Search Results for: Dahl

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular).

**John August:** And now here is the part of the show where we actually do the Q&A which will be cut into a separate little part of an episode. So, if you have a question for me, or for Craig, or any of our panelists you can line up at that microphone and we will happily answer your questions.

Now, standard things we talk about when we do Q&As is that ideally the question and the answer if it fit into a 60 second segment would be awesome. So, the shorter your question, the more time we’ll have to answer your question.

**Craig Mazin:** Yes. And as always make sure your question is a question.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Please don’t pitch anything during your question.

**John:** Yes. A statement that ends with a question mark or an up voice isn’t really a question.

**Craig:** No, it should technically be an interrogative.

**John:** Yeah. It should be. It shouldn’t be like a, “Blah, blah, blah, don’t you agree?” But I see someone standing there who I think is our first person asking a question. So, please come up and ask.

**Openings:** Hi. I want to say first off thanks for being awesome.

**John:** Oh, thank you for saying so.

**Openings:** And I had two questions. One I wanted to ask Craig at this point after 123 episodes are you regretting introducing yourself a different way every time?

**Craig:** Uh, yes. [laughs]

**Openings:** Cool.

I have found with the last couple scripts that I write I’m really happy with the product but I just find that that opening — that opening three pages, it just tends to be it’s not the sort of thing that jumps out and grabs people. Do you guys have anything that you do specifically where like this is the checklist that I need for the first three pages in order to just grab somebody by the lapels and just really knock their socks off?

**Craig:** Well, I think that knowing that you’re supposed to do that is probably the first thing, you know. I mean, the first ten pages, I would think of the first ten pages as the most important pages in the script. It’s like you’re making a seed and everything that grows out of the script comes out from that little seed. It’s all packed in there. Who the hero is. Potentially who the villain is. What their problem is. What the world is like. What their voice is like. And also you education of the audience so that they understand what the movie is going to be like is all in those ten pages.

I will spend a month sometimes on the first ten or 20 pages because everything is there. So, take your time and be cinematic. Frankly, watching movies will kind of give you some clues.

**John:** Well, I would say the first — I agree about the first ten pages. The first three pages, we may not really know your hero, but we’ll know what your movie feels like. We know like why we’re signing onto this movie and what the overall shape and feel of this kind of movie is. And that’s crucial. And so that’s why it’s so important that you’re really doing that detailed work there.

Now, I’ve been on a lot of movies where you end up cutting those first ten pages or first three pages. Like those first things you write may not be ultimately in the movie, but that’s what told you as a writer what your movie felt like, so they were critically crucial things to write. Go was an example of that. Big Fish was an example of that for me, those first ten pages, were almost literally like ripping the pages out of the typewriter and doing it over again. I just had to keep figuring out like how I was going to tell the story. But once you break those it’s crucial.

So, no, not a checklist, but just making sure that they feel like the best movie that they could be, like they could stand on their own if they had to.

**Craig:** Yeah. Don’t be afraid to take your time on those.

**Openings:** Great. Thank you.

**John:** Thanks so much.

**Craig:** Sure. Nice shirt!

**John:** Great shirt.

**Scriptnotes Shirt:** I know. I’m rocking the shirt.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Scriptnotes Shirt:** I’d like to hear from you guys and any of the panelists that would like to answer, what movie that you didn’t write do you wish you had written and why?

**John:** Oh, that’s a…

**Craig:** Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.

**John:** Oh, absolutely.

**Craig:** Just because honestly if you could write that on purpose, you’re on a level beyond anyone. I don’t know.

**John:** Of recent movies, Aline already said it, but I thought Frozen was terrific. And what I thought was so smart about Frozen was that it both honored and subverted the expectations of like what a Disney princess movie was supposed to be. It did all the Disney princess stuff really well, and then it sort of turned what the expectation of what that is.

We talked about the Bechdel test on the podcast. It almost passes the reverse Bechdel test in that there’s no two men who say lines to each other that aren’t about the woman, which is actually sort of fascinating. Except at the very end. But, now Richard Kelly who is going to tell us —

**Richard Kelly:** I’m going to sit on the floor for this one.

**Craig:** This isn’t getting weird at all.

**Richard:** I would say Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the — it’s hard to say what your favorite Coen Bros film is, it’s so difficult because they’re so great, but this screenplay structurally is so innovative and layered and it appears to be something that’s a very simple journey over the course of three days of a flailing folk singer. But, after having seen the film three times there are so many layers to this script and the sort of structural innovation of it becomes more apparent upon multiple viewings.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Did you like Frozen?

**Richard:** I did love Frozen. I did love Frozen. I thought Frozen was terrific. And I went back and I looked up the Hans Christian Andersen story.

**Aline:** Oh, and?

**Richard:** I really did!

**Aline:** And?

**Richard:** I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to.

**Craig:** So, Inside Llewyn Davis is your —

**Richard:** Is my pick. I mean, that film is extraordinary.

**Craig:** Even though Script Shadow didn’t like it?

**Richard:** You know, um…

**Craig:** You’re still okay with it?

**Richard:** I’m going to see it five more times just because they didn’t like it.

**Craig:** Okay, yeah. Because that’s going to —

**Aline:** Wow. I’m so sad that nobody on the podcast will see that Craig is kneeling.

**John:** Yeah. I hope so — document this please. Thank you.

**Craig:** What, did you not know that my knees worked? What do you think?

**Aline:** It just is a weird thing to do.

**Craig:** I don’t know what else to do. I’m doing it. It’s the David Kwong stance.

**John:** Aline has the microphone that’s going to be passed down, though. You don’t have to do this anymore, Craig. Aline has the microphone with the cord.

**Craig:** Oh she does?

**Aline:** The Kwong kneel! You’re doing the Kwong kneel!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, she has the microphone.

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna, save us please. What would you have wished you would —

**Aline:** You know what? People ask that question. I don’t really even understand that question, because I feel like —

**John:** So, pass it to Franklin who I know understands the question.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Give it to somebody that understands the question.

**Franklin Leonard:** This is why I was kneeling. I actually, as someone who is not a writer, I feel sort of unqualified to answer that question.

But I can say that this year there was one film where I am profoundly and overwhelmingly jealous of everyone involved in any capacity and that’s 12 Years a Slave. That is a film that obviously as an African American it held a special place in my heart, but just as a film itself, the story it told, the choices it made, the simple fact of its existence, I am deeply, deeply and profoundly jealous of everyone who was involved in it.

**John:** Rawson Thurber?

**Craig:** Rawson?

**Rawson Thurber:** Oh, I guess Mud, Jeff Nichols. Mud.

**Aline:** Yeah, that’s good.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Rawson:** I thought it was fantastic. I hope it wins. That’s all I have to say.

**John:** Hey, how short that was. That was terrific. Lindsay Doran?

**Lindsay Doran:** Again, I’m not a writer, and I just saw the movie, so I know that it’s really influencing me, but American Hustle, where I was just dazzled by the writing all the way through. Nothing even happens in that movie for like an hour. It was just phenomenal relationships and phenomenal dialogue and just sort of full-on filmmaking and I’m just kind of — I’m just kind of reeling from it, still.

**John:** Kelly Marcel?

**Kelly Marcel:** I loved Toy Story 3. I thought that was beautiful. And I would have liked to have written Identity Thief.

**Craig:** Ha!

**John:** Oh, nice.

**Craig:** It’s not hard. [laughs]

**Kelly:** That’s why I would have liked to have written it.

**Craig:** It’s just like you could do it in like a week.

**John:** Next up please.

**TV Assistant:** Are you guys willing to answer a TV career question?

**John:** Sure.

**TV Assistant:** Okay, sweet. So, brief setup. I’ve sort of written it down so it will be shorter. I’ve been a writer’s assistant on a network television show for four years. This is the first legitimate show I’ve worked on, so I have no other professional writing contacts, no agent, no manager. Last March I wrote one freelance episode for the show and the experience for me and them seemed acceptable if not good.

But this will most likely be the show’s final season, so I will be out of a job in April. Several of the EPs have sold pilots that have already or will most likely receive pickups for next season. So, here’s the three-part question.

**Craig:** Oh good!

**John:** All right.

**TV Assistant:** I know. I know. Sorry.

**Craig:** Because I thought this was going so quickly.

**TV Assistant:** Yeah. Sorry.

At what point in them producing their pilot should I ask for a job on their show? When I’m asking them how should I handle doing that?

**Craig:** Right. Not like this. Go ahead. [laughs]

**TV Assistant:** This is why I’m asking.

And when or if they say no is it totally unacceptable to turn around and say I’ll still be your writer’s assistant. Is that job available?

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Right. Okay.

**John:** So, I have more TV experience so I’m going to answer this question for you.

**Craig:** Please do.

**John:** I think it’s actually a really good question.

So, the short version of this question is at what point as a guy who has written on a show in a very low capacity are you allowed to say to someone who is leaving the show, “Hey, could I get a job on that show?” And that’s a very natural thing to do.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Like, hey, can I have a job? I would pick the people and your relationships with those people and prioritize them based on who is writing the show that you might actually be a good fit for, who you have the best relationship for. But you’re going to have to be upfront and honest about sort of like, “Hey, I really think this thing is great. I would love to work on this show if you can consider me for it.”

So, you have this sample of the produced episode you did. You should have two other amazing things that they can read that show that you’re a really good writer. Do you?

**TV Assistant:** Specs or pilots?

**John:** Great, so —

**TV Assistant:** No, I’m asking.

**John:** I would say originals. Because they’ve seen you write a show —

**Craig:** Originals.

**John:** Original things.

**Craig:** For sure.

**John:** Because they’ve seen you write the show that they were already on. So, they need to see you write something else that’s great, and brilliant, and shows a side that they didn’t know you could do.

So, you have that, you have those conversations, and one of those three things should work out. Because being a writer’s assistant for four years, you’re there to do what you’re doing. If you got an episode produced, you didn’t shit the bed on that. So, that’s good.

**Craig:** Look, I think you should honestly, it is a good question. I was just kidding with you. I think you should ask all of them frankly. I would cast the widest net possible. And at some point though you need to actually say, “I’m here to be a writer.” They’re not going to ever really take you seriously if they think they can just keep getting you to be an assistant. You’re just going to have to bite the bullet.

**TV Assistant:** So, should I not ask for the —

**Craig:** I think you should say, “I’m here to be a writer. You guys know that. I’ve been doing it for four years. I wrote an episode. This is what I’m here to do.”

Unless you truly want to be a professional writer’s assistant, and I don’t think you do, then I think it’s time for you to find out if you’re a writer or not.

**John:** Great. Thank you so much.

**Aline:** May I interject with something? May I add? One thing that I’ve been talking about recently is there’s kind of more than one component to being a professional writer. And one is —

**Craig:** What?! I’m not trying to electrocute myself.

**Aline:** [laughs] One is actual writing talent. That’s important. But there’s another thing that goes into it which is your EQ and how you understand relationships and how you relate to other people. How you feel about yourself. How confident you are. And those are really difficult things because you can’t learn them, you can’t take them in a class. You can’t do all that.

And you look at somebody like Rawson who out of the box got to direct — he’s like shocked — got to direct his first movie. You know, if you’re super charming, and confident, and outgoing, and people like you, and you can sort of demonstrate that you understand what room you’re in, and that you can be in that room and interact with people and do well at that — that’s just a huge important part of being…

— And I was saying to somebody last night, I had dinner with a screenwriter last night. I was saying, I know some strange people who are screenwriters, but I don’t really know people who are non-functional socially. You know, as I’ve talked about before you have to kind of be —

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** No, you have to kind of be an entrepreneur. You have to be able to go in and represent yourself and sell some things and really forcefully articulate your opinion. And you can be an oddball for sure, but you still have to be able to go sit in a room and understand the feedback that you’re getting from people and present yourself. And it’s very important.

And it’s something that I would encourage you as you go forward to try and imbibe, because it’s something that you learn by doing.

**John:** Cool. I would agree with you. Absolutely. That social skill is crucial. Our next question is…?

**Dodgeballer:** Yes. This question is for Rawson. Talking about Dodgeball, that process of rewriting and going through the different drafts, how different was the final version compared to the first thing that you handed into the production company?

**Rawson:** God, I guess pretty different. I remember going back and reading the first draft, the draft that actually Ben and Stuart got behind and sort of strong-armed DreamWorks into optioning for crackers.

**Craig:** Crackers!

**Rawson:** And I remember reading it, I forget why I was reading it, I reread it and I was sort of shocked at how far I’d come from that draft to the shooting draft.

And I just remember having like this deep sense of gratitude towards Stuart Cornfeld and Ben Stiller for seeing it, seeing it from what in reading it in retrospect was not a very polished script. I still don’t know why they did what they did, but I owe them a great deal for it. I will say, however, that the shooting script to the final movie is very close. Very close.

So, that process of about 18 months, two years of rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting was really valuable. And I think as a first timer had I not gone through that, had someone been dumb enough to just let me shoot the first thing I wrote, I wouldn’t be here. [laughs] Because it wouldn’t have been a very good movie.

But, thank you for your question.

**John:** Cool. Thank you very much.

**Josh, a big fan:** Hey guys, I’m Josh, a big fan. So, my question is there’s a lot of information about like how do you get an agent, including an episode of your podcast, which was great. My question is what do you do when you have one and what’s the etiquette?

Because I’ve spoken to a lot of established writers and I’m like, “What are the rules? What do I do now?” And they’re like, “I don’t really know. It’s weird for me, too.” And they’re pretty established.

So, could you guys talk about that and like how do you drive things forward. And how do you do it eloquently and not muddle the relationship and —

**Craig:** Good question. Good question!

**John:** Because we have all these people here maybe we should just ask like how often do each of you guys speak to your agent, or communicate with your agent. Aline, how often do you speak to your agent?

**Aline:** Well, it really depends. I mean, I had one agent for 17 years and we’ve talked probably every day. And then for the last three years I’ve had a team of three agents and, you know, we talk pretty frequently. It’s sort of about what you need and what your communication is. And also it’s interpersonal. It’s one of those things that I was saying about the EQ thing, like you sort of have to read the room and know if you’re the person who is calling too much. You know? And sort of be able to tell if you’re having that right kind of communication.

But it is really, the first agent I had scared the pants off of me. And I was — and there were no cell phones and no email and no, I mean, we had answering machines, but I was so desperate to get him on the phone. And then he would call me and I would have built up all these questions for, you know, a week and a half. And then he would finally call me and I would be like, “I wanted to ask you about, this, this, this…” and he’d hang up on me.

And I always felt like I never got a chance to ask the million things I wanted to say, but he didn’t have time for me because I wasn’t making him any money. [laughs] So, it was, you know, at that point when you’re not making people a lot of money, be really like, I mean, I would even write down on a piece of paper like ask them about this, and ask them about that, and can you send this, and do you know this person, and be really specific. Because later on when you have more of a business going people might be more willing to put their feet and have a chit chat.

But it was definitely very stressful in the beginning and it’s a really, really good question, because it is one of those things you just have to feel out.

**Rawson:** My agent I’ve had for, I guess, almost ten years now, maybe a little bit longer. I speak with him daily at this point. And sometimes many times a day. It just depends on what’s going on. And I think it just depends on the kind of person you are and the kind of person the agent is. And a lot of times the agent that you pick says a lot about you and what you want in your life.

I have friends who have an agent and they’re buddy-buddy. They go to birthday parties together. And they want a friend and a cheerleader.

**Craig:** Argh.

**Rawson:** Right?

**Craig:** Ugh.

**Rawson:** Well, exactly. And I think the world of my agent and I would consider him a friend, but I don’t go to his birthday party. He doesn’t come to mine. It’s a professional relationship. It’s friendly, and cordial, and we root for each other, and et cetera. But, I think it’s really about what you want from your agent.

And I know what I want is someone who is really good at their job and will be on the phone with me when I need to talk to them. But I don’t need another friend. I don’t think anybody does really. Everyone is alone.

**Craig:** Forever alone.

**Josh, a big fan:** Thank you.

**John:** Kelly Marcel, how often are you talking to your agent? Now, how often are you talking to your agent?

**Kelly:** I speak to — I have a team of agents, and I speak to them probably every day at the moment.

My advice to you is that your agent at your agency will have a list of open writing assignments. It’s an enormous, enormous document that goes around all the agencies and talks about assignments that are open, they’re looking for writers on. Ask them to send it to you. They shouldn’t have any problem. It’s a big document. Look through it.

See if there’s anything on there that interests you. Then chase it. And chase it hard.

**John:** Richard Kelly?

**Craig:** Richard Kelly?

**Richard:** I’ve been hanging out in a cave with Smaug writing for four years. My agent doesn’t even remember who I am. But I’m coming back.

I’m kidding. I talk to him pretty often. I’ve been with my agent for 15 years. 15 years.

**Craig:** That’s Richard Kelly.

**John:** So, I would say, you would think that as an aspiring writer versus as an established writer you would talk to them more, or less, or differently, and I’ve found that actually the frequency isn’t all that different, but we have a shorthand now because we talk to each other so often, that even if I only talk to my agent twice a week we can bang through stuff really quickly because we all know the same people. We know what’s going on.

I know why he’s not sending me on that thing. Or he could say, “It’s a fishing trip. It’s not a real job. They’re just trying to figure out what the movie is.” We can have that kind of shorthand which is really useful.

But in terms of like being your agent’s best friend and vice versa, I agree with Rawson is that you want somebody who you can talk to on the phone and you’re not ever scared to talk to on the phone, but it doesn’t have to be like he’s your best friend. It has to be someone who you feel can represent you out in the world and you don’t feel is toxic or poisonous or is going to misrepresent you out in the world.

But it’s the business version of you and that’s a very different kind of person.

**Craig:** All I can really add is that we don’t always get the agents that we want, especially when we’re starting. We don’t really have a choice of these.

**John:** And when you get a bad agent, Craig is the best at firing them.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m the guy if you need an agent to be fired.

**John:** I have to just say, Craig, we have mutual friends who will have a terrible agent. And Craig is the best at talking them through how to fire their agent.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m really good at it. I love it.

But, this is really what — to get to the heart of I think what you’re going for here, in order to communicate with your agent unfortunately you have to kind of imagine what their day is like. And I hate having to put myself in their shoes, because they’re supposed to be working for us, but at least in this stage in your career, do it. And really what they need are bullet points. They just need bullet points. And you have email now, which I didn’t really have when I started, you know. Just send them an email and bullet point I want this, this, this. What’s happening here? What’s happening here? What’s happening there?

And then they’ll get back to you. This whole phone tag thing, getting on the phone. They’re distracted on the phone. I had an agent that I fired, one of many, I could hear him typing when I was talking. I could hear the keyboard. He would make me insane. And I’d be like, “You’re typing right now. You’re not listening to me. You’re typing.” [makes keyboard clicking noise] “No I’m not.” He even took the time… — So, anyway. Nice little short bursts of emails. Make sure that you’re getting what you need out of it. Real simple.

But, you know, that probably will get you where you need to go.

**Franklin:** I would actually add one thing. I think people forget this all too often, which is assistants can be incredibly valuable. And you should treat them incredibly well. Both because they have more information oftentimes than their bosses do, but they will either be agents or producers, or executive, or writers, or directors as quickly as six months from when they’re working for their bosses.

**Craig:** Fact. Truth.

**Franklin:** So, treat them well. I mean, if they’re an idiot, ignore them. But they were hired by their boss for a reason. And as a representative of their boss you can oftentimes get just as much information or scripts or whatever you need from the assistant as you can from the agent. And the assistant can also chase up the information you need from the agent in a way that is not going to make you look like you’re annoying.

**Craig:** Great advice.

**Josh, a big fan:** Great. Thanks so much, guys.

**John:** Thank you so much. Great.

And I see you. Please, come on up. I see five people in line and you’re our last five questions, so you’re awesome people. And you have the mic. Come up.

**Adaptation’er:** Thank you. First off, pleasure to meet you all. Mr. Mazin, I have an agent that…

**Craig:** You need me to take care of?

**Adaptation’er:** You could work your magic. But, actually my question is on book adaptations. When it comes to authors, especially, or specifically ones that are known for their language, their pentameter, say like Elmore Leonard for 3:10 to Yuma, and The Devil Wears Prada by Weiner [sic.] and so on, that how much of it was a battle, if there ever was one, an uphill battle or so on to put your stamp onto the script, your own language, whilst also trying to go with the adaptation of the author? How much was it kind of a bargain between —

**Craig:** The negotiation between your voice and the voice of the novelist.

**Adaptation’er:** Yeah.

**John:** I could talk it from Big Fish or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or books I’ve adapted. You’re always mindful that that book exists for a reason and that person wrote that book. And that person wrote the book to write a book. And you are writing a screenplay to make a movie. And they are different things.

And so there are times where the very specific quality of their words or choices, their voice, will translate really, really well to a movie. And so you get the luxury of being able to use that. So, for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I would highlight one little line from Roald Dahl’s book and use everything I possibly could from his book in there because that felt very much like what the movie was we wanted to make.

Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish, I loved it, but there was very, very little there that I could say, “Oh, that’s the movie version of this voice.” It just wasn’t really going to happen. So, I had to be truthful to what the movie wanted to be.

So, if Derek was here we could talk 3:10 to Yuma. But, in all those cases you’re looking at what is the movie version of this. And if there’s a way that you can use that author’s voice in a way that helps your movie, you do it. If there’s not, you can never feel bound to it because there’s no… — No one is going to benefit if you’re just trying to shove that onto the screen.

Aline, did you have any sense of voice?

**Aline:** You know, with Devil Wears Prada it was like, it was enormously well researched and so I used a lot of that material. And then I did the adaptation and then when it was done I went back and went to see if I had missed any stuff.

I also adapted a book called I Don’t Know How She Does It and I had a little bit of an issue with that book which was I was incredibly infatuated with her writing. I mean, I still am. I worship her. I think she’s such an amazing writer of prose. And so I labored really hard to try and figure out how to get that prose kind of into the script. And it ended up being somewhat in voice over, which in a funny way I don’t know was in the best service of what Allison had done.

I kind of felt at the end of the day that with that book I would have been happy just to watch Allison read the book to me. And that’s maybe not the best starting point to mine things from. Because I always kept going back to bits of language. So, it’s sort of about the relationship you have with the material. And I think there’s some instances where you’re going to want to be more faithful. But in order to make that leap to really a screenplay you kind of have to put that thing down.

I really do think you have to put that thing down.

**John:** I’d offer one last cautionary tale. I think you need to read the book with the mind of like if I didn’t have this voice would I still want to make this movie? Because there could be cases where, I think I Don’t Know How She Does It may be a good example of that. If you just look at the story of it, was there enough story to tell to make that movie independent of that great voice you had in that book? And that may be a useful thing to let you know is this a book I should try to adapt, that wants to be a movie.

Thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you. Hi.

**John:** Hello.

**Jeff Pulice:** Good evening and thank you for doing this. My questions are about the Three Page Challenge. It’s my big goal to get on there.

Is that going to be returning? How often do you guys reach out to somebody who has got a really good three pages? And since I’m just chomping at the bit to be mentioned on it, is it better for the three pages to have a thrill or a laugh?

**John:** You know, we have somebody here who could actually answer those questions.

**Craig:** Brett Goldfarb!

**John:** Stuart Friedel, come up here and take a microphone.

**Craig:** Come on, Stuart! I can’t believe we’re letting him talk on a podcast.

**John:** Stuart, take a real seat here.

**Craig:** Come on, up, up. Up in the big boy chair.

**Jeff Pulice:** Hi Brett. My name is Jeff.

**Craig:** It’s happening.

**John:** It’s happening.

**Stuart Friedel:** I wish I was groomed before this.

**John:** You have your hoodie on. Now, Stuart, how many entries do we get for the Three Page Challenge?

**Stuart:** Do we get?

**John:** Yeah.

**Stuart:** We still get like 15 to 50 a week I’d say.

**John:** That’s a lot of pages.

**Stuart:** Yeah.

**John:** And do you actually read every one of them?

**Stuart:** I try to. I try to. I have a theory that some disappear. Like sometimes I’ll accidentally highlight everything and say Mark As Read, because we get a lot of spam in the Ask account. And then I’ll be like, oh my god, there were 15 unread Three Page Challenges in there and I’ll have to remember which those were. But usually I think I catch them all. The odds are still against us —

**Craig:** It’s so weird to watch you lose a job live on air.

**John:** Wow! [laughs]

**Craig:** It’s so weird. What an amazing choice for your debut on the podcast to reveal the most ramshackle method possible for dealing with their dreams.

**John:** Sir, could I have your name?

**Jeff Pulice:** Jeff Pulice.

**John:** Jeff Pulice. Do you recognize his name?

**Stuart:** I do because of your last name. It sticks out.

**John:** So Police like a police officer?

**Stuart:** But —

**Jeff Pulice:** Police, yeah. [sic.]

**John:** So, you recognize that last name.

**Craig:** You haven’t lost his yet.

**Stuart:** I hope not. Or I’ve at least —

**Craig:** I hope not.

**Stuart:** I don’t think that I’ve lost many.

**John:** Or any.

**Stuart:** But it’s possible.

**Craig:** I can’t believe this. This is so embarrassing for you.

**John:** No. It’s not embarrassing for me at all. It’s just delightful.

Stuart, I deliberately — there’s like a little wall, I don’t see any Three Page Challenges. So, tell me about your thought process about, basically I ask you for like send me and Craig three Three Page Challenges, and you just do it. And you’re always really good. You make good choices.

**Stuart:** Well, I hope…

**John:** What is your process?

**Stuart:** Honestly, like —

**John:** I’m fascinated to learn what my employee does.

**Craig:** Yes, honestly. Don’t hold back. [laughs]

**Stuart:** I will not lie.

There’s probably less of a formal process than people think, which I get from the questions that I get. I’m not looking for Something. I’m just like, “Oh okay, that worked.” And then I use the star — the Gmail star colored system. There used to be different folders, and those got too cluttered, so now it’s like yellow star means it’s going to get on, blue star means like, well, if there’s —

**Craig:** What a scientist. Just remarkable.

**Stuart:** Yeah, well, you know.

Basically I’m looking for things that are not bad. Like they can’t be illegible. They can’t be not in English. There are certain pet peeves of badness that bother me that are just like, you know, we talk so often about not using the same first letter and length of name. And I’m not going to disqualify you for that, but if like after hearing that on every Three Page Challenge we’ve ever done you’re still doing that and it’s dated this week then it’s a little bit like, well, you didn’t listen to the lessons we’ve given you so there’s nothing to build off of.

**John:** Yeah. He’s winning us back a little bit.

**Craig:** That’s okay. Okay. Yeah?

**John:** So, sir, what I will say is that because you have bravely stood up there and asked about the question, we will do your Three Page Challenge. That’s a guarantee probably after the New Year.

**Craig:** Now, of course, be careful what you wish for, I mean…

**John:** So, what title should we also look for? Do you know which one?

**Jeff Pulice:** Oh yeah.

**John:** It’s a script called Oh Yeah?

**Jeff Pulice:** How the Genetti Brothers Invented Hollywood.

**John:** How the Genetti Brothers Invented Hollywood. You should listen for that on an upcoming episode of the Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Are you excited now? All right, we’re excited, too.

**Craig:** All right. Way to go!

**John:** Hello and welcome.

Stuart, thank you very much. Thank you.

**Craig:** Way to go Stuart.

**Kate Powers:** So, I have had a Three Page Challenge.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Kate Powers:** And it was awesome, so it was horrible, but I used everything. Craig helped me rewrite my opening and I got a freelance off of it.

**Craig:** Yay! Oh great.

**John:** Tell us what you’re Three Page Challenge was because we’ll remember it by topic what it was.

**Craig:** You can tilt the mic down. There you go.

**Kate Powers:** For a shorter person?

**Craig:** Yeah. There you go.

**Kate Powers:** It was a junior producer on a daytime talk show and a bathroom that has a bloody footprint in it.

**John:** Oh, I remember that!

**Craig:** I remember that one. Yes. Yes.

**John:** That was early on in our Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** That was very early on.

**Kate Powers:** Thank you very much. So, here’s my question and I’m very much hoping there will be some role play or improv on your part in the answer.

**John:** Guaranteed.

**Kate Powers:** So I’m a writer’s assistant and I’ve been really lucky. I’ve been in some really good ruins. And they’ve ruined me. I’m filthy. I’m honest. I say out loud what I’m thinking.

**Craig:** Oh, you mean they’ve made you awesome?

**Kate Powers:** Yeah, that!

And now I’m meeting with people because of the freelance thing and I’m discovering this phenomenon where I’ve worked on shows where like say a guy got gutted with a box knife. And I’ve worked on shows where somebody sweeps everything off the desk angrily but also because secretly he’s in love. And I think these are both equally valid dramatic moments and we talk, agents, managers about what I love, what I respond to.

The box cutter shows are dramatic. The sweeping off of the desk shows are soap operas. And I’m thinking there’s a gender thing going on that when there aren’t as many men on screen an industry shorthand is that’s soapy.

So, and it keeps happening is the other reason I bring it up. So, a great thing for me to know would be a cool, sophisticated, smart way to acknowledge that I’ve just had all the things I like written off as soapy because there are women in them and then keep the conversation going because I would probably just say some really smart ass thing that would burn it to the ground.

**John:** Great. So, your question is as you go into rooms for meetings on shows, to acknowledge that you’re doing both things. I thought you honestly did a nice job setting up that like you’ve done the box cutter show. That’s a good image for what that is. And for the soapy things with women.

But you want to be considered for the job that’s in front of you and you’re a great candidate for the job in front of you because of these things about the show that you’re actually meeting on. And that’s I think the thing to emphasize more than anything else is that, “I can do anything, but I want to do more than anything else is this show right in front of me. Is this show, this job, that you have right here. And let me talk to you about the things I saw in the pilot I read, or the things I think are exciting possibilities…” because they’re hiring you for one job not for everything else you’ve written in your life.

**Craig:** Yeah. I often imagine Hollywood as this multi-armed Shiva the Destroyer who is slapping you in the face with various hands, some of them are the racism hand, and the sexism hand, and the ageism hand, and the “I don’t like your face,” and all the other. And you’re constantly getting slapped.

And you can get so angry about which hand just slapped you that you then — but at some point you realize, “Oh, I’m just going to get slapped anyway. It doesn’t really matter why the hand is slapping me. None of that matters. I’m just in for a good slapping today.”

So, [laughs], with that in mind, I wouldn’t get hung up on why they’re doing it to you because that can send you down a rabbit hole of anger. I would however take John’s advice to say positive and talk about what you’re passion is for the show in front of you. And it’s okay to acknowledge that what they’ve read of you isn’t the show in front of you. Sometimes that’s all they need to hear is that you can see that. Because they get a lot of people who are like, “See, I’ve done it already,” and they’re like, “No, you haven’t. That’s not my show at all.” And everybody thinks their show is special, even when it’s just another show about people picking up blood stains off the floor. Okay?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, show your passion for their show and be positive and just don’t worry about all the slapping.

**John:** Yeah. The last thing I’ll say is that you seem cool. And that’s a quality that’s very important. It’s that EQ thing that Aline brought up. You’d be a cool person to have in a room. And so people are going to see you and go, “Oh, she’d be fun to have in the room. She’s be a great person to have in.” So, hopefully your writing is really good. And you seem like a cool person who is going to be good in an interview and you’ll be a good person to have in a room.

These are all good things in TV. I think you’re going to have good success.

**Kate Powers:** That’s awesome. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**Female Action Writer:** Hi. My question is why are there not enough female writers who write action movies?

**John:** That’s a great question.

**Female Action Writer:** Because, you know, for like The Hurt Locker we had Kathryn Bigelow be the director.

**Craig:** Right. But she didn’t write it.

**Female Action Writer:** Yeah, she didn’t write.

**Craig:** No. I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t know. We have two women writers right now and we have Lindsay Doran. So, do any you have suggestions on why there are not more women writers being hired?

**Craig:** Oh, I get to kneel!

**Linday:** [laughs] Are you going to propose now?

I used to work for a woman who had been an agent. I was telling I think Aline this story before she was a production executive. And I was asking her why there weren’t more women in general who were writers. And she said, “Well, I can tell you one thing which is that when I told men that their writing wasn’t good enough they would go out and prove me wrong. They would say, ‘Oh, I’ll show you.’ And when I told women their writing wasn’t good enough they’d believe me.”

[laughs] So, I think there, you know, I think that was awhile ago, but I’m not sure how much it’s changed. I think, you know, if you look at the movies that women are making in the independent world they tend to be character based. They tend to be relationship based. They tend to be about people in homes talking to each other. And I love those movies.

When I was working at studios and looking for writers on action movies and making it very clear that I would love to have women being — not just women who had written action movies, but just women who had written exciting scenes. You know, that’s all they are is just exciting scenes. It was very, very difficult to find people who were literally interested in that.

Now, I know that sounds like everybody is sexist and of course there is some sexism. Of course I’ve heard people say, “Well I don’t want women in my room.” But in general people just want good writing. They’re so desperate for good writing. So, I just — I keep wondering, and I feel it’s a very unpopular point of view, whether it just has to do with interest.

You know, are they just as interested in explosion?

**Aline:** I want to ask a question. Are you an action writer?

**Female Action Writer:** I love action, so I write different genres. But —

**Aline:** But is that something you’re interested in writing?

**Female Action Writer:** Yes. I’ve always had this sort of connection to… — Beau Geste was my first action movie. So, movie. So, movies like Hurt Locker, movies like Lone Survivor that I want to see. They appeal to me.

**Aline:** Can I give you some advice?

**Female Action Writer:** Yes. Thanks.

**Aline:** Just do it. Who cares? Who cares? And I’ll tell you something right now. It would work for you because right now if I saw your name on a script and I was like, “Oh, who is that, that’s a female woman who wrote this kickass action script, that’s great. Oh, you have to see her. She’s adorable. She’s got this cute gray coat. She’s going to kick your ass.”

And it’s going to be like, oh, it’s not going to be like the 20 other dudes who look the same who are in cargo pants. It’s going to be like we have this girl. Her action kicks ass. People would freak out. They would be so excited. And if you’re putting up that barrier in your own mind, forget it. Put it down.

**Female Action Writer:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

**Kelly:** Jane Goldman writes action.

**Craig:** Jane Goldman.

**John:** So, we’re listing women writers. So Jane Goldman. Mary Wibberley.

**Linday:** There’s a ton.

**Aline:** Berloff.

**John:** Yeah, Andrea Berloff writes all the —

**Aline:** [Laida].

**Craig:** Kelly Marcel wrote on Bronson which is pretty violent and manly.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s just another one of those hands slapping you around. Just ignore it.

**John:** Our final question of the evening. Hello.

**Real Voices:** My question is for Kelly. I saw Saving Mr. Banks on Tuesday. I’ve been also reading Valerie Lawson’s book. And I want to know, also they play the tapes over the credits, how you adapt that. They didn’t sound exactly like word for word like what you wrote. So, how do you balance adapting what she actually said to what you think she would have said and everything like that, like Tom Hanks’ Walt Disney, how you think he would have said all those things?

**Kelly:** You know, it’s a really tricky one because ultimately at the end of the day you do have to make a decision about who the characters are to you. So, the tapes, there’s 39 hours of those tapes and you hear them over the credits, so if Emma had decided to play her like that and we had written it verbatim you’d be digging your eardrum out with a fork after two hours of watching that film.

And so I think you just take what’s interesting, the most interesting thing about it, and make it as sayable as you possibly can in the most interesting way. You know, she would go on for hours and hours and I need that to become five lines in a scene. So, I’ll just choose the most interesting ones and then have her say them the way I want her to say them.

And with Walt, you know, there’s a lot of research that you can do with him and he’s a very well known character so he needed to be quite specific. But what there is out there is a lot of Walt being Walt. There’s not a lot of stuff that you can find where he’s really himself. So, we had a lot of leeway there.

We’re not making a documentary. We’re making entertainment, so I think you can take a lot of artistic license.

**Real Voices:** Perfect. Thank you. Awesome.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Great questions. Great answers.

**John:** And that’s our show. So, thank you guys all so much.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** This will be out next Tuesday. And you’re awesome. Have a great 2014.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** Oh!

**Craig:** Oh, god!

**John:** Bonus eggnog for us. Thank you!

**Craig:** You spent charity money on this? It’s light eggnog. I mean, ugh.

**John:** Thank you guys all so much.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

Links:

* [The Scriptnotes Holiday Spectacular](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show) and [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing)
* [Franklin Leonard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Leonard) on episode [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes)
* [Kelly Marcel](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2813876/) on episode [115](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-back-to-austin-with-rian-johnson-and-kelly-marcel)
* [Lindsay Doran](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/movies/lindsay-doran-examines-what-makes-films-satisfying.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) on episode [68](http://johnaugust.com/2012/talking-austen-in-austin)
* [Rawson Marshall Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on episodes [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode) and [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show)
* [Richard Kelly](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0446819/) on episode [118](http://johnaugust.com/2013/time-travel-with-richard-kelly)
* The [2013 Black List](http://list.blcklst.com/story/7887) and [blcklst.com](http://blcklst.com/)
* [Saving Mr. Banks](http://movies.disney.com/saving-mr-banks) is in theaters now
* Thank you to the [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/) and the [LA Film School](http://www.lafilm.edu/) for hosting
* Support the Writers Guild Foundation and get something awesome from their [Holiday Sale of Extraordinary Experiences](https://www.wgfoundation.org/holiday-fundraiser/)
* [Intro/Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/10-questions-10-answers).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 94 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, in full disclosure, this is our second attempt at doing episode 94, because we got four minutes into it and you realized that something was not right.

**Craig:** Yeah, I totally blew it. We use these external mics and I didn’t switch the input source to the external mic, so it was trying to record me though my closed laptop. So, I sounded like a ghost in a wind tunnel.

**John:** Yeah. That’s never good.

**Craig:** A boring ghost in a wind tunnel.

**John:** But, now we’re here and we can do the podcast that we really want to do which is that we have so many questions that have stacked up. And they just keep piling up and piling up. And if we don’t address them at some point they will just burst through and the email folder will come to tatters.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a real thing called Question Poisoning.

**John:** Yeah. It’s deadly.

**Craig:** Deadly.

**John:** And there’s not enough media attention on Question Poisoning. It just builds up and builds up. And, you know, everyone talks about the Explanation Point Poisoning, and sort of that’s the danger, but no, it’s the question marks that are really the dangerous part here.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, we’re going to try to churn through a lot of these questions that people have generously written in. If people have a question for us, I should start by saying you can always write at ask@johnaugust.com and we will attempt to answer your question. You can also, if it’s a short thing, just tweet Craig or I. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

But, Heather from Dahlonega, Georgia…see, the good thing about re-recording this podcast is I was actually able to say her city right.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s good. Well, because it’s called Roald Dahl’s name in it, so I figured you’d pick up on that.

**John:** Oh, yeah, Dahlonega. So, now I can’t not say it.

**Craig:** Dahlonega.

**John:** Heather writes with a really good question. “Why do so many TV shows now produce less than the average 22 episodes a season if they’re not midseason replacements? And how is this affecting the writers?”

That’s a good question, Heather.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, Heather brings up the point that most seasons of TV shows we think about as being 22 episodes, but that’s not actually really correct a lot of times. When shows are really successful, sometimes they’ll do a 23rd or a 24th episode. That happened to Chicago Fire this year. And I think Castle does it. And that’s a thing that happens because networks want more of the hit shows so they can keep their ratings up, which is understandable and great; exhausting for the writers, but great.

And TV shows used to be even longer. Series could be like 30 or 40 episodes in a season, which just seems madness now. And they were shorter schedules on things and it was all crazy. Now, we talk about 22 episodes as being a full season. And we talk about 13 episodes as being the initial order for a TV show. So, an American TV show, classically, if it’s going to be a fall pickup they will order 13 episodes, sometimes they’ll order less — eight episodes, or not quite to 13. But they’ll order 13 episodes and if the show is a hit then they’d hope to order the back nine episodes which bring you up to a full 22. And that has been sort of the classic model.

But that classic model is changing largely because of cable, because of other changes that happened in the TV industry. And, Craig, in the previously recorded podcast you’d actually talked about the TV season and why we have the TV season that we do.

**Craig:** Yeah. The notion of the fall, I mean, so summer was a break. It wasn’t a break because they felt like giving writers a break. It was a break because people didn’t watch TV, at least in the early days, in the summer very much. The viewership numbers went way, way down. And, remember, this is back in the day of three networks. So, they don’t have to wonder where people are going. When the ratings at ABC go down, and NBC and CBS, it means people have turned their TVs off. They’re outside; they’re picnicking; their swimming. This was back when people used to move around and not just eat in front of their TV.

So, the summer seemed like a good time to actually just put reruns on the air because the viewership numbers weren’t at a level where they could get great advertising numbers. But, then the question is well why does the season start in the fall as opposed to like, oh, I don’t know, late August, or when kids go back to school. And it’s the fall because that’s when the new car models were introduced to the public. And the new car models drove a huge amount of the advertising.

So, they very quickly landed on a fall to late spring season. But, you know, that’s kind of gone.

**John:** It’s gone to some degree. I think we still have a fall season because broadcast television, which means the big networks in the United States, so NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, they have a fall season because they still have an upfront season. And upfronts is where the networks display all of their new shows for the new season to big advertisers and the advertisers have a chance to buy a bunch of advertising time upfront and commit at a discount rate for the stuff that they want to — the commercials that they’re going to want to air over the next year.

And so it’s useful to broadcast TV to have a fall season. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be in the fall season, and I think we’re seeing more and more shows being introduced midseason.

But Heather writes like why some shows that aren’t even midseason don’t seem to go their full distance. And a thing that happens quite a bit is a show gets its initial order of eight, or its initial order of 13, and it may not get that back nine. It may not go to a full 22 episode season. And yet the network says like, “Well, it still did well enough that we want to give it another shot. We want to put it back on the network the next year.” And so therefore it might have a ten episode season the first year, and then ten episodes the next year.

That’s not awful. That’s just a thing that happens. It can be challenging for a writer who wonders whether, “Should I take a job on another show? Am I still under contract to this show so I can’t jump onto another show?” There’s challenging things with those short orders. But, that is a thing that really happens.

Now, in cable, weirdly a different thing happens a lot which is that you will get an order for ten episodes or 12 episodes and your season will go and you’ll go off and do something else and then you’ll come back and they’ll say, “Oh, no, no. This is still the first season. We’re going to just keep continuing on this same season.” And they do that because contractually that way they don’t have to give people their season bumps.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s lame.

**John:** It’s lame, but that’s the way that the contracts have sort of shaken out. And so it’s something that we should probably be addressing at some point in the WGA that you have to…

**Craig:** It should be by time, not by whim.

**John:** Yes. There should be some reason for why things kick into their next season of a show. But, for actors, and for writers, and for producers and everyone else who would get a bump in the second season, sometimes they will also get a title bump. So, like the first season you might be a staff writer and they’ll say, “We move you up to co-producer in your second season.” That wouldn’t happen because you didn’t actually have a second season; it was just a 40-episode first season that was spread out over four years.

So, that’s madness, but that is something that is happening right now.

**Craig:** It sounds like madness to me.

**John:** So that’s why Craig doesn’t do TV.

**Craig:** One of the many reasons I don’t do TV. I do actually kind of like the notion of the shorter seasons. It’s a very European way of approaching it. And certainly in cable there are shorter seasons, it seems like giving writers a little bit more time and directors in particular.

You know, people hear us talking about the writer-director issues in features. You know, directors in TV are constantly behind the eight ball. It’s actually one of the things that the DGA worries about when they go into negotiations and they try and protect their TV directors because they get these scripts at the very last minute. There’s no chance to prepare or really plan. And suddenly they’re thrown into this incredibly aggressive schedule to shoot the show. And so giving writers and directors a little bit more breathing room to create the shows would, you think, would maybe help quality.

But, you know, the business people have their quality and quantity graph. And that’s the way they approach it.

**John:** I will say in a general sense, I see more and more writers approaching shows as arcs of 13 episodes or arcs of seven episodes because they don’t know necessarily where their break is going to come. And I think a lot of feature writers would be more likely to approach television if they weren’t committed to that 22 episodes that’s just going to kill you.

**Craig:** It’s really scary to me.

**John:** With Chosen, which Josh Friedman and I set up at Fox, my hope — sort of my stated hope — was that we could get like a midseason order so that we could do ten or 13 episodes and have them be awesome rather than 22 episodes and have them be, you know, okay.

**Craig:** Alright.

Well, we have our next question from Anthony. Anthony! “Should one try writing a script before pursuing a career in screenwriting, or start pursuing a career in screenwriting, for instance an internship and assistant jobs, and learn how to do that first and then try writing?” I should say that I’ve added a lot of words into that question to make it read properly. [laughs]

So, Anthony…

**John:** Should I learn proper grammar before I start writing or should I do it afterwards?

You should write a script. But here’s the wonderful luxury of the screenwriter is no one can stop you from writing a script.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so you should write a script. And you should write your script now. And you should see whether you enjoy the actual process of putting scenes together and writing a screenplay before you commit to doing it. It’s like, should I become a football player? Well, you should probably play some football first.

**Craig:** Yeah. When you say should I try writing a script before I pursue a career, or should I first pursue a career…do both. Write one now. Write one while you’re doing something else. Write one after you do that thing. Nothing is stopping you as John said from doing it.

You will learn just from the process of doing it. You will learn something. There will be some value. And you can rewrite that one if you feel like you’ve learned and you want to.

**John:** So, in full disclosure, I did try writing a script before I moved out and went to film school. And I just didn’t get it. All the pieces didn’t sort of fit together right for me. But, I think I didn’t have as much exposure to what real scripts look like. And I feel like now with the internet, and with like a thousand scripts online, and the ability to sort of see what that is actually supposed to look like, I would have read a lot more scripts and probably would have tried writing a screenplay before I ever moved out to Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Makes total sense.

**John:** Roger asks, “The last few years I’ve worked as a location scout on several movies and TV shows. This year I’m going to make a big push in sending out my scripts in hopes of getting an agent or a manager. Do you think my credits on IMDb as a location scout hurts my chances at getting representation or work as a writer? I know in this town it’s very easy to get pigeonholed. Should I use a pen name, my initials, or am I over-thinking this?”

**Craig:** Well, I’m glad he included this last little bit so that I could say, ah, that one. You’re over-thinking this.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Don’t worry. If your script is good that will be the matrix within which all is contextualized. If you write a good script then they’ll say, “Check this out. This guy wrote this great script and believe it or not he’s a location scout.” If you write a bad script it will be like, “Oh my god, do you want to see what a screenplay by a location scout looks like?” [laughs] That’s the way it goes. Okay?

Everything will be led by the quality of the script. You don’t have to worry about hiding what you do.

**John:** I will say if you have just terrifically embarrassing credits that you want to get off IMDb, get them off IMDb and go through whatever weird process you have to go through IMDb to get those credits taken off. Sometimes I’ve found where people will give me a “special thanks” on IMDb. It’s like, why did you give me a special thanks? So, now you have your link to your movie on my page? That’s just crazy.

And so I’ve had to…

**Craig:** That’s weird.

**John:** I’ve had to throw some tantrums about that. Because, that’s just not cool. And generally they’ve mentioned it in a nice way like, “This guy was a real inspiration to me and so therefore I want to thank him.” But then it shows up as like I was involved in this project which I wasn’t.

**Craig:** Eh, that’s weird. Don’t do that.

**John:** But if there’s something that like, you know, Steve Callahan is a friend, he’s an actor. He is a genuine actor and shows up in a lot of indies, but one of his credits is for this move that’s like Man at Urinal. And that’s the credit that shows up in IMDb. And I’m like, that’s not good at all.

**Craig:** I love it. I’m totally into it. Now, I want to see that movie. I want to see Man at Urinal.

**John:** Man at Urinal.

**Craig:** Well, Urinetown is great.

**John:** Urinetown is fantastic.

**Craig:** If Urinetown can somehow avoid the jinx of urine-based titles?

**John:** Urinetown relies too much on the theatricality of it all and the staginess of it.

**Craig:** It’s a great musical.

**John:** I like Urinetown a lot though, too.

**Craig:** It’s a great show. It’s a privilege…

**John:** It’s a privilege to pee.

**Craig:** …to pee.

**John:** I got it out first!

**Craig:** You did. Ugh!

Laurence from New York, otherwise known as Urinetown, “Why are actors sooo,” and he did put three zeroes, I mean Os. We call them Os! [laughs] I called the Os zeroes! What’s wrong with me?

“Why are actors sooo grossly overpaid in comparison to writers, directors, and/or producers? Are they paid more than you guys?” Now, first of all, I love those two questions. So, the first question as a premise and then the second question questions the very premise of the first question. Yeah, of course, they’re paid more than us if they’re big movie stars.

“It seems that if an actor is making $20 million then a director and writer should be making at least $30 million.” Oh, what a great guy. “But obviously this is not the case.”

**John:** Again, he’s like stating a premise, and then denying the premise.

**Craig:** It’s pretty funny.

**John:** So, let’s tackle the premise altogether. Are actors overpaid? That’s sort of one premise. And then are actors overpaid relative to writers and directors?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, are actors overpaid? Definitely, I think, we’ve gone through cycles where actors have been just wildly overpaid and that’s annoying. And yet you look at sort of why you pay an actor a certain amount of money. You pay an actor a certain amount of money because you believe that having that actor in your movie will guarantee you a certain amount of box office. That’s the only reason why you pay somebody a lot of money.

And so the classic example that everyone will always bring up is like Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, who got $20 million for The Cable Guy. Well, maybe he was worth $20 million for him in that movie. I don’t know that the facts bore that out, but they felt that that was the right amount to spend on him.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s all about the marketplace. So, people ask this question a lot about professional athletes as well. There are actors who do get people to go see them in movie theaters. The trick of it is very few of them, really none of them, do it perfectly consistently. What happens, therefore, is the marketplace is reactive.

You are an actor, you have a movie, it’s a big hit, and people perceive that it is a hit because of you, as an actor. The next movie you’re going to get paid a whole lot of money. Does that one not do as well? Okay, then that’s when you’ll be paid less. Everything is this sort of marketplace analysis of what your value is.

But considering that most movie studios won’t make big budget movies without actors, big name actors, yeah, they clearly have a real value.

I have to tell you, I don’t look at my value as connected to their value. So, in terms of this question of should they be paid more than writers — there’s no “should.” You get what you get. For me, I don’t care what you pay Melissa McCarthy. Pay her as much as she can get. I hope Melissa McCarthy gets a billion dollars a movie.

None of that impacts what I think I’m worth. Right? My worth is based on my market value. And my market value is based on what you think this movie will make for you if I write it. And what other studios seem to be willing to pay me if I don’t work for you. And I have had situations where studios have said, “Look, we would love to pay you this. The only problem is we’ve agreed to pay this actor this and our budget is really getting squeezed.” And my response is, “Not my problem. That’s your problem.”

If you paid this actor this much money and you knew you wanted to pay a writer, you wanted me to do it, but you don’t have enough money for me, that’s poor management on your part. Either pay me what I’m worth, and somebody else gets jammed, or expand the budget. But, the option of getting me for a discount because you decide to pay somebody else more than you ought to have, per your own budget? Nope.

And almost every time it works out.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, the writer has two choices. The writer can say, yes, I will take this amount of money which is less than my quote, or you could say no. And, I’ve had to say no sometimes. And that’s just the situation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, back to this issue of actors getting paid. Classically Marvel, as they sort of set up this franchise for how their movies fit together, made very aggressive deals with the actors that they brought in so that they could have them for multiple movies, so that their salaries couldn’t go astronomically huge in success. And that has paid off very well for them.

So, they were able to make sequels to these movies with giant stars and actually be able to afford to make them. Now, I’m not clear sort of where Robert Downey Jr.’s deal is right now with Marvel, but if he doesn’t have any more movies under his contract he’s in a position where he could ask for a tremendous amount of money because he has driven some very, very big movies for them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** All the same, Marvel can say, “You know what? We get that. That’s not our business model.” And they could with somebody else for Iron Man. And people would go, “Oh, no, you can’t do that!” But you know what? It would be fine.

**Craig:** Yeah. And look, this is why, forget fairness and just deal with reality, okay. I believe, of course, that writers are an extraordinarily important part of this process. The most important part. I’ll just go ahead and say it. I’m a chauvinist. Writers are the most important part of the process.

However, when a big band breaks up, let’s say U2 broke up today, and Bono went and did a tour and the other guys did a tour… — Well, here’s the deal. I can get a bassist, a drummer, and a guitarist to sound exactly like those other three guys, Clayton, Mullen, and The Edge. But I can’t get anyone to sound like Bono. Bono is Bono. It’s just one of those human things.

Human performance is incredibly specific. And, yes, they can ultimately go and get other people to write and direct Iron Man movies. They’ve done it. Right? They’ve proven they can do that. And you may like one better than the other, but if you put somebody else in the suit and it’s not Downey, I don’t know, it’s just not as cool, it’s not as interesting for that movie.

Michael Keaton? Turns out he was replaceable as Batman. Is Christian Bale, was he replaceable as Batman? No. [laughs] It’s just different. It’s just one of those things.

**John:** You’ll have to do a different version. And that’s actually something kind of exciting about doing the next version of something. That is fine and good.

Jay Z asks…

**Craig:** Oh, my god, Jay-Z?

**John:** Wouldn’t it be amazing if Jay-Z were listening to our show? You know who does listen to our show is Rebel Wilson.

**Craig:** I saw that tweet. It was very, it was like, “Ooh, look at us!”

**John:** Ah, Rebel Wilson, we adore you. You’re very, very funny.

**Craig:** Hey Rebel.

**John:** So, I hope you’re enjoying your hike, because apparently you listen to us while you hike.

Jay Z. asks, “If you are a screenwriter over 60,” oh, so it’s probably not the real Jay-Z.

**Craig:** Oh, it might be because Jay-Z is interested in senior issues.

**John:** [laughs] He’s very interested in senior issues. Interested in Cuba. He’s interested in Beyoncé Knowles.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And writers over 60.

**Craig:** Ageism.

**John:** “If you are a screenwriter over 60 still looking to break in, which of the following are true? Number one, stop, you don’t have a chance in hell at this point. Number two, you have to write the greatest screenplay of the 21st century to break in; anything less won’t get developed once they see how old you are. Three, if you walk into a meeting with a 25-year-old writing partner you might have a shot. Four, make your own low budget movie; it’s your only avenue at this point. Five, write a play or a book and hope it gets noticed.”

**Craig:** He seems to be missing six.

**John:** Which is?

**Craig:** Write a good screenplay! I mean, god, darn.

**John:** Well, number two was that essentially.

**Craig:** No, he wrote, “You have to write the greatest screenplay of the 21st century to break in; anything less won’t get developed once they see how old you are.” Here’s the thing — write a good screenplay. Write a good screenplay.

I’m sorry. I think that there is this belief that somehow you’re toxic because you’re 60 years old. You are not. I know a lot of screenwriters out there who if they’re not already 60 are getting really close, and they earn way more money than I do year after year.

If you write a good screenplay, note that screenplays do not come with a photograph of you and your birth certificate. Again, just like we mentioned to Roger the location scout — the screenplay will set the circumstances. The guy who wrote The King’s Speech, older gentleman.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** If they read the screenplay and they really like it they’re going to buy it. You know why? Because they’re going to make money off of it. Don’t beat yourself down right off the start with a list, with an iteration of things you cannot control.

**John:** Yeah, don’t nick yourself.

Where I think he has some reasonable questions which is when I go into the room to do all the stuff, when I do the water bottle tour of Los Angeles and do all those first meetings, will it be different with me going in as a 60-year-old than me going in as a 25-year-old? Yes. It will be.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Because you will be older than some of the people that you’re sitting there and talking with. That’s just a fact of life. And so your question about like if you had a 25-year-old writing partner, would that be helpful? Yeah, it might be helpful, just the way perception works. And that’s if someone sees you as someone who is perceived as a peer rather than as their father, that could be useful.

But they’re ultimately going to respond to can this person write or can this person not write. Do I trust this person can write the movie that I want them to write and deliver? Then, you’re happy and you’re golden.

Now, going to say writing a book or a play and hope it gets noticed, well, you could absolutely do that, but I don’t think those are the best ways to get started as a screenwriter. If your goal is to be a screenwriter you should be focused as a screenwriter. If that doesn’t work out and you like to write plays or books, those are things which I think tend to favor people who are not so young, and therefore you could be successful at that at any age.

But don’t stop — don’t kill your dreams of being a screenwriter simply because of your age.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s remember that if you want to look at a group that gets more rejections a year age wise, it’s going to be 20 year olds, because they’re writing the most screenplays, I think. And they’re getting their butts kicked out there. Okay? It’s no picnic for 20-year-old screenwriters, believe me.

One thing to think about if you do end up in rooms with people is that your attitude will carry you a long way. If there is a positivity about you and an acknowledgement that this is a bit odd, “I know, I’m 60. Maybe this isn’t what normally happens but, you know what, I’m having fun. I’m enjoying it. I have the kind of energy and spirit of somebody that isn’t 60, or 20, or 30, but just a writer who wants to make a great movie.” You will be appreciated.

If you walk in there with the burden, the silent burden, of all these presuppositions — that you’re being judged, that you’re going to be discarded, that you’re going to be somehow the victim of inherent discrimination — it’s going to radiate off of you and get kicked back at you. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t tell you that ageism isn’t real, because it is. I can’t tell you that you won’t suffer from it, because you very well may, might, or almost certainly will at some point.

All I can tell you is worrying about it and factoring it into the way you behave isn’t going to change anything.

**John:** I would expand that to sort of all of the isms or “obias” that you’re going to generate for yourself. And so I’ve walked into these rooms. You know, I had a meeting with Tony Scott. I’m like the gay guy going in to pitch to Tony Scott. And he’s like smoking a cigar in the room. But, you know what? It was just fine. And like I could have been freaking out about sort of what that was going to be like. And it was absolutely just fine.

And, you know, if you’re a woman going into a room to pitch, like, you cold freak yourself out about how this is all going to work, or you could be the person who is like confident going in there and delivering the goods and you’re probably going to have a much better outcome there.

So, it’s not to say that none of these things are real and that there’s not a reason to talk about them or discuss them. I would say that there’s not a reason to let them stop you from trying to do what you’re trying to do.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Yes.

**John:** Next, Fiona. Do you want to ask her question? It’s a long one.

**Craig:** Boy, all right. “How does someone hire you?”

**John:** That’s Fiona’s entire question.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s so great.

**John:** And here’s why I picked this question, because I could read it two ways.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The one question is like how does someone hire a writer, which I think is an interesting thing we don’t kind of talk about.

**Craig:** But I really think Fiona wants to know how do you get work.

**John:** No, I read this as how does Fiona hire me. I thought she’s saying, “How do I hire John August to do…”

**Craig:** Okay, see, that never occurred to me.

**John:** I would say a few times a year just a random person will say like, “Hey, I have this idea for a movie. How much would it cost to hire you to write this movie?”

**Craig:** I get that.

**John:** And that’s a charming thought. And so I don’t want to sort of automatically dismiss that [crosstalk].

**Craig:** I always tell them $800, and that’s enough to back them off.

**John:** [laughs] So, let’s talk about how writers are hired overall. And so writers are generally hired by studios and by producers when there is an existing something to adapt or the writer has come in with a pitch for some project and then the studio or producer or production company will hire that writer to write that for them so then it becomes a work-for-hire, which is an important sort of copyright concept.

So, you, the writer was the original writer of something, but authorship and copyright rests with the people who paid you the money to write it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** They will pay you a certain amount of money to deliver a draft. And if it’s a WGA sort of situation, they will pay you a certain fixed amount to start writing and a certain fixed amount when you deliver. And there will be hopefully some guarantees about reading periods, and that they can’t sort of drag it out forever.

There are hopefully some guarantees in that contract, even if it’s not WGA, about sort of how this relationship is going to work.

It can be very little money. So, for like the non-WGA things, maybe it’s $5,000 to write a script, which is not a lot. If it’s a big tent-pole project, there are some scripts where people are paid $2 million, $3 million to write something. There’s a huge range of how that happens.

When was the last time where someone wanted to hire you individually as a person? Has that happened to you in your career? Someone who wasn’t representing a company but just wanted you to do something for them?

**Craig:** No, it’s been forever. I mean, I initially started when I was first out here and I was working, I was working in advertising. And so I was a copy writer for entertainment advertising, you know, trailers and TV spots and stuff like that. And so I would freelance and get hired by individuals at various, you know, people think that studios make trailers. The studio doesn’t make the trailer. They hire a trailer company to make the trailer. And the trailer company doesn’t really make the trailer. They hire people like me to go write the copy for the trailer.

It’s a whole thing. But, yeah, but it’s been 15 years or more.

**John:** Yeah. Going back to Fiona’s question about how do you hire a writer, generally if there’s a project, like, I have this book that I now control the rights to and I want this writer to do it. You would approach that writer’s agent. You would figure out what agency they’re at. You can call the Writers Guild to find out who represents a certain writer. You would call the agent, talk to the agent, convince the agent that you are not a crazy person. And then that agent would report to the writer saying like, “This person wants you to read this thing and I’ve read it and you should maybe consider doing it.”

You usually go through the representative, so either the agent or the manager to get access to that writer and get them to pay attention to you and see whether they would work on this thing for you.

**Craig:** If you want to hire me, if anybody out there wants to hire me it’s very, very simple. A briefcase of kidneys. I would write anything for 20 kidneys — healthy — packed properly in ice. Or five hearts.

**John:** Now, there was some writer and I feel like it is John Milius, but I may just be completely making this up. It’s probably an apocryphal story anyway. But like the price to hire him was a certain amount of money and like a rifle and some deer to shoot. There was some bizarre thing where like he wanted…

**Craig:** Oh, that’s bizarre? Should I have not asked for that? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It’s a standard rider. So, you have like no green M&Ms in you bowl and some deer to kill.

**Craig:** I would accept lungs. I used to not. But, you know, things are getting tight. [laughs]

**John:** You know what’s good about money? Money is fungible and you can buy things with money. I get so frustrated when people want sort of those other things. And it’s just like, no, no, get money.

**Craig:** You think money is fungible? You should try human organs.

**John:** Ha-ha.

**Craig:** No taxes. Very portable.

**John:** For this project I’m working on I’ve had to learn a lot about gold. And gold is one of those things that seems like, oh, it’s fungible, and it’s safe, and it’s bankable. Gold is really a pain in the ass. And I don’t fundamentally get why people still want to use gold because it’s just difficult in so many ways.

Even though it’s exciting that you can actually sort of melt it down into different things, you have to test it and it’s just not good.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a big pain and it’s super heavy. I mean, but it’s shiny and it’s beautiful.

**John:** It is shiny and beautiful.

**Craig:** It’s beautiful.

**John:** And like if you’re a Looper then I could understand why they would want to give you some gold blocks to pay you off, because that would make a lot of sense.

**Craig:** Yeah, oh, for sure. But, you definitely can’t use hearts or lungs.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Because just the time. Well, anyway. So, what’s our next question? [laughs] Oh, Ferdinand.

**John:** Ferdinand from East Prussia asks, “Say you’ve got a scene set on a sidewalk then partway through a character arrives via car. You want to show his approach from inside the car, but there isn’t necessarily any dialogue or more than one shot before the sidewalk scene continues. How do you handle short inter scenes. I’ve always assumed they get their own slug line, brief scene description. However, when breaking down a script for production it’s a little misleading to identify this shot as a scene, isn’t it?”

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** This is Ferdinand from East Prussia, or just a clever name. It’s probably not a real person from East Prussia, but wouldn’t that be awesome?

**Craig:** Well, East Prussia is either from the east of Prussia, or it’s East Prussia, Pennsylvania. I think there’s an East Prussia, Pennsylvania.

**John:** I thought that Ferdinand was like the deposed, like assassinated person of East Prussia?

**Craig:** Archduke Ferdinand was…

**John:** Wasn’t he Prussian?

**Craig:** No. I think he was a Serb.

**John:** Okay. Well, I’m going to type this in and see what…

**Craig:** Right now. Let’s do a live Google. Live Googling. Archduke Ferdinand I think was…Bosnian?

**John:** Ferdinand Krueger of East Prussia…maybe not?

**Craig:** Oh, he’s from East Prussia, Illinois?

**John:** Maybe.

**Craig:** I thought it was Pennsylvania. But the Archduke Ferdinand who was shot was definitely not from Illinois.

**John:** Yeah. I know almost nothing about actual history. [laughs] I’m sadly just awful at most of history. I now know that World War I came first.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who I propose was Serbian, was in fact, well, he was Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia. And his actual nationality was, oh, I’m sorry, his assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia.

**John:** Mm-hmm. If it didn’t happen on Game of Thrones I’m not going to really follow what happened.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s as much history as I can sort of take in.

**Craig:** WWI was the original Game of Thrones. It was Game of Thrones but with mustard gas.

**John:** Oh, yeah. But they have the equivalent of mustard gas. You get that…

**Craig:** Yeah, Wildfire.

**John:** The dragon wildfire; the dragon stuff that they shoot out there and that was cool. That was green.

**Craig:** In WWI every day was the Red Wedding. Every single day. So, when things like that happened everybody was like, “Eh, it’s just another day.”

**John:** Back to Ferdinand’s question. So, he’s asking about sort of what happens when a scene is going to continue but you have to show a new thing that’s going to interrupt that scene.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a good question.

**John:** I would probably do that as a slug line. How would you do that?

**Craig:** I generally don’t, because I find that it’s going to make the read too jangly, because I really don’t want… — I mean, I understand what he’s saying. We don’t really want to feel like we’re watching three scenes in one scene. It’s one smooth flowing scene; there just happens to be a shift of a POV into an interior of a thing.

The interior of a thing really doesn’t demand a slug line. So, what I would probably do in this case is just an all caps action line FROM INSIDE THE CAR or POV INSIDE THE CAR, describe the POV inside the car, and then BACK TO SCENE as the next action line.

I might bold POV INSIDE THE CAR. Here’s the thing — you as the screenwriter, you’re trying to, again, as we said before, paint the movie for the people reading it. And that will do that. When it gets time for production, the first AD is going to go through and what he may just simply do is assign a number to that shot, just so that they know they have to be inside the car for that shot.

**John:** Yeah. So, you and I are actually talking the same thing, but you say slug line for what I would call a scene header.

**Craig:** Oh, I see.

**John:** I would do that same thing where it’s an all caps line that’s on the left that is indicating that it’s a major thing to pay attention to, a shift, and therefore we’re doing that but it’s not actually a new scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I agree with you that when the AD is going through and breaking down the script, if that was scene 32, she might call that scene A32, acknowledging that that little moment is a separate little blip that they’re going to have to pick up the day of shooting.

A general conversation about when you’re inside cars I’ll often go to the INT/EXT header for what that is, because if you’re inside the car and you’re outside the car, like you’re inside a car but you are in an outdoor environment. And so sometimes it’s really about the neighborhood that you’re in is as important as being inside that car.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, INT/EXT can be your friend when you’re inside the car, a scene that’s happening in the car but then it’s also getting outside of the car.

**Craig:** Yup. That’s true. Depends really on balance. You know, if you just have one moment that’s inside, then just call that out. But if you’re back and forth, if it’s somebody inside a car talking to somebody outside of the car and it’s back and forth, yeah, then just INT/EXT.

Next we have Jeff who wonders, “If you have an agent but you feel he or she isn’t doing enough to get your work out there, what are appropriate ways of being proactive?” Well…

**John:** Well, you’ve come to the right person because Craig is an expert at dealing with agent type situations.

**Craig:** Fire them! Well, I do love firing. In general, screenwriters are far too afraid to treat their employees as employees. Yes, an agent is an employee. Are they an employee who deserves a lot of respect and consideration? Yes. Should they be an employee/partner? Yes.

However, in the end they work for you. And if you are not satisfied with the way that they are doing their job, it’s a very, very simple thing. You call them up and say, “I want to sit down with you and I want to have lunch.” There is this thing in all agent brains that hears that and goes, “Oh no.” There isn’t one agent on the planet who doesn’t hear that and think, “Oh, great. I love lunch,” or, “Nah, I’m too busy for lunch.”

They all hear it and they go, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” If they don’t hear “oh no” from that then they really are ridiculous and you should fire them. You sit down and you have lunch and you say, “Look, I’m not loving the way things are going.” And be as honest as possible. “I’m a little uncomfortable. I’m very disappointed. I’m mildly disappointed. I am infuriated.” Whatever it is, lay it out there. And just say, “I want this to work. And here’s how I think it should work. You tell me what I can do to help you, but here’s what I need you to do to help me.”

You have that lunch and you listen to everything they have to say and hopefully they listen to everything you have to say. That lunch is like a flare you just shot out there. If it doesn’t improve within a certain amount of reasonable time, call it three months…

**John:** I was going to say three months, too. Then you have to leave.

**Craig:** You have to leave. You have absolutely laid down the gauntlet and it’s time to go.

**John:** Now, Jeff is specifically saying you feel he or she isn’t doing enough to get your work out there. Now, the reality of the situation may be that no one thinks Jeff’s work is very good. And you’re going to have to listen carefully to the agent because the agent may be phrasing this in a way, saying it’s just not landing the way you would hope it would land; it’s not getting the response we really hoped for. And that may honestly be the case. Or, it may not be the case and you may have other ways of finding out sort of what’s really going on there.

A general thing is you can talk to other people about your agent. And so if you’re going out on some other meeting or you meet somebody at a party and you’re five minutes into the conversation, you can kind of talk about sort of like what agents are like, too. And maybe there really is a problem and maybe you’re just not at the right place.

So, it could be you. It could be them.

**Craig:** Right. And that conversation that you have with them sometimes could bring up… — I remember years and years ago I was grumpy because I was looking around and I saw some of my peers doing production rewrites, like little weeklies. And I thought, “Why aren’t I getting those offers? Where are those jobs for me? I feel like I could do a really good job on those sort of things.”

So, I sort of had a, “Hey, what’s the deal? Why don’t I get that?” And basically the response back was, “Because they don’t think you can do that and you’re going to have to prove that you can do that. And it’s a very small list of people that do that and you have to earn your way onto it. And if you want to earn your way onto it here’s what needs to happen.”

And I thought, oh, thank you for the honesty. And so it all happened. But I needed to know that it needed to happen. In other words, I needed to know that there was a process to go through in order to get there.

And, similarly, if you sit down with your agent and you lay all the stuff on the table and they say, “I’m having trouble because everybody hates what you wrote,” then you should say, “Well, thank you for that. That hurts, but thank you. It would have been better for me to know that from you sooner. And let’s see now if I can write something better.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But honesty, honesty, honesty.

**John:** Mark asks, “I was very lucky to get a spec of mine shot. I was involved in the process and on set, but obviously not making decisions after the script was handed in. The movie did not turn out well. I was hoping you can discuss the etiquette for what to do with that situation going forward. For example, when you’re in a meeting and people who read and liked your script asked how the finished product turned out, what do you say? I don’t want to say it’s great and then have them see it when it comes out and think I’m an idiot; but I also don’t want to complain or badmouth the people involved.

“My manager recommended to deflect the question by saying I’m too close to it to have perspective. Any other advice?”

**Craig:** That’s not a bad answer. I mean, the other answer — it sounds like what’s going on here is we’re in that gap between the movie being finished and the movie coming out. And it’s an important time for this screenwriter because when he says “I was very lucky to get a spec of mine shot,” it sounds like this is his first movie. So, he’s going out there now as a screenwriter that just has a movie coming out.

People like his script and now he’s a guy who’s been through the process of production. So, these meetings are about getting work. You don’t want to necessarily call an air strike in on your own position here. So, what you could say is, “I actually haven’t seen it. I’m hearing some good things, but honestly the director kind of ran with it and I haven’t really been a part of the process since. So, I’m looking forward to seeing the movie.”

Now, that may be a total flat-out lie. And if you’re not comfortable with that flat-out lie, you that you’re going to get caught in that flat-out lie, then I think something like, “You know, it’s different. It definitely reflects his vision. I’m still kind of wrapping my mind around it.” [laughs] That’s a good phrase.

By the way, everyone will know what you mean.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sorry to tell you, unless you literally lie and say I haven’t seen it yet, anything less than “I love it,” everybody will go, “Oh, it’s shit.”

**John:** Yeah. So, I think your suggestion is good. I think the manager’s suggestion is good about sort of the deflecting. I would also maybe deflect it into, “Yeah, I just don’t know how it’s going to turn out. It’s such a weird process going through that.” And you could talk about what your intentions were going on and just go onto the next thing over.

You could talk about sort of how hard it is to get a movie made. Or, the classic thing that Laura Ziskin would always say is like, “I think we should just give an award for getting a movie made,” which was always a sign that like, oh, that movie did not turn out well.

But, that’s the reality. And people will pick up on that code and they’ll also know to stop asking questions.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, you can thank them for loving your script. It’s like, “Well thank you; that really means a lot to me that you read it.” It’s such a strange thing to have something that was so close to you that now is this movie that’s the same but different.

**Craig:** The other thing you can do is kind of an invitation for bonding is to say, “You know, it’s in process. I’ve seen a lot of it. It is so-and-so’s vision of what I did. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. I would love to hear from you. When you see the movie I’d love to hear from you as a third party who read the script and thankfully liked it, and thank you very much for that, what you thought of it. Because I’m kind of curious about that myself.”

**John:** Now, here’s another thing that we should tell Mark is that we don’t know where it is in the process. So, he says it didn’t turn out well, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s done. Because when I saw the first cut of Go, my first instinct was to kill myself. And my second instinct was like do something so this movie never comes out, because it was awful.

It was soul-crushingly awful. And it just did not work at all. And so I remember I was just sort of shaking. I was downstairs in the screening room at Sony. It was not at all what I wanted to do. And I was in this situation sort of like Mark where people loved my script and then fortunately only ten people saw this cut. I’m like, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to proceed.”

And how I ended up proceeding was we just went back and we just kept editing, and editing, and editing and sort of getting it back to what it needed to be and doing the reshoots and it turned out really well. But, if I had gone out and sort of like badmouthed it at that point, that would have been a mistake, too.

**Craig:** Never do that. Never, ever, ever do that.

**John:** So, what Craig says about like it’s early in the process. It’s fair to say that it was so tough to see it because it’s just not the same thing that you went through. And you can bond on that level, too.

So, maybe things will get better.

**Craig:** Yeah. Doom — oh, I guess things aren’t getting better — Doom writes, “I have one bone to pick. John’s use of the phase of The Avid,” which is not a phrase but rather a term, “drives me crazy.” Not as crazy as your misuse of the word phrase.

Sorry. I can’t help but editorialize as I read these questions. You’re much better at it then I am. I’ll start again.

“I have one bone to pick. John’s use of the phrase The Avid drives me crazy. The reason is because he is so fair in pointing out alternatives to ubiquitous programs like Final Draft. In every other category you make room for the possibility that someone else is not using your technology. But when it comes to film editing there is just The Avid.”

Well, it’s not actually a question; that’s a bone which is being picked.

**John:** Yeah. So, I chose the question because I think on some level Doom is right in that I’m using the Avid as a generic description for any non-linear editor, partly because I feel like we don’t have a good term for what that is, because “non-linear editor” is just too long of a word.

And I’m using the term the way that people who edit movies really do sort of use the term. Because even if they’re not cut on the Avid, in a general sense people will say “the Avid” because what they mean is literally that machine that is sitting in that room that the editor is staring at.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, that’s kind of what the term is that we use and I’m sorry that I’m Kleenexing it, but that’s really sort of what we use.

I think it’s lucky to live in a time where there are many choices in editing software. And so the Avid is certainly some of the most common stuff you see, but people use Final Cut. People use all of the other systems that are especially designed for commercials and things.

**Craig:** I just know really there’s the Avid and there’s Final Cut. And, frankly, it seems like Final Cut had its moment and then blew it. And we’re back to the Avid again. I don’t see anything else out there actually.

**John:** There actually is other stuff. And people who cut stuff for commercials and cut things for other systems, other systems are used in other things.

Most of the TV and film work that I’ve been encountering recently has been on the Avid. Final Cut Pro, the older version, was making some serious inroads. People sort of chafed at what Apple did with the revisions.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They may be winning some of those people back but the Avid is just sort of the term that we use for these things. And it’s what people are sort of using as their workhorse in making features and TV shows.

**Craig:** I think that Doom, either you work for one of those companies, or you’re just a little fussbudgety. But, here’s the thing — is that really worth, I mean, as somebody that loves umbrage, you need to portion it out at the right moments I guess is my point.

**John:** It’s a good point because this took Doom easily ten minutes to write this email to me. And easily probably an hour to think about like, “Oh, that just drives me crazy!” He had to sort of sit with his anger long enough to decide to write the email about that.

So, it is sort of interesting that it actually crossed over a line to him for that. Because we got some two-page emails about the Bechdel Test and other things like that. And I can see where people were coming from, because they had a strong opinion about sort of how that stuff fit. Or, like, please don’t bring up Jesus again, because we had enough emails about that.

**Craig:** Oh, really?

**John:** Yeah. Oh, I’ll send you some of those. Nothing terrible. You shouldn’t be afraid for your life.

**Craig:** No. Should I be afraid for my eternal life? [laughs]

**John:** Basically saying your earlier Jesus analogy and your Moses analogies were pointing out reasons why they didn’t fit perfectly and really was kind of moot.

**Craig:** I’m sure that’s true, by the way.

**John:** Well, what’s interesting, going back to last week’s conversation about Nikki Finke and comments sections is that this is the kind of thing where it would be very easy to write in a comment section, but to actually — this person chose to email me his thought. I guess that’s why I’m responding to it because it took a lot more initiative to actually send the email to me and to have that personal relationship of like, “I am sending an email to you rather than just commenting on your blog.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, listen, I get it. It just seemed like a strange thing to be fussy about. Because, you know, if I were listening to a podcast between editors and they referred to Final Draft all the time. “Well, you know, when writers are on Final Draft,” I would think, yeah, I get it, because that’s what they know. I mean, that’s not…whoop-de-do. I’m not going to get that worked up about it.

Whereas they know about Lightworks and the little shark that comes along out of the door and eats your, or whatever that thing is.

Anyway, last question. Nick. Do you want to read this one?

**John:** No, you can do it.

**Craig:** “Is it a bad idea to copyright my screenplay? Some say that it’s a speed bump in the selling process because lawyers would have to get involved to get the copyright transferred to the production studio company. Thank you for any help.”

What do you think?

**John:** So, what Nick is referring to — obviously anything you write is copyright you. You don’t have to submit stuff. And he’s talking about the actual process where you’re submitting stuff to the copyright office and going through that process. And I’ve seen people come on both sides of that. And I’m honestly hoping that you’ll have a more definitive answer and I can just say I agree with Craig.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to copyright your screenplay at all. Yeah, it requires that somebody actually fill out the paperwork to transfer the copyright officially as opposed to just pretending from the start that you in fact wrote… — See, the fiction is this: You write a screenplay. It’s a spec screenplay. That’s you. Copyright you.

It’s not registered? Doesn’t matter. Your copyright. You then sell it to a studio. The studio wants to own that screenplay under a work-for-hire doctrine meaning I own this screenplay, all parts of it, I wrote it.

So, what they say is, “I’m going to buy this from you and part of the purchase agreement is that you agree that we commission this,” which they didn’t. And that is fiction. And the reason the Writers Guild allows this fiction is because it’s good, frankly, for the Writers Guild. Because what it means is that this is covered as employment and therefore the following things apply to it — minimums, and I believe health and pension apply to sale of literary material, I believe. I may be wrong about that. Credits, more importantly. And, of course, then the requirement that the person selling it get the first rewrite job on it, which is a big deal.

If you just go ahead and copyright it yourself, eh, so they transfer the copyright. And it may be, I’d have to check with the Guild to see if that would disrupt things like pension payments or health payments on the sale itself. But, you know what? I’ll follow up on that.

**John:** Okay. We’ll do follow up on that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ll follow up.

**John:** Because I remember being at a panel in which an entertainment lawyer was making a very strong case that you should absolutely register these copyrights and that it was a very important thing for writers to do. And I was surprised by it because I’ve honestly never done that on any of my specs.

**Craig:** I mean, the benefit of registering your screenplay with the copyright office is that in the case of infringement I believe registration with the copyright office does give you a certain avenue that you wouldn’t otherwise have. And I believe it’s to collect punitive damages as opposed to just damages of infringement.

But, let me check and see if there’s any downside over the Guild. And we’ll do a little follow up on that.

**John:** Cool. It’s time for One Cool Things. Do you have a One Cool Thing for this week?

**Craig:** Have I talked about the Fitbit before?

**John:** I think you may have. Is that the bracelet thing?

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, mine is like a little clip on in my pocket. If I have talked about it before then, oh well.

**John:** No, I don’t think you have on this podcast.

**Craig:** On this particular podcast I haven’t talked about it.

**John:** Yeah. I think maybe last week’s you did.

**Craig:** [laughs] So, I’ll just do it again. I’m like an old man now. “Have I told you about how I met your mother?” Yes!

**John:** Yes. [crosstalk]

**Craig:** It’s this little doohickey and you clip it to your pants pocket or your bra, if you’re so inclined, and it keeps track of all of your movement throughout the day. It keeps track of how many steps you take, how far you walked, distance. How many flights of stairs you go up and down.

And it’s super motivating because the theory is you should take 10,000 steps a day. You should walk five miles a day. This is just good, basic health. And because I’m wearing this thing and monitoring it with my iPhone and the computer, I’m just taking the stairs more and walking more. It’s so stupid, and yet it works.

I am a slave to a Fitbit now, and better off for it. And, oh, the other cool part of it is it monitors your sleeping. Again, this is something I got out of conversations with Bob Gordon of Galaxy Quest fame. So, you can wear it on a little wristband thing when you sleep — it’s very soft, so it doesn’t bother your sleeping — and it basically measures your restless moments and your awake moments and gives you just a general sense of how much did you actually sleep last night.

You know, yes, you lost consciousness at midnight and you regained consciousness permanently at 8am. But, did you sleep eight hours or did you sleep five hours and like three weird tossing, turning hours? So, it’s very cool. I like it. And it’s like $89 at Amazon.

**John:** Lovely. Cool.

my One Cool Thing is a website that is free and this is a suggest from a listener named Jason Ahlquist. So, Jason, thank you for sending me to this link.

It is called Mission Log. And the Mission Log Podcast has this archive of discovered documents from Star Trek, the original series, dating back to 1966. And there are a bunch of memos and photos and outlines from the original series from back in the day.

And so I’ve always loved seeing things like letters from Desilu Productions to Gene Roddenberry, and sort of talking about like, “I just read your script for The City on the Edge of Forever. Here are my notes.” And these are actually typed like on real typewriters. And they’re on letterhead. It’s just such a different way of how things used to be done.

And so it’s great to see notes about episodes of TV shows you’ve seen 30 times and sort of how they’ve changed over the time.

**Craig:** I’m going to check that out. that sounds awesome.

**John:** So, the Mission Log Podcast. And thank you, Jason Ahlquist, for sending that in.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** If our listeners have suggestions for things we should talk about on One Cool Things, or have questions about anything we’ve talked about on the show today, they should visit johnaugust.com/podcast. We’ll have those links.

We will also have information about the t-shirts. And I probably should have started the episode with this. The t-shirts, we have the amazing orange t-shirt and the amazing blue t-shirt.

**Craig:** So soft.

**John:** So soft. Stuart swears it’s the softest shirt he’s ever touched. This is the last week to order them. Actually, if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, Friday is the last day that you can order them. So, just stop whatever you’re doing, pull over the car, and just go to johnaugust.com/store and take a look at the t-shirts because they’re really good.

We’re only selling them in this window so that I just don’t have to deal with t-shirts for more than just this one little window. So, we are going to get the orders. We will make the t-shirts. We will put them in packaging and send them out to the world.

**Craig:** Are we profiting on these t-shirts?

**John:** We’re sort of barely on these t-shirts. We are covering out…

**Craig:** We do we make a shirt?

**John:** We’re going to cover our costs. So, we’ll cover our silk-screening cost.

**Craig:** No profit yet.

**John:** No profit yet.

**Craig:** I’m waiting for the profit part.

**John:** I think we make like five bucks on a shirt, maybe a little more.

**Craig:** Whoa! Woo!

**John:** So, that money will help pay for things like our transcripts, which I never talk about on the show, but it’s one of the rare things that a podcast does is we have transcripts for every single one of our — approaching — 100 episodes that are actually at johnaugust.com.

So, if you are listening to this podcast and wanted to go back and see what we actually said, if you go to the actual episode at johnaugust.com, at the bottom of every post when Stuart has the transcript he will put a link to it. And the transcripts are usually up three or four days after the episode. And you can go back and see exactly what we said.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, that’s what we will cover. And it may help us buy some alcohol at our 100th Episode.

**Craig:** Woo!

**John:** So, in fact, we have two live events this summer. We have Saturday, June 29, which is part of the Writers Guild Foundation’s big benefit a whole full day craft seminar. Tickets are available for that right now. You can go to the Writers Guild Foundation. Just Google that and find tickets for that.

I think there are still tickets as we’re talking right now. And our 100th Anniversary Extravaganza…

**Craig:** The big show!

**John:** …which is Thursday, July 25. Tickets for that should go on sale July 1.

**Craig:** That’s going to be fun.

**John:** I’m really looking forward to that.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s going to be a great night. Are you going to wear something special?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You’re just going to do regular…?

**John:** I’m dressing in normal clothes. Are you going to dress up?

**Craig:** Well, I’m either going to wear my regular clothes or I’m going to go like a full Liberace fur — I might do like a fur and sequins.

**John:** There’s nothing better on a nice summer night than fur and sequins. So, applaud that.

**Craig:** Furs. Rings.

**John:** And maybe you can just crank the AC so it’s all comfortable for you.

**Craig:** Rings. And those big boots that Gene Simmons would wear in Kiss. You know, just something for the ladies.

**John:** Yeah. Or, maybe you could bring Michael Douglas in to wear that for you and you could wear normal clothes.

**Craig:** Hmm. I’d have to get a hold of Michael Douglas somehow.

**John:** Oh, we’re going to have a bigger guest than Michael Douglas at our 100th Episode.

**Craig:** Oh? Well, now I’m showing up.

**John:** All right. Cool.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And we’ll talk to you again next week.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Email us](http://johnaugust.com/ask-a-question) or tweet [John](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) or [Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin) your questions for future episodes
* [Fitbit](http://www.fitbit.com/) helps you manage your health and wellness goals
* [Mission Log Podcast](http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/discovereddocuments/)’s archive of discovered Star Trek documents is fantastic
* [Order your Scriptnotes shirts](http://store.johnaugust.com/) before June 21st!
* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* John’s blog post on [this summer’s two live shows](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-live-in-la)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/ugly-children-and-cigarettes).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 88 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, we have a very big show today and we’re already getting a late start, so I thought we’d just dive right in. Is that okay?

**Craig:** Boom. Dive. Go.

**John:** Boom. Three things I want to do today. I want to talk about this New York Times article that everybody tweeted me this morning, because I think it was just designed to provoke outrage…

**Craig:** Umbrage.

**John:** …umbrage from screenwriters. We will answer some questions that have been stacking up in the mailbox. And we will look at three Three Page Challenge entries from our listeners.

**Craig:** Great. Oh my god, so much. Let’s go.

**John:** So much.

The only bit of housekeeping I need to do is that on May 15 of this year I will be hosting a panel for the Academy with some nice screenwriters and other film professionals including Damon Lindelof and Mark Boal. We’re going to be talking about the impact of technology on filmmaking. And it is a $5 panel, so come see us at the Academy Theater if you want to. That is on May 15.

And there will be a link in our show notes for how to come see that panel if you’d like to come see it. So, please come.

**Craig:** Nifty. Good group.

**John:** Yay. Let us start with this article that everybody tweeted me this morning. It’s an article by Brooks Barnes in the New York Times and it is about a man…

**Craig:** Vinny Bruzzese.

**John:** Vinny Bruzzese, who is, “‘The reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,’ in the words of one studio customer.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Yes. What Mr. Bruzzese does is he provides notes for filmmakers — really studios — on screenplays they are considering going into production. And he’s looking at them from the perspective of here is the data of a whole bunch of other movies and these are concerns about the script based on genre, based on specifics in the actual script and giving them suggestions on how to improve the screenplay based on the data that he has. So, for this knowledge he may charge $20,000 for this consultation which results in, I think, a meeting and also 20 or 30 pages of notes.

The article ran this morning and I think it’s interesting to talk about both from the perspective of what this guy is doing, but also to talk about from the perspective of entertainment journalism, because I think there are concerns I have about both areas.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, where should we start? Should we start with the article or start with what this guy is doing?

**Craig:** I mean, why don’t we start with the article because that will probably go faster and then we can did into Mr. Bruzzese.

**John:** Great. So, this article is written by Brooks Barnes, and I met Brooks when he first started working for the New York Times and he does a lot of these kinds of articles which is talking about the nature of the film industry.

And I was about halfway through the article when I scrolled back to the top thinking, “I bet Brooks Barnes wrote this,” and I was right.

Here’s what tipped me off that I thought it was a Brooks Barnes article, because he used the word “script doctors” in a way that’s actually not the way you use the word script doctors. He meant script doctors in the way talking about like a script consultant, which is what Vinny Bruzzese is.

But Vinny Bruzzese is not a script doctor. A script doctor is a screenwriter who comes in to fix a problem in a script. So, at times in my career I am a script doctor. That’s not what this guy actually is or what he’s doing.

The other concern I had sort of overall was that no one was on the record. Other than this guy, Vinny Bruzzese, and one screenwriter who was horrified, nobody was actually named by name in the article, which I think was really telling.

Now, at the end of the article Brooks Barnes talks about his theory on why people don’t want to go on the record, they don’t want to offend people. But I think it’s just really telling that nobody wants to actually talk about this by name because it doesn’t seem like a good useful thing that’s going to track well into the future. And nobody wants to be able to be Googled that they contributed to this practice or behavior in the industry.

**Craig:** Brooks Barnes…you know, I teed off on this guy years ago because he wrote an article — I think it was about residuals and he simply did not understand how they work.

Brooks Barnes tends to approach Hollywood the way that an anthropologist sometimes approaches some local tribe that they’re just encountering, describing it as if they’re alien life forms. This guy needs to just stop writing about Hollywood because he doesn’t really understand it. He doesn’t really get it. And the people he’s talking to, frankly, it’s like, you know, some of these people that he’s quoting, you know…Scott Steindorff? Okay.

I mean, is Scott Steindorff really representative of people that are actually holding Hollywood up with their hands? Not really.

**John:** I will actually amend my earlier statement, because Mark Gill is also mentioned by name, and Mark Gill is a person whose name you will see in actual trades and is actually making movies. Mark Gills is president of Millennium Films.

**Craig:** Yeah, but he’s president of Millennium which is just… — I’m sorry, I guess this will disqualify me from working for Millennium. They stink! That’s a bad company.

**John:** Millennium is a genre filmmaker that does a very specific kind of movie.

**Craig:** Well, they also do a very specific kind of thing where they treat writers poorly, I have to say, in my opinion. I think they treat writers poorly. We’ve seen this before from there where, you know, there was a whole thing recently where they had been asking writers to write stuff on spec for them in order to get a job, at least that’s how I recall it.

I just think that…I’m going to get sued now by Millennium films. Oh, whatever. What am I going to do? This is my opinion. My opinion is that they stink!

**John:** Yes. Now, let’s bridge a little bit into the actual work that Mr. Bruzzese is doing. So, basically they are providing this advice and in the article says, “But you can ignore the advice at your peril, according to one production executive. In analyzing the script for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer…Vampire Hunter…”

So, this is the example they’re actual citing. It’s the only movie that I think they’re actually talking about by name. “The company worked on behalf of the film and the production company supplied 20th Century Fox with notes. The movie flopped. Mr. Bruzzese declined to comment.”

So, the one movie you’re going to hold up as like, “Oh, this is the movie we worked on,” was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer? Hunter. God, I keep saying Slayer.

**Craig:** I know. I like it.

**John:** Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This is the movie that you’re going to hold up as like, “Oh, this is one we did notes for, and they didn’t take all our notes, and that’s why it flopped.” Really? Really? That’s why it flopped?

**Craig:** Well, now let’s get into this dude. So, can I just say first of all I kind of love some parts of him. So, first of all, I love that he’s Vinny Bruzzese because, you know, I’m from Staten Island and there’s a lot of Vinny Bruzzeses. And he seems like a cool guy actually in that regard.

I love that he drinks Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper and smokes Camels all at the same time. I mean, the guy is cool. And I will also say this much about this guy: I love how totally upfront he is about how he’s trying to make money. And I have to say one of the things that drives me nuts about the cottage industry of these awful so-called script consultants — or people that Brooks Barnes bizarrely calls script doctors incorrectly — is that they’re always couching what they do in some sort of altruistic, artistic form.

And this guy is the opposite. And I love that he’s literally like, “Yeah, you know, basically I got into this to make money. And I really like making money. And I also am providing the service to studio executives so that they can cover their ass in case of a failure.” He literally says that.

**John:** He does actually say that. I do totally respect that.

**Craig:** I think that’s so great.

**John:** And so I will also defend him to some degree in the sense of using data to look at which movies should get made, because there is some value to that. And if you step back, studios have been doing this for a long time because there is actual Data-data that you can look at. You can look at what movies you’ve made. You can look at what movies have grossed. You can look at what dates you release them. You can look at what actors were in those movies and what other actors were in those movies with them.

There is a whole big giant set of data that you could look at that can be invaluable for determining, like, do I green light this movie? Do I not green light this movie? That is valid. And that is especially valid when you’re looking at, like, how will you be able to market this movie?

The challenge is that’s actually objective data. When you’re looking at a screenplay there’s almost nothing objective you can say in there. And one of the examples they cite quite early on in the article which I found just the best, and worst, and most telling was he talks about movies about demons and horror movies.

So, it says, “‘Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,’ Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. ‘If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.'”

What is that? So, you’ve created a distinction between summoned demons and targeting demons, which I’ve never even considered. I don’t think any writer has really ever considered. You’re saying, “Well that’s the difference between why this movie does a certain amount of box office, and this one does a different kind of amount of box office.”

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous.

**John:** Yeah. So, with data, when you have enough data you can look for correlations and you don’t necessary need to say that that’s the cause of why this thing was what it was, but if you’re just making arbitrary distinctions you’re just cherry-picking little things in whatever movies were hits and whatever movies were not hits. And you’re using that to defend what really your decisions are. And that’s not actually using data. That’s just manipulating things.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s take the demon example, because it’s so bizarre. First of all, it’s pretty rare for marketing to specify whether someone has been targeted by a demon or has summoned a demon. So, right off the bat people don’t read the script for opening weekend. I’m not sure how anybody would know that for opening weekend.

But, let me give a counter example, and this is where this guy kind of, you know, look, you made your bed, let’s sleep in it. There’s a Ouija Board in The Exorcist. She uses a Ouija Board to talk to Captain Howdy. I’m pretty sure that’s in there. I’ll have to check and make sure, but either way there’s some kind of implication that she has summoned Captain Howdy. It’s just dumb.

Look, the thing about this guy is he’s not the villain here. What he’s really doing is basically hustling and giving notes on stuff. If his theory is that people like some things more than others…duh. Right? Okay?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If his theory is that, I don’t know, let’s go out on a limb here. I’m going to crunch some quick data here using my statistics program. In romantic comedies, people like it when the couple ends up together. Duh! Okay. We all know. We get it. We got it, okay? That’s called giving notes and that’s what studios always do. They’ve always done that. And we as writers have always tried to write towards an audience, but also sometimes challenge an audience, maybe turn things on their head a little bit.

The villain here are the people hiring this guy! Because it used to be — it used to be — that people in Hollywood who gave notes, while maybe not the smartest people all the time, had the courage of their convictions. That’s why they had a job. What the hell is their job if they’re hiring this guy to do exactly what they’re supposed to do? And the data doesn’t mean a damn thing. We all know that. The data…Fight Club.

Let me back up for a second. One thing that this kind of stuff will never account for are the Black Swans. You’re familiar with the whole Black Swan theory?

**John:** Absolutely. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I think, is his name.

**Craig:** I believe that’s correct.

**John:** And so his theory is that — a gross simplification of his theory — that there are going to be events or things that happen that are so outside of your expectation that you can consider them Black Swans. And those events you can’t fully prepare for but in a weird way you have to be ready for the fact that because you can’t prepare for them you have to prepare for them.

**Craig:** And also that when Black Swans occur they tend to have very large impacts, because the world is set up in such a way that we expect things. And when the unexpected happens it is either very, very good, or very, very bad.

In Hollywood, I think what we find is that there are a lot of Black Swans that in retrospect we look back as White Swans because so many White Swans follow them.

So, Star Wars is a Black Swan. Nobody thought Star Wars was going to work. Nobody. Fox literally let Lucas put his own money into it and gave him merchandising, because they didn’t — I mean, everybody thought the thing was going to be a disaster. And, frankly, based on the early screenplays and ideas it probably was going to be a disaster.

And, by the way, it may even be a Black Swan within the world of George Lucas. It may have been that Lucas just fluked himself into Star Wars and really Lucas is far more Howard the Duck than he is… — I don’t know. I mean, he did a good job on American Graffiti. But I guess the point is those are the things that make Hollywood Hollywood.

If you want to be in a business that follows various predictable patterns in order to grind out predictable income, what the hell are you doing in Hollywood anyway? The whole point is to chase things that are surprises. Isn’t that the point?

I mean, yeah, of course, you want to make Avengers, go for it, make Avengers. And when that works you can point to how it basically fit everybody’s expected pattern. Except take three steps back and then say, well then why didn’t the Hulk make all that money? And why didn’t the Bryan Singer Superman make all that money? And why didn’t, you know, they’re on their 12th iteration of Iron Man, it’s still working great, but when they hit the fourth Batman back in the ’90s it didn’t work great.

Nobody knows. And you can come up with all this nonsense, but the truth of the matter is what this guy is peddling is nothing special at all except comfort.

**John:** Yeah. He’s peddling comfort. I mean, he’s doing that retroactive pattern fitting to say, “This is the reason why these were successful, therefore we’re going to take this pattern and template and apply it to these future things. Oh, but never mind the things that don’t fit that template because those were flukes or we’re going to find somebody to explain why they do fit the pattern magically.”

What I will say is especially telling is that nowhere in this whole article does it talk about the quality of the actual product. And in a weird way I’d argue that the quality of the product is largely irrelevant to sort of how well it does. It’s not completely relevant, but it’s not the most important factor in how well it does. So, his notes and his opinion on what movies you make and how you make those movies is about the screenplay and it’s about sort of the actual movie you’re going to make.

But, the movie you made has very little impact on the actual opening weekend. The opening weekend is the biggest predictor of how much a movie is going to make. And nothing that they’re doing here is going to bump that needle for what that opening weekend is.

**Craig:** It’s right.

**John:** Your opening weekend is determined on somewhat the movie that you made, somewhat to a large degree the stars you have in it, to a huge degree the weekend that you’re choosing to open, the competition around that weekend.

So, all of these factors have nothing to do with this 20-page report that you pay $20,000 for. And it’s maddening to think that it’s going to all come down to these formulas.

**Craig:** I totally agree. And I have to say that his whole, that Brooks kind of skews this article and Bruzzese feeds into it, to suggest that the only people — the ONLY people that don’t like this are the writers. We’re the only ones.

I don’t care. Let me tell you something. If I’m working for somebody and they want to give this guy $20,000 to write up a bunch of notes, great. I’ll read them. If they’re good, I’ll do them. I have no problem with that. I mean, the fact that Mr. Bruzzese bills himself as a distant relative of Einstein, notwithstanding, if he writes good notes, terrific.

It’s just that what he’s trying to do is this game that I’ve been watching. He’s formalizing a game that I’ve been watching and experiencing for nearly twenty years now. And that is the game of, “My opinion is not an opinion; my opinion is a fact.” That’s the game people play.

When I’m sitting in a room with people and they’re like, “I think it should be like this.” Really? Because I think it should be like this. “No, no, no, it can’t be like this. It has to be like this because of this, this, and this. It’s a fact.”

No it’s not. Your opinion is not a fact. Nobody’s opinion about any screenplay is a fact. Ever. I can’t take it! That’s got to stop.

And all this guy is doing is dressing up opinion as fact so that these executives who don’t have either the courage of their convictions or convictions at all can present them to the writers as fact. But, look, if you can come up with all the pieces, do it! Go, spend another ten grand, maybe he can actually give you the demon movie that will do the best. But, until you can do that you have to acknowledge that there is an enormous ghost in the machine over which you have no control.

And, frankly, that’s what we do. So, I don’t mind that this guy is doing this. I applaud any hustler. I am so sad that people are lining up to play his three-card monte though. That is…oh god.

**John:** I wonder how many people are actually lining up to play his three-card monte, though. Because if you look at it, like no one else went on the record. No one else said that they were actually talking to him. So, my concern sort of from the journalistic perspective is it feels like a terrific press release for this guy. And in some ways selling the controversy is a way to sort of get more people talking about him and talking about this idea and this service that he’s providing when there may actually be nothing to it. There may not have even been sizzle before this article ran yesterday.

I don’t know. I mean, there’s a photo of them in a nice-looking office where he’s talking to some young woman who is a development executive there. Great, but I don’t know that there is anything to this at all.

**Craig:** We don’t even know that that’s his office.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** [laughs] I don’t know where he is. But I just think, I mean, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not plugged in enough, but for instance it says, “Major film financiers and advisers like Houlihan Lokey confirm…,” who?

**John:** Who is Houlihan Lokey?

**Craig:** Houlihan Lokey doesn’t even sound like a real name. Is that a person or…?

**John:** It’s an amazing name, though. I love it.

**Craig:** It is a pretty good name, like Houlihan Lokey. Houlihan Lokey is like the old drunk in the saloon who ends up killing everyone because he’s still really, really good with a six-shooter.

**John:** Yeah. He’s notorious.

**Craig:** “Who did this? Houlihan Lokey! Ugh.”

I don’t know how that would be analyzed by Mr. Bruzzese’s spreadsheets, but all I can say is my reaction is not… — In the end he tries to, I love it when people do this, they try and basically pre-but you, you know, so in a rebuttal but a prebuttal he says, “All screenwriters think their babies are beautiful. I’m here to tell it like it is. Some babies are ugly.”

No shit. I mean, like do you really think that we’re all so stupid and narcissistic that we think that all of our scripts are beautiful? No. No!

Go ahead, ask how many screenwriters after their first draft, okay, you have a choice: you can get notes and we can work on this, or we will turn around and shoot this exactly the way it is and put you name on it and we can’t change a word. How many screenwriters are going to go, “Um, uh…”

**John:** Yeah. You want that chance.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. Of course. So, no, we don’t think that all of our babies are beautiful. And, no, we don’t have a problem with notes and we don’t have a problem with anyone’s notes.

Compare this, by the way, to Lindsay Doran’s terrific talk about joy where she says, “Look, movies that end on joy really please audiences.” That’s a very dramatic statement. It is not specific. It doesn’t say, “You cannot summon demons.” You know why, because it is talking about an audience experience. It’s not talking about a story point.

She, unlike Mr. Bruzzese has made movies. She has actually sat and worked with writers. She understands how to talk to us. This guy understands how to talk to executives, who don’t make movies.

**John:** So, let’s talk about that specific example and Lindsay Doran’s perspective on it, and his perspective on it. He would come to saying like, “Well, the data says that moviegoers don’t like movies with summoned demons, they prefer the other kind of demon.” But he might have ten points of data. That’s not actually meaningful data.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So he’s only looking at correlation. Lindsay Doran can come to it with that same note, but she could say, “Here is why I think that’s not going to work, because in this situation it’s going to track through this way, and we as the audience feel this way about the characters at the end because of the nature of what happened with that demon situation.”

That is a meaningful note that you can actually think about and use and implement throughout your script. His saying like, “Don’t summon the demon, don’t use a Ouija Board,” that’s not…

**Craig:** Because it’s a fact. And by the way, all we’re doing now is just waiting for the movies that contradict those facts because that’s the business we’re in. We’re in the business of surprises and subversions of expectations. It’s constantly changing. There are movies that come out that don’t do any business in the theater at all and then in home video become phenomenon.

Look at Austin Powers. I think made $40 million in theaters and then was just enormous at home. Office Space. Nothing. Enormous at home.

Who knows? I have a movie coming out where we decapitate a giraffe, how does that work out on a spreadsheet?

And I’ve watch this with comedy testing all the time. Inevitably the highest testing joke is also the worst testing joke. But, you know, this is the same old snake oil as always, and shame on anyone who is so bad at their job — it’s your job. And you have to hire somebody else to do it for you? That’s embarrassing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Why don’t you just quit at that point. Why don’t the people who employ you just fire you and hire this guy instead? What do we need you for, to write a check to this guy? Oh my god. This guy is fine. I love this guy. Good for him. Way to go, Vinny.

**John:** Let’s answer some questions.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** So, Jill writes in to ask, “A friend of mine wrote a pilot for a web series and decided to get some of our smarter writer friends together to punch it up. That’s when I realized I have no idea how to run a punch-up session. Can you give us some tips and tricks?”

So, Jill is talking about an informal punch-up session. Sometimes on a big movie, you and I have both been in these situations where it’s a WGA movie, and so therefore there are kind of rules about how you do it. So, you are bringing in people for a day, you’re paying them for a day, and you’re sitting around a table. We all sign these contracts saying that we know what we’re doing. And eventually we have to sign another form saying we’re not going to try and get credit on it.

That’s not what we’re talking about here. She’s just doing a little web series. So, let’s give some suggestions on the smaller version of what she should do.

**Craig:** Well, I have done these before. And the basic rule of thumb is if you’re running the session you should try and participate very little. Your job really is to kind of move people through the script. So, you’re sort of saying, “Okay, let’s just start,” usually you’ll say, “Here are some general areas where we’d love to punch up. Here is our kind of thing we’re looking for, some specific questions, but really more than anything, let’s just go through the script page-by-page and pitch out some thoughts as you have them. So, let’s just start. Let’s just start with page one. Anybody have any thoughts on page one?”

So, you can do a little preliminary “let’s just talk about the big issues,” if anybody has any big story issues, if you want. But then just go, page one, and then people start pitching and you’re like, great, great. And just be encouraging and you’ll find that some people are really good at it. Some people are terrible at it.

As the person running the session you have to kind of rescue and be kind to the people who are floundering because you don’t want to be mean. You don’t want the room to turn on somebody because they may have one joke that works, and it may be the best joke ever. So, you just don’t want to kill them. And just keep things going and keep things light. And just keep moving through pages.

You will find, inevitably, that most of what people have to pitch are on the first 30 pages or so. The last 20 pages everybody gets really quiet because they either stopped reading or it’s action and climax and it’s not joke time.

**John:** Yeah. I would say if you have the opportunity to do a reading of it right beforehand, that’s helpful, so it’s fresh in everyone’s head. Just read through what’s actually on the page so everyone agrees that they read the same thing together, that’s really helpful before you start flipping pages. You won’t always have that chance, but it’s great if you can do that.

I’d say provide plenty of food, a lot of carbs, to keep people going.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Pizza is always good. Be genuinely thankful for everyone who is there.

Inevitably in any group situation someone will probably kind of dominate the conversation, and maybe that’s a really good smart person who is actually really funny and that’s great, but if it’s the wrong person then you have to sort of do some judo to sort of get the other people talking a little bit more.

If you can get Nick Kroll to come to your punch-up session, he’s really good.

**Craig:** Nick’s funny, yeah.

**John:** So, that’s a good, funny thing, too. But have fun with it. And always ask the questions, like the what-if questions, and try and never shut down an idea because like, “Oh, that’s going to be impossible based on what everything else is.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Don’t shut down now. Just sort of improve rules of like, “Yes, and?” And just keep rolling because even if it is not an idea that is implementable right then, right there, you may find a way the next day, like, “Oh, I know how to do that kind of thing,” or that sparks something that’s really good.

So, take notes for yourself about not even what they’re talking about right there but what it inspires for you.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you have a producing partner or somebody that’s there with you, don’t worry and think that they’re going to somehow think that you can do something you can’t do, and vice versa. For those of you who produce don’t think that this is the time to jump in and say that’s not possible.

The two of you, knowing the script and the situation better than anybody, will have the exact same reactions afterwards. “Okay, well, we can’t do that, we can’t do that, we can do this, we can do this. What about this? What about this?”

So, just keep it light. Keep it moving. Don’t freak out. And, also, just be aware that when there’s a ton of stuff that people are going to be like, “That is so funny,” and in your mind you’re like, “And will never be in this movie because it’s totally off-tone or it’s going to stop the movie dead.” That’s okay. Just keep that to yourself. That is, 95% of stuff that gets a room laugh in these things — unusable.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can think of one guy in particular who is awesome at these things and I never once have gotten anything usable from him. [laughs] But he’s fun to have. And he keeps the room laughing which in and of itself has great value.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** But, you will find some… — And you know, the fact is there will be all these little dramas that occur, usually little soap operas that happen at these things. People get jealous, they get weird, they get quiet, they get too talky. Sometimes they go after each other as part of like the comedy sport. Just, you know, you be mommy or daddy and just gently encourage everybody to stay on target.

**John:** Yeah. Next question. Matt in Orlando, Florida asks, “When you look at the pilot script for Modern Family you’ll notice the character introductions are done in list form directly under the title page before the actual script begins. It seems like a great way to save space, especially in a sitcom script where you have a lot of characters to introduce and a limited amount of time to do so. Is this common?”

The answer is, yes, it is common. That is a very standard sitcom format. And so I encourage all writers no matter what genres you’d like to work in to take a look at the different formats for how things are done. And in sitcoms, yes, it’s common to do that kind of character introduction, a page of these are the characters who are the regulars and these are characters who are unique to this show. And that’s a standard way of showing stuff in sitcom land.

Even a single camera comedy like Modern Family will often do this.

**Craig:** I take your word for it.

**John:** Yeah. But don’t do it in a screenplay.

**Craig:** No!

**John:** No one ever wants to see that in a screenplay. Don’t ever…don’t do that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So, it’s a sitcom thing. And that’s why it’s important that if you’re writing a spec episode of Modern Family, which is probably not the right one to do because that’s an older show, but if you’re writing a spec episode of whatever great new sitcom, find an episode that’s a common — actually just mimic their formatting exactly because that’s what people want to see, that you know what you’re doing.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, I just have to interrupt because I just remembered one thing also that makes me angry about Brooks Barnes. [laughs]

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** Can I say it? God, so, in the beginning of his article he makes this really weird analogy to what Vinny Bruzzese is doing to what Facebook and Netflix do by analyzing the way people use their websites. They’re so not analogous…

**John:** [laughs] Not even remotely.

**Craig:** …in any way, shape, or form. They have nothing to do with each other. It’s just a totally different business, purpose, and point. Brooks needs to stop writing about Hollywood. Okay, sorry. Back to the questions.

I get nuts. I get nuts!

**John:** I know. I mean, it could have been the whole episode but it came up very late and so I thought we’d…

**Craig:** I know. We have so much to today. It’s a very busy show.

**John:** Heather in Dahlonega, Georgia writes, “Can you tell me why so many movies starting big names are going straight to DVD? I recently watched one on Netflix streaming called Fire with Fire starring Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson, Josh Duhamel, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Julian McMahon, and Red Lights with Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver, and Robert De Niro.

“In the past a cast like this would garner a theatrical release, or if the movie just wasn’t good enough the actors wouldn’t have signed onto it in the first place. What’s going on with these movies?”

**Craig:** Ah-ha! Typically when a movie ends up going direct to video like that, and Netflix, however you want to describe direct-to-video these days, it is because the movie just didn’t turn out very well. Actors sign up for movies because they think the movie will be good. Sometimes, though, that just doesn’t happen. You know? Sometimes the movie doesn’t come out well.

And basically if it’s an independent movie — and these are almost always the case — if there is independent financing the idea is “let’s find a distributor.” And nobody wants to distribute it because distribution comes with great costs. There’s typically the cost of marketing, the number one, plus also making the prints, putting it in theaters and so forth.

And if they can’t find enough theaters interested and they can’t justify the marketing budget based on what they perceive to be the interest in the film based on test screenings and so forth, they have no choice. They have to cut their losses while they can.

**John:** Absolutely. So, back in the day when Variety was a print publication I would get, I always loved once or twice a year AFM would come up, and AFM — American Film Market — and, I guess, maybe it was twice a year. I always got confused about it. But, there would be this thing out in Santa Monica where these foreign distributors and foreign filmmakers would come in and they’d show the packages of movies that they were going to get made.

And so in Variety they would have these mockup one sheets of all these movies. And it was like you’d never heard of these movies. And sometimes they were movies that were going to go into production, sometimes they were movies that were already done. You’re like, “Really? This movie exists in some way?”

And that’s sort of what some of these things are. Like I suspect Fire with Fire was that situation where someone raised the money to make this movie, foreign financing/other financing, they were able to make this movie with the hopes of selling it to a major distributor because it was going to be so good and everyone was going to love it. And often that just didn’t happen.

I’ll also say that, you look at Nicholas Cage as sort of the classic example of this, like who’s in a lot of movies, and you can’t believe he’s in so many movies. Some of those actors, they’re meaningful overseas in ways that they’re not meaningful here. And so even if it doesn’t have a theatrical release in the US, it may have a theatrical release overseas.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Or home video may be enough overseas that it is worth it to make the movie with them.

**Craig:** I think that’s what — I remember the same thing at the same time, flipping through Variety as a twenty-something and going, “What is this AFM and what are these movies?” I remember the one that made me laugh the most was, it was shortly after RoboCop, somebody made a movie called Cyborg Cop. This is obviously just RoboCop. But it was like a flea market of movies, and that’s exactly what was going on.

Basically they were selling them to foreign distributors and then here in the US they would either get no distribution or direct-to-video. So, that’s what’s going on there.

**John:** That’s fine. And, you could say like, “Well, why would anybody be in these movies?” Well, they got paid to be in the movie. It may be the kind of role that they really wanted to try to do. And sometimes those movies are giant, great, big hits.

And so things like the Jason Statham movies, like The Transporter, that was probably that kind of movie and it actually took off well enough that it sort of established him as a bit of a star. So, sometimes those movies that seem like they come from a major distributor, they really were pickups and they were bought by some distributor here and it always seemed like they were a Columbia movie but they weren’t.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Let’s look at some Three Page Challenges. So, while we open these up I will give you sort of the backstory on these. If you are new to the podcast, every couple weeks we invite listeners to send in the first three pages of their screenplay and Craig and I will read it, and take a look at it, and share it on the podcast so people can listen to our critiques but also read the pages themselves and see if they agree with what we said.

If you have a screenplay that you want us to take a look at the first three pages, and only the first three pages, you can send it to us at the website. The link for it is johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and we will maybe take a look at it.

Stuart reads through all of them, all the ones who come in with the proper boilerplate language on it. And Craig and I get a small sampling of them. And Stuart sent us three today. Which of the three should we start with?

**Craig:** You know, I’m just ready to do any of them. And if you want me to summarize one, let me know. You know, I’m back to being your apprentice. Dad’s back.

**John:** [laughs] Let’s start with Sue Morris’s script. We don’t have a title for this. I can do the summary on this one if you want to do the next one.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** So, we start, we fade in on the nib of a quill pen, it’s moving in small, neat strokes on the paper. And there’s a super with text over it. We are in England, Christmas, 1126. So, we see a young woman giving birth. She has given birth to a baby girl. Next, we see at the Palace of Westminster we see two, we see Sir Thomas and Sir John, both knights, talking about the fact that she’s just given birth to a daughter and that daughters can still be useful.

Next scene we meet King Henry in his late 50s. He says that, “It has been six years since the death of our beloved son and heir, William, in that great tragedy which took the lives of so many sons and daughters.” He says that the next heir will be his daughter, Matilda, will be his successor.

Actually, no, “My daughter Matilda, widow of the Holy Roman Emperor, will be my successor, to rule over the lands on both sides of the sea.”

Some raised eyebrows but no one questions it. So, there’s obviously some sort of court intrigue happening there. More discussion, as we wrap up page three, more discussion about sort of what this means, and then we jump forward at the end of page three to a hunting lodge near Normandy and the king has died. And that’s where we’re at at the bottom of page three.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Craig Mazin, talk to me about these pages.

**Craig:** I feel like I’ve read this kind of thing many, many times. I’ve seen a lot of spec scripts that are medieval dramas. More than you would imagine, actually. There’s quite a few of them out there.

This scene where the child is born I feel literally like it just gets repeated over, and over, and over. There is always the woman on the straw mattress and there is always the screaming and the blood and there’s always the midwife. I guess that’s how children were born back then. And no one ever wants a daughter; everybody always wants a son.

I got a little confused by the fact that King Henry is the king, but there was a boy who was the Holy Roman Emperor. Maybe I just don’t know the difference between the two, but I thought that once Charlemagne became the Holy Roman Emperor he was the king? I don’t know. I guess it’s two different things.

I didn’t really love the fact that we cut away from this to show the drowning. It just seemed a little strange.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** To have a flashback there on page two of a character we’ve never met. It felt very TV. And maybe this is TV. I don’t know. It feels very TV to me.

And then there’s just like sort of generally generic court murmuring. “So the King’s nephew precedes the King’s bastard.”

“You should know our man by now. Always determined to be the first.” You know, like political intrigue and stuff. It’s all fine, I mean, it’s written fine. I have no problem with the writing. I just feel like hopefully something crazy happens after this because otherwise, you know, been there.

**John:** Yeah. I was lacking point of view on this. I didn’t see what was going to be special about this versus The Tudors or sort of every other kind of big medieval drama. And, so, let’s start from the very top.

We see this quill pen writing. Okay, that’s a little cliché, but fine; quill pens can write, that’s great. But then there is a super. It’s listed as a super, but I can’t believe anyone would read this much onscreen. Here’s the text of the super: ‘If on the death of a baron or other of my men a surviving daughter is the heir, I will give her [in marriage] with her land following the advice of my barons.’ Clause in the coronation charter of Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy, 1100 AD.

That’s a lot to throw at me to read. And it’s not especially clear writing. That’s a hard, hard sentence to pierce. So, that’s throwing up a bit of a wall to me at the start.

Then we get to the actual birth stuff, and while it’s a kind of cliché scene I thought it was actually nicely written. Those are nice short lines breaking the action down.

**Craig:** Yes. I agree.

**John:** Two paragraph little chunks. I get it. I love it.

When we get to the Palace of Westminster we meet Sir Thomas and Sir John. Sir Thomas I’m told is in his early 20s. Sir John I get no information about. And if you’re just going to call them Sir Thomas and Sir John I have no way of really keeping them apart or separate. So, why am I watching these two people and what’s really going on?

I also got confused because, here’s the description of Sir Thomas and sort of what he’s doing:

Bright, cold sunlight. Leather boots crunch on frosted grass as SIR THOMAS (early 20s) strides across to meet the newly arrived MESSENGER dismounting from his horse. They confer briefly, breath condensing in the chill air.

Sir Thomas spins on his heel and strides back, towards a fellow knight, SIR JOHN. Sir Thomas says, “Another daughter.”

What was weird to me is like I think we were supposed to be in a really wide shot so therefore we weren’t hearing what the messenger was saying, but if you’re going to have people confer and we don’t hear it, kind of say that we don’t hear it, because otherwise that dialogue we’re going to assume is somehow between the people who — I just confused where we were at in the scene and whether that messenger was still there.

**Craig:** Let me also mention: a knight doesn’t walk across the lawn to go talk to a messenger; the messenger walks across the lawn to him. Much more interesting. I mean, these things are all about power, and rank, and privilege, and all the rest of it, so much more interesting to follow some exhausted courier to walk over to a guy and whisper something in his ear.

**John:** Exactly. So, if you’re going to have a similar situation, if you keep Sir Thomas on his horse or whatever, the messenger comes over with him, and then they pull back to reveal that Sir John is watching this from a distance and not able to hear what’s going on. That may be more interesting. That, again, suggests some cinematography here that’s happening.

With King Henry on page two, “King Henry may not be the largest man there, but by God he owns this place, and the assembled BARONS, the great Anglo-Norman nobles, all feel it.” Wow. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of clauses to throw at me.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so, “He’s not the largest man there,” but he is the King. It was just a weird sentence to me. It didn’t help me understand the power dynamic of that moment as much as it probably could.

**Craig:** And it is, I mean, “But by God, he owns this place, and the assembled BARONS,” so he owns them too. “The great Anglo-Norman nobles all feel it.” Oh, I see what’s she’s saying. You know, that’s that kind of tortured writing, the tortured sentence structure.

Also, his first line, I don’t, “My lords, it is time.” Eh.

**John:** Eh. Yeah. It’s cliché.

So, here’s a problem with those clauses there. “But by God he owns this place, and the assembled BARONS, the great Anglo-Norman nobles all feel lit.” The “and the assembled barons,” does he own the barons? He owns this place and the barons? What? Huh?

So, it could read either way. It’s actually sort of interesting both ways. It’s actually probably more interesting if he believes he owns the barons.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then I agree with you, there’s a flashback on page two which is like, oh my god, I don’t know who anybody is and we’re already getting a flashback to somebody who dies and therefore is not going to be part of our show. So, that’s…

**Craig:** We just don’t care.

**John:** These are all issues. And then we jump again at the end of page three and at that point we may be ready to actually start the story and so that jump may feel great if we hadn’t jumped around in time on page two.

**Craig:** And if the idea here is that these two guys, Stephen, late 20s, the golden boy of Henry’s court, and Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a decade older than Stephen, are going to be competing with each other for the favor of this newly minted widowed queen, I’m suspecting as much.

Then, that’s the perspective we want to play here. That’s what we want to do. And it certainly can’t be manifested by a weird shoulder scuffle fight. “A few moments of shoulder-barging and scuffling between the two men. They glare at each other.” That just seems comedic. And I don’t think that this is supposed to be comedic. I mean, that’s just funny to me in a bad way.

**John:** Yeah. I would say I hadn’t guessed that Stephen and Robert would be the focus of things. If they are the focus of things I want to see them on page one or page two, rather than page three. And, honestly, we could get them there just by cutting out some stuff that I didn’t think we needed in page one or page two.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Agreed. Not bad, Sue. Not bad.

**John:** Not bad at all. And, you know, everything on there was nicely written. I didn’t have any sort of issues with sort of how you were describing things on the page. It felt professional. It just felt like something I had seen before too much.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Next let’s do Robin Peters. The Gaffer. Do you want to do the summary here?

**Craig:** Sure. Okay, so we begin at a fancy restaurant, and we’re in England, where Simon page, in his 20s, is proposing to his girlfriend, Trudy, and he’s given her a small diamond ring. And she doesn’t feel that it’s big enough and basically says I can’t, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a market trader.” So, she’s unhappy with his status in life.

Next, we’re in Simon’s office, sort of, and someone is congratulating him and they don’t even know his name.

Now we’re in a park and she’s very happy because I guess she’s heard that he’s gotten a promotion but he tells her the catch is it’s in Texas. So, he’s been promoted but he has to go to Texas. And she basically says, “I’m leaving you because that’s not good enough.” She hands him his ring back. He begs for her to come back. She does not. And he chucks the ring away, hitting a duck.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, my first concern here is specificity. And that’s a word we use too much on the podcast, but I think it’s actually really important for here.

We start, “EXT. NORTHERN ENGLISH CITY — NIGHT.” Uh, just tell us the city.

**Craig:** Right. Manchester takes fewer letters than Northern English City.

**John:** “Lights flicker against the night sky.” Yeah, but maybe you could think of something more specific. Maybe you could just paint our world a little bit more specifically because I have a hard time clicking in because I just don’t feel like you know what these things are. And I lack confidence because you don’t seem confident in your choices here so far.

We’re “INT. FANCY RESTAURANT.” Okay. I mean, if you don’t want to give the name of the restaurant, that’s great, but just paint our world a little bit in that first line here.

Simon and Trudy, okay, proposals are an interesting thing, or diamond rings are a thing we’ve seen a lot at the start of things, but it’s a natural way to start something, but that scene never really quite clicked. I wasn’t sure at the end of that first scene how I was supposed to feel about things.

Then we jump to the next “OPEN PLAN OFFICE,” again, really generic, before we start this next thing. Every place we go to is just the most basic description of what it could possibly be. And I just don’t feel — I never click in because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, this is a comedy. And I don’t know if Robin is English or not, but it certainly reads English. The problem is that it’s not very funny. And it’s not very funny, I think, in part because the characters are so broadly and thinly drawn.

You’re absolutely right about all the specificity. And there’s also a kind of TV-ish quality to it, for instance, starting with the first line of dialogue on an establishing shot that’s rather boring, and then coming inside and moving through diners. You might as well have a waiter carrying a tray through. It’s all very kind of cliché and generic.

Bu the biggest issue is, if I can summarize, Simon is basically a schmo and Trudy is a gold-digger, mean lady. I don’t know why these two are together at all. I don’t believe, frankly, that they are together. I don’t believe that anybody talks like Simon. When she finally breaks up with him, because she doesn’t want to go to Texas, he keeps begging after her and I hate him for it. And she’s acting in a way that’s just sort of broadly sociopathic in a mean girl way which I kind of just don’t believe.

I’ll give Robin credit for getting the plot out on page two. Englishman is going to be a fish out of water in Texas, I presume. That’s fine, but I don’t know anything about his job. I don’t really know why market trader is better or worse than “junior” — “They could use a junior in Texas.” I’m not sure what that means.

His office was very odd. Talk about generic: INT. OPEN PLAN OFFICE — DAY. Simon exits a room into a gleaming corporate open plan office, reeking of wealth. A SUIT comes up to him.

Well, let’s count the genericisms here: Open plan office. Room. Reeking of Wealth — gold? A suit. I don’t understand what’s happening. Frankly, this would be a much more interesting scene if it were one scene and it started with a guy proposing to a woman and she was super happy because he was giving her everything she wanted and he’s telling her that he knows that she was waiting for this promotion because she knows, I mean, explain it in terms that women — so women watching this don’t feel like you hate women. She really wanted to make sure that she was supported and secure in her life because of how she grew up, whatever it is. And he says, “But the only thing is we’re…” And as part of the surprise, because he knows this is the big pitch. It’s not the ring is the big pitch. The big pitch is, “Texas.”

And off of her face the next shot you see is him at the airport alone. And, you know, the airport lady is like, “And you are traveling alone?” “Yup.”

Just there’s so much… — Be more interesting about this. This is just not interesting to me.

**John:** Well, also what you described in that take of a scene is you were giving a moment where he could actually be funny.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Because none of these scenes that he’s actually funny now does he have the capability of really being funny, because he’s just reacting to other people.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And so in either his trying to sell this idea to her, what’s his motivation? What is he attempting to do? And you need to give him something to attempt to do. So, either he’s attempting to get her on board with this idea of moving to Texas, or, alternately, we can see that whatever that room he came out of, well what happened in that room? Was he like making a pitch for himself and trying to stand up for himself about why he should get a promotion, and then he gets Texas out of it, which is not what he wanted, but it’s something new — that’s a moment where you can see him actually driving something.

I would also back up one step, because when I talk about sort of Northern English City, you know, working on a musical for the last 10 weeks I’m very keenly aware of you kind of need the “This is our world” song before you get to the “I want” song. And I didn’t get either of those so far.

And it’s fine, if the first three pages were really just like a “This is our world” song, that’s great. And you can setup this is the nature of the universe that we’re in. That can be wonderful.

And then by letting us see that guy in his world, then we can see the decision of what is it he wants. What is it he’s trying to do? And I wasn’t — none of those gears were sort of clicking in on these first three pages for me.

**Craig:** Yeah. Agreed. If it is, in fact, going to turn into a fish out of water comedy, we do need to see the fish in water. And we need to know what that means. And it can’t just be simply one shot of him at a park, which we describe as “Park,” kicking a stone around like a football, and then mentioning a local fast food joint. It’s just not enough.

Yeah. I think that this needs a little bit more remedial work and study to make… — And you’ve got to be careful about these jokes like, she says, “I don’t mean to be heartless, but I can’t spend the rest of my life with a market trader, can I?”

“Yeah, of course. Sorry, which bit of that wasn’t heartless?”

Well, okay, if you know it’s heartless, why are you still there? She’s heartless. What is going on here? And the issue with this, yes, we know people in real life who are pathetic doormats, but we don’t root for them in movies. We need to see some spark of something with this guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s why so typically people will find if the movie starts with a breakup they find their mate in bed with someone else because we understand that they were deceived. But this guy — she is such an open book, I really hate this guy for not getting it.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right, our final Three Page Challenge of the day comes from Kevin Pinkerton.

**Craig:** Pinkerton.

**John:** It’s called The Morning Briefing. And I will attempt to give a summary here.

So, we start on the Pentagon Basement Corridor.

**Craig:** Wait, did you say Pentag-AN.

**John:** Pentag-ON.

**Craig:** Pentagon. You said Pentigan.

**John:** I did say Pentagan. That doesn’t make any sense at all. I rhymed it with Alyson Hannigan and Bennigan’s.

**Craig:** [laughs] Bennigan’s. Exactly. Or it’s like Houlihan O’Reilly, or that guy, one of the biggest financiers in Hollywood? What was his name? Houlihan Lokey or something?

**John:** Yeah, something like that.

**Craig:** That’s great. Pentagan!

**John:** So, we’re at the Pentagon Basement Corridor, and the president is walking next to a Special Forces Sergeant. They’re appearing and disappearing into pools of light. The president wipes his forehead with a red, white, and blue handkerchief.

They come to an unmarked door. The president says, “Let’s get this over with.”

Inside is a chamber. It’s sort of dark and ominous inside. And, in fact, on a low circular dais is a creature, a giant creature — looks like it’s made of rotted meat in over-muscled humanoid form. There are also children on bleachers who are chained there watching, and terrified.

The president expects this creature to be there, and the president says, “Begin.” The creature gives the president advice about what’s happening in the future. And so tells him to, “Deploy the ships to Bosporus. Acquiescence is certain.”

The president asks about press reaction. So, basically this monstrous creature is an advisor who has some ability to see into the future. And so at the end the president thanks him to some degree, but also says, the creature is hungry, and the president agrees, okay, well, you can eat the children. And then the president leaves and we hear in the background the sounds of the children being eaten by this monstrous creature.

**Craig:** I love this.

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

**Craig:** I loved it.

**John:** And let’s talk about reasons why we love this.

**Craig:** Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, just from a craft point of view, it’s really well written. At first I was nervous because on the first page it seems like, oh no, this is just a bad version of a Roland Emmerich movie, because they’re doing that thing where they walk down the hall, “lit overhead by a row of dim bulbs.” And I’m like, dim bulbs?

He’s got a red, white, and blue handkerchief which feels like…

**John:** Yeah. I flagged that, too. I was like, oh, no, no, no, that’s cheesy, but then I was like, no, it’s deliberately cheesy.

**Craig:** Deliberate, exactly. It’s deliberate, which is great, because it’s a choice, and it’s a smart choice given what we’re about to see. And then we go into this room, and again, I’ve seen this room in the basement of the White House before, so everything just feels like, oh god, I’ve seen it…and then there’s like an alien there. Oh no, but then there’s these kids. And I’m like, well, what the hell is that about?

A dozen children, and I love how unapologetic Kevin is here — he doesn’t pull a punch at all. “a DOZEN CHILDREN, ages five to seven,” [laughs], the cutest age, “wide-eyed and weeping in horror at the thing before them, as they sit gagged and chained to their seats.” Brilliant. I love how audacious this guy is.

And then the president snaps his finger at the creature and one word, “Begin.” So, you know, here’s just so you guys playing at home, the home game, what I love about this line, it’s the first line of dialogue, or rather the second line, and it is, “Begin.” And what that line tells us is this has happened before. In fact, this is so frequent that the president is actually annoyed. It’s like, “I don’t have time, let’s go, begin.”

That is such a great tonal shift, because we’ve been set up to believe that this is like so horrifying, like the way in Independence Day they visit that alien that they’ve captured and it’s like so super serious. This guy is like, “Begin, let’s go.”

And the creature delivers these predictions. And the funny thing about the predictions, even though it’s not done funny funny, is that they’re so mundane. “Press reaction?”

“Acceptable.” [laughs] It made me laugh. “On the crux of the Senate standoff, the weak vote…” The creature is like a Beltway insider at this point, which is so great. He even gives a weather prediction.

**John:** Yeah, so the creature says, “Thunderstorms in the D.C. Metro area. Hail.”

**Craig:** Hail!

**John:** “But I’ve scheduled a speech.”

“I have seen the storm. It is already cut on the lathe of time. What more? Enough.”

**Craig:** On the lathe of time! I know. The creature is like, “Get out, I’ve given you…stop questioning me.” And the president is trying to figure out exactly, like his concern isn’t about the world, or any of that stuff, his issue is he’s got a speech and it’s supposed to hail. [laughs] It’s like, “Are you telling me? I just want to be clear.” And then he’s like, “Back to the Russians.”

Creature: Tired.

“I just want to be clue, the carriers, the Russians won’t be –”

Creature: Hungry.

And the president is like, “Eh.”

**John:** So, let’s talk, I do have a little bit of some criticisms here. On page one, “THE PRESIDENT walks beside a SPECIAL FORCES SERGEANT.” Well, how are we going to know he’s the president? We’re not necessarily going to know he’s the president. So, you’re telling us he’s the president. I’m not sure we’re going to necessarily get that originally. And it’s very important that we know that he’s the president.

So, you may want to throw in a, “Mr. President,” like he comes out of the elevator, “Mr. President,” just let us know. Because it’s much funnier if we know from the first frame that he’s the president.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The overall more general concern: this was a tremendous little sketch, a little moment. There’s nothing there that leads me to believe that this is a good sustainable idea over the course of a full-length movie, but I kind of don’t care, because I’ve enjoyed reading these three pages so much that I want to read the next pages.

And that’s, there’s a lot to be said for that. Kevin had a perspective, and a voice, and it was enjoyable to read. And these are — it felt confident. And, god, just give me some confidence…

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** …and I will just keep reading.

**Craig:** Such a great point. I mean, he is totally in control of this. And he is unapologetic, and specific, and frankly, there’s just a lot of craft. I really like the way the dialogue flows. There’s a great rhythm to it. And we cannot teach that to anybody. There’s just a really smart rhythm to it. I can tell you that Kevin is a funny guy. He’s a very funny writer. I thought it was really good.

And I think, if I were to predict what this kind of movie is, it feels a little bit like those early — you ever see the early Peter Jackson.

**John:** Oh yeah, early Peter Jackson.

**Craig:** Just like over-the-top comedy/horror/grotesque/funny, obviously satirical. I think it’s really cool. And I think Kevin did a great job.

**John:** I think so, too. It reminds me of sort of mid-era Whedon or sort of like the Buffy and Angel sort of at their peak. This would be like the cold teaser opening to something and you’d meet, like the new villain of the season would be the president and he would have this monster. And that would be the villain for the season, or half the season.

It felt great and solid that way.

**Craig:** Yeah, very cool.

**John:** Nicely done, Kevin. And nicely done, Stuart, for picking that sample for us.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s so nice to leave on a high note.

**Craig:** On a high note. Left on a high note. Well, well done Kevin Pinkerton.

**John:** I have a Cool Thing this week. My Cool Thing is actually, this is going to sound really self-indulgent, but it’s a book that I’m featured in. It’s a book called The FilmCraft Book of Screenwriting. And, as we’ve talked about on the show, I don’t like most books on screenwriting. And what’s nice about this book is it’s just a bunch of interviews with a bunch of screenwriters. And so there’s me, there’s Billy Ray, there’s Whit Stillman, there’s Mark Baumbach, Guillermo Arriaga.

It’s a really nicely put together, really pretty, pretty book that this British publisher put together. It’s $20 and it’s actually kind of great. And so I have an interview in there where I’m talking about sort of different movies I’ve worked on and sort of process, but everyone else is really fascinating and great, too.

And so if you’re looking for a book on screenwriting, or want to give a gift of a book on screenwriting, I think it’s actually a really well put together book. So, edited and written together by Tim Grierson. And there will be a link to that in the show notes.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Oh, I also have to say, it also has the most misleading cover in the history of any book you’ve ever seen. So, the cover is Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in Bed from Benjamin Button. And it’s this incredibly sexy shot. And it says Screenwriting over the top of it. [laughs] It’s like there is nothing sexy at all about screenwriting.

And so this was waiting for me when I got back from Chicago. I opened the envelope and I’m like, what the hell is this? And I had no idea that I was featured in it. Then I found it inside and it was good.

**Craig:** Nice. I’m cool-less this week. But it’s such a big podcast.

**John:** It was a big podcast.

**Craig:** Maybe my Cool Thing this week is Vinny Bruzzese.

**John:** It’s a great name.

**Craig:** Vinny. I love…Vinny is like, “You know what? I’m busy. I’m smoking. I love Diet Dr. Pepper, but sometimes I also like Diet Coke.”

**John:** Yeah. Mix them together it’s good.

**Craig:** Boom. “Open, hey, genie, I want both. Give me both. Open them both! And Camels.”

I don’t know why I imagine Vinny yelling at genie.

**John:** Because he probably does.

**Craig:** He might.

**John:** He might.

**Craig:** But he may be a very soft-spoken guy. The point is, I love him. I love this guy.

**John:** I love him, too.

**Craig:** He’s cool.

**John:** All right. Craig, thank you for another fun podcast. If you have questions about anything we’ve talked about, including how to submit Three Page Challenge samples, or this book I just hyped, or any of the Three Page entries that we talked about today, you can find them all at johnaugust.com/podcast.

This was Episode 88, but there’s 87 episodes before this if you want to go back through and look at them.

If you are not subscribing to us in iTunes you probably should, because that way we know that you’re subscribing in iTunes and other people can find us. So, look us up on iTunes at Scriptnotes.

And we will be back next week. And next week I think we’re going to have exciting news about our 100th episode live show.

**Craig:** Very excited.

**John:** Which could be very exciting, because we got a great email today. So, I think that could work out nicely.

**Craig:** It could. Could!

**John:** Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. And welcome home.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Turning the Page: Storytelling in the Digital Age](http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2013/05/turning-page.html) at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater
* [Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/solving-equation-of-a-hit-film-script-with-data.html?hp&_r=0) by Brooks Barnes
* Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s [Black swan theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory) on Wikipedia
* Screenwriting.io on [multicamera script format](http://screenwriting.io/how-are-multicamera-tv-scripts-formatted/)
* Three Pages by [Sue Morris](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/SueMorris.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Robin Peters](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/RobinPeters.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Kevin Pinkerton](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/KevinPinkerton.pdf)
* [FilmCraft Screenwriting](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0240824865/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Tim Grierson on Amazon
* OUTRO: Thompson Twins’ [Doctor Doctor covered by Danny McEvoy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpHAgyUKn-0)