunch of animals stampede, and it’s like, “Oh shit.” One runner by themselves is not threatening at all, but you see a pack moving towards you, they just– all of your instincts kick in. It’s like, “Oh, this is a dangerous situation.” I also want to get back to what you talked about, humiliation and Amy being humiliated or being the source of– the problem is her is also, I think, really important too. What is it about me that I decided like, “Today, I’m going to be the person, I’m not going to move.”

Craig: Today I decided is really good. Maybe the setup is like every day I see the run club, I turn around and flee. Today I’m not going to because a friend told me to stick up for myself and my therapist. I’m going to hold my head high, and I’m not going to move, and she’s killed. That’s all, they kill her, which is a really good lesson.

Mike: I have an analogous story years ago that I do as stand-up sometimes that’s never found its way into the special. It’s a similar city scenario, which is years ago, I’m rushing down subway steps at the West Forest stop. One of the jokes I make is, I’m always in a rush, I have nowhere to be. I’ve never had anywhere to be. I’m always in a rush. I trip on my lace. My dad taught me how to tie my shoes when I was a kid– he was never around. As I’m not good at it, and so I trip fourth step from the bottom, fly in the air, I land on the ball of my shoulder.

Craig: Argh.

Mike: I know. I often tell people growing up, I know. I was that guy writhing on the floor.

Craig: Dirty subway floor.

Mike: Dirty subway floor. People blowing past me-

John: Of course.

Mike: -just like, “Are you okay?” “No.” “Good,” or “Yes, good,” and then they’re gone. Then, what I sometimes say– nobody’s like, “Oh– “ “If you’re laughing, you’ve been one of these pigs. I want you pigs to know, we’re not fooled by your faux generosity.” It is a similar scenario where, essentially what you’re trying to explain is what your point of view is, what your status quo is. It’s not dissimilar to movie writing. Then what happens, and then what happens because of that.

John: Because of that, there’s a chain of events, there’s a causality like this was not the end of the story. It’s moving to the next thing.

Let’s try our next thing. This is a story from Slate’s Care and Feeding. The advice is from Michelle Herman, but the letter writer is anonymous. Drew, help us out.

Drew: My mother and father divorced more than 10 years ago when I was in eighth grade, after my mother learned my dad was cheating on her. Once my parents split, my father married his affair partner, Ruth, and moved out of state. They ended up having two kids who are now eight and five. After my dad moved out of the house, he never paid a penny in child support, and I didn’t hear a word from him again, until now.

My dad told me that my five-year-old half-sister, Amelia, was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. Her medical team wanted her to undergo a bone marrow transplant, but neither he, his wife, nor my half-brother was a match. He asked if I would be willing to undergo a screening to see if I am. Long story short, I am.

I find myself utterly conflicted. This man, who was supposed to be my dad, to love and provide for me, shattered my family with his selfishness. He abandoned me for the woman he cheated on my mother with. He wasn’t there to teach me to drive or to see me graduate from high school or college.

While I spent a decade dealing with the pain and rage his walking out on me caused, he started a new family and forgot I existed. Had his daughter not needed a donor, I doubt I would have ever heard from him again. Here he is, crawling to me, hat in hand. Part of me wants to tell him and his wife to leave me alone and never contact me again. I’ve never met my half-sister. I feel no connection to her. But then, there’s this stupid part of me that says that my father and Ruth were the ones who hurt me and that Amelia is innocent. That denying her a potentially life-saving treatment as a means of taking revenge against her parents would be wrong.”

Craig: That’s the stupid part? Okay. Because this guy cheated on my mom and left and didn’t pay child support, I now have a golden opportunity to murder a little girl.

John: Oh my God.

[laughter]

Craig: It was pretty awesome, actually. I also like that she said “affair partner,” by the way. There’s a whole side bit on that, like partner, the way that partners become a thing. In our society, it was just husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, and now everyone says partner. I never know if people are gay or not. I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know if they’re working together or romantic.

Mike: It’s a startup?

Craig: Affair partner.

Mike: It’s an app they’re working on.

Craig: Yes, exactly. An affair partner is incredible. That’s like granting status like cheating– Anyway.

John: There’s lots of things to unpack and potential comedic things to hold on to, even though this is not obviously comedic. There’s some good stuff here.

Her rage to this disappearing dad, that conflict and that my expectation of what this man is versus the reality is great comedic fodder. Obviously, her relationship to whatever this donor, her half-sister is fascinating. The space of bone marrow donations and would you help out a stranger? The trolley problem of it all is also fascinating. Mike, what’s your way in?

Mike: Yes, I think the way in, with anything that dramatic, I always say to people like, “You need to find one joke that works because the one joke that works indicates to the audience, ‘We’re all okay laughing about this.’” The way that Drew read it, and it was beautiful, was a little bit like a eulogy where it’s a sad story. That’s a tough story. If you just told it like Drew told it on stage in the first person, people would not know to laugh. They would go, “Well, what’s the funny part?”

I just think you need to find a joke. It’s like I have a joke in my special where I go, “My dad was a doctor and in his free time, he got his law degree. That’s how much he didn’t want to be a dad.” The audience knows that my point of view is I’m over that part of it. I’m okay with that part of it.

I had bladder cancer when I was 20 and the first joke I figured out was like, I had bladder cancer, but it’s funny because I’m a hypochondriac. I think the funniest thing that can happen to a hypochondriac is you get cancer because it affirms every fear you’ve ever had. “See, I told you. Remember last week when I thought I had rickets? I was probably right about that too. There’s going to be a lot of changes around here.”

Craig: “When I showed you my nipples–“

Mike: Exactly, yes. If someone wanted to do a comedy bit of this, it’s like, “Well, where is the first joke that indicates that this is okay?” That joke has to be really good. Probably nothing I could come up with now, but it’s like, “My dad wasn’t around as a kid, and then he called me because he wanted my bones.” Just something where just you break open how outrageous the scenario is, and then it turns on itself. I think you can do like, “My dad wasn’t around, and then he wanted my bones,” and then try to come up with a joke around that and then say, “But actually, I’m torn on it because this girl deserves this, and she needs this, and I could help.”

I think with a story that inherently has such high stakes, you have the ability to both have jokes and have dramatic moments. In The Good Life, there’s four or five times where it goes to a dramatic moment just because the audience– a lot of it is, the audience doesn’t see it coming at a comedy show. In some ways, it’s the ultimate surprise. I think the back and forth of jokes in comedy, I think jokes and dramas, it is the potential there.

Craig: You could also– I could see occupying a character and the character is a woe-is-me character, who’s like, “Anyway, my dad left, and cheated on my mom, and then married this other lady. They had a great family that was incredible. He never talked to me ever until his daughter was sick and he came for my bone marrow and I thought, ‘He loves me.’”

[laughter]

Mike: That’s good.

Craig: It depends, like occupying– I do enjoy comedians who occupy characters.

Mike: I love that.

Craig: I love that weird space. It’s always interesting meeting them afterwards and going– like Natasha Leggero occupies a character. Then you talk to Natasha offstage and you’re like, “You are the opposite of that person.” It is–

Mike: Then you can heighten that and be like, “Then he asked to borrow $75,000 and I was like, ‘Maybe this isn’t love.”

Craig: “Wait a second. As the marrow’s leaving me, I thought, ‘Wait. Wait.’”

[laughter]

John: Let’s talk about this as a scene. I would say it could be a movie, which is a whole dynamic, but you could also imagine a scene where you’re talking to this girl at a party and it gets to the point where it’s like, “So now I don’t even know if I should donate marrow to this kid.” It’s like, “What are you talking about? You are going to kill a small child.” There’s that, it’s a good build up for like, what kind of monster are you?

Craig: Or you’re like– Obviously, you all know where this went, I didn’t do it.

[laughter]

Mike: Right, exactly.

Craig: She’s been dead like, I don’t know, three or four years now.

John: Oh God. Oh my God.

Craig: I got to go tell you, it feels great. They tell you it won’t, but it does. Revenge is awesome.

John: Yes.

Craig: Got ya.

Mike: A lot of that is– Those are like three different POV takes on the same–

Craig: With different tones.

Mike: Yes, a lot of it’s persona. Anthony Jeselnik gets away with a different type of joke than I get away with.

Craig: I wish we could send him that. Oh my God, Anthony Jeselnik. Can I just–?

John: Again, occupying a character’s place. [unintelligible 00:40:43] area.

Craig: Completely, but I just want to salute–

John: Oh, I assume that. He’s not actually like that, is he?

Craig: Oh God, I hope not.

Mike: Not that I know of.

Craig: Yes, no, that would be insane.

Mike: I’ve never had an interaction with him like that.

Craig: The mathematical precision. He’s the closest thing that comedy has to Agatha Christie. You know there’s going to be a twist and you’re trying to figure it out-

Mike: Yes, that’s right.

Craig: -and you can’t. It just happens over and over and over and over.

Mike: That’s right. Yes, that’s right.

Craig: He’s just, the craft there is pretty remarkable.

John: Great. This last one, we don’t have that part to read, but this is a New York Times article by Heather Knight and Loren Elliott, with great photos and video by Elliott. It’s about the coyotes of San Francisco. Basically, there were no coyotes in San Francisco, but 10 years or so ago, they started coming back in, and now there are more than 100 coyotes in San Francisco, and they’re letting them be, largely.

One case, they were going after a young child and they went after that coyote. Basically, they do keep down rodent populations and other things, so there’s a reason to be there. It’s just so jarring to have coyotes in the city that never had them.

Mike: Wow.

John: Coyotes are cool. Obviously, in Los Angeles, we’re used to coyotes in our neighborhood. We have coyotes all the time. The comedic space of predators in an urban environment and like how a person interacts with them, what the moment is.

Craig: This is in San Francisco?

John: In San Francisco. Hacks this last season has a coyote episode where Jean Smart’s character is hearing the coyotes howl all the time. She’s putting out bear urine to scare them away. She has a showdown with a coyote at the end. Let’s talk about what can we imagine the comedic premises are for talking about coyotes on stage? What are the handles for that?

Mike: For me, it would have to be story-based interacting with a coyote. I’m trying to think if I have– Do you guys have any good animal stories of interacting with animals?

Craig: My mind goes to just right off the bat, but what is–? Isn’t a coyote just an asshole dog?

John: Yes. [crosstalk]

Craig: Why have we put it in this special category? It’s just, I’ve looked at them. They’re hungry dogs. That’s all they are.

John: It’s a sense of like, what’s a dog off leash though. We have a sense of like, “Oh, dogs are wonderful,” but when you see in a dog in a place you don’t expect to see a dog or a dog who doesn’t seem to have an owner, that’s–

Craig: You call it a coyote. Right. They’re like the hobos of dogs.

John: I was just in Egypt, and Egypt is just like, there’s just dogs everywhere. There’s street dogs.

Mike: That’s right.

John: I was like, “Oh, wait, why don’t dogs get hit?” Mike pointed out like, “Oh, we’re seeing that’s the logical fallacy. Basically, we’re seeing the dogs that survived and–

Craig: You see the dogs that aren’t hit.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes. Coyotes in San Francisco probably, I think the hacky version would just be to start making fun of San Francisco. It’s like, “Oh, now the coyotes keep moving into our neighborhood and the rents are going up.” I wonder where [unintelligible 00:43:29] Coyotes don’t seem funny to me.

Mike: I feel like I would break it–

John: Come on, Wile E. Coyote is an incredible character.

Mike: [laughs]

Craig: The thing is, Wile E. Coyote is, we’re laughing at him, I suppose, but he’s not doing anything irregular. I’ve never seen a coyote use an Acme product.

Mike: If I were going to go into animals, which I ever, if I ever did, it would be the inherent contradiction. So much of comedy is about inherent contradiction. The contradiction is similar to what you’re saying, it’s like, we eat animals, we own animals. We shoo away animals. How are we deciding? Yes.
Who made up the rules on this?

Craig: I think Gaffigan’s got–

Mike: Oh, did he have–? [crosstalk]

Craig: He’s got a pretty good one of like, we eat the animals that aren’t cute.

Mike: That’s right. That’s right. Contradictions would be the thing that would go down, and also the personal story, but I always tell people, one of the probably the smartest things I did artistically was like 25 years ago, I had been doing set up punchline, set up punchline, set up punchline based on things in the news, things happening around town. Then, at a certain point, I was like, “If I wrote about my own experiences, then no one can steal that idea.” Really, no one has that idea. No one’s lived that.

The first thing this makes me think of is like, there’s animals in the walls of my apartment that just run over us. Sometimes Jen will just be like, “Mo,” she calls me Mo. She goes, “Mo, what are we going to do about the animals?” I’m like, “I don’t think you know who you married. I don’t really know. I have no plan for the animals in the ceiling, and I’m not going to have one.” You know what I mean?

Craig: Right, and, “You know that about me.”

Mike: Yes. I don’t know. I do think like finding the what’s your story, the thing about standup comedy and in relation to storytelling, is that the more you have examples of things of your experience of dealing with something, the more people can see themselves in the story. They’re not judging it as, “Oh, this is another guy or lady with a hard take on coyotes,” or this or that or whatever.

I always just try and think, “What’s the personal way in? What’s the personal way in?” Because ultimately, you actually, by telling stories are exhibiting a point of view. Because it’s in the form of a story, the audience isn’t as suspicious of the point of view.

Craig: Yes. Also to give you credit, it’s not a persona. This is actually you. You’re incredibly likable. You’re incredibly likable in no small part because you’re not afraid to be vulnerable. A lot of comedians, their persona is, “I figured it all out. I figured it all out. Let me explain the world to you idiots.” Right? Your persona and your personality is I haven’t– I’m on a journey. I often don’t know what to do. I’m scared a lot. I’m confused. Everyone’s like, “Okay, I’m with you now on this.”

Mike: It’s so funny you should say that because the other day, I did an interview for Time Magazine and she goes– The reporter was great. She goes– It’s a funny question. She goes, “What’s your appeal?”

[Laughter]

John: I love that. That’s so good.

Mike: I’ve never been asked that, “What’s your appeal?”

Craig: Oh my God.

Mike: It forced me to look inward.

Craig: Oh my God.

Mike: She goes, the appeal of Jim Gaffigan is that he’s clean and he’s relatable. The appeal of this person is that she’d go there. I go, “Huh.” It’s so funny what I–

John: It’s amazing.

Mike: What reminded me of it is that my answer is similar to Craig’s.

Craig: There you go.

Mike: If I really had to think about it, I think people think they’re on the journey with me because I’m cataloging these eras of my life as honestly as I can. The audience, I think, trusts that I’m trying my best. I think the people who like me are trying their best. It’s weird to say that that’s my “appeal”, but I think it is probably close to that.

Craig: When she asked the question, was it–? There’s two different meanings to that question. One is, “I’m curious, what do you think your appeal is?” The other one is, “What is your appeal?”

John: Yes, there’s two different reads of that.

Craig: “I’m just so confused why anyone likes you. Can you explain why people like you?”

Mike: It was generous though. I think she’s a good writer. We’ll see how the article comes out.

John: It’s reminding me of when we were doing Big Fish on Broadway, after the Wednesday matinees, sometimes we would do talk-backs, where people could stay in the audience and talk back. It’s always really old people who stick around, who’d go to the Wednesday matinees in the first place.

It’s me and several of the actors at the front of the stage talking to people who stuck around. This one old woman, she asked me a question, she’s like, “Why are you so confident?” I’m like–

Mike: Oh my gosh. Why are you so confident?

John: Yes, and it’s just–

Mike: Wow.

John: It was actually just.

Craig: What a confident-shaking question.

John: Yes, and it sort of put me on my heels, like, “I guess I am con–“ I had to sort of do introspection, like, “I guess I am confident, but why am I confident?” Like, “Who is this person who is speaking right now who is confident doing this thing?” It was a while. It really did shake me a bit.

Craig: Yes, of course. It’s a rattling question. “Why are you so confident?” It’s suspicious.

John: Yes, it’s a challenge to it.

Craig: Yes.

Mike: I think to go back to this point of view and comedy concept, it was like, why is Jeselnik Jeselnik, and me me, and Gaffigan Gaffigan? Is a majority of what you do if you’re trying to be a comedian is you try to figure out who you are on stage in relation to the audience.

Craig: What’s your appeal?

Mike: Yes, it’s what’s your appeal?

Craig: What’s your appeal?

Mike: It’s like, “Oh,” and it takes years. Sometimes it takes a decade or more.

Craig: It is interesting seeing comedians early in their careers as opposed to where they end up. Sometimes it’s sort of unrecognizable.

Mike: Absolutely.

Craig: It is a fascinating thing to watch them evolve into the groove. Sometimes I think like, “Oh, do people get trapped? Because they get very successful, and then suddenly, that fake accent and get ‘er done thing that you’re doing, you can’t stop doing it.

Mike: Are you speaking of someone specifically?

Craig: No.

Mike: Just in general?

Craig: No, just in general, like–

[laughter]

Mike: Hypothetically, if someone was like, said a joke and they’re like, “Get ‘er done,”-

Craig: That would be like–

Mike: -that would be a thing that you’re leaning on a crutch.

Craig: They were like had a job that isn’t really a job anymore, like a cable guy, [crosstalk] or a plumber, or whatever.

Mike: Yes, exactly.

Craig: Yes, like what do you do then, because you’re stuck making all that money?

Mike: What if you never were a cable guy?

Craig: Or had that accent.

[laughter]

John: So good. [crosstalk]

Craig: Then, what do you do? Then what do you do?

John: A crisis of inauthenticity.

Mike: This is like a three-page challenge of personas.

John: What if Mike Birbiglia had a heel turn, where I actually just like, it goes off for a little while, then it comes back, and it’s just like this shock comic, this– I would love to see it.

Mike: It’s funny–

Craig: “Hickory dickory dock.”

John: Yes.

[laughter]

Mike: No, I do think that there is a version of the next few years, where I’m leaning a little bit away from personal stuff, where I do something that takes on the religion, politics, world events, but in an evergreen way. I think what drives me crazy about topical comedy is that you just go, “Okay, this isn’t relevant today, even. It was relevant 24 hours ago,” but I would like to see something that has a wide-spanning, like the last 20 years of living in America.

Craig: It sounds like something that O’Reilly would do.

[laughter]

Mike: Yes, a cross between Matt Damon and Bill O’Reilly would do.

John: As we wrap up our discussion of coyotes, I do want to share one photo, which I think is a great comedic premise. This little white dog is wearing, it’s called a coyote coat, and it’s basically, it looks like a life jacket, but it has all these little plastic spikes on it, so that a coyote can’t bite it and carry it off into the woods. I can just imagine like having to buy the coyote coat for my dog, or just like my dog having to wear the coyote coat. It’s like you’re in a war zone now.

Craig: I think that is, some people might think that that disrupts the Darwinian process, but I think that it is an example of the Darwinian process. You become so cute that a larger, stronger animal dresses you in special things so that you aren’t devoured. It’s a strategy.

John: It’s a strategy.

Craig: That’s a strategy.

John: Yes. Let’s tackle some listener questions. We have one here from Chris.

Drew: Let’s say I heard an idea for a short film expressed on a podcast by a working actor, writer, comedian,-

John: Mike Birbiglia.

Drew: -and wanted to make that film, but was not able to make contact with said person to ask permission. Could that film still be made and shown publicly? Is there credit to be attributed? What if there’s a line spoken by an actor that is nearly identical to what was expressed in the podcast? In this case, this would be 60-second film for social media, just for context.” I can already hear Craig saying you can’t copyright an idea, but maybe the person or podcast details are important.

Craig: Yes, I will say you can’t copyright an idea, but that doesn’t mean you should be doing this.

John: It also feels like stealing a joke. It feels like–

Craig: There’s legal lines and there are moral lines. Legally, could you get away with it? Always remember, legally getting away with it means you were sued, spent money to defend yourself, and won, which is not ideal. In this case also, it’s just, yes, come up with your own idea. That’s my feeling, is if that person wanted to do a 60-second short bit about that, they would. It’s a little odd. I don’t think I would recommend that.

John: The fact that you’re doing this on a podcast with a working actor, writer, comedian, it’s their thing, they may actually do a thing with. If you heard it in a conversation or your brother said something, it’s a different kind of thing. You could also just ask their permission.

Mike: I also think, yes, building on what you were both saying, is as creatives, if you’re pursuing a creative profession, it is so oversaturated. There are so many things being made simultaneously. I actually think the only chance any of us stand is to have our work be so much ours and not something that’s already filmed, recorded, and out there in the universe that you’re actually– It’s a weird case against the argument. The idea is that it’s out there. Even if it’s not a short film already, someone said it, so it’s a little bit less original than you’d want it to be.

John: Going back to what we were just saying about hiking is just walking, that idea, what’s out there, is it’s not an original idea, and so great, do something else that is specifically to you.

Mike: 100%, and by the way, to speak to that person’s note, that’s an oddly helpful piece of feedback, is like, once that person says, “Hey, that’s out there in blah-blah-blah way,” sometimes people, along the tour for two years, people will say to me, “Hey, this line you have is similar to this comic’s thing you have.” Often, I’ll go and I’ll dig it up and I’ll try to find it, and then you have to make a judgment call. Is it too similar? If it is, can I write it in a different direction?

I had one a few specials ago where someone, when it came out as a special, was like, “That’s my joke,” and I was like, “I don’t know what to tell you, I never saw your joke, and it’s filmed right now, so I don’t– It’s parallel thinking, and I feel bad that that’s the case, but there’s nothing I can do.” It’s definitely best efforts to not do that.

John: Dylan in Little Rock has a question.

Drew: “I’m feeling myself getting a little bit paralyzed. I’m feeling that I need to start writing in order to feel accomplished and hold onto some momentum, but I’m not feeling that I have really broken the story in a satisfactory way, and I don’t feel that I know the characters as well as I could or maybe should. I’ve considered that the process of writing may help me to come up with new ideas and fill in some of the gaps, but when do you consider a story broken? How do you know when your characters are developed enough and how much character development work do you do before you write?”

John: Yes, so breaking a story means different things in different contexts. In a TV writer’s room, you break a story, you’re figuring out all the beats on a big whiteboard, you’re doing that stuff. The process of writing a feature film, it could be more experimental and you’re sort of putting things together as you’re doing them. I often won’t have the full thing broken as I start. I’ll just feel it out along my way. There’s probably not a perfect answer for this. You’re writing something right now, is what you’re writing broken? Do you know what all the beats are?

Mike: It’s so funny. Whenever people say this term, breaking a story, I’m always like, it’s not my process. Mine is, I have an idea for a story, I write it out in an outline. At a certain point, I take it as script. At a certain point, this is where I am right now, I take it back to outline because I’m trying to isolate all the individual character arcs, and I can’t do it in a script form. That’s literally what I am right now. My brain can’t do it.

How do you guys deal with that, actually? That’s a question from me to you. How do you deal with managing, like in the case of my movie, it’s like, there’s eight characters. It’s akin to a movie like Four Weddings and a Funeral where not everybody has to have a meaningful arc, but unless they have like a little miniature arc, I do feel like there’s some threads that are unfinished.

Craig: I think I probably wouldn’t start writing until I understood all of that.

Mike: All of it.

Craig: Yes, but that’s me. I think your process clearly works for you, and it’s perfectly fine. Anyone’s process is fine if the outcome is good. I think breaking the story is actually, I agree with you, it’s not a useful term. It comes really from writer’s rooms, from 14 writers eating Mendocino Farms and hashing out, “Okay, this episode, this happens. What’s the A story? What’s the B story? What’s the C story?” It is procedurals, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: There isn’t a mechanism to it, which is important for that process. For a movie, I never use the phrase, “breaking the story” for a movie. Really, I would say, outline. I start with a very broad outline. Who’s the main character? What is the thing that needs to happen at the end? What would be an interesting beginning for that? What is the premise of this thing, and what’s the journey?

Mike: I think one of the best things you can have in terms of breaking a story or to use that term is like figuring out, can I pitch this in 25 words or 50 words? And is that compelling? If I told this to a friend and I said it in the first person, are they interested? I think that if they’re not interested is when you start to go, “Okay, let me figure out where I’m losing their interest.”

John: Yes, I just pitched a project yesterday, and in the early conversations with people, it wasn’t fully broken. I sort of knew what the beats were, but by the time where I was actually pitching it to a buyer, it really had all the beats. You could feel what the entire movie was and that’s, I guess, what I would consider broken. It’s like you really can have a sense of what all the sequences of the story were going to be.

Mike: It’s funny, you hear terms like breaking story or industry terms, and in so many ways, the work I enjoy most is people trying to reinvent what their artistic process is. If you look at Last of Us, for example, I think my favorite thing about it is it’s not like other television shows. That it is, in some ways, weirdly, doesn’t resemble a TV show. That it feels like life, it feels like we are in this apocalyptic scenario and oh my God, what is that? What would I do? What’s she going to do?

Craig: Oh, it’s definitely not like other shows.

[laughter]

Mike: Don’t you think that’s part of it is like making things that don’t feel like other things?

Craig: Yes, I do think so. I think that’s become more and more important because there are 14 million television shows. The trick is to find a way to both be different and also compelling. It is very easy to be different and bad because a lot of difference were considered by our forebears and tossed aside because they were bad. I would say to Dylan, you need to slow down a little bit and ask yourself if maybe the story that you’ve come up with, any of the things that you think of as fixed in position should be fixed in position.

Sometimes we get stuck. We build a column and a load-bearing wall, and then we’re like, “I can’t fit the rooms I want around this.” Maybe the problem is the column and the load-bearing wall. Those things that we think of as immovable, maybe start moving them.

Mike: I also think you look at things that we admire, I was saying like Last of Us, another one would be like the films of David Lynch. It’s like if you try to put Mulholland Drive into the story-

John: No.

Mike: -the story format,-

Craig: You create that story.

Mike: -of McKee or something, it’s like,-

Craig: Or you could-

Mike: “I don’t know what that is.”

Craig: Pitch that in 50 words.

Mike: Yeah, I don’t know.

Craig: That would be the pitch.

Mike: Yes, exactly, that’s the pitch.

Craig: “What’s it about?” “Yeah, I don’t know.”

[laughter]

John: All right, let’s do our one cool things here. I’m going to call an audible, and so I’m going to pivot from what I was going to recommend to in terms of just like breaking the form and spinning a bunch of plates. John Mulaney’s show, Everybody’s Live, it’s just gotten really, really good.

Mike: Oh yes, it’s great.

John: If you’ve not watched it at all, go back and watch the episode, guests are Sarah Silverman and Patton Oswalt, but the show is just nuts, and Mulaney’s blindfolded through the whole episode. 19,000 things are happening, and it all holds together really, really well. It’s postmodern in the sense of like, there’s a theme kind of, but it’s just crazy. it’s just I’m really admiring what they’re able to pull off once a week on Mulaney’s show, Everybody’s Live, on Netflix.

Craig: Amazing. What about you?

Mike: I was thinking of young comedians and newer comedians. There’s this great comic named Chris Fleming who came on my podcast recently, and he just kills me. He’s a Massachusetts guy like me. He — talk about burning it all down — he just has no allegiances to anyone, specifically in culture, and so he’ll say things where I’ll just– I said to him on my podcast, “Do you know that–?” the person he’s referencing? He’s like, “No.” I go, “You don’t know that person you said that crazy joke about?” but he’s great.

Craig: That’s awesome.

Mike: He’s super funny, and to speak to the kind of David Lynch with The Last of Us of it all, of creating a thing that hasn’t existed before, when I look at Chris Fleming, I don’t go, “Oh, that’s like this.” I just go, “Whoa, that’s Chris Fleming. I love that.”

Craig: Yes, who is this?

Mike: Who is this?

Craig: That’s my favorite. I’ve been on a roll for one cool thing for games, so I spoke to Inevitable Foundation, which is run by Richie Siegel, and it was a lovely group of folks. He was kind enough to send along some of the feedback, which was all bad, and [laughs] not really. They were very happy. One person in their feedback said, “Oh, and by the way, since I know Craig likes these sort of things, he really needs to play Blue Prince, if he hasn’t.” Blue Prince is as in blue, the color, and then Prince, P-R-I-N-C-E, but of course, this is a pun on blueprints. The game is so simple and so hard, which I love.

Mike: Oh, wow.

Craig: You have inherited a mansion from your mysterious uncle. Your job is to go through and explore the mansion, which has 45 rooms, find the 46th room, and you will be able to keep the mansion. The mechanics are every day, you start in the foyer, and there are three doors, and when you open a door, it gives you a choice to draft what room goes there, and there are like 40 types of rooms, and you pick it, and you start to move through, and every time, the house is different, and some rooms just stop, and you know if they stop or not.

There are costs, and keys, and methods, and puzzles, and it’s roguelike, because then the next day, you’re like, “Okay, that didn’t work, let me try this.” It’s early on for me, and I’m so beautifully frustrated.

Mike: Wow.

John: Love it.

Craig: Yes, it’s really, it’s like when you come across a fresh idea like that, it’s really cool, yes. Blue Prince, and it’s developed by Dogubomb.

Mike: Great.

Craig: You can get it on PlayStation, Windows, Xbox, your Steam Deck, which is where I play it, and so forth.

Mike: Very nice.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, with help this week from Sam Shapson. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. Don’t leave comments on Spotify because we turn those off, but you can leave comments to our YouTube videos, which we have a Scriptnotes YouTube channel.

Mike: You do?

John: Yes, we just added this week.

Craig: Another place for people to yell at me about Joel. I’m Scriptnotes Premium, by the way.

John: Thank you very much for that.

Mike: I joined recently. I love it.

Craig: Oh– [crosstalk]

John: You get all those back episodes.

Mike: I love it. Two of my faves are Dennis Palumbo of course and the Craig Mazin, Here’s How to-

John: How to Write a Movie.

Mike: -How to write a Movie. It’s so good.

Drew: Those are both available on our YouTube.

Craig: We should probably charge extra for them.

John: We should. Yes, yes, how do we charge extra?

Mike: Yes, supplements.

Craig: Because we got to get these cool new microphones.

John: You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with the signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You can find those at Cotton Bureau. You get the show notes with all the links to the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all those premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this every week. For Craig to dream of new microphone setups in our office studio here.

You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. You get all those back episodes, like episode 99 and How to Write a Movie. Bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the infrastructure of being a standup comic and doing all the things that you have to do to actually make a living. With that, Mike Birbiglia, thank you so much for being on the show.

Mike: It’s such an honor. I love this show. My favorite podcast.

John: Aww.

Craig: Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Mike, one of the things that impressed me when I came to record the podcast at your place is that you do video, you’re promoting the podcast, but it’s also part of your bigger machinery because you have to, as a touring comic, you have to plan all that stuff, you have to do marketing, you must have a giant mailing list. I want to talk to you about sort of the infrastructure it takes to be a comic who’s doing the kind of stuff you’re doing.

Mike: It’s funny, I was on The Town podcast the other day, which is really good, and we had this discussion of this thing where Matt says, “Do comedians need Hollywood anymore?” The answer is they don’t.

Craig: Not at all.

Mike: Weirdly, they don’t, and I think that that’s good. I think the things to make comedy and get the comedy to market are less and less expensive and more easy to access. It puts the onus on you to make something that’s great and sets itself apart from all other things, but also, you have to get it to market and market it, really. There’s a lot to that.

John: Getting it to market, there’s Instagram, there’s YouTube, those are crucial channels for comics. What else?

Mike: Weirdly, sometimes I’ll say, because Mabel and Gary and Peter and Joe, that’s my company, and we all produce the podcast together. Mabel and Gary are in their 20s, and so sometimes they’ll point out things to me that I’m just going, “Oh, I wouldn’t have thought of that at all.” For example, at a certain point, like two years ago, Mabel goes, “We have to have the podcast on video. I’ve never listened to a podcast.”

[laughs]

John: Yes, that’s my daughter too.

Mike: I was like, “What do you mean you haven’t listened to a podcast?” She goes, “I’m sorry, I just I put it on. I don’t look at the video, but it’s on. Sometimes I’ll reference it, I’m like, ‘Oh’.” There is a degree of rolling with, so then we did it. Rolling with where culture and media is going. Then the other side of that is, sometimes I’ll say to Mabel and Gary, I’ll go like, “We have to be aware of what are the platforms that are next. Because when I was coming up in the 2000s, it was Myspace. Myspace is gone.”

Craig: It is? I’m spending so much time on that.

[laughter]

Mike: Your premium membership on Myspace is $49 a month?

Craig: Yes.

John: I have a friend request, and you never get nothing.

Craig: It’s the only place people don’t yell at me about The Last of Us.

Mike: Of course, Zuckerberg is spending billions of dollars every year to make sure that Instagram is still relevant, still relevant, still relevant. Cut to, at a certain point, it’s not going to be.

Craig: It’s the opening credit sequence of Silicon Valley, just watch them go up, watch them go down.

John: That’s right.

Craig: Explode, implode, come back, grow. You have to have– Well, really, it sounds like part of your infrastructure is youth.

Mike: It’s youth. Yes, it is. Yes.

John: A mailing list. Is there a mailing list people subscribe to and you send out blasts with all your upcoming tour dates?

Mike: That’s right, and I’ve been doing that oddly since I was in college. I would do shows at the Washington, DC Improv, and I would have comment cards on the tables and say, “If you have your email address, I’ll send out a newsletter once a month.” I think the infrastructure is Maichimp and one of the companies that does it–

John: Mailchimp is so effing expensive.

Mike: I know.

Craig: Mailchimp is expensive?

Mike: It’s on the pricey side.

Craig: Also, then everybody, their podcasts are sponsored by Mailchimp, so Mailchimp is just like rotating the money around.

Mike: Yes.

John: Yes, it’s a money cycle.

Mike: No, it’s true, but I do think the relationship between artists and audiences has just gotten closer and closer through the years, and such that things that are massive, and it’s a comedian who’s playing Madison Square Garden, you might mention that person’s name to someone else, they go, “I’ve never heard of that person.” They’re playing Madison Square Garden, and it’s just them talking into a microphone, you’ve never heard of them.

Craig: That’s right.

Mike: It’s astonishing.

Craig: That’s happened a few times recently to me, where I don’t know, and that’s part of getting old. I actually love the way the world is slowly getting cottony and sealing me off in preparation.

[laughter]

Craig: I don’t mind that, but I do love talking to the people that work for me that are younger because– Riding back and forth from location every day with Ali Cheng, who used to be my assistant, and now she’s a writer on The Last of Us. Ali was able to explain to me in deep detail the whole Kendrick and Drake thing as it was happening, because I was like, “I don’t know– What is going–? First of all, who’s Dot?” She was like, “Oh my God. Okay.” But then, I was so into it.

John: Yes, sure.

Craig: Then I was deep in, and I was– Then the next day, I’ll come in, I’m like, “Oh my God. Did you see?” It keeps you plugged in, but you’ll need somebody to help you.

Mike: Yes, I think the key thing about entertainers in this moment is continuing to be open to where everything is going and nonjudgmental about where it’s going. Because if you become the judgmental person of like, “Oh, back in my day,” blah-blah-blah, I think you’re toast, or you will be toast.

John: Someone like Gary, who’s working for you, or Mabel, they have their own careers, they’re developing their own online presences.

Mike: Absolutely.

John: They have their own analysts. They have to figure out all that.

Mike: Directing things and short films and all kinds of stuff, yes.

John: Yes, so who teaches you? Basically, you just have to learn. You get in the crowd and see what everyone else is doing, because it’s not like you can go to film school, you can theoretically, learn how to write a screenplay. If there’s no comedy school, I guess you could go through-

Mike: UCB-

John: UCB.

Mike: -or improv and stuff like that. Yes, there’s no path to be a comedian, but at the same time, there never was a path, right?

John: Yes, it was always figuring out how early in a career does a person need a manager or an agent who’s doing mostly standup?

Mike: I’ve always thought– People ask me who are starting out all the time, how do I get an agent? When I think back to my agent now, Mike Berkowitz, who I’ve worked with for I think 25 years, he was starting out. I was like one of his first two clients. He started out at a management company, but he was doing the side, booking thing on the side. We’re the same age, and so we came up together. Now, he represents Kevin Hart and John Mulaney, all biggest comics on the place. He’s a huge agent, but I think part of it is surrounding yourself with people who you respect, who are in your roughly age group, and even level.

I think there’s a sense of like, “Oh, I need to sign,” I’ll throw out someone who’s dead, but it’s like, “I need to sign with Bernie Brillstein.” It’s, “No, no, you don’t need to sign with Bernie Brillstein. He doesn’t have time for you. You need to sign for someone who’s three rungs below Bernie Brillstein.”

John: Yes, absolutely. Signing with an agent who was really a peer and who I was grinding with together was incredibly helpful, because he just knew the right people. He knew what was actually happening.

Mike: The people who are young, while you are young will be the stars of tomorrow across the entire field.

John: Absolutely.

Mike: -and so making friends and making bonds and collaborations with people who are in your peer group and investing in those people, and hopefully, they invest in you. That’s, I think, one of the best things you can do.

John: How much of your work time is devoted to writing, figuring out the comedy, figuring out that work versus the career of like setting dates, and doing social media, and doing all the other stuff? What is the split?

Mike: I would say like it’s 2/3 the art, 1/3 marketing, but I would say, there are periods in my career where it is like 70/30 marketing. It’s miserable, but it was because there wasn’t enough work, and so it’s like, “Oh, I have to advertise my work more. I have to market my work more.” It’s like, you’re always rest always, and I think this is true of everyone.
It’s like the next hurdle is like, “We got to figure out the key art.” The next hurdle is, “We got to figure out the trailer.” The next figure, “We got to figure out what the Instagram tile is that conveys the idea of this whole project.” All that kind of stuff. It’s like, it is important. Yes, I try to minimize it, but it’s like, I don’t think anyone gets out of doing that.

John: I think one of the big differences between a pure screenwriter and what you’re doing is that we talk about like a screenwriter has to be entrepreneurial, but it’s like that whole level of magnitude is greater. You literally are responsible for how much the money’s coming in, whether you’re getting that date, whether you’re getting that thing to happen. Your income is so directly tied into how much promotion and everything else you’re doing for yourself.

Mike: Yes, and also, I feel like you have to have an awareness or try to have an awareness of where the business is going, where it’s been, where it could go, where we can’t possibly imagine it’s going. The AI discussion right now is so interesting because it’s like, it’s some people going like, “All right, easy on the AI stuff,” it’s every other conversation, but it’s like “No, no, it literally could change everything.”

John: Oh, absolutely.

Mike: Everything.

John: Yes, next week or a week after, I do once a full episode where we really just look at it because you look at not just the, how it’s impacting writing, but you look at the new video production things that come off, which is like, “That looks completely photorealistic, and the speech lines up,” and I just don’t what we’re going to do.

Mike: It’s astonishing.

John: Because like, maybe you won’t have to tour anymore because you could just press the button and there’s Mike Birbiglia. You’ll be this age forever.

Mike: Yes, we can only hope.

[laughter]

Mike: I got to lock in age 46, because it’s not getting any better.

John: This is the good life. Congratulations to get on the special, and thank you for coming on.

Mike: Thanks for coming to the screening last night, it meant the world to me.

John: Cool.

Links:

• Mike Birbiglia
• The Good Life on Netflix
• Mike’s previous episodes: 121, 168, 261, 427, 443, and Working it Out: Screenwriting Advice You’ll Actually Use
• Episode 660 – Moneyball
• Ira Glass on Mike’s podcast Working it Out
• Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk
• The Run Club Haters by Melissa Dahl for Curbed
• I Hadn’t Heard From My Dad in Over a Decade. Now He’s Returned With a Brazen Request. I’m Actually Considering It. from Slate’s Care and Feeding
• The Coyotes of San Francisco by Heather Knight and Loren Elliot for NY Times
• Coyote Vest
• Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney
• Chris Fleming
• Blue Prince
• 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 Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.