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The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 687 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we answer listener questions on first films, adaptations, writers groups, and thematic questions on television. In our bonus segment for premium members, we will play a round of Strong Opinions, a new little game we play in the office.

Craig: Oh.
John: Craig, you have Strong Opinions.

Craig: What?

John: You know, strong opinions about mayonnaise.

Craig: It’s a hard opinions about mayonnaise.

John: Ventriloquism.

Craig: Hard opinions about ventriloquism. Ventriloquism is the mayonnaise of entertainment.

John: Yes. We have a list of, honestly, 300 other topics too. We’ll get to-

Craig: Amazing.

John: -most of these. It’s a-

Craig: We’ll run it down.

John: -free little game we’re putting out there in the world.

Craig: Very exciting.

John: Great. First, we have some follow-up. Craig, last week we talked about tariffs, which was a non-starter.

Craig: Yes.

John: This week, the MPA and all the guilds together have sent a very glowing letter to our president saying, hey, we would really love to have some sort of national film production incentive and other esoteric changes to the tax code, which makes it easier to make these things.

Craig: Yes. If there is a way to somehow backdoor in something that’s really great for our film industry, because the president was suggesting something that would literally destroy it within seconds, that I suppose is a net positive. I don’t think there’s been any discussion like this for quite some time.

John: No.

Craig: If there’s one gift this guy has, it’s that he shows up at your party with an enormous amount of dynamite.

John: Yes, absolutely. It’s like, instead of blowing that up, maybe we could–

Craig: Here’s something like an uncomfortable topic no one else has discussed. Why don’t we do that instead of you just blowing everything up? Listen, fingers crossed. It would be a tremendous thing for, obviously, the crews here in Los Angeles in particular.

John: That would be great. Second bit of follow-up. Way back in 1999, I wrote a scene in the first Charlie’s Angels in which a bird alights on a windowsill, and Bill Murray interacts with a bird, and it’s overheard. Cameron Diaz recognizes the sound that that bird makes and realizes where Bosley has been kidnapped and taken to.

This scene that I wrote innocently has frustrated birders for 25 years because the bird that she says it is, it’s not the bird we see on screen. It’s not the bird we hear.

Craig: No. Birders are notoriously flexible people about this sort of thing.

John: They are.

Craig: That’s why they got into birding.

John: Yes. [chuckles] They’re like, it’s some kind of bird. It doesn’t matter. They don’t care about specifics. One thing I really respect about birders is they’re like, that’s some kind of bird.

Craig: It has wings. it’s a bird. It’s big.

John: It’s a bird.

Craig: Yes. What kind of bird? A big one.

John: I mean, if you confuse a bat and a bird, then they’re like–

Craig: By the way, I have done that.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: To this day, whenever I see swallows or something, Melissa’s like, “Ooh, swallows.” I’ll go, “No, those are bats.” It makes her insane because she’s a birder.

John: Oh yes. That’s good. Yes. Forrest Wickman is the writer from Slate who was first annoyed by what had happened here. This has already been a podcast episode of Decoder Ring, Willa Paskin’s great show. Now there’s actually an article we can link to, which is a much longer history of and more detailed about the work he did to figure out what went so wrong with my script and all the subsequent scripts.

I didn’t write Pygmy Nuthatch. Pygmy Nuthatch is funnier. I picked a bird that actually made sense. Then over the course of the 16 other writers who worked on Charlie’s Angels, it all drifted away. Then ultimately the bird that they picked for it, you cannot actually film because you’re not allowed to own the bird. They talk to the animal handlers, talks to everybody. It’s just a good lesson in sort of how, quote unquote, “mistakes” in movies happen.

Craig: Sounds like a whole lot of apologizing for some terrible behavior, John. Sounds like you’re making a lot of excuses for a very hurtful thing that you did. That– who’s this guy?

John: Forrest Wickman.

Craig: Is still talking about 20 years later.

John: Yes. When they reached out to me about this, this was almost a year ago-

Craig: Jesus.

John: -I did not remember that there was a bird in Charlie’s Angels. That’s how long ago it’s been.

Craig: I don’t even know what to say. There are a lot of problems in the world. It’s not that we can’t be frivolous, but there has to be some limitation to the frivolity, especially if you’re doing it under the guise of your professional work. I am going to spend a company’s time and money to chase this down. Pygmy Nuthatch is a very funny name.

John: It is a funny name. Ultimately that’s my argument. We can’t quite figure out who wrote Pygmy Nuthatch. It could have been Zak Penn or Susannah Grant or anyone of the other people who worked on this movie.

Craig: They won’t remember either.

John: No, but it’s the funniest name.

Craig: No, it’s very funny. Does he not get that that’s why that happened? [chuckles]

John: He does understand it.

Craig: Oh, he does?

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, that’s great.

John: Also, then why is the Pygmy Nuthatch not the bird depicted there? Why is the bird called not even matching the bird that’s there?

Craig: He doesn’t know how any of this works?

John: Well, now, if you read this article, you’ll understand how Hollywood works.

Craig: Oh, he figured it out.

John: He interviewed everybody. He did the journalist’s job of actually going and figuring out– finding the answers.

Craig: Good. There are serious problems that need to be uncovered. [laughs]

John: There’s also trivial problems. Sometimes the trivial problems are good.

Craig: I guess.

John: Honestly, the puzzles you’re solving every day are just for your own enjoyment. This is enjoyable for him.

Craig: Yes, but I’m not convincing people to watch me solve– Maybe I should. Maybe I should go on Twitch. There’s a guy named FoggyBrume. I’ve probably talked about FoggyBrume. No? He’s the editor in chief of P&A Magazine, Panda Magazine, which every couple of months has a quite difficult puzzle suite. For the elite people, I think it’s sort of like– it’s medium.

Foggy, every now and then, will go on Twitch and solve a cryptic crossword puzzle by a publication in England called The Listener. The Listener’s cryptic is insanely hard, and people will show– I’ve showed up to watch him do it, and he struggles, and then he does do it. He’s very, very good. Maybe I should– yes, I’m going to start a Twitch channel. Solve Cryptics with Craig.

John: Honestly, we’re going to have a Scriptnotes YouTube channel now. That could be a place where you can solve some [crosstalk]

Craig: Let’s do it. I’m going to do it.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: We’re going to teach people cryptics, and we’re going to solve cryptics with Craig.

John: One of your big puzzle friends is a guy named Dave.

Craig: Dave Shuken.

John: Dave Shuken. I met Dave Shuken.

Craig: What?

John: I’m going to tell you this. I met him at Rachel Bloom’s birthday party. Rachel Bloom had a birthday party where she had a spelling bee, and Dave Shuken was the moderator for the spelling bee.

Craig: Dave Shuken seems to be at the hub of many moderated games of intellectual adventure.

John: A bunch of our people we know were there. I finished third.

Craig: Okay.

John: Yes.

Craig: Spelling bee, as in the New York Times spelling?

John: On, no, no. A classic grade school spelling bee.

Craig: Also the thing that Dave Shuken would be excellent at.

John: He was excellent at.

Craig: Dave’s knowledge of everything is startling. Everything.

John: I have to say, adult spelling bee is a good choice for a party theme.

Craig: That’s fun.

John: Yes, it was good.

Craig: Yes, I love that. Third. Who won?

John: Rachel came in second, and I’m blanking on the guy who won first. He’s a director who used to work on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Craig: Okay, but that guy.

John: That guy.

Craig: Tip of the hat to him.

John: More follow up. We have one here on 36 Questions, which was a thing I brought up in a previous episode. Maybe you weren’t there, but 36 Questions– Oh, actually, it was in the Leslie Hedland episode that you weren’t here for. This sort of famous list of 36 questions to bring closeness between people. Questions to ask each other, so romantic partners but also just strangers to get to know them. We follow up on this from Kamel in Zimbabwe.

Drew Marquardt: Kamel writes in response to John’s One Cool Thing. “I wanted to make you aware of 36 Questions, the podcast musical with Jonathan Groff and Jessie Shelton. It’s my all-time favorite musical. I don’t want to spell the plot, but they use the 36 questions to follow two characters on an auditory journey.”

Craig: Wow.

John: Jonathan Groff.

Craig: Jonathan Groff. Never bad.

John: Never bad.

Craig: Always good.

John: Always good. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that. All right, let’s do a little bit of news here. First off, we have a summer intern. Drew Marquardt, once upon a time, was our summer intern. He’s now our Scriptnotes producer. Our new summer intern is Sam Shapson. Welcome Sam Shapson.

Sam Shapson: Hey, guys. Good to be here.

Craig: Sam Shapson is hard to say thrice quickly.

John: It is. It’s a challenging name.

Craig: Sam Shapson, Sam Shapson, Sam Shapson. Yes, it’s hard.

John: Yes, you do it.

Craig: It’s hard.

John: One of the things that Sam is working on this summer is getting our Scriptnotes YouTube channel started up. We’ll have longer form episodes of things we’ve done. We’ll bring over your How to Write a Movie episode, which we put up on YouTube. Episode 99, the Psychotherapy for Screenwriters. Sam’s also cutting little short things, which are delightful for YouTube when you just want little blips.

Craig: Amazing. Welcome aboard, Sam. Happy to have you here. Do a good job this summer, you know. It’s crucial. It’s a crucial summer in your life.

Sam: I will try my best.

John: All right. Second bit of news, Craig and I are planning to attend the Austin Film Festival at the end of October.

Craig: Again?

John: Again. Why not? October 23rd through 26th is the screenwriting portion of that. We’ll be there. Drew will be there. We’ll probably have a Highland event there. If you’re thinking about like, what do I want to do? Do I want to go to Austin this year? If that helps sway you in the decision of Austin, great. It’s cheaper to book hotel rooms now than down the road. Just wanted you and people to know that.

Let us get to our questions. We have so many questions to get through. I pulled out two of them as more marquee topics. The first one is from Tyler. Drew, would you read this question from Tyler?

Drew: “I loved your Scriptnotes episode about writing a movie to argue a thesis. How do you adapt that method for television? Specifically, how do you break the show’s thesis into sub-theses that argue the show’s thesis across episodes while serving as theses for complete standalone stories within an episode? Moreover, how does this process differ between miniseries, where you know the whole arc and episode constraint at the outset, and ongoing series where you don’t?”

John: Great.

Craig: That’s a great question.

John: It’s a good question. This is referencing back to something we just talked about, which was your episode on how to write a movie. It was really about arguing a thesis, and so talk to us about what you mean by a thesis.

Craig: It’s a simple argument, some statement about something that people could disagree on or could argue either position for. Your movie is often about a character who believes one side of that argument. By the end of the movie, through the events that you’ve put that person through, they now believe the opposite side of that.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: We think of it as a character arc, but a lot of times character arc implies that they just went somewhere, but this is about, okay, everything along the way is getting to that argument. The people they meet show them other possible answers to that argument. They try to maybe dabble believing the other side of the argument. They get punished for it.

They end up in a terrible place where they definitely don’t believe what they used to believe, but they’re not brave enough to believe what they should be believing. Then through some climactic action, they behave in accordance with this new way of thinking, even at great personal risk.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: It’s pretty standard across the board stuff.

John: The kinds of things we’re talking about are also the same space as a central thematic question, the central argument of a thing. It’s basically, what is it that we are grappling with?

What is the idea that we’re grappling with, and how are we creating characters and situations that grapple with this? What you’re speaking about specifically in a movie is that, generally, over the course of the movie, a person will enter with one perspective on this central dramatic question and leave change with a different answer to the same question.

Craig: The opposite answer, often. For television, it’s a bit different. I’ll be honest. I don’t know the answer to one of those questions, which is how do you do this when it’s an ongoing series where there is no planned end? I don’t know because I’ve never worked on a series like that. I know what the end for The Last of Us is, and I’ve always known. That’s different.

John: We’ve had guests on the show who have had to do this, and so I would reach back to some of the really talented showrunners we’ve had in these podcasts with us. They often talk about the blue sky phase at the start of a season, where they’re really talking about, what is it we want to explore this year? Ultimately, they are still wrestling with the same question that the show is fundamentally about, but how are we doing it this year, and what are the ways in which we’re exploring this question this year?

Whether it’s Frasier or The Good Wife, they’re going to be thinking about how it is they’re going to tackle the kinds of questions that their show is tackling in this next year and how they’re going to break that out over the course of the season.

Craig: Yes. it’s probable that people that are on ongoing shows do think just in terms of the season as a movement. There is a beginning, middle, and end to the season. If it is a drama or if it’s a comedy that is episodic, meaning one episode leads into the other story-wise, as opposed to self-contained episodes that don’t, then yes, there’s going to be something that gets pulled through. You’re thinking about a big circle for the season.

Somebody is going to go on this thing, and they are either going to go from I believe one thing to I believe the opposite, or they’re going to go all the way from I believe one thing to I still believe, and in fact, I believe it no matter what. The episodes themselves are like their own little circle. There’s circles inside of circles inside of circles. Every scene should have somebody changing somehow.

There should be a thesis at the beginning of the scene that gets disrupted through antithesis, and we have a new synthesis, and so on and so on. It’s just circles inside of circles. That’s how you do it.

John: Another distinction I would make is that, in a movie, the central character and the movie are trying to answer the question, at least answer the question for that character in the course of this story. In this series, especially an ongoing series, you’re not looking for the answer. You’re exploring the question, and exploring the question is a valid choice. You don’t have to get to an answer.

Craig: That’s right.

John: There’s no final answer. There’s no total victory. It’s just how do you wrestle with this question?

Craig: Television does allow you to give people the experience of going somewhere at length. When you go all the way through, at some point, you can see how the end is more about a wistful goodbye than it is about people learning things or concluding. In movies, you really do feel like, when there’s a happy ending, that the ending of the movie is the best and most important day of that person’s life, and everything will be fine from here on out.

John: Series can end, even like ongoing series can end. Six Feet Under has one of the best endings of any series ever. If I had to say what is the central question it’s grappling with, it’s like, how do you live when you’re confronted by death constantly? How do you live knowing that you’re going to die? The final episode, that grapples with that for all those characters in a way that’s thematically satisfying, but each individual episode is also about that.

That’s always the tension within the episode. The Wire, season by season, it’s about the systems we’ve built to help people betraying them, and it changes what that system is each time, but it’s still always grappling with those same questions. Listen, I think, Tyler, you’re asking the right question. It’s exactly the stuff that happens in a room as you’re trying to figure out what that thing is. The shows that aren’t working–

Craig: There’s no big idea there.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes. You need one a little bit. It needs to be about something, even if it’s just about one relationship or one family and how it’s being impacted by the choices that people make, whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be very involved. each season needs a thing because, when you get to the end of a season, you need to feel like you reached the end of something. There has to be something that concludes.

John: All right. Let’s move on to our second question. This is from Scott, who’s asking about his first feature.

Drew: “I just got my first feature film greenlit to the tune of a few million dollars. It’s a horror movie. I adapted from a book, funded through a private investor, and I’m both thrilled and terrified. What advice do you have for a first-time filmmaker jumping in at this level to avoid royally flubbing this? I’m also curious about setting expectations for the finished film. What should I be thinking about now to ensure the finished film is what I have in my head? Finally, as it moves into the marketplace, are there any insights to avoid getting screwed over?”

John: I hear Scott asking a series of questions. Basically, I hear him asking, how do I emotionally protect myself from what I know is going to be a difficult situation? I hear him asking, how do I make sure I make the best movies and don’t screw things up? I feel like there’s probably some imposter syndrome also embedded in all this as well. First off, congratulations. Great news. Great that you’re able to find money to make this thing. That’s fantastic.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: This investor is great, but you need to have somebody who actually knows what the hell they’re doing. You’ll need a line producer, but you also need a person, a producer on board who has made this kind of film at this kind of budget level and sold this kind of film at this kind of budget level, because it’s such a specific thing. I know people who’ve literally fallen into a bunch of money and made a movie and like, “I got to make the movie I wanted to make,” and had no plan for how to put it out there in the world. That is disastrous.

Craig: Scott, I feel your fear, which is completely justified. I have felt it myself. I’ll try and be comforting. Then I’m going to give you the anti-comfort. The comforting part is there are some simple things that you can keep in mind as you go through this. The first is don’t expect that anybody is going to respect you when you start doing this. In fact, quite the opposite. People are very suspicious of first time directors.

The crews just presume that you’re going to suck, and you’re not going to know what you’re doing. You’re going to want to really get a good relationship with your first AD. The first AD is the person that’s going to help you move through your day. They’re going to keep you planned. You’re going to want to have an excellent relationship with your cinematographer because the first AD and the cinematographer pushing and pulling will have the biggest impact on how long your day is and how much you get done that day.

You’re going to want to create a little bit of a bubble for yourself and the actors because they’re the ones who end up on screen. You’re going to want to have a good relationship with the crew, but don’t be overly concerned if the crew doesn’t like the show itself, the movie, that’s not important. What’s important is that you have some sort of vision for it because you’re gathering pieces that you will put together later.

Those things, good stuff. Then keep in mind that there will be politics going on that will swirl around you and try to ignore them as best you can. If somebody gives you constructive criticism about how you can get more out of people or do a better job, listen to it carefully, take it in, be humble, but don’t get caught up in swirling political stuff between actors, between representatives, between the money and the producer, any of that stuff.

Now let me be uncomforting. There is nothing we can tell you that is going to prepare you for this. You are not going to be the same person when you’re finished. You will be smarter. You will know more, and you will be better when you’re finished. This is not good news because it means that you are not going to be the best you can be when you start. This is normal. It’s just normal.

Go in there understanding that you’re going to do your best, but you are going to grow and improve from this experience. You cannot forestall these things. There’s no way to prepare for a lot of it. It’s a little bit like having a baby. You can read a whole lot of books, but when you have the baby, you’re like, oh no. There will be some days, man. There’ll be some days, but it’s okay. Everybody who’s been a successful filmmaker has gone through this.

John: Here’s my pitch. Making a film is a creative heist. Think about it like it’s a heist. It’s like Ocean’s 11. How do you pull off a heist? First off, you have to assemble a team. Assembling that team is crucial. You’ve got to have the right people on board to make this with you. That is, you’ve mentioned it, the first AD. Cinematographer, I think is right up there at the tip top. That is the person you’re going to be sharing you vision for what it is you’re actually seeing on screen.

Your production designer, your editor, your casting director, and ultimately your cast, that is the crew that you’re assembling to pull off this creative heist. Then you’re going to have a plan. You’re going to have a really detailed plan. If everything goes exactly according to plan, you’re going to make the best movie. It’s all going to work perfectly, but it’s not.
That’s why you need to have a crew that you really can trust and smart people for when things don’t go according to plan. Your job is to be able to remember what is actually important. Because you wrote the script, which is great, but that script and reality are not going to match up very, very well. You’re going to have to have situations where, okay, we have lost this location. What do we do?

You’re going to have to be the person who figures out what to do in those situations. That’s by really understanding what those scenes are about. Therefore, if you have to set it someplace else, or if you lose this actor or whatever else, you make it work. Especially filmmaking at this budget level where you don’t have the padding and safeties, that’s the reality.

Craig: You aren’t going to make the movie that you have in your mind right now.

John: No.

Craig: That’s not possible. You will hopefully make a movie that represents enough of what you had in mind and has the essence of what you were looking for. You are going to constantly be wavering back and forth between not wanting to be too precious so that you can solve problems and make your days, but also not wanting to be too much of a good boy syndrome.

John: Obliging is not going to help anybody.

Craig: Yes, exactly. You have to figure out how to wander that middle ground. It’s tough. You may miss a few times. You may go too far one way or the other. AD, cinematographer, start there. Those two people are incredibly important. If you run into people, like a production designer or a costume designer, anybody that you suspect is just there to get paid, and I’m talking about department heads, putting aside the pure crafts like grip and electric, when we’re talking about the creative department heads, if they seem like they don’t care, they’re not right for this. You need people that care. You want them to actually be passionate about this. There’s no way to get through it otherwise.

John: I’m helping out with a movie that shoots this fall. Seeing the director assemble her team has just been so inspiring because she has such a specific, unique, singular vision. She will meet with 15 people, and I’ll be the 16th person, like that’s the one, and she’s right.

Craig: Yes, that’s nice.

John: Yes. [laughs] It’s also a luxury of being able to shoot in town and just having choices like that.

Craig: Exactly.

John: The last thing, Craig said you can read as much as you want to read about it, what would be probably helpful for you, Scott, right now, is to read accounts of filmmakers who’ve done something recently and who did things at your budget level and what they learned, what they would have done differently. Read those interviews or if there are longer form books or just stuff because that’s the stuff– you’re entering into a very specific kind of filmmaking and to understand how that works is going to really serve you.

Craig: I think there’s a book called My First Time.

John: Oh yes, there is a book.

Craig: Yes, and it’s a collection of interviews with directors about their first time directing. I remember reading it thinking, this is great. The whole point of the book, it was pitched like, okay, if you read this, then you could avoid the mistakes that all these great directors made. No, you can’t.

John: No, you make your own mistakes.

Craig: You’re going to make your own mistakes. You’ll be too worried about making their mistakes, and it’ll be too artificial and weird. You got to go be yourself.

John: You also recognize that all these people made these mistakes, and they’re now fantastic directors.

Craig: Exactly, and so you’re just going to have to experience this, and it’s going to be a wild ride. I will say, once you do it, and you come out the other end, you will look at movies and television in a much different and vastly more forgiving way.

John: Yes. I will remember when I was making The Nines and leading up to The Nines, before I brought on my cinematographer, I got way too obsessed with cameras, and then I realized I should not be thinking about the camera at all. It’s out of my purview. I should let the cinematographer decide what she wants to do for this. I gave her my poetic descriptions of what I’m going for, but let them decide this.

Craig: Ksenia Sereda, who’s our cinematographer on The Last of Us, before the second season, she was so excited. She’s like, “Okay, so I’m getting these special lenses that are going to be made for this season with this cool thing going on.” She tried to explain it to me, and I didn’t understand it. She goes, “But don’t worry, I’m going to run– I’m going to shoot a bunch of tests. I’m going to show you all these different things, and you’ll see the differences.”

I’m like, “Great.” Then she showed them all to me, and I was like, “These all look great. Which one is the one that you want?” She’s like, “This one.” I’m like, “Okie dokie,” because I don’t need to know. She was like, “Look” because it’s like, okay, the test footage is just some light bulbs turning up in a room. She’s like, “These will be great for these scenes and here’s why.” I was like, “Okay, I trust you on that stuff.”

When makeup people are like, here’s how we’re going to approach this, I’m like, great, because I don’t do that. You do need to trust your people. They will come to you with a million questions. Be prepared to answer four million questions a day.

John: That’s the reason why I didn’t want to direct for a while. It was just like, oh, they’re going to ask me a thousand questions a day, I won’t have the answers. Then I was like, oh no, I do have the answers.

Craig: You will. In fact, what’s frustrating is sometimes you’re like, I thought that was obvious from this. Okay, let me explain what I want to [mumbles] Of course, everybody who works on The Last of Us knows that I love meetings where the question that was asked 14 times gets asked the 15th time.

John: I think podcast listeners are very [unintelligible 00:25:27] [crosstalk]

Craig: Oh, yes. You know what? I get it. I get it. I get it. Yes, I answer it.

John: All right. Our next listener question comes from Selfish in Seattle.

Craig: Great name.

Drew: Selfish writes, “I belong to a six-member writer’s group. We meet regularly. Everyone in the group has been in the business longer than I have, and I’ve learned a lot, so I appreciate being invited to join. Here’s the issue. I have a proactive manager who makes lots of introductions for me. Anytime I share that I’m having a general with this person or that person reading my script, the other members pounce on me for the person’s contact information so they can reach out to them about some project of their own.

When I say I don’t feel right about sharing someone’s contact information without their permission, the other members assure me that, in this industry, contacts are considered community property and basically make me feel like a selfish person. Am I? What is the protocol when it comes to sharing hard-won contacts versus keeping them to myself?”

Craig: John, why are we putting our phone numbers on the podcast?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: It’s community property.

John: It’s community property.

Craig: Yes, it’s community property.

John: Before we answer this question, I do want to say that, at some point back when I was working as an assistant, someone called or texted me and said, “I have Tom Cruise’s phone number.” I’m like, yes, it’s weird that you have Tom Cruise’s phone number, but it’s not actually useful. I disagree with the premise of this writer’s group, like having that contact information is going to somehow fundamentally change what they’re doing.

Craig: They are not one contact away. I think the thing that I want to actually put my finger on there, Selfish in Seattle, is why you’re saying these things in the first place at all. This, to me, feels like writer’s group bragging. Like, “Oh, hey, oh my God, good news, everybody.” You’re proud of it, maybe, and it’s just driving them crazy and then they’re bothering you. Just don’t talk about it.

You know what? Here’s the thing, if any of those general meetings turns into a specific meeting, turns into a sale, if you want to talk about how you sold a script, that seems reasonable.

John: Yes, you should take everybody out for drinks.

Craig: Yes, but a general meeting?

John: Yes. Drew, you are a member of a writer’s group or two. What’s your instinct here? Would you say that you had a specific meeting about a specific project in a writer’s group? Maybe we just don’t know how these groups work, but.

Drew: I would say most of them start off with people talking about where they are with the project. If you’re like, oh, I had a meeting, and it feels like you’re moving forward, I think there’s a natural sort of space for that. Most of the time, people are encouraging, and I’ve never heard anyone ask or solicit contact information about stuff.

Craig: Then that’s why you’re okay saying, yes, I had a general meeting with so and so because no one’s going, great, what’s their phone number? If you’re in a group where people are like, give me your stuff, then just stop showing off your stuff. Take your watch off before you walk in the room.

John: Yes, that feels right. Let’s move on to John, who is stuck in the mailroom.

Drew: John writes, “I’ve been at a studio mailroom for three years, and it’s been great, but it’s also been impossible to get out. I’ve learned that there is a non-official policy of not promoting from within. As much as I’ve networked there, there’s only so much that can be done without being overly pushy. The worst part is that I’m not exactly gaining too many skills that other entry-level jobs are looking for, which makes it harder to find something.

I know it’s hard for everyone right now, but what do you guys think are the best ways people can break out from entry-level in the current environment where such a thing seems impossible?”

John: Let’s define our terms here a bit. Mailroom is like the classic, like you are a runner. You’re literally sorting stuff. It sounds like John is not on a desk for somebody.

Craig: No.

John: It’s not that first step as an assistant. It’s like a pre-assistant level. Three years is a long time to be in that spot.

Craig: What is a mailroom now? Because it used to be people would get scripts and contracts and things.

John: Photocopy a bunch of stuff.

Craig: Then they would show up in a mailroom, and they would be sorted. Then the mailroom people would wheel a little basket around through the hallways, delivering the mail to desks. What is it now?

John: Drew and Sam, can you talk us through what a mailroom is right now? Do you have a good sense of what a studio mailroom, which is where John certainly is?

Craig: In the era of the PDF.

Drew: I know friends who’ve worked in mailrooms, and they still refer to it as a mailroom, but I don’t know what they’re doing.

Craig: [laughs] Do you want to ask them? You just have no clue what they’re doing.

Drew: They usually get on a desk pretty quick, it seems like. You’re a floater. If someone’s out, you jump on the desk.

Craig: I see, floater. Got it. Okay, so a floater is somebody that fills in for assistance when they’re out sick or whatever, because they know the system of the place. Let’s get to the heart of the question. The heart of the question is, if you’ve been doing an entry-level position for three years, and nothing has shifted in that time, and there is no path forward to progression that’s provided for you, you need to go.

John: Yes.

Craig: What they’re saying to you is, we’ll let you work here in whatever this putative mailroom is for a while, but we’re not going to give you anything else. It’s a dead end. To me, it’s the definition of a dead end. To start with, maybe give them one last chance by going to the supervisor and saying, listen, when people come to work in the mailroom, presumably it’s so that they can go somewhere. Can you just let me know? Is that going to be happening within the next, I don’t know, six months to a year? Let’s just be honest.

If it’s not, if no one’s interested, if it doesn’t seem like a good fit, then I should probably look around for something else. I’ll go to a different mailroom. Maybe that mailroom, people will be like, oh yes, we do think there’s a future for this guy.

John: First, I’ll ask our listeners who are currently working in a mailroom or have very recently worked in a studio or an agency mailroom, can you tell us what your actual daily job is like? We clearly don’t understand what the mailroom actually means right now. If we are giving John wrong advice about to get out of there, but I don’t think you’re going to tell us that. I think you’re going to tell us like John should have left it a year ago or two years ago.

Craig: Yes. Three years is a long time for no movement when you’re on the bottom rung. Middle rung, sure. Bottom, no.

John: Our next one is an audio question.

Craig: Oh, okay.

Naomi: I’m a 17-year-old from Southern California, and I’m graduating high school next year. I’ve been really passionate about pursuing directing and screenwriting for a really long time. Now that I’m getting closer to actually entering the industry, I’m trying to figure out the best ways to prepare myself and get experience. It seems like everybody has a different opinion on what someone my age should and shouldn’t be doing in order to make it in film.

Of course, the industry is in a wild state at the moment. I’m trying to sort through the noise and find some stable ground to build up from. I’ve been researching, watching movies, taking cinema classes at community college, learning to edit and practicing photo and video with my own new camera. Obviously, there’s a lot more to it. I need to start making connections, working more on my own scripts and videos and getting internships once I’m 18 in addition to anything else I may be missing.

Based on your experience, how can I do this all efficiently and effectively? How should I approach the changing film industry as a beginner? I’m trying to make it my goal to learn from other people’s experiences and be proactive about my own decisions. I’d also love to know what changes you would or wouldn’t make looking back on your own career.

John: Great. This is Naomi.

Craig: Naomi, wow. What a well put together question. Great poise. It’s sort of related a little bit to the prior question. Even though Naomi’s just starting out, she hasn’t graduated high school yet, it’s all in front of her. Her question is not that different from the fellow who said, hey, somebody put up a couple of million dollars for me to make a movie. Both people are saying, can you help me not fall down pits and avoid the fire traps and take a safe route? The answer is not really because everybody’s path is different because everybody is different.

The people that are telling you, hey, the way in is this or this, anybody that’s being really prescriptive, anybody that’s being really rigid about what you should or shouldn’t do is wrong because the way John started is different than the way I started. It’s different than the way all of us, all of our friends, everybody seemed to start in a different way.

First things first is to acknowledge that your ambition and your intelligence are your best assets at this point. You have no experience, but you’ll get some. I love that you’re taking classes, and you’re learning editing. That’s amazing. My advice has always been to find a job. I don’t care how peripheral it is to the entertainment business. As long as it is sort of vaguely connected to the entertainment business, get a job, get paid.

Now you’re young, so it’s going to be difficult, but there are some internships you can apply to. The Television Academy is a wonderful intern– I am a graduate of the Television Academy internship program. We don’t talk about that enough. It’s a wonderful thing. Apply to lots of things. You’re in Southern California. That’s good. Find yourself a place that is within an hour drive of the place that you’re going to end up working at, and then just start doing what you do and learning and absorbing and listening.

You are very young. You can’t vote yet. You’re really young. It doesn’t feel like you are, but you are. The next four years you will be a very different and I suspect even more accomplished person than you are right now.

John: Let’s talk about those next four years because Naomi didn’t mention college at all.

Craig: Community college.

John: Well, she’s taking classes.

Craig: Right. Summer classes.

John: I think you should go to college. I think you should go to college, not necessarily to learn filmmaking, but just to learn the kinds of things you’ll learn over the next four years between the ages of 18 and 22, which are crucial growing things, and to hang out with other people who are hopefully going to do the kinds of things you want to do. A film program is helpful because you’re with a bunch of kids who are also making movies, and you get to spend your time making movies, which is great. If it’s not that, like any sort of basic four-year degree, I think it’s probably the right idea. Don’t go to a crazy debt for it.

Craig: Yes. Community colleges are great.

John: Yes. If you’re in Southern California and if you’re as smart as you sort of sound like you are, if you can get into a UC or any California college, right.

Craig: Those are tough. Whatever you can do, I agree with John, what you can, for instance, at pretty reasonable costs, especially if it’s a community college, you can study literature, you can read great books. Nothing is better for you than reading. Reading the great stories and the people that wrote them and figuring out what they were trying to do and how they did it, all those things.

Think of it as a turbocharged version of whatever your English class has been in high school. That’s a good thing to do if you want to be a storyteller. While you’re in college, yes, if you can, sure, you can get a job. Get a job.

John: Get a job.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Yes. Listen, you hopefully don’t need to make a lot of money so you can do the kinds of runnery things or the shadowing and just visiting sets will be really good for you. I’m also thinking about like, you’re a writer as well as a director, thinking about what movies you actually want to make.

One of the things that always impressed me about Lena Dunham when I met her, which was right after college, was she was already making movies, but she was making movies about her life, people in her age. She wasn’t trying to make The Godfather.

She was trying to make things that were specific to her. I think, Naomi, if there’s a specific story that is yours to tell that a 17-year-old in Southern California can tell that, a 30-year-old can’t tell, that’s what’s going to be interesting and fascinating, and people are going to want to meet you because of that.

Craig: Keep yourself open to the idea that you don’t yet know actually what it is that you want to do or will be good at doing. I did not show up in Hollywood looking to be a writer. I didn’t. A lot of people say, I want to be a writer and director. They don’t necessarily know what that is yet because they haven’t done it. Sometimes people who want to be a writer and director start taking editing classes and realize they’re great at editing.

Great editors are worth their weight in gold. Some people end up being camera people. Some people end up being in advertising. Everybody finds something, but just keep yourself open because you don’t want to show up sort of locked off to the possibilities because you don’t know what they are yet.

John: No, exactly. Next up, let’s answer a question from Charlie.

Drew: Charlie writes, “I’ve recently been hired to write a screenplay and, yes, it’s becoming all the nightmare scenarios you guys have described a thousand times. The director and producer are in a cold war over ideas and both have dug their heels in. I am more closely aligned with the producer’s vision, but the director has threatened to quit. For the moment, he’s won. He’s been given carte blanche to move forward and is unwilling to collaborate on any points he previously argued.

I am fighting such a bad urge. I want to just stop trying. I want to just write the bad script so he can see for himself. I’m tired of trying to control my emotions. I feel like throwing in the towel and just writing the expository dialogue and unresolved story threads. But won’t that reflect so poorly on me? Isn’t it my job to be the adult in the room and do everything I can to guide this to the best possible place? How do I come out of this crap smelling like roses?

John: Wrong question to end with. There’s no roses here. Basically, how do you get through this situation with your vision as intact as possible and also a movie? I think these would be noble goals.

Craig: Isn’t this horrible? isn’t this embarrassing to directors? I hope that directors listen to this. I’m sure there are directors who listen to it. You and I are directors. We’re both in the DGA. This isn’t chauvinism. This is just a fact. It should be humiliating to directors to hear that somebody that is one of them behaves like this. It’s embarrassing. Just because there is this weird leverage of, well, we got a director and we can’t lose the director, to behave like this.

By the way, if the director is a writer, then why aren’t they writing it? If they’re not a writer, why don’t they shut up? Because they signed on to do a script, did they not? I’m just saying, directors, don’t be this person. Just don’t do it.

In a circumstance like this, I think it would be fair to go to the producer and say, listen, I don’t know how to do the things that this person wants me to do. I don’t know how to write them. I don’t think anybody would know how to write them.

Maybe he can write them. Maybe you should have him write it. I think we all know that it would be bad. The movie would be bad. Maybe do let him quit. Maybe let him quit. There is a point where you can’t just willingly– if you write the bad thing, you’re like, here, I did everything you said, look how bad it is, 98% chance he’ll be like, no.

John: No, it’s great.

Craig: It’s finally fixed. [laughs] I love this house with no doors and five chimneys that are sideways. I think you need to have a long talk with the producer. I would include your representative in this to say, let’s be serious. You cannot last forever biting your tongue. You can’t last forever being overly diplomatic. You can’t last forever trying to solve problems you shouldn’t be solving because they shouldn’t be there at all. At some point, it’s fair for everybody to go, “This is not what we want to do. It would be bad.”

John: I agree with that approach. I think another approach would be to continue to engage with the director. This may be a director who just needs to constantly talk through all the ideas and is not actually necessarily asking or expecting you to deliver the thing but basically needs to talk through all their bad ideas.

Craig: They did say that the director’s not willing to compromise or discuss.

John: Yes. If they need to see something, an alternative can be, never give them screenplay material, but you can sort of do a little beat sheet that puts down on paper for what these beats would be, what their vision would be, and why it wouldn’t work so you can actually show them. I understand Charlie’s instinct to just write the pages and say, “Look, this doesn’t work,” but the minute you’ve delivered anything that looks like a screenplay, you’re dead.

Craig: Yes. You can’t do that.

John: If you were to write down something that’s basically just bullet points, then you can have a thing that you can talk through and you can actually just look at like, “This is what we’re describing here, and this is why I think it’s not working, but I did listen to you and then you could see like, this is me showing you what this actually looks like.”

Craig: Why are we so concerned about these directors and their feelings? See, I listened to you. Nobody’s listening to us. No one. Why does this matter so much? I just don’t understand. I’ve never understood it. The emotional fragility of directors is such a problem in our business. I love the directors I work with, so many of them, but I have also worked with a lot of directors in the course of my career. As of you, so many of them have been remarkable and so many of them have just been so fragile, and everybody has to contort themselves to make sure that they feel good and that they aren’t hurt and that they are danced around and catered to.

John: Same could happen with movie stars too.

Craig: The movie star is a movie star. That’s the thing. Look, Tom Cruise is a movie star. There are certain kinds of movies that if Tom Cruise is in, people are going to show up. That’s money, right? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this director is not that.

John: This is not Ridley Scott.

Craig: There are about 12 directors maybe in the world that matter and really probably only 3 when it comes to names, 3 maybe in terms of box office. I guess this is where I would suggest that there’s a long talk to be had with the producer, especially since the producer and you see eye to eye, and the producer’s going to be the one left holding the bag of this thing when all’s said and done.

There has to be adults having this discussion, and I do think you have to be willing to say, all right, I’ve gone as far as I can go. I matter too. I’m writing the script, the thing that says what everything is, all the things that happen, all the things that are going to be, what are they wearing, what are they saying, where are they standing, all of it. All of it, so yes, I think I matter too. I think my opinions matter too. They should matter at least as much as the opinions of this director, and maybe the director’s not right for this because they don’t seem to like the script very much.

John: Yes. Producers suffer from loss aversion, and I think they’re going to feel like, “Oh, if I lose this director, then everything is falling apart again,” but I agree it’s the right approach.

Craig: I’m going to quote the poster from Pet Sematary, the old one with Fred Gwynne: “Sometimes dead is better.” I believe that in my heart. I have seen this so many times. You just go, “Oof, we worked so hard, so hard to make sure this thing never lost a pulse, but it should have, because look at what we ended up with.” You just won’t survive, and no one will ever give you any credit for it. They just won’t.

John: We’re going to try two more questions. This is a longer one. Robert is asking about adaptations.

Drew: Robert writes, “The Netflix show The Residence is credited as an adaptation of the book of the same name. The series is a murder mystery alternatingly set behind the scenes at the White House with zany detective Uzo Aduba and a congressional hearing. Here’s the catch. The book is a nonfiction oral history style tell-all of what it’s like working at the White House. No zany detective, no C-SPAN, and no murder mystery. I have a hard time seeing how the book is anything more than a well-worn reference. I understand if it was thanked or otherwise footnoted in the credits, but how is this an adaptation?”

Craig: Okay, let me explain. This is a technical thing. It’s not a creative thing. An adaptation occurs when you as a writer in the WGA are assigned literary material at the beginning of your work. Now, there are two kinds of material you can be assigned. You can be assigned what’s called non-story literary material, newspaper articles about some crime or maybe a very non-fictional account. You can be assigned literary material of a story nature, which is almost all of it, which includes even songs that have little stories in them, and that’s why it’s an adaptation.

There are things that happen with the credits. If it is material that’s largely non-story, but the point is, nobody is getting this adapted from or based on the blah blah blah, because somebody decided it was. It’s legal.

John: Yes. I don’t know the whole provenance of this show, but my guess is that this book, The Residence, sold to Shonda’s company at Netflix to do an adaptation. Great. We have this thing. Ooh, we need characters and we need a plot. We need the whole reason. We have all this sort of background information, but we don’t have anything more.

Craig: There’s probably some material in the book that you can see, you can pull storylines out, so there are plotlines or storylines, settings, types of characters and things, and then you expand from there. For adaptations, typically there isn’t a story credit, but in cases where the story of the adaptation is markedly different or original to the source material or the source material wasn’t very story-oriented in the first place, you might get a story credit or screen story by for movies at least, but it is entirely a function of what the contract says when you sign it. It’s all listed, and they are required by the WGA to list all of the source material.

John: I’d be curious in case of some of the toy adaptations, Lego or other things like that, to what degree was it considered to be any story material other than just the name?

Craig: For the case of Lego, we could always ask Chris and Phil. My suspicion is they were not assigned any literary material because there is none. There is a toy, but there are no words to the toy. There’s no story to the toy per se. It’s just bricks. If there were certain toys that they did have storylines with, there would be something written. It’s all about getting assigned written material generally where that comes into play.

John: I suspect Barbie had written material, but I don’t know.

Craig: Maybe. Maybe.

John: Let’s answer one last question. This is from D, who’s writing about Scriptnotes T-shirts.

Drew: “Will you bring back orange T-shirts? Sadly, I outgrew my original orange T-shirt or it shrank. [laughter] In my opinion, guys seem to prefer black, blue, olive, or gray shirts, but we women would like more choices than just the white T with the typewriter. Help a sister out.”

Craig: Let’s help a sister out.

John: Help a sister out.

Craig: Why not?

John: We’ll add some orange T-shirts.

Craig: I love the orange T-shirts. Not big sellers, or?

John: Our original T-shirt was the orange T-shirt, very Scriptnotes orange. I just don’t end up wearing it that much.

Craig: Right, but you’re not a woman.

John: I’m not Dee.

Craig: Sisters want the orange shirt.

John: We are listening-

Craig: [laughs]

John: -and we are providing a T-shirt in orange for D.

Craig: Look at you. Look at you. See that? Look how we’re growing.

John: We are growing. We’re growing.

Craig: We’re growing, but actually, also, I like the orange shirt.

John: Thank you, Drew, for reading all these questions.

Craig: Yes, great job.

John: Thank you to all our listeners who sent in these great questions. We got through a lot of them. We didn’t get through all of them, so we’ll save some for sure for a future time.

Craig: For next time.

John: It’s time for One Cool Things. My one cool thing is something I’ve been using the last this six weeks or so. There’s actually two different programs. I’m going to talk about the newer one that I’ve been using called Aqua. It’s a voice dictation software. Craig, you probably remember like back in the day, there was Dragon dictation. There are ways you could talk instead of type into your computer. We had to train them. It was fussy. You had to do everything sort of exactly just right.

Somehow this last year, it just got incredibly, insanely good, so you can talk full speed, and it does a very good job of not only understanding what you’re saying but figuring out the context of what you’re saying and putting periods in appropriate places. It just got crazy better, like much better than the dictation on your phone.

Craig: Yes, which is not good.

John: Which is not good.

Craig: They’ll be buying this shortly.

John: For my trip to Jordan and Egypt, I handwrote my journal. After going to see places, I would handwrite sort of what I was doing. I didn’t open my laptop the entire time I was there, and so I had this handwritten journal, but it wasn’t actually all that useful because I can read my handwriting for about three days, but then it’s just like sort of indecipherable.

Craig: Then it has to go to the mail room.

John: The mail room has to handle it.

Craig: It’s paper.

John: I wanted a digital copy of it, so I was like, “Oh, God. I’m going to have to type this all.” It’s like, “No, I’m actually just going to dictate it,” and so I would just like dictate a lot. I could just go through paragraphs at a time.

It’s just really good. If you’ve not tried computer-based dictation software recently– originally, I was using superwhisper, which is also very good. Aqua seems a little bit better. It just figures out context behind things. I was naming temples in Egypt and it was spelling them properly.

Craig: Spelling them correctly?

John: Try it out. They’re free trials, and then it’s a subscription if you decide to keep using it.

Craig: Fantastic. That’s for cross-platform, or?

John: I know it’s on the Mac. I think there’s probably a Windows equivalent support. Again, dictation software is one of those things that was so important for accessibility for people who couldn’t type and so I typed. It’s just great that these tools, which were originally designed for people with these things, are now so useful for all of us.

Someone’s going to write in about this, so let me acknowledge this. There are privacy concerns with any tool that is basically taking the audio, sending it to the internet, and sending it back very quickly.

Craig: It could keep your stuff.

John: It could keep your stuff.

Craig: Have you looked at the–

John: I looked at the terms of service. They’re saying they’re not keeping your stuff, but do you trust them? At a certain point, I was like, “No,” but do I trust Dropbox, which has all my stuff? Do I trust anything?

Craig: Weirdly, I do trust Dropbox. I don’t know why I trust Dropbox.

John: I’ve just sort of given up. For mission-critical stuff or things that are truly secret, if I was Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy writing on Westworld or something, maybe I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it, but for what I’m doing, I just think it’s really good.

Craig: All right. Good to know. I’m also going to go down the tech road here. I finally experienced something in VR that made me go, “Oh yes, this is going to work.”

John: Oh great. What was it?

Craig: I use the Quest 3, which is from [sighs] Meta, stupidest name and evil. I was so excited because the Fireproof Games, which is the company that makes The Room games for iOS, has pivoted away into VR, which was bumming me out, but they did make a Room game for VR that was pretty darn good. It didn’t make me think like, [mumbles].

They have a game out now called Ghost Town. It is astonishing. It’s a good game, but also, it’s astonishing. For the first time, I was like, “I think I’m somewhere else.” I got close to the wall and was just looking at the texture of the drywall, and I’m like, “Yes, we’re here. It’s happening.” If they can do that now, 5 to 10 years, it’s going to be remarkable how similar it is to the actual visual experience. The next step then would be to add smells and texture and wind ruffling, but honestly, even if you don’t–

John: A direct brain interface at some point.

Craig: It was astonishing, and it’s really well done.

John: Remind us of the name of that.

Craig: Ghost Town.

John: Ghost Town, and it’s available on the Quest. Do you know if it’s available on Vision Pro or any other things?

Craig: I think it’s across all the VR platforms, I believe.

John: I have a Vision Pro. I might try that.

Craig: It should. I think so. I hope so, because it’s also just a really good game, but boy. There’s a little tutorial section, it’s like the first little setting, and I was like, “Eh, it’s pretty good.” [unintelligible 00:52:09] like, “Huh.” Then I got to the next bit, and I was like, “What?” Then it just kept getting better. It’s really something else.

John: This was months ago, but what if the Marvel series did a thing for the Vision Pro, did like, basically, an episode that’s sort of inside the Vision Pro? Remarkably well done, just incredibly effective use of the tools and technology. I’d have no idea how much it would cost. It must cost so much money, but the market for it is like, “Did 50,000 people see that?”

Craig: Right, exactly. That’s the thing.

John: The chicken-egg problem of it is a big thing.

Craig: This was the first time where I was like, “Yes, this is going to happen.” It’s been a while. We’ve had these headsets for a while now.

John: Great. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt-

Craig: I don’t know.

John: -with help from Sam Shapson.

Craig: No.

John: It is edited by Matthew Choleli.

Craig: If you say so.

John: Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links for things about writing.

We have T-shirts, even orange T-shirts, and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. [music] You’ll find the show notes with the links for all the things we talked about today in the e-mail you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net. We get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Strong Opinions. Craig, thank you for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Craig, Strong Opinions is a game that we sort of came up with in the office. Nima, who you know, our coder– we love Nima. Nima has a strong opinion about everything. The thing is, you can’t predict what it would be, like pickles, “Ah, pickles are the worst,” or, “Pickles are the best.” You just don’t know, but you know he’s going to have a very strong opinion.

Craig: He’s going to have a hard opinion on every possible yes/no.

John: One day in Slack, I just made a list of 15 things and I had us all vote on, what do we think Nima thinks about each of these things? Then we went through it and [unintelligible 00:54:39], so I built it out into a little bit of a game now called Strong Opinions. It’s a good kind of game for– if you are having a game night, it’s like sort of the first like warmup kind of game.

Craig: Little icebreaker?

John: Yes, a little icebreaker. Let’s do a new game here. We’re going to play.

Craig: This is exciting.

John: Drew will play with us. Here, we’ll do three rounds, and we’ll go start. We’ll start with Craig, so it’s your turn. You just got microwave ovens. Now, Drew and I have to decide what Craig thinks of microwave ovens.

Craig: Got you.

John: All right. If we’re playing this in person, you have a Heck Yeah or a Nope card. Heck Yeah is a testament to–

Craig: Loving something.

John: Yes, and it’s a reference to Megan McDonnell, our Scriptnotes producer, who says, “Heck yeah,” so that spirit, or “Nope.”

Craig: All right. Would I theoretically have to write this down so you would trust me?

John: Yes.

Craig: But just trust me.

John: We’ll just trust you here

Craig: It’s the honor system.

John: Drew, why don’t you go first? Craig and microwave ovens.

Drew: I think it’s a nope.

John: I think it’s also a nope.

Craig: Heck yeah.

Drew: Really?

John: You’re heck yeah? Okay.

Craig: I use a microwave almost every day. I love a microwave oven. There are things that microwaves do so well. I had a breakfast burrito this very morning. It was a frozen breakfast burrito.

John: Where is your microwave oven? Because I’m picturing your kitchen.

Craig: It’s buried in the cabinetry to the left of the refrigerator. It’s sleek. I looked on the directions and it was like, “If you want to make this in an oven, it’s 19 hours. If you want to put it in an air fryer, it’s a million years, or it’s one minute and 30 seconds in the microwave.” I was like, “I’m going to go with microwave.”

John: Two of our D&D friends do not have microwave ovens.

Craig: It’s crazy.

John: I was astonished by this.

Craig: Crazy. No, I’m going to heck yeah microwave ovens.

John: All right. Drew, your topic is tiki bars. I actually know this about Drew. Craig, do you think Drew is a fan or an anti-fan of tiki bars?

Craig: I’m going to say that it’s a heck yeah because who has a hard no on that? How many times have you experienced one?

John: I’m actually a hard no on tiki bars.

Craig: I’ve never been to one.

John: Yes. But I know that Drew is a fan of tiki bars.

Craig: Okay, I got it right.

Drew: I’m a heck yeah.

Craig: Heck yeah.

John: All right.

Craig: That’s so strange. Where– I don’t even want to know. The only one I know is the tiki room in Disneyland.

John: All right, mine is composting. What do I, John August, think about composting?

Drew: It’s a heck yeah.

Craig: It has to be a heck yeah. He’s so green.

John: I’m actually going to be a nope.

Craig: Ah, what?

John: This is surprising, but because we actually tried composting and it was such a disaster.

Craig: Why?

John: We got one of these cones that you throw all your compost bits in and it becomes overrun with ants and other bugs and stuff, and so I would shudder every time I needed to do it. Now we have the green bin and we throw stuff out there, but honestly, Mike is more often the person who’s emptying the compost into the green bins.

Craig: So you are composting.

John: Yes, but I don’t like it.

Craig: It doesn’t sound like you have a hard opinion on it one way or the other. Nobody likes composting.

John: Yes, I’m not anti-concept of it. I just don’t like the process of composting.

Craig: Alright, interesting. I thought you would’ve been more enthusiastic about composting.

John: All right, going back to Craig. What do we think Craig thinks about pineapple on pizza? Okay. Drew, you’re up.

Drew: Oof.

Craig: Everybody has a hard opinion about that, I think.

Drew: I’m going to say heck yeah.

John: I’m going to say nope.

Craig: Nope is correct. I’m from Staten Island. Do not dare violate a pizza with that nonsense.

John: Yes, and one of the tricky things that comes up with this game sometimes is like, “Well, am I thinking just for myself or for other people?” Bird-watching came up and like, I don’t believe in bird-watching, but also, I’m not opposed to other people bird-watching. If Julia Turner wants to bird-watch, I support that for her.

Craig: Or Melissa.

John: Yes, but I don’t–

Craig: I make fun of it all the time because it’s stupid.

John: All right, Drew’s is, well, how does Drew feel about artificial Christmas trees?

Craig: Oh, that’s interesting. It’s funny that you brought up the– for me, because I love an artificial Christmas tree myself, but I think that Drew is a nope on that.

John: I think Drew is also a no on artificial Christmas trees.

Drew: I think I’m a nope now, but I was a heck yeah for a very long time.

Craig: But you’ve converted to nope.

Drew: I’ve converted to nope just in this last year because I have been informed of like the microplastics that these trees end up sort of becoming, and then [unintelligible 00:58:35].

Craig: By the way, nope converts are the hardest nopes of them all. Everyone knows that.

John: Yes, absolutely. They once believed it and now they’re– no, that’s fair enough.

Craig: Yes, now they’re just like, now they need you to know. Making me feel guilty.

John: What do I think about flavored sparkling water?

Craig: Nope.

Drew: I think John is largely a nope.

Craig: I’m a nope.

John: I’m a heck yeah.

Craig: I was trying to remember if you drink like-

John: Yes, LaCroixs I do. I’m not like the Topo Chico fan that you are or used to be.

Craig: Topo Chico’s not flavored, though.

John: It’s not flavored, but like the idea of sparkling water as a thing-

Craig: Yes, I love the sparkling. I like the hit.

Drew: John only likes one flavor of sparkling water.

Craig: What is it?

John: I like the Pamplemousse [unintelligible 00:59:07].

Craig: Pamplemousse.

John: I was at your house. I was at your house and from your refrigerator, I pulled a Peach-Pear.

Craig: Melissa loves that.

John: Oh my God. It had like a texture to it that I just did not enjoy. Water should not have a texture, but it created something.

Craig: Oh sorry, we keep old milk in those. I should’ve mentioned. That’s where we put our compost. [laughter]

John: It was a very meaty water, so.

Drew: Gross.

John: Whoa. What does Craig think of tuna salad?

Drew: Nope.

John: No, it has mayonnaise in it. Absolutely nope.

Craig: No, of course not. Also, the way that they’ve abused the word salad, this perfectly fine word. [laughter] Just, oh, it’s salad, or it’s something that isn’t salad that we put this snot on top of. God.

John: What does Drew think about Christina Aguilera?

Craig: I’m going to say heck yeah.

John: I’ll say heck yeah also.

Drew: I’m a heck yeah.

Craig: Yes, because she’s great.

John: Talented.

Drew: Very talented.

Craig: An amazing singer.

John: Yes.

Drew: Yes.

John: What do I think about podcasts on YouTube?

Craig: Well, you just said that you’re putting us on YouTube, although you’re not putting us as a podcast on YouTube, per se. I’m going to go with nope because I think John is– he likes the proper podcast delivery systems, so I’m going to say nope.

Drew: I’m also going to say nope because I feel like this is watching people talk, and I feel like that’s not up John’s alley.

John: Yes, I’m going to be a nope on that, too, and I feel like it’s absolutely fine to make videos of people doing stuff, but it’s fine to have a talk show kind of thing, but I think it’s no longer a podcast. I think a podcast is about an individual listening to a thing, and a visual podcast at a certain point just becomes a talk show.

Craig: Just a tiny talk show. I mean, I’m okay with when they put the audio podcast on YouTube because some people do listen. Then it’s fine.

John: That’s time. That was it.

Craig: Great, well that was a fun game. I learned a lot.

John: If you wanted to play this for yourselves, it’s just johnaugust.com/strong-opinions.

Craig: Amazing.

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes for it.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: Craig, thank you for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

John: Thanks, Drew. Thanks, Sam.

Drew: Thanks.

Links:

• Scriptnotes on YouTube!
• Strong Opinions game
• Hollywood Unions letter to President Trump
• The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch by Forrest Wickman
• Foggy Brume on Twitch
• 36 Questions, the podcast musical
• Austin Film Festival
• My First Movie: 20 Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film
• Orange T-shirts are back!
• Aqua voice dictation software
• Ghost Town by Fireproof Games
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2023/character-and-story-fit).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 606 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

How do you know if you got the right characters for your story, and whether you got the right story for your characters? To help us solve this crucial piece of matchmaking, we welcome back Pamela Ribon, a screenwriter whose credits include Moana, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and the new Netflix feature, Nimona. Her short film, My Year of Dicks, was not only a previous One Cool Thing, it’s also an Oscar nominee. It made Craig giggle every time I said it. Welcome back, Pammy.

**Pamela Ribon:** Hi. Thank you for having me.

**John:** I’m so excited to have you on the podcast again. Full disclosure, you moderated a session very recently about screenwriting, and your questions were so brilliant so insightful, and you’re leading of the discussion. I actually suppressed my need to take over all those things. You know what I’m talking about.

**Pamela:** I do. This is the highest praise I’ve ever received. Thank you so much.

**John:** They were so, so good that I stopped myself in answering questions and didn’t try to redirect the question. I recognize you as a fellow podcast host. If at any point you feel you need to elevate yourself from just guest to podcast co-host, feel free.

**Pamela:** I will be your Craig as much as you need. I will take umbrage, but you will find that I’m a more empathetic umbrage person.

**John:** Yeah, but you have strong opinions though, and I like that too. You have strong opinions about craft. I really want to dig in and talk about craft. I also want to talk about recapping, because you were a recapper. I want to talk about that relationship between writing about film and television and writing film and television, what that is. I’ve got some listener questions. I’m excited to get to it.

Also, for a Bonus Segment for Premium members, I want to talk about your podcast, because you have a podcast called Listen to Sassy, which is all going through the back issues of Sassy Magazine and discussing the relevance then and the relevance now?

**Pamela:** Yes, and the official issues of Sassy Magazine, because there are some that we might say aren’t canon.

**John:** Wow. I did not even know that. I’m learning even as we start this podcast. Hey, let’s jump into this. Let’s talk about character and character fit, because this is a large part of the discussion we had a few weeks ago as we were talking. You started with a really smart question, which was, what is your favorite character that you did not create. I don’t remember what your answer for that question was yourself. What is a character that you wish you had created?

**Pamela:** What’s interesting is I wouldn’t have answered this in any other room, but the room we were in and the conversation we were having led me to answer Annie. What I’m going to say right now is Paddington in Paddington 2.

**John:** Let’s talk about Paddington in Paddington 2, because it’s a great movie. It’s a great character. Talk to us about, why is that a perfect movie for Paddington to be in, and vice versa.

**Pamela:** Part of why Paddington is perfect in Paddington 2… That movie is perfect. Perfect movie. This movie, imagine like double XL. This movie is perfect, because when you know what Paddington wants, from being a little bit in a book, which only this movie could do, from us knowing his backstory, which just happened, we’re just in. We’re just in. I remember saying out loud, “This is perfect.”

It’s not easy. I was so awed by how you can bring every single person in the whole wide world to understand, what if I could walk this person I love through the world, because of the book. I just need this book. I grew up with The NeverEnding Story and Annie. I think in the room, I answered Annie.

**John:** You did. I remember you answering Annie.

**Pamela:** Definitely. You love her.

**John:** Annie and Paddington are similar characters, in that they are not hugely flawed characters who have to learn a valuable lesson that transforms them. They start the movie with clean and simple wants. The movie wants to give it to them, but will make it difficult along the way.

**Pamela:** I think I am drawn to those characters, like in Whale Rider, or going all the way to the other end, secretary. I think I am drawn to characters who know who they are, but the world doesn’t understand them.

**John:** That’s so fascinating, because usually we think about, movies are journey of self-discovery, so over the course of the movie, the character has to learn about themselves and challenge their assumptions about what they’re able to do, in order to conquer the problem in front of them and to transform the world in front of them. They have to transform themselves in order to transform the world.

I think I brought this up in the room. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie Bucket is not a character who has to go through a big arc. The character in the book, he is a good kid from the start. I kept fighting these studio notes from like, “Oh, Charlie has to want it more. We have to see him struggle.” No, he’s actually a good, perfect kid. He does need to change the world around him, but he’s changing it in the way an antagonist changes the world, rather than protagonist. He doesn’t have to exit the movie profoundly changed from how he entered into it.

**Pamela:** I always think of characters are moving right, being right. I have a problem when they’re always moving right, always being right. I do think you have to find this balance of, you’re right, the world needs to know you’re right, and because the world is bending, you actually learn you can be wrong inside that right. That’s that end of second act feeling of, “Oh, shit. I didn’t have it all figured out, because no one let me grow.”

**John:** Let’s back up and talk about character and story fit, because I think so often, we are lectured that story comes from character, character want is what drives story. It’s true, but also, that’s generally not the starting place for an idea.

An idea is generally about like, “This is the world in which I want to tell the story. I want to tell a story about a character who does blank blank blank.” Then you’re backing into, who is the best, most appropriate character to put into that story.

It’s not so clean. It’s like, “I’m going to create a character in a vacuum and then set them in a world for a story.” That just never happens. It’s not a thing that a writer almost ever really experiences. Instead, they’re like, “This is the place in which the story needs to happen. Now we need to find who is the perfect character to tell that story.”

I’m wondering if we can talk about some animated movies, because they often are cleaner ways to get into this. For something like Moana, which you were writing on, was this like, “We want to tell a story about Pacific Islanders and this universe,” and then you had to find a character, or was there a clear like, “We want to tell a story of a chieftain’s daughter who goes on this quest.” What was the back and forth between the two of them?

**Pamela:** It’s a little of what you said on both sides, and also neither, let me say.

**John:** Perfect. That’s what it is. It’s complicated.

**Pamela:** It’s very complicated. I come in right after Taika Waititi had written a draft. My first day was a table read, which you’re just in the story trust, day one, like, “Welcome to this.”

I would say a lot of times, I am brought in when people are very comfortable with structure, they understand where they want it to go, but perhaps their female character could use some help owning the film.

**John:** Making sure they’re not a passenger in the film, but actually driving the film.

**Pamela:** Maui’s a very dominant character. In Taika’s hands, he was beyond charismatic, so what do you do? Moana at the time was only 13. She had a bunch of brothers. She wasn’t allowed to sail because she was a girl. That is where we started during my time there.

**John:** A lot had been done before you got there, so it wasn’t a completely clean slate. When you’re thinking about a movie from scratch, it’s that balance. Most of our listeners are probably thinking of their own thing they want to do. They will look through books that will tell them, oh, story comes from character. We’ve said it on the podcast. They may be beating themselves up, like, “I need to find this perfect character, and then the story will come out of that.”

That’s not necessarily a good solution, because I’ve had experiences where I absolutely love this character, I’ve been down a draft with a character, and I love this person, and they are just not the right person to base this movie around. I made the wrong choice. We often talk about how sidekicks steal movies, because they are characters who are just more interesting to watch in the world that we’ve created for ourselves.

**Pamela:** They’re there because your protagonist has to be on a straight line, and so they aren’t always allowed to be so chaotically funny. We enjoy our sidekicks, because they can just keep nudging at that protagonist, to say, “I think you need to change. I think you need to change. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see what’s wrong with you? Isn’t it better to live like me?” That sidekick has some growing to learn. The protagonist is what’s actually going to help the world.

**John:** Exactly. I think back to Big Fish. For the adaptation of Big Fish, there’s a book that I could base it off of, but the book is really thin, and it only has sketches of these characters and situations. I went into the adaptation knowing who Edward was, knowing who Will, the son, was, which is basically a proxy for me. I knew that Will had a French wife, which I just created because I needed someone for him to talk to. Then I had to figure out everything else.

Those characters can feel very functional along the way. They’re getting me through a section of story. Then the trick is to make them feel like those were characters who were always there, who always had a reason and a purpose and own their life, you could make a story about them, even though they really were just functional for me in this story to tell this one bit of it. It’s that sleight of hand, where you feel like, oh, any one of these people could drive the story, but of course they couldn’t, because it has to be about this one time, event that this one character is going through.

**Pamela:** Going back to the question you asked me earlier, this is not true, but Taika likes to joke that all that’s left in the script from what he did is exterior ocean day. It’s not true. It’s not true, but it’s a very funny joke.

That was the part, going back to that question, that was interesting, because you had so many scenes that had no walls, they had no props. You’re two people maybe, or just Moana, on a boat. Ocean. Exterior ocean day. That is not a world that is populated.

When you think about moving on to something like Ralph Breaks the Internet, where the whole world is very important. In fact, you can’t make some of these characters exist until you understand what this internet world looks like in the, quote unquote, room they might be in. You’re like, “Oh, I understand a knowledge base, a data search engine was that character.” In terms of Moana, you have the endless sea.

**John:** Can I ask you a question? I remember looking at the initial posters. I went in and saw early art on Moana. I got a talking through of who the different characters were. Some of those characters did not make it through to the movie. I can say that specifically there was a poster that released that showed the pig on the boat.

I feel like my instinct was that some of those characters were brought along on the journey just so there would be stuff to do on those boat journeys, as we were off on sea, exterior ocean day. They ultimately were not crucial to the story. They probably got trimmed, maybe late in the process. That’s the kind of discovery that can happen in animation particularly, because you just got to keep iterating and iterating and iterating. Without spoiling, revealing any NDA stuff, am I kind of right?

**Pamela:** Listen. Look. How old is this? Are these NDAs still happening? I feel like I’m just going to tell you. First of all, like I said, she was younger when I was writing on the script.

I can talk to you about Pua, who was named Kuni [ph] when I was working on it, because kuni means pig. So does Pua. That pig originally went with her, because you also learned how she had rescued this pig as a little tiny runt that was going to be left to die. She brought that pig home and raised that pig. That was her pig.

There was something about having Pua along on the journey that made the stakes a little too high. I totally understand this was past my time, but you’re just like, “She can’t just leave the boat.” I knew this feeling. She left the boat to go somewhere else. You’re like, “I don’t care about Hei Hei, but you can’t leave Pua. He’s such a sweet piggy.”

**John:** No one cares about the chicken.

**Pamela:** Yeah. The sweet piggy can’t be… It became too high of stakes, actually, for her to continue her journey. I do understand Pua’s going to stay home, because otherwise, you’ve brought a puppy on your boat, and how are you supposed to leave that puppy in a lava realm? You just can’t. It’s too scary.

**John:** Let’s talk about the room and animation, because we had Jennifer Lee on the show, and she was talking about her experience on Frozen and coming in at a place where they had a lot of the pieces, and they couldn’t make all the pieces fit. A lot of it was figuring out, “Okay, what do we have here? How do we get back to this central relationship? How do we make this all work?”

As a feature writer, I’m mostly used to working alone, or I get notes from a person, or I work with a director. There’s TV writers who are used to working in a room of other writers. As an animation writer, you can find yourself in situations where you’re at these big tables, where it’s not just other writers, it’s a bunch of other people from other departments. You’re all having to talk through these things. You’re having to figure out how do we synthesize these ideas and get back to a place.

If you’re the writer who’s coming in on a project like Moana or Ralph Breaks the Internet, how do you take all that in and synthesize this and give them back something they need? At what point do you stop talking and start writing and show scenes? What is that like for you?

**Pamela:** Much like in TV, it’s different in every room. It’s led by that showrunner, who will be your director, or directors. They set the tone. Moana and Ralph and Smurfs, so whatever, each one is a very different room.

I would say what’s interesting, coming into animation when I did, was a real specific change, probably Pixar led, of, hey, a writer might have something to say in this room and might have some reason to be talking to you.

What I found really cool was, this might be because I moved around a lot, but part of it was looking at each room and going, “Oh, okay. Oh, so now I’m talking to mostly visual artists,” whose brains are already adding. They take a sequence and think of it as five minutes. They’re already adding and plussing, which is why we have the best stuff in animation, because each person is really filling it to the top of their own game.

How do you talk to that person without stifling them, while also explaining, like, “You don’t have to think about the other 88 minutes, but I do. This scene is great. Put everything you want in it, but just make sure this happens and this happens and at the end it’s this. If we can do that together, if you do that on your own… ”

I think I prefer working with storyboard artists, because they’re able to give me what exterior ocean day looks like, or interior Fale night. I don’t really know what that means. Interior Ebay day. Once I can see what they see, I can show them what I think they should say. Then together, we can make something that you can pitch back to a director, that is more fully formed than either of us can do on our own.

You don’t get that option often in a TV writing room, unless you’re off in a B-room or whatever, and you’re all like, “Let’s hope these jokes make it.” It’s the same skill.

**John:** In TV though, you don’t have the chance to iterate, where you see, “What was this? What did it look like? Great. Now let’s go back,” because in TV, ultimately you’re still delivering a script, which will then go off to another group of people who will make the show. You’ll have, hopefully, writers there to help oversee it. You don’t get that chance to like, “Oh, everyone’s looking at the same thing. What are we going to do for this next pass?”

**Pamela:** I started in more multi-cams. You did have a rehearsal. Everybody’s on their feet. Everybody’s giving input. You also have a lot of weird downtime, because you’re a staff writer, and learning what to do with all of that time and then learning what everyone else does. I would say for any room I’m in or any job I’m on, while doing the job, I also want to know, what can I learn from this?

**John:** Of course.

**Pamela:** I would say that, from working in IBM tech support before I moved out to LA, all the way to anime dub jobs or working in reality television and recapping, all of that leads into what I’m doing in a Disney room, where I’m talking to people who are seeing what I’m saying, before I’m even done saying what I’m saying, and just knowing how to pick up all these words, which you do as a writer once you’re in the edit bay or you’re in casting or whatever. These are just different words. It’s their language.

**John:** Now, I have made a lot of animated movies, but weirdly, the movies that I’ve worked on have been much more like traditional features, where I’ve delivered a script, here’s the script, or I will get reel back, but then I’ll change stuff in the reels. It’s not been that sort of collaborative thing, because it’s mostly been stop-motion.

In stop-motion, you get that one shot to shoot something, and there’s not the iteration there is in either traditional animation or computer animation. We don’t get to do the kinds of things you see in Disney features. I remember going in on some Disney features that I was shocked what a mess the project was, and like, “Is this coming out in a year? Are you serious?”

**Pamela:** That’s a good screening five is what I’m going to guess, when you’re running screening four, screening five of a-

**John:** I’m like, “Oh, god.” Then somehow, it does come together, which is just remarkable. It’s a strange thing for me to see. You have to trust the process that you’ll get there, to the right place. I guess you don’t always get to the right place, but you often get to the right place.

**Pamela:** It’s tough to trust the process, I think, depending on where you are in the situation. How do you trust the process when you’re not given access to the whole thing all the time?

**John:** That’s the thing. In many cases, I haven’t gotten full access, or it was so clear, the movie is shooting in London, and I just know they’re going to make it happen, or it’s Tim Burton, he’s going to shoot exactly what’s there, and so it’s going to work.

Giving up control for any writer on any project is part of it. It’s recognizing that it’s never going to be exactly what you saw in your head. With animation, sometimes the timelines are so long and the iterations are so many, that you could really lose a sense of what the intention was.

**Pamela:** Yeah. I think the trick is knowing that you’re usually not the first, and probably not going to be the last, unless you’re like, “This movie’s coming out in six months. I got it. I got it. I’m going to get credit. It’s going to be great.”

You just stay very invested, in the time that you’re there, to do the thing that you know the movie needs the most work in, which is either our main characters, our dynamic of our most important relationship is not zinging, or, “Man, this first act is too long. How can we care about them sooner?” and shoot the movie.

Animation in particular I think needs long first acts, that eventually we cut, once the movie is like, I feel this moment, the movie has begun. That takes a little while to find.

**John:** The gears click in.

**Pamela:** Yes, because the last thing animation looks for are characters.

**John:** Say more about that.

**Pamela:** They start from a world that’s impossible to do in live action, or you do it in live action. You have to start in this like, “What is the internet? What would the internet look like?” Just taking that one as an easy answer.

Once you try to figure out how a place can be both something you’ve never seen before and a place that feels like, “Of course I’ve been here, because I’m here all the time theoretically, but I’ve never seen it,” then you’re like, “Who should go through this journey and make us feel the most like us going through this crazy world we’ve never seen before?”

**John:** Yeah, but in this case of the internet, you have characters you’re bringing back for another movie. Yes, you’re going to create supporting characters who are going to be exactly right for that, but you cannot create your two central characters. You have to create a world that is going to challenge them and their relationship and still be rewarding for the world itself. That’s a big ask.

**Pamela:** That’s very astute, because you’re taking two characters who only know old-school video games and an arcade that’s not visited as often, because there’s this internet. What would they do in this infinite world?

There was a want at one point that kicked off the movie. It didn’t last, but it’s still one of my favorites, where Vanellope could see a little bit beyond the door every time the arcade was closed. The only thing she could see was Yoshinoya beef bowl. She just wanted to know what that… It just sounded so perfect.

**John:** Oh my god, what a great lyric to sing. (singing:) Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya.

**Pamela:** (singing:) Yoshinoya beef bowl. She was just like, “Doesn’t it sound perfect? I just want to know what it is. I want to eat it if I can, or swim in it if I must. I just want to know what that is.” That was that idea of eventually Slaughter Race, of, I want to know this thing that makes me feel like that’s where I’m supposed to be. Originally, they were just going to get online and try to find the Yoshinoya people. I think we moved into bitter yearnings.

That’s the idea of how do you get a character that you know and love, in a sequel, how do you get a character you know and love to want just the next step, so that you have the same wonderful feelings that you’re visiting your old friends, but you have a new adventure? That’s very hard in a sequel, because your protagonist is arced.

**John:** Yeah. They’ve gotten all the way through it. Toy Story, god bless them. Those characters arced and arced, and we’re going to make them arc more. It’s a challenge.

**Pamela:** We’re going to get hard in there. We’re going to cause forever scars on people who watch this.

**John:** Let’s go back to some of your forever scars. I want to talk about recapping, because for folks who don’t know, could you explain what recapping is or was? Because I feel like there’s a whole generation that may have just not experienced this as a thing, but it was so important to me as a person who was growing up on the internet.

**Pamela:** First, imagine the internet as a place where you read. You just read. You go there to read more about what you saw. It is something you’re doing to look like you’re working. That’s what’s great about the fact that it’s a lot of reading. You look very busy.

Television Without Pity started as Mighty Big TV, which was actually an offshoot of DawsonsWrap, which Tara Ariano and Sarah Bunting and Dave Cole had made, which was recapping Dawson’s Creek episodes. It’s the idea of, you’re sitting on a couch with a friend, and the two of you are talking the entire episode of your favorite guilty pleasure, because it’s way more fun to watch something like that with a friend.

When Television Without Pity came out as Mighty Big TV, I don’t even remember how many there were the first year, 10 shows maybe. I don’t know. It was a bunch of us that had been writing on their other sites, like Hissyfit and Fametracker.

**John:** What year would this have been? I looked it up on Wikipedia.

**Pamela:** Is it ’98 or ’99?

**John:** It’s ’98. ’98 is when the first one was.

**Pamela:** I know where I worked. I still have my first recap handwritten in a Mead notebook. It is 20-something pages, handwritten, of Get Real. Get Real.

**John:** Get Real.

**Pamela:** Do you know Get Real? You shouldn’t, but let’s see if you can remember one actor from Get Real. It was on Fox on Wednesday nights.

**John:** That helps. Greg Evigan?

**Pamela:** Nope, but I love where you’re starting.

**John:** Tell me who. Give me an actor.

**Pamela:** Anne Hathaway.

**John:** Wow, Anne Hathaway on a Fox show.

**Pamela:** I’m not done. Are you ready? Eric Christian Olsen.

**John:** Oh yeah, of course.

**Pamela:** Jesse Eisenberg.

**John:** Wow, nice.

**Pamela:** Taryn Manning. Jon Tenney, and others.

**John:** That was the same year as Go. It was when we were filming Go. It’s that caliber of those people.

**Pamela:** I was learning about you while I was writing for Get Real. The reason that most people didn’t see it and it didn’t last forever was, it was on opposite a new show called The West Wing.

**John:** Yeah, I’ve heard of that show. There’s a guy, Aaron Sorkin was the guy who wrote that.

**Pamela:** Yeah, he’s still around. I hear he’s still doing things. Good for him.

**John:** You were assigned to recap Get Real, or you volunteered to recap Get Real.

**Pamela:** I was assigned it.

**John:** What does a recap consist of? The show’s airing live on Fox. How quickly are you supposed to be putting up this recap? How long was a recap? Really, what is the purpose of a recap?

**Pamela:** It morphed over the years. I moved on to things like Gilmore Girls, which I did for five years. Over the years, and as it got popular, we had to deal with what those demands were.

I would say originally, you had to record that so that you could watch it again. Later, we used to have to do these recaplets, which were very fast, here’s what you missed, if you were just waiting the next morning to find out what happened, and you missed it, because you used to be able to miss television.

Essentially, you would then write these, I did call them dissertations, because they felt that way, where you took each scene or each episode and talked about where the characters were on their journey, what was happening, and often, how you felt as a viewer watching this. That led to jokes, and sometimes inside jokes.

I had these two patron saint of televisions, I don’t know if you remember this, from gift shops. There were these glow-in-the-dark Saint Clares. And they were the patron saint of television. And I had two under my TV. And I used to let them sometimes do some dialog when I was bored with an episode.

You would just try to make an entertaining recap, which was, “Here’s what happened scene by scene. Here’s where it’s working. Here’s where I don’t like it.” It’s weird to say now, because it does feel like it’s common now to see these versions everywhere. They would be 12 to 20 Word doc pages of deep diving into what’s going on.

The people who were reading it and writing back, that was also really early internet feedback, a forum that was super popular, that then became something that you know people in LA and writers’ rooms were reading and changing the writers… It makes so much sense to me now that a writers’ room is obsessed with the one thing writing about writers.

**John:** That’s what I want to get into, because that feedback loop has to be really strange. It would be impossible if somebody were recapping my show and actually deep diving into it, to not read that thing and think about that thing, because that person is a super fan, but also a super critic. It’s the person who wants the show to be better, the person who’s studying the show more obsessively than-

**Pamela:** Anyone.

**John:** … some of those writers in the room.

**Pamela:** It’s your actual audience in many ways, and accessible in a way that we had not had before. It’s not a Nielsen. There’s no dial I could hit. I was telling you, “Here’s where I felt my intelligence was insulted. Here’s where I cried and called my mom.” That’s feedback. How could that not affect a room?

I think often now about a story editor or a co-producer who read a recap and was like, “That’s fucking what I said. When we were pitching this out, I knew this was a problem. No one listened to me. Now here she is saying this is insulting and I wish it were this.” I wonder what it did to a writers’ room back then to have anybody validating someone whose job in the room is to not be validated, but to be a part of the room.

**John:** The tone of recapping was also very specific, because it was love, but it was also snark. We were coming out of Spy magazine, Entertainment Weekly. There was a tone there that was very specific. It was smart. It wasn’t mean, but it was poky.

Did you ever scale back your snark? How did you moderate the tone of these things? A Gilmore Girls, it feels like you’re going to approach that differently than you would approach maybe a reality competition show. Talk to us about that.

**Pamela:** That’s why I didn’t really do many of those. I have a lot of thoughts about snark, having grown up with it, into it, and out of it. I think for me, snark was important. I don’t know that we need snark right now. I think snark at the time was important to say, “Can’t we do better than this? Is this enough? Is this okay?” I think now when we say, “Is this okay? Is this enough?” we say it like we all know that this is wrong and someone isn’t addressing what’s already wrong. I think snark at the time was, we’re just supposed to be fine with this, but we all know that maybe this is not good enough.

I would see sometimes snark taken to a mean place. That was just never the idea. We’re not just here to call this person an asshole. Let’s back it up with some things.

**John:** It’s important to note that recaps are always talking about the characters and not the actors. Is that correct?

**Pamela:** Yeah. Yes. Sometimes that actor blurs. Sometimes you’re like, “This actor is acting in my scene with a character.” I couldn’t recap now. I definitely couldn’t.

When I started working in reality television, where I was a logger, which meant I watched unedited footage of The Bachelor, in the middle of the night, until 5:00 in the morning, and wrote everything I saw, and flagged anything that was maybe interesting to a writer. That’ll mess your brain up.

**John:** I’m sure. It just burns a hole. It’s like doing coverage on scripts, where just like, “Oh god, I’m reading all these scripts. None of this will ever get made. I have to write this detailed synopsis of the things that don’t actually make sense.”

In the case of logging, you’re just looking at all the raw footage and seeing is there any moment that’s worth pulling out here, so that the editors can snip that out, and some assistant editor could keep in a bin to put into the cut. Lord.

**Pamela:** I was a pretty good logger, but I shouldn’t have been a logger, which is probably true to anybody, if you read what I wrote. I had to watch two hours of Lorenzo Lamas on a motorcycle. Not a lot to pull from there.

**John:** No one should have to do that.

**Pamela:** I watched a guy make salmon. I also watched a girl sit alone in a room that they wouldn’t let her leave, waiting on a date that was running late because of time, just because of producers and the show. That wasn’t what they were going to show. I ended up making a fake monologue for her, because I couldn’t stare at this shot of a girl sitting alone at a table, not moving, for two hours of my own life.

**John:** You weren’t allowed to fast-forward through that?

**Pamela:** No. What if she does anything interesting?

**John:** I just feel like a little command-J there and speed through there and just see if she’s now… Wow.

**Pamela:** You’re also supposed to, a little bit, transcribe. Sometimes someone would open the door and be like, “Are you thirsty?” She’d be like, “I’m okay.” If she rubs her nose in a way where you could use that clip later-

**John:** That’s right.

**Pamela:** … that’s it. You’re watching the whole thing. I also got the flu during that. It made me have an idea for a book that I wrote, because I think that’s what my brain does is when my time is being wasted, I start thinking a way out.

**John:** What this could mean, how this could be worthwhile outside of this impossibly not worthwhile thing you’re doing.

**Pamela:** Where that helps in animation is you can get so stuck on a moment that needs to happen that nobody can back all the way up. Also, most of the people in the room shouldn’t back all the way up. A writer can go, “Okay, oh my gosh. I’m just going to take a hundred steps back and look. Why are we doing this? What needs to happen later? Why are we even here right now? We know what needs to happen later.”

I think that is the benefit of a writer in the room with everybody at the intensity and sophicity [sic] level that storyboard artists have to and should be owners of what they’re given, and the director or directors have to be owners of thousands of people asking them questions.

The benefit of your writer, if you know what to do with your writer, your writer just looks at you and goes, “That’ll work,” like in surgery. “That’ll work. This is great. That won’t work, and I’ll tell you why.” A director that can be a little bit flexible with the writer, and think through that without feeling like someone’s yanking your Jenga, that’s a great writer-director relationship, to go, “Thank you. You are my scaffolding. Will my characters be okay through this new shiny thing that I think is really funny?” You just figure out all the iterations so that you can keep all the parts you really loved and get rid of the parts that weren’t working.

I think by the time you get to screening seven or eight, I always think of them as seasons, you’re like, “We have the villain from Season 2 talking to the love interest from Season 4. Now it’s really going. It’s all the things we liked in Season 1. It’s all working.”

**John:** So often, as I come in to work on movies that are going in production or about to go in production or in crisis, it is those conversations where everyone has their opinions. They’re trying to make their movie, but they’re not all the same movie. As the writer, I have to come in and understand which movie each person’s trying to make and get them onto the same page and honor the choices that they’re trying to do and get them to all making the same movie. It’s a writing skill, but it’s very much a psychology skill.

**Pamela:** Definitely.

**John:** It’s being comfortable in the room, making people feel heard, but also leading them to a decision. It’s like a hostage negotiator.

**Pamela:** I always think of it as the therapist. “How does this script feel for you today? Are you up here? Are you down here?” The difficulty is, some of the people in the room are empowered all the way to level 10, and some people know they’re actually level 11 or 12 or 13, but they haven’t told anyone. You can sense as the writer, where you’re like, “Oh, I can help this person’s vision, but it’s ultimately this group’s mandate. How can I make everyone feel good and still be myself? Why did you bring me in? You could hire a therapist, but you actually need someone who can make these characters sing in the way that you’re all hoping for, the feeling you’re looking for.”

**John:** It’s always so tough when you’re trying to deal with the actor and the director, and you realize the actor and director have tension with each other about a completely unrelated thing, that is sometimes a wardrobe thing, and that you’re not going to be able to get an agreement on the two of them on the story point because of this other thing. You just have to accept that and, again, do your best work and try to provide what the movie needs, even if it’s not necessarily solving this crisis moment right in front of you. It’s tough. Sometimes just remembering that it’s hard and it’s not your fault that it’s hard. It’s hard because it’s hard.

**Pamela:** It’s hard because it’s hard. I think what’s unique about animation is you do get a lot of shots on goal, and so you can hear what you heard in the room and what you recorded and all the different takes that you asked, because you couldn’t possibly guess. They’re not in a room together. You don’t often have these actors acting together. You’re putting together does this feel right. You’re like, “Oh, you know what it is, is we rushed this part.”

You can go in the edit bay and record something really fast and put it up in scratch, and see does that work, where you’re just like, “I’m so sorry, Ralph. I didn’t know.” You’re like, “Does that make everything better?” Before you’ve booked everybody and cost all this money, you can try it in these little places. There’s no other world where you get to do that.

**John:** In live action features and television, you can do some little things. You can put in some scratch. You can make some experiments. You’re never going to really get people back. If you’re ADR-ing lines, something’s gone wrong generally, so it’s tough.

**Pamela:** In animation, you have so many more chances to have them. What you don’t want is for them to come in and go, “What happened to this awesome arc I used to have?” They’re like, “We had to throw it out, because it turns out you’re not the main character.” These aren’t things you can say. One shouldn’t, if you want your actor. You want all the talent to be as excited as they should be about the part that they’re in, because they’re so great. How can you keep a lot of it from them, so that they don’t feel, “Oh, it’s my responsibility to get back to what it used to be,” because it isn’t. It just isn’t. Nobody’s working against their talents.

To be able to be in a room and have everybody scratch these characters a lot, which is what we did in Ralph, it was five or six of us doing all the voices, until we were like, “We’re ready to go.” Then an actor could really go forward with these scenes.

In the case of that film, there were some actors who wanted to be in the room together when they acted, and we could make that happen. Then a lot of times, it was just me reading with Gal Gadot, just being like, “Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. It’s going to be fine. I’ll just sit here in a room with Gal Gadot and hope she likes it.”

**John:** If you’re in there with Gal Gadot, are you playing Sarah Silverman’s character? Are you doing the voice opposite her?

**Pamela:** Yeah.

**John:** It feels kind of right?

**Pamela:** Yeah, so she has something to play with.

**John:** Fun.

**Pamela:** And vice versa. I also was Gal for Sarah. You want them to be able to look at… They have someone to look at. You’re in a room that has nothing. Exterior ocean day, interior recording studio afternoon. Nobody’s in hair and makeup. Nobody looks like the character they’re playing. I’m trying to be very quiet and not pick up on their mic. I want her to feel as there as she can be, so that we can have a real moment, because a lot of those scenes were, for Vanellope, heart-to-hearts with Gal’s character.

That room is silent. I’ve been in the room recording, where you can’t hear the other room. You’ll say a line three times, and then you just see them all talking, and maybe even fighting, but you can’t hear any of it. You’re just like, “Cool, cool.” They’ll come back and be like, “That was fine.” You’re like, “I know that wasn’t fine.”

**John:** That wasn’t. There was disagreement.

**Pamela:** Someone’s mad at someone. If you’re in that quiet, quiet room with an actor, the nice thing is you get to be together on stage and just make a scene happen. It’s something I could’ve never predicted would happen in my life, but I’ve been in a quiet, tiny room with some really incredible performers and gotten to see what they look like when they’re acting, without anything but themselves.

**John:** Exciting.

**Pamela:** It helps as a writer.

**John:** Absolutely. That experience of just, we’ve written dialog, but how do we actually make this line land, is tough.

**Pamela:** Because they don’t have their body, they don’t have their hair, they don’t have a smirk. They don’t have their fucking gorgeous eyes. They have what they can say.

To get someone still enough to also be screaming in pain sometimes, but still, but not stomping or clapping or anything that we are naturally, like the slapping of thighs that every actor wants to do. You can’t do any of it. It is so limiting, that at least the life vest, whatever I am over them, the buoy, whatever it is, someone else that you can look at and go, “Can I at least say these lines with you?” It’s very helpful.

I find it an honor to be able to be in those situations where they’re also saying the things that you wrote. If they just look at you and go, “Is that right?” As a writer, you very rarely get to be like, “What do you want to say? How can we make this happen?” That’s great.

**John:** It is great. Let’s answer some listener questions.

**Pamela:** Yay.

**John:** We have a couple of little crafty ones I thought might be good. Drew, can you start us off with Denise?

**Drew Marquardt:** Denise writes, “What criteria do you use to choose the sex of a character, mainly supporting characters, when it could go either way? Do you play against type, or do you go conservative?”

**John:** Sex and gender of characters and assumptions about who that doctor, that engineer should be, what the mix is. Pamela, what’s your instinct? If there’s no reason why a character needs to be male or female, what are you thinking?

**Pamela:** My instinct is something I haven’t seen before. That’s where I’ll start, if it can happen. I have also seen where I didn’t do that. I thought I was doing something I hadn’t seen before, and then someone would flag, that character is actually pretty stereotypical, that you’re using to have your new scene in with this other character.

That’s something I learned, where I’m trying so hard to make a protagonist unique that I will accidentally surround them in something you’ve seen before, to help show how unique they are. Let’s call it the first and last time that that was flagged, I really was like, wow, I would’ve never noticed that I had done that without someone going, “What if it’s not this other person in the room that you’ve seen before?”

**John:** We’ve talked on the podcast before about Black judge syndrome, Black lieutenant syndrome. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this on the podcast, but there was a project I was brought in to rewrite, and the main character had a sister who was gone a lot. The draft I received, she was a flight attendant. In the rewrite, I made her a pilot. The producer said, “No, there are no women pilots.” I’m like, “But… ” The female producer said, “There are no women pilots.” I’m like, “I don’t know, I think there might be more female pilots than there are female producers at your level.”

It was a really strange comment, because I thought the pilot thing actually made a lot of sense. It tracked more with this woman’s sense of responsibility and control of her life. I got shut down, so she’s a flight attendant in the final movie. I think it’s always worth pushing against those things.

What I would caution Denise though is look at the choices you’re making. If the choice is going to be distracting in a way that pulls from your story, think about why that is and how do you have it support the needs of that scene, rather than pushing against the needs of that scene.

**Pamela:** It’s also seeing where and when your movie is set, and so that character can be different than default, because theoretically you’re past now. I wrote on a space thing where I wanted an astronaut that was essentially Lizzo.

**John:** Great.

**Pamela:** It was pretty soon after the thousand tampons for Sally Ride and all that stuff of like, “Women in space, what do you need?” Even maybe you can make a suit that is not just one suit for a dude. Even that, in exciting that character, which I was like, “This is where that should be,” there were times when I noticed I was trying to over-explain why that was okay. That wasn’t my job in the script, to pitch why this character was okay. It should just be, and also this character, because we’re in the future, and maybe we’re evolved. We can make space suits in other sizes.

**John:** I was talking with a writer about his script, and there was a police lieutenant. There’s a police detective and a police lieutenant in it. They had a scene in the police lieutenant’s office about the police detective overstepping. I’m like, “I don’t think you can have that scene. I just don’t know that there’s a version of that scene that is not going to feel tropey tropey tropey trope. We’ve seen the TV version of that just too many times. You’re going to have to change. I would say just get it out of that office. See if that lieutenant’s actually the crucial person to be giving that information or if you even need to get that information, because it’s just such a stock moment. It’s not just a stock character. It’s a stock moment to have your cop protagonist be challenged by the authority figure on this thing. You need to find a different way into it.”

**Pamela:** Once you’ve seen puppets do that scene…

**John:** Absolutely.

**Pamela:** Once puppets have done it, you get to retire the scene. You get to say, “Here we are. The puppets have done it. We’re done here.”

**John:** Let’s go to Bradley’s question.

**Drew:** Bradley asks, “What do you do when you realize you’ve grossly underestimated your page count? How can I better construct my outlines so I’m landing closer to my goals? I’m working from a 37-page detailed outline, and the parts I expected to land around page 25 or 30 are actually landing around page 45. At this rate, this spec is going to wind up around 140 pages instead of the 100 pages I planned. In retrospect, I may have overstuffed the outline.

Generally, I find cutting huge swaths of the script to be much harder than cutting an outline, but I’m already midstream, and the story feels like it’s working. What would you do in this situation? Finish the story and then cut, or go back to the drawing board, re-outline, and start over? How can I change my outlines to more accurately gauge how long something will be in a script?”

**John:** Bradley, I think you’re fine. I think something that’s 45 pages, they thought was going to be 30, that’s a really common scenario for me. Pamela, I see you nodding here.

**Pamela:** Yeah, for sure. I was like, “You’ve gone past your outline pages?” I find myself with the opposite problem all the time.

**John:** Oh, really?

**Pamela:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** You’re a big outliner? You outline deep deep deep?

**Pamela:** No. My scripts end up being short short short. I don’t like to outline, which is probably my why scripts end up short. I think what Bradley’s got is a trilogy he doesn’t know about. Write the whole thing, and then figure out, when I’m reading this, when do I think the movie has begun. Probably page 28 if your script’s that long. You’ll find your midpoint is something different than you thought it was. Then a lot of that stuff was just for you to know your characters really well. You’ll figure out, oh, these first 15 pages are actually better as a one-page scene, or this thing happens in a gas station. We learn all of that stuff. I find that to be the fun part.

I don’t like first drafts, but that second draft of, “Oh, here’s what I’m working with. How do I make it look like a real script?” is fun to go, “This is too long. This is too short. This isn’t enough.” I find a lot what I think will be my end of second act is actually the midpoint, because I think that’s going to be huge, but when I make the whole thing, I’m like, “Oh, that wasn’t as big as where I ended up going.” That end of Act 2 is actually that midpoint moment of, “This is actually much bigger than we ever thought.”

If I end up in something that is let’s say 120 pages, I don’t know if that ever happens, but let’s say I get into 118 when I want 99. That’s usually what I find, is I’ve missed where the moment of everybody going, “This is bigger than we thought it was. I have more moments for bad guys closing in than I thought.”

**John:** Like you, I’m by my nature not a planner, and so I’m not a person who does detailed outlines, except on projects where I’ve been required to do it. Then it’s always like, “Oh my gosh, I have this outline. I know what it is, the next thing I need to do. That’s exciting. I know what my daily work is going to be, a little bit more clearly.”

Writing the Arlo Finch books, with those, I would have a sense of like, “Oh, this is what happens in this sequence.” I would think, “Oh, this will be a chapter,” and it’ll be three. I could never accurately predict it.

Now that I have 20 years of screenwriting experience, I have a much better sense of how many pages it’s going to take to do a thing, how many pages it’s going to take to do a moment and land that. You’re probably new, Bradley, and so this is all the first time you’re experiencing it. I would say don’t be so worried about the match of your outline to your script. You’re just trying to figure out how many pages it takes to deliver a moment. It’s not a function of your outline. It’s a function of how you write.

**Pamela:** That’s right, Bradley. You’ll learn as you do this more often, where you’re like, “Oh, that’s going to take me five days. That’s actually three pages. This outline is so long in the beginning, but it’s really only going to be four pages. For you to understand what I’m talking about, I’m going to take three or four pages of outline space to just explain this crazy world that you may not understand, because you haven’t seen it before. It’s not your fault. I have to walk you through how we got to why we’re making this film.”

That stuff probably won’t go in your script, because you have an establishing shot or an opening scene that says all of that, that your outline can’t. Your outline can’t. It’s not for your script. Your outline’s not for your script. Your outline is for other people to let you go write your script.

**John:** Or your outline is for yourself, to remind you what it is… It’s the plan for your plan. If it’s helpful for your process, that’s great. I just often feel like writers get forced into outlines that don’t ultimately serve them well. They get handcuffed to outlines that were never the right plan for making the movie.

**Pamela:** What I do for that, I think of a beat sheet, but I really am making a Claire Danes board of notes and lines and all kinds of things that will eventually all mostly go into the script. You can’t hand that to anyone. When I think of a beat sheet, that’s for me. That’s a cleaned up version of my chaos on the wall. It’s just for me. An outline, just a pitch. It’s a book report of what you’re about to write. I try not to do a lot of dialog in an outline. I will do it if you end up in these script-ment places where you’re doing a treatment script half thing. You can do it in an outline.

What I think is missing a lot, that helps you so much if you can put it in there, is your tone. If a outline reads dry, people are going to be worried about your script. The faster your outline sounds like what you’re writing and how the characters live, the more successful that outline’s going to be. You don’t have to worry about how many pages. It can actually be even shorter for what you show people. You can keep your 40-page outline, but you can give them 18 pages of a tight version of what it feels like to watch your film.

**John:** Exactly. While I have you here, when we were at the Austin Film Festival, I remember sitting in the restaurant, and Craig came down. He was incredibly sick, and then he went back up. You talked through this project that you were pitching. If I get this wrong, correct me.

How you were pitching this, it was all on Zoom, but you would start the Zoom meeting and talk to the executives you were pitching to. They’d say, “At this moment, we’re going to give you a link that you can click through, and you can all watch this prepared video that is the pitch, and then rejoin us on the Zoom.” Is that what you actually did?

**Pamela:** Yeah. This started because we had lockdown. Originally, we were all going to be in a room. I was working with animators in Austin. They were like, “Oh, our travel budget got cut. We’re not allowed to fly anywhere. What is it, two weeks?” I was like, “It’s going to be a little longer than two weeks.” I said, “Let’s duplicate the feeling of pitching in the room.”

I tell everybody this still. I still do it. What’s great about making your own 8 to 13-minute Vimeo pitch is you are controlling it. You only do it once. You get to give it to everyone and say, “Hey, here’s this. You’ve met us all. You think we’re great. Instead of staring at my eyes not looking at you, here’s something where I’ve given you visuals while I’m talking, and I’m showing you what the thing will feel like.

This was Slam, for my graphic novels. I ended in a sizzle reel that I got to make with a talented editor, and show them not just what the pilot would be or why I’m here, or here are other people doing roller derby, and where it was at in the state at the time of lockdown, because they were one of the first sports to come back, because they had COVID protocols and figured out how to do it.

**John:** Roller derby’s a great sport. The community around roller derby’s fantastic.

**Pamela:** It also for a long time was the fastest-growing female sport in the world. It was the first sport to include transgender people. If you identified female, you got to skate. It 100% is a forward-moving sport that is completely do-it-yourself. There’s no big business coming in and changing things. Even within that, there are factions of, “I want to go to the Olympics. I want to be Mamie Thigh-senhower because I’m a kindergarten teacher.” How does a sport move when you’ve lowered an age to 18? All of these things to be able to put into a video.

As I said, there’s no way you’re going to want to be amped enough to watch more roller derby without seeing some roller derby. Being able to put all of that in a pitch that I said, “Just go watch it, however you like to consume your media. We’ll all be here in 13 minutes, and we’ll talk some more.” It just let people come back excited to talk and really helped. I like it a lot.

I learned this from animation, of giving something for people to look at so they don’t have to stare at you and feel bad when they’re writing notes or feel bad if they’re thinking about dinner. They just do. Sometimes I stopped a pitch and been like, “Oh, it’s so late. It’s 5:00 on a Friday, and the sun’s going down behind me. I can already tell I said feminist and all of you shut down. We could just stop right here.” I don’t know, I’m always trying to find a way to humanize the experience.

Being able to like, “We’re talking about something you’re going to see, so go see a little of it. If you like it, we can talk more about what it might be like to make it together,” I love it. It’s a lot of control.

**John:** It’s a lot of control. It’s a lot of upfront work to make that thing. I’ve also been in the situation where I’ve done the exact same pitch to 13 different places, with a slide deck, that Megana was driving the slides as I was talking, so there was stuff to look at. It was a beast. The best version of it, I was just on rails. I felt so bad for the producers who had to sit through me giving the exact same presentation 13 times. A video does feel like it’s more choice.

**Pamela:** I also think what happens when you’re going to have to do it 13 times with producers who are in the room, listening to you do the show, they’re going to have opinions after the fifth, sixth, seventh, what’s next. You find yourself doing even more free work to hone it to what maybe we think the mandate is over here. Then you got to change it again for the next one. You end up rewriting your pitch a lot.

If you can be like, “You’re in or you’re out on this show.” Roller derby is a good example. You’re in or you’re out. You like this or you don’t. Please don’t make me figure out this version and that version, because you can talk to me about, “Can we do this, because that’s more what we’re into?” That’s a conversation, as opposed to me trying to guess whatever you were told that morning is the new thing you’re supposed to be looking for. It’s a lot easier to put something down that doesn’t sell if you know you really gave it your best.

**John:** True.

**Pamela:** I know it is a lot more work at the beginning, but you spend all that time really getting to know the show or the film or whatever. You spend a lot of time doing that to be able to make a presentation.

I have an acting degree. I really was horrible at pitching, until one of my friends was like, “This is the only time we’re asked on stage. You’ve got 20 minutes.” I was like, “I’m making a show. I’m making a show.” When I think of it as the one-person show about this, it is less annoying, because the pitch is not the script. It’s just this one little moment for this little thing. The script is not the film or the show. It’s one little moment to get hundreds or thousands of people on board to make the thing.

Breaking them into these milestones has been helpful, because they’re all hard, and we all want to procrastinate. If you can know that you’re actually thinking while you’re procrastinating, it feels like you’re not working. What you’re doing is giving yourself a minute to go, “Something’s not working, and that’s why I’m not working.”

**John:** The devil’s advocate, I do want to bring up, because we’ve talked about the rise of pitch decks on the show, is that this is an escalation even well beyond pitch decks. If a writer’s being asked to do this on spec, that’s a huge commitment of time and space. This goes beyond.

**Pamela:** No one’s asked me to do it. I’ve had to convince a couple of people, “Let me go show you what it is,” because it is hard to understand. You’re going to make a Vimeo. They do. You’re making a short.

**John:** Do it for something that you control, but not for someone else’s project, not someone else’s IP.

**Pamela:** I’m trying to think if I did it for someone else’s IP. Once. Once. You know what? In this case, I ended up… Whatever. We can talk about that some other day, all our heartbreaks. I’m glad I made that. If I hadn’t gone all the way to make that full-on, “Here is the pitch. This is what it looks like. This is the sizzle reel,” I mean this, it would’ve been harder to not get that gig.

**John:** Let’s do some One Cool Things. I see that you are a prepared cohost. I see two things in the Workflowy here. What’s your One Cool Thing or your two Cool Things?

**Pamela:** It’s One Cool Thing, but one’s an intro to explain why my One Cool Thing, because we’re talking about character. Judd Apatow has some great books about talking to funny people and writers about their process. One of the things that he has said… I’ve never met Judd. I don’t know him. One of the things that he has said he uses to get deeper into both himself and therefore his characters, is self-help books.

Esther Perel, I feel like when I’m telling someone something that’s a podcast on its fourth season, perhaps most of you have already heard of it. However, I will say that what Esther is very great at is getting into why these dynamics are happening between people. That’s the best part of characters. Why are these two or these three or this family or this ensemble of office workers going through this together? What is it where they’re going to step on each other’s insecurities, secrets, and, for lack of a better word, traumas? I think that what she does with such compassion and empathy is allow people the space to learn.

Anyway, she has a brand new season. She’s also doing some Premium subscriber stuff. That’s new, where there’s extra bonus things. If you haven’t listened to Where Do We Begin, usually they’re a one-time session with a client or a couple, and it’s an edited situation. She never meets them again.

**John:** I like that.

**Pamela:** It’s fascinating. You drop right into a crisis moment. She also has a How’s Work. I think it’s called How’s Work, where she does it with business partners, because it’s another relationship that can sometimes need-

**John:** Me and Craig are going to have to sign up for this.

**Pamela:** Oh my gosh, I would listen-

**John:** It would be the best.

**Pamela:** … to you guys. It would be so good. It would be so good. I barely know what Esther looks like, because I don’t want to see.

**John:** It’s always best when you don’t know what a podcast host looks like.

**Pamela:** Her voice is wonderful.

**John:** They’ll have different faces in my brain.

**Pamela:** She’s also, through the pandemic, ended up making a game of cards that no one will play with me, because no one wants to do these questions. I tried to bring this up with some group in some sort of pandemic moment, where I was like, “I have this deck of cards. It’s called Where Should We Begin. It’s just these questions.” My friends were like, “We were already having a conversation.” I was like, “No, I know.” They were like, “We were just talking, and now you’re-”

**John:** You’re making it a thing. You’re making it work.

**Pamela:** “You’re making it a thing. You’re making this work. You’re making me uncomfortable. Why are you asking me about a moment I wish I had shined in?” I was like, “I hear you. I hear you.” I was always that kid who was grabbing those books at the bookstore that were like, 100 questions to ask your best friends or 300 questions about sex and love. I just think that when you’re on a road trip and you’re asking someone next to you, “What did you wish you had won in high school that you didn’t get?” you find out so much about that person.

That’s also the stuff that we’re looking for in these scripts to be like, flashback. “I didn’t win this. This was my dream, my wish, and it didn’t come true, so I’m taking all these coins back.” That’s how we get that stuff of knowing this is a person who’s been many persons before this person.

I think that’s the longest version of a One Cool Thing to say here’s a podcast that’s many years old. If you haven’t heard Esther Perel yet, I highly recommend it.

**John:** I will listen to it. My One Cool Thing is an article from a couple weeks ago. Evan Osnos writing for the New Yorker. It’s about “How to Hire a Pop Star for your Private Party.” These are bar mitzvahs, private parties, by the ultra wealthy, who bring in a pop star to perform at them. We see Jennifer Lopez doing something for a million dollars or whatever.

The story centers around Flo-Rida, who is playing bar mitzvahs and other events. He has one big song he’s known for. He makes good money otherwise. What I really liked about this article and Flo-Rida in it is that he’s not resentful. It’s not a sad story. He’s not doing this because he feels like he has to. He’s doing this out of a sense of professionalism. He’s a really good entertainer. This is a way that he gets to entertain these crowds and give them exactly what they need.

For all of the potentially gross stuff about just the ultra wealthy doing these events, it made me happy and hopeful for a future for some of these artists who are not going to be in the mainstream but still have a venue for making money and making their art.

**Pamela:** Have you ever tried to figure out how much it would cost to make a dream come true musically, pop star-wise, for a party or an event?

**John:** I never have. I do remember back in college, I ran the student activities board, because of course I ran the student activities board. We could bring in events. We could bring in bands and stuff for that. At some point you could just get a list of like, this is how many thousands of dollars each of these groups cost. It was exciting to feel that power, like, “I have a $200,000 budget. I could do these things.”

**Pamela:** My husband once just, not just once, but enough that I knew it was a real thing, said he would love to hear Roxette with a full philharmonicy orchestra for one night. I was like, “I feel like this is an attainable goal.” I was wrong. I was wrong. It’s not an attainable goal. First of all, they were a lot of money. Then I was like, “What if it’s just a string quartet playing in a room? That’s fun. We eat a meal or something.” I learned from people who do this professionally, they’re like, “Why would we learn so many Roxette songs? We’ll never do it again. That’s so much time of ours.” I was like, “That’s fascinating.”

**John:** Wow.

**Pamela:** “I can’t pay for that kind of time for all of you.” I was like, “What about four of you?” They’re like, “Still, no one wants to do this. Where are we going to find a singer? Get a cover band.” That’s not what he wanted.

**John:** No, he wanted Roxette.

**Pamela:** So much money. So much money to make your dreams come true.

**John:** You pay for experiences, not things. That’s what we’ve learned, is that the experiences are what really matter, not material possessions.

**Pamela:** I didn’t have that kind of cash. It was a lot. Not now, but someone at the time could’ve made that happen, but it was not me. I was like, “Oh, I see. Oh, I see.” You get used to it when you’re working in film and television of like, “Here’s this. What do you need? Here, you’re in the Griffith Observatory. Look at all the stars. What star do you need?” You get a bit out of your reality and go, “I’m sure Roxette would love to work with the LA Phil.”

**John:** They’re chomping at the bit.

**Pamela:** No. It’s hard. Good for Flo-Rida. I understand that. It’s like a TED Talk as a musician. You’re like, “I get to come in, perform for people who are… “ That’s what Britney’s Vegas residency was theoretically. That’s what I thought I was doing.

**John:** Absolutely. It wasn’t a hostage situation, which apparently it was.

**Pamela:** Not what I thought at the time. You never know. I’m glad for Flo-Rida, but I do think a lot of people are in bar mitzvah hostage situations.

**John:** That may be the title of the episode.

**Pamela:** Great. Glad I could help.

**John:** That is our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Pamela:** Yay.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Adam Pineless. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. It’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

We have T-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. This week on the picket line, I saw two vintage Scriptnotes T-shirts or related Scriptnotes T-shirts that I’d never seen out in the wild before, which was very exciting. It’s always fun to see those T-shirts out there.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on Listen to Sassy. Pamela Ribon, what an absolute pleasure it is to have you on the podcast and be talking with you.

**Pamela:** Thank you. I like to be the anti-Craig. Whenever you need me again, I will bring anti-umbrage to your podcast.

**John:** [Indiscernible 01:07:43] embrace.

**Pamela:** I love your role. You’re doing it. You’re doing it.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** One of the main reasons I was so excited to have you on this podcast is you are also the host of another podcast, so therefore you’re a podcast professional and know how to do all the things. Talk to us about Listen to Sassy, in which you are going back through issues of Sassy magazine. Start us off, because I can picture Sassy magazine, but I never read it, because I was not the target audience, what was Sassy magazine, and why is it relevant today?

**Pamela:** You probably weren’t the target audience. Perhaps you saw its male spin-off, Dirt.

**John:** Oh, Dirt, okay, yeah.

**Pamela:** That was for you. They were like, “I know you’re reading Sassy.”

**John:** Dudes.

**Pamela:** “Dudes, what about skaters?” Dirt. And Spike Jonze, lots of Spike Jonze. The people I do this podcast with, Tara Ariano and David T. Cole, are professionals all the way back from Television Without Pity, as we were discussing earlier. They have their own podcast things.

During the lockdown, I was on a sad run. I got a text from Tara that said, “My pandemic thing was buying every issue of Sassy magazine ever. Do you want to do a podcast?” I just stopped. I stopped running, and I said, “Yes, yes, a million times yes,” not knowing what I was getting into time-wise, preparedness-wise. It’s a lot of work. I think you know this. Craig doesn’t, but you do.

We take every issue, which I also got my own Ebay-ed version of now. I now have every Sassy. We take every issue, and we break it into first teen life, then pop culture, and then the fashion and the magazine sections. Then our fourth one is, we call slumber party, which are calls and letters. We take the quiz, like a slumber party.

We started with the very first issue, which was 1988. We are at 1990 right now. We’ll be going until ’94 or ’95. I can’t remember when. That was when Sassy changed ownerships and just became a different then. Then Jane Pratt ended up making Jane magazine, which then became the website xoJane, which some of you are now like, “I remember this.”

Back, back, back in the day, Sassy magazine was an alternate to YM and Seventeen. Instead of talking about how to get asked to prom or six ways to wear your makeup, those things are in there, but what it began with really are, here are kids who got pregnant, here is death row, this is what suicide is like, this is what the skinhead movement is doing right now in the ‘90s, and then didn’t pull punches with celebrity interviews, and could be what one might say is the beginning of snark, of that, “Why do I have to love Tiffany or the New Kids, when REM and Keanu Reeves are right here?”

One of the things about going back to Sassy, which starting on Television Without Pity and Mighty Big TV and Hissyfit and Fametracker, one of the things that drew me to that site and writing for Tara and Dave and Sarah in particular was they did a thing where they would, as editors, come in and make little notes inside your recap, of jokes off your joke or inside jokes about all of us. That was what Sassy did.

Sassy made it feel like you’re in a room with all these young people in New York, and we’re all just excited about Michael Hutchence and a Meg Ryan movie we just saw, but Winona Ryder-y, in terms of an older sister who’s telling you, “Here’s some music you might like.” I had an older cousin who was like this for me.

I was in a small town outside Houston. Before then, I was in a small town of Jackson, Mississippi, and no internet. To have a magazine say, “Do you feel not like everyone else? Are you mad about fur? Are you mad about meat? Do you want to know how to be a vegan? Do you want to know how to protest the circus?” There was all that, early activism stuff, of you can be 13 and still change the world, and then also what about John Waters, or what are indie things?

For me, it was Sassy magazine and Rolling Stone magazine were how I figured out there was a world outside the world I was in. I really appreciated the way that they wrote to someone young, to say, “You might be young, but you have agency in your world.” We wouldn’t have Rookie Mag without it. We wouldn’t have a lot of the things that we have now. I think Teen Vogue right now shows a lot of-

**John:** Yeah, it does that.

**Pamela:** Is the newest better version.

**John:** Talk to me though about the advertising in it, because magazines were ad vehicles, and that’s how they made their money was ads, not by the actual cover price of the magazine. What are the ads in there? Are they all makeup? What kind of stuff do you see in there?

**Pamela:** There’s a lot of makeup and vision streetwear and Bongo. Bongo the whole time. My whole teenage years were some girls, but in some short jeans, and me being like, “How can I have this butt?” Instead of it being Guess, which I guess there was a little bit of, it was more counterculture clothing or maybe even… I’m trying to think. There’s still Debbie Gibson in the ads, even if in the articles it’s about not. It’s about B-52s or whatever.

They actually ended up having problems with their advertisers. They lost a lot of advertisers at a certain point, because people were writing in, parents and church people were writing in about, “They’re talking about birth control, and they’re talking about sex, and they’re talking about these things that are not, quote unquote, proper.” We’re currently in the lean years, where you could tell they were having to deal with, how do you get an advertiser, but also stay true to your audience that is very grateful for no bullshit.

**John:** The way that magazines and film and TV writing have overlap, or the way that we always want to portray magazines in film and TV is just so fascinating. They’re always the backdrop we go back to, because it’s a bunch of people in a room who can say smart things, we believe they’re saying smart things, so we make our female characters editors at magazines. We make them young teen journalists or young magazine writers, because it’s glamorous. We believe they can be wearing that fashion if they’re in New York City.

Jane Pratt as a character seems great too. Has there been a fictional version of her on anything, that sense of that magazine founder? I think back to our high fashion people we always make as characters, but has Jane Pratt ever been one of those?

**Pamela:** First of all, I would say that Sex and the City is doing some of that that you’re talking about. So does Girls and all of that stuff. These are aspiring New York friends who are chatting. That’s what Sassy felt like. Skate Kitchen being more the modern version of what I think feels like Sassy magazine. A show that tried to do it, The Bold Type. That was close. That was a modern version of… Even Ugly Betty, if we’re going to get into the weird versions of how glamorous is this world.

What was fun about Sassy wasn’t so much that they were all in New York, because they were like, “I’m in New York, and that’s why I just saw Sting on an elevator.” They sounded like they could’ve come from wherever we were.

They also had contests for the Sassiest girl in America. You just felt like you were part of the magazine. I don’t know there’s any other magazine that made me feel like this came in the mail once a month to say to me, “Hi. How are you? Here’s what you want to see and hear next. Here’s what you’re going to want to talk about when you really are talking to your friends about real things.”

It’s a little difficult to go back. I was doing My Year of Dicks the same time I was doing Listen to Sassy, so I was really reliving my high school years. What’s tough about Sassy is how much Johnny Depp love is in there, which I had 3000 percent at the time. Now, as a other side of Johnny Depp person, you’re having to think about who you were then and who you are now and how much this magazine actually gave me a guide for who I wanted to be and how I wanted to do it. I know I’m not the only one, because you can see it in all these other, particularly female writers of now, who are like, “Sassy made me think I could do this as myself.”

**John:** Big sister energy feels like a good thing to put out in the world.

**Pamela:** Knowledgeable big sister energy.

**John:** Exactly. The podcast is Listen to Sassy. It’s listentosassy.com. People can find all the back-episodes. Pamela Ribon, what an absolute delight to talk with you.

**Pamela:** Thank you so much. This has been fun.

**John:** Great.

Links:

* [Pamela Ribon](https://pamie.com/) on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0962596/)
* [Listen To Sassy](https://listentosassy.com/)
* [Television Without Pity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Without_Pity)
* [Get Real (1999-2000)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212662/) on IMDb
* [How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/05/how-to-hire-a-pop-star-for-your-private-party) by Evan Osnos for The New Yorker
* [The Secret to Judd Apatow’s Comedy? A Huge Library of Self-Help Books](https://www.gq.com/story/judd-apatow-self-help-book-interview) by Clay Skipper
* [Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel](https://www.estherperel.com/podcast)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Check out the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://www.instagram.com/clmazin/) on Instagram
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [John on Mastodon](https://mastodon.art/@johnaugust)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Adam Pineless ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/any-given-wednesday).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it. Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 578 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Often when we have guests on the show, I am meeting them for the first time right before we start recording. My guests today I’ve known for almost 30 years, which is impossible, Al Gough and Miles Millar, the writer/producers known for Smallville, Shanghai Noon, Into the Badlands, and a zillion other movies and TV series. Their latest is the Netflix hit series Wednesday. Welcome Al and Miles.

**Al Gough:** Good to see you.

**Miles Millar:** Absolutely. Great.

**John:** We actually went to film school together a thousand years ago.

**Al:** Yes, we did, 1992.

**John:** 1992. I want to get into a little bit of that. Maybe in our Bonus Segment, let’s talk about film schools, because Craig hates film schools. It was actually incredibly important for the three of us. I think we can get the other side of film school and whether we would do it again.

**Miles:** I think the answer for all of us is yes.

**John:** I think it would be yes, but I might do it differently this time. We’ll see when we get into that. That’ll be our Bonus Segment. For you guys right now, I really want to start by contrasting… I remember as your whole career began. Usually, this would be the point where I would ask you to do an origin story. Let me see if I can give the origin story, Al and Miles, see how much I get right and what stuff I get wrong. Al Gough, before you came out for film school, you were working some place in the East Coast. You went to Washington University?

**Al:** No, I went to Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

**John:** Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Something like that. You came out to Stark with the intention of becoming a producer.

**Al:** Correct.

**John:** Miles Millar, you came from the UK. You had been working in London before that?

**Miles:** Yep.

**John:** You came into the program, the Stark Program at USC, with the intention of being a producer, or did you also know you were going to write?

**Miles:** I didn’t know what I was going to do. It was my excuse to get to America. That was really the reason. I loved the idea of film. I’d been obsessed with film my whole life. That was my dream. I didn’t really know how to navigate Hollywood. The program felt like a grab bag of you figure it out.

**John:** That’s honestly very close to my experience there too. I knew I could write in a general sense, but I had no sense of how Hollywood worked. It was my introduction to everything. We should explain to people listening what 1992 was like. It was pre-internet, basically.

**Al:** It was pre-internet. Also, we say the party was over, but the after-party was starting. Corporations buying movie studios was just becoming a thing. I think Sony had bought Columbia. I think at that point, Matsushita had bought Universal.

**Miles:** Turner had bought-

**Al:** Not yet. That wasn’t until ’94.

**Miles:** It was a gold rush era.

**Al:** It was a gold rush era.

**Miles:** It was incredible.

**John:** It’s important for how we all came up and rose into it, because it was definitely a period of great expansion that we were coming into it. You guys met in our very small film program. Only 25 students per year in that group. How quickly did you hit it off as friends and then did you start thinking about writing together? That’s where I’m not quite clear, because it was in that first year you must’ve started writing together.

**Al:** We were friends almost… I think we met the second day of film school.

**Miles:** Yeah, we had that cocktail party. USC film school had this bizarre, brutalist architecture. It had this garden well, where there was a bad cocktail party we had for students.

**John:** It was a kegger really.

**Miles:** Exactly right.

**Al:** A kegger, yeah.

**Miles:** We met there. At the end, I gave Al my phone number. I’m terrible. I’m the worst with numbers.

**Al:** Terrible.

**Miles:** I gave him the wrong number, so he couldn’t get in touch with me. A few days later, he said, “I tried to reach you.” I was like, “Oh, whoops.” We did hit it off immediately.

**Al:** Miles is terrible with numbers still.

**Miles:** I have to copy his-

**Al:** I do the WGA dues, and then I take a picture of it and send it to him.

**Miles:** I’m always [crosstalk 00:03:44].

**John:** You guys eventually hit it off. In our first year of Stark, we were writing scenes. We had a class taught by Bobette Buster. We were writing scenes for that, and we were writing individual scenes. You guys were separately trying to work on some stuff together?

**Al:** No, because remember, she partnered us up.

**John:** Did you?

**Al:** I think we all did an outline and 30 pages.

**Miles:** It was the outline and the first act of a screenplay. You had to partner up with someone. I love this story, by the way, because we had to partner up. I partner with Al. My story was the worst story. It was a very commercial idea, but found out later on it was the worst story as a professional writer, which was a story about a cop and an orangutan, because they were buddies, called Mango. Al lost faith in me pretty quickly and tried to bail. Luckily for us, the head of the program, Larry Turman, who is the producer of The Graduate, told him he couldn’t do it, that he couldn’t bail on me, and so he was forced to work with me. Lucky he did, because…

**Al:** Then that led to Mango, led to the first sale.

**John:** What was crucial to understand about this origin story is that you guys wrote this project together. You had the initial idea, but you end up working on it as a team. In our second year of Stark, you end up selling this spec script for a lot of money.

**Al:** That’s another thing too, which we tell young writers. Again, it was a different era. Where now we’re in the era of IP and everything, there it was literally the era of spec scripts. It was Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas and all of that.

**Miles:** Every day you’d go to Variety and you’d read five scripts sold for a lot of money, and they were high-concept stories, and first-timers breaking in every day. It really was this gold rush mentality of you just needed to get the story out, and people would buy the idea. It was really amazing, all of us, the three of us to launch at that point as writers, because it allowed us… We always talk about the [inaudible 00:05:36] to learn how to write. Without that sale, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. It was all about the gift of that era.

**John:** As we all know, Mango got an immediate green light and went on to make $200 million. It was a giant hit that made your whole career. No, Mango did not get made, and yet it did start your career. Let’s talk through that, because going from a sale, which doesn’t really happen so much… A spec sale of a script doesn’t happen that often anymore. There are scripts that get attention, and then people go off in meetings. That’s really an important next step for you guys is not that Mango happened, got shot as a film, but you guys were taken seriously. You got agents and managers, got started with a career.

**Al:** Exactly. As Miles was saying, we sold Mango. It was the week after Ace Ventura opened. Some of it, you hit the right moment. People loved the concept. They liked the writing enough. What we found is then you go for these general meetings at Disney, at New Line, Warner’s, and they’re offering you animal comedies. This is not what you want to be known for.

**Miles:** It was literally our very first script. It was total beginner’s luck. We didn’t know really the craft of writing yet, so we spent the next three years working every day. We’ve always had a really good joint work ethic. I’m sure John does too. It’s all about not the grind, but it’s really about treating it as a profession, that there’s never a day when we’re not writing. That’s something that’s I think stood us well in terms of we just keep on working. We’re workhorses, and we’ll always do that. Even when it’s hard, we’ll still work.

**John:** It’s also important though to think back to that time and the expansion of the industry. It’s not just that there were spec scripts selling. The reason why there were spec scripts selling is because they were trying to make so many movies.

**Miles:** Correct.

**John:** That was also an era where Disney was trying to do 40 feature films a year.

**Al:** Yeah, each division, Disney, Touchstone, and Hollywood Pictures were each making 25 movies a year, because it was also the era of DVDs. Basically, even if a movie didn’t make all its money back in theatrical, the DVD aftermarkets were huge. A lot of them got made.

**Miles:** There’s a similar era now in terms of content. The streamers desperately need content. It’s not dissimilar. I think for writers, it was a better period when we started out, just in terms of you could hit the jackpot, literally.

**John:** Coming off of Mango, what was the next big step in your career? I was trying to [inaudible 00:08:03] is there another big thing, like, “Oh, that’s a shining beacon,” before we get to Smallville?

**Al:** Oh, yeah. We wrote a couple more specs. The next one we sold was a political thriller called Favorite Son. We sold it to… It was a producer named Leonard Goldberg. He was Aaron Spelling’s partner.

**John:** Absolutely. He did Charlie’s Angels.

**Al:** Exactly. We sold it to Laura Ziskin, who was a producer we all had as a film school teacher, who was then running a division of 20th Century Fox. For us, that was the first script that was… It was a great sample, and it opened different doors. I think that’s the great thing about being a writer is you don’t need permission, and you can always write yourself out of any corner. Finally, with that script, we were able to do that. It just got us out of the animal comedy cul-de-sac.

**John:** Absolutely. I was pigeonholed as a guy who’d do movies about gnomes, elves, dwarves, and Christmas, very soft family things. Then Go was the thing that got me out of that.

**Al:** Go, right.

**John:** People could read it for whatever they wanted to do. You have written Favorite Son. That gets set up at Fox 2000?

**Al:** Fox 2000, yeah.

**John:** From that, you’re taking other meetings. Are you getting any rewrite work? What’s the next step?

**Miles:** We’ve been a little bit in the rewrite business but not really. It’s never been something that we’ve had time to do or focused on, because then we pretty quickly got into TV. We had an agency change. We changed agencies and went to William Morris, and then they put us with a TV agent as well as a feature agent, because we’d done… Our first TV credit was this British BBC show called Bugs. That was our first-

**John:** Oh, that’s right. I forgot about Bugs.

**Miles:** It was a really obscure but fun BBC show.

**Al:** It was an action-adventure series. The reason they liked us is because Miles is British and I was American. They couldn’t find British writers who could write Mission Impossible type stories, which is what these were.

**Miles:** That got us when we went to William Morris. They’re like, “Oh, you do TV. You should have a TV agent.”

**John:** Because it was a UK show, you were not in a room with a staff writing that show.

**Miles:** No.

**John:** You pitched an episode, wrote an episode.

**Miles:** We used to fax the pages to them in London. That’s how old we are. It was a great experience. Then that led to our interest in TV. Then we started staffing on TV. We met some writers. They said the way to be successful in television is, just fair enough, you have to learn the hierarchy, and you’ve gotta go up from staff writer to story editor to the various stages of TV writer. We did that. Our first TV credit in America was Timecop, which is based on the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

**John:** ABC show? I’m trying to remember.

**Miles:** ABC, yeah.

**Al:** ABC.

**John:** Did it run for a season?

**Al:** No, I think it ran for eight, and then it was out.

**Miles:** It was an era they thought TV drama was dead, but sitcoms were the king. The idea of doing that show… You have to sign a three-year contract. It was like, “Oh my god, if we do this for three years, I will literally die.” It ran for eight. We were heroes on that show, because there was such infighting with the young guys on the totem pole. We ended up writing… Was it three scripts?

**Al:** Yeah, we wrote three of the eight.

**Miles:** Three.

**Al:** One of ours became the new first episode, because ABC hated the pilot episode of the show. With writers too, we call it the “fuck you, I’m doing Nazis” approach. When they were pitching the show, ABC said, “Whatever you do in Timecop, don’t have them go back to Nazi Germany, because Germany’s a huge market for us, and we don’t want to do it.” What did they do? They go back to Nazi Germany and stop something. That started.

There was no room on that show. You’d go pitch to the executive producer. We did, and then we wrote the script. He came in, and he goes, “Yep, this one’s going to be the first episode.” Timecop. Then we got our first pilot at ABC from that, which got made but didn’t go to air. Then we staffed on a show that Carlton Cuse created called Martial Law.

**John:** That’s right.

**Al:** That’s the TV side of the story. Then meanwhile, on the feature side, we had done some work for Joel Silver and Dick Donner on these low-budget genre movies, which led to Lethal Weapon 4.

**John:** I remember visiting set with you on a movie you’d written that starred Heather Locklear.

**Miles:** That was called Double Tap. That was our very first feature credit. It was directed by Greg Yaitanes, who is now a huge TV director. He just did House of the Dragon.

**Al:** House of the Dragon.

**John:** That’s right.

**Miles:** It’s weird we’re all still here. Those were really cheap movies, but we learned a lot doing those. We never said no. That was also our thing. We always just said yes to anything, and still do. That’s part of our problem is never saying no. We’re not as selective as John.

**John:** There’s also two of you, so you can get twice as much done. Are we almost caught up to Smallville at this point?

**Al:** Yes. On the TV side, during Martial Law, we got a deal at Warner Bros, and we did this show from Lethal Weapon 4 with the producer, Joel Silver, called The Strip, which was an action buddy thing set in Las Vegas. We’d sold it to Fox. They had a regime change. A thing that did happen in 1999 was you’d sell a pilot to another network. They sold it to UPN, which was another network that no longer exists. Because it was on UPN and was so under the radar, they let us run the show. We really hit it off with Peter Roth.

**Miles:** He was the head of Warner Bros.

**Al:** He was the head of Warner’s Television, just retired a year or two ago. They made an overall deal with us. The Strip ran eight episodes, got canceled.

**Miles:** First-time showrunners, we had no idea what we were doing. I’ll say for the first three pilots, we had no idea what we were doing. Then it began to click in terms of what we needed to do and be set forward. There’s always this thing about showrunning, which is you’re basically two guys in a garage writing scripts, and suddenly you’re in charge of a huge business, and they expect you to know what you’re doing, and you don’t.

**John:** You also had very few opportunities for mentorship, because you’d been on some sets, with Double Tap and things like that, I guess Martial Law. You have seen some of it. Was Martial Law shot in Los Angeles?

**Al:** It was, yeah. You’re right, you don’t really get that much-

**Miles:** You’re stuck in the writers’ room.

**Al:** You’re stuck in the writers’ room. We had a deal. At that point, I always tell people there was no Marvel Cinematic Universe. The later iteration of Superman had been Lois and Clark. The last iteration of Batman had been Batman and Robin. This was like the Nadir of superheros. Warner’s, who was like, “Sure, TV, you can have Superman,” they didn’t care.

Peter Roth came to us and said, “I have the rights to do Superman, and I want to do kind of like a Superboy show. We were like, “We don’t want to do Superboy.” We came up with the pitch for Smallville, which was no flights, no tights, making the parents younger, introducing the idea of the meteor shower and all these different things.

Then we went out and sold… We only went to Fox and to The WB. What was funny at the time is The WB and Warner’s Studio did not have a good relationship. Peter was brought in to smooth it over. They had just pitched them the idea of like, “Oh, we’re doing a Superman in high school show.” They’re like, “Eh.” They weren’t interested.

**Miles:** This is the era of Dawson’s Creek.

**Al:** Dawson’s Creek, yeah. We went to Fox, and we sold it in the room to Gail Berman. Then that afternoon, we had to go to The WB, just because they’re corporate siblings. Peter’s like, “Just go in. Pitch it. It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to sell it. We’re going to sell it to Fox.” We go in and pitch it to The WB, to an executive named Susanne Daniels. It’s one of those things, you could tell during the pitch. In the beginning, it was a little like sitting back, and then as they heard the pitch, they were like, “Oh, this might actually be good.” Then by the end, we left, and we’re like, “Oh, that went better than we thought.” Peter’s like, “We’re going to Fox.” Then three days later, we were at The WB, which is where it should’ve been.

**Miles:** The great story there is that the other executive in the room, who’s a friend of ours, we’d had lunch with the year before, and she’d told us point blank, “You guys aren’t WB material. Sorry.”

**Al:** “You do buddy action,” because at that point we’d done Lethal 4 and Shanghai Noon. “You’re buddy two-hander guys.” Then the next year, we’re at The WB.

**John:** I want to compare and contrast that experience, taking an iconic piece of property, a piece of IP that people know, Superman, and turning it into a teen show, to Wednesday, which is, again, an iconic piece of property everybody knows, and taking the character from that and putting it at the center of a teen series. On the surface, kind of similar, but actually, the way we make things now is so vastly different between the two of them. I want to contrast the two of those experiences. Let’s talk through the pitch on Wednesday Addams. How does Wednesday Addams come into your universe?

**Al:** It was 2018. We had just finished doing this show called Into the Badlands, which we did for AMC for four seasons. We were, frankly, looking for our next thing, and knowing how IP-obsessed everybody is… The Addams Family seemed to be… We knew MGM had the animated movies, but Paramount had done movies.

In a similar way that Smallville tells an unknown chapter of Clark Kent’s story, it’s a story nobody’s ever told. We wanted to do Wednesday, but we’re like, “Teenage Wednesday Addams in boarding school.” That was really the eureka moment. We sat down. We knew we wanted it to be a supernatural murder mystery. We talked about do we just put her in a normal high school or do we do something different. We realized if we just put her in a normal high school, it becomes a very one-note show.

**Miles:** She goes home to her family at the end.

**Al:** She went home to her family. The opening of the first episode is her in a regular high school. She gets expelled, and then she goes to Nevermore, because it gave us the Addams ethos without being the… It’s like if you took the Addams mansion and the Addams vibe but then you put it in the school. Then it was the school where her parents met. Literally, we had the idea. We came up with the whole pitch.

**Miles:** We did it on spec.

**Al:** On spec.

**Miles:** We wrote a 20-page bible.

**Al:** Bible.

**Miles:** Then we approached MGM, said to the head of the studio, “Okay, this is what we want to do,” and he loved it. It was the first step. It was the first step with us coming up with the idea. It wasn’t like they approached us.

**Al:** Nobody approached us.

**John:** There wasn’t any notion, like, “Hey, let’s do a Wednesday Addams show.”

**Al:** No, it wasn’t.

**John:** [inaudible 00:18:40].

**Al:** In fact, they didn’t even know if they had the live-action TV rights. We were like, “Does Paramount have those?” We pitched the head of the Addams Foundation, who controls the estate. He loved it. That’s how it all got started. It was very different. Smallville was like, “We have this idea. Can you guys crack it?” This one, we brought them something they didn’t frankly even know they had.

**John:** Great. In both cases, the idea is now set up. Was the idea set up at Netflix, or did you have to write a script first?

**Miles:** Now it seems like a no-brainer, but it wasn’t at all. It’s been a three-and-a-half-year journey to get to this point. We’d written it. They loved it. In terms of the pitch, we went out and pitched it around to all the different streamers, to Apple and Amazon, Netflix. Actually, Netflix bought it. This is great.

**Al:** This was fall of 2019. This was this time 2019.

**Miles:** They couldn’t make a deal, so it fell apart.

**John:** It fell apart. They couldn’t make a deal because of underlying rights or your rights or just everything?

**Al:** Basically, whatever Netflix was offering, MGM said, “That’s not enough.” This was basically January of 2020. They had already basically given us the go-ahead to write the pilot script. They’d written that. We thought it was kind of dead. Then Steve Stark, who was the head of television at the time-

**Miles:** At MGM.

**Al:** … at MGM, convinced MGM to basically fork over money for a writers’ room, for a mini room, and said, “We’ll write a bunch of scripts, and then we’ll go back out with it,” which to be honest with you, is a terrible idea. Most streamers aren’t going to buy a show that they had no hand in developing. We were like, “If it keeps the project alive, great.”

**John:** That said, Station Eleven was a similar situation.

**Al:** Was it really?

**John:** He came on to talk through the Station Eleven process. Paramount did put together a mini room for that, so they could write scripts. It ended up working out really well for them.

**Al:** Same here.

**John:** At this point, there’s a pilot, and you have a room together. How many scripts are you trying to get out of this room?

**Al:** We’re trying to get another seven scripts out of the room.

**John:** Which is the whole season.

**Al:** The whole season, because we had the bible for the whole season, and so we were breaking it. Of course, we had to push the room a week, because it was literally the first week of lockdown. The pandemic started. We did it fully on Zoom.

**Miles:** Which I think was a really great… No one had ever done a Zoom room. It was actually incredibly efficient, because often my beef of writers’ rooms is everyone sits around talking about war stories. It’s so inefficient, whereas a Zoom, it’s actually much more focused. It can be exhausting, but we got an incredible amount of work done in a limited amount of time.

**Al:** Yeah, we did. We did. It was spring of 2020. Before we went out, we wanted to package it. Tim was always our first-

**John:** A natural choice.

**Al:** A natural choice.

**John:** Tim’s always wanted to do an Addams Family story.

**Al:** We’d heard. Of course, everybody’s like, “He’s not done television. He’s not going to do it.” We’re like, “If we don’t ask, the answer’s no.” Steve’s partner, Andrew Mittman, got the script to Mike Simpson, who’s Tim’s agent at WME. Mike read it and really loved it. We heard all this later. He sent it to Tim, and then four days later, we get a text, “You’re not going to believe this. Tim read the script. He really loves it. He wants to talk to you guys.” Tim lives in London. We thought, “Okay, great, so his assistant’s going to set up Zoom?” He’s like, “Nope.” Mike goes, “I’m texting you his number, and you’re going to FaceTime with him tomorrow.” It was Memorial Day weekend 2020. We called. We FaceTimed with Tim. He was in Oxford.

**Miles:** Oxford. He has an amazing house in Oxford with this beautiful garden with these life-size dinosaur models. He was out there wandering around in this garden talking to us about Wednesday Addams and how she would’ve been his girlfriend in high school. It was really, really great. He was a bit nervous, I think, about launching to TV, but also really intrigued about doing extended storytelling. Long-form storytelling was something he’d never done. It was really something that he thought would be a great challenge. He’d always loved the Addams Family, and Wednesday in particular.

**Al:** What we did know, the opening of the script, it opens with Wednesday terrorizing the water polo team. We didn’t know Tim played water polo in Burbank.

**Miles:** At Burbank High.

**Al:** He must’ve been reading the script going, “What is happening?”

**Miles:** That’s how it happened.

**John:** I want to also flash back to Smallville though, because bringing on the pilot director has always been a big thing. That’s a big deciding factor of which pilots get ordered is what kind of director you can get on board, but they’re never the iconic name that a Tim Burton is.

**Al:** Correct.

**John:** It’s never that level of [inaudible 00:23:23] directors. It’s always like Michael Dinner. It’s some person you’ve never heard of.

**Miles:** Michael Dinner, yeah.

**John:** Normal people don’t have that. It’s such a change from this. Also, in a classic way you pick pilots to make, it’s on a casting. For Smallville, talk through the casting on that, because I remember my WB show, the way you had to bring in actors to audition in the room in front of Susanne Daniels and everything else was a very specific, scary, terrifying process. I want to contrast it with now. Talk us through Smallville casting, and then we’ll go to Wednesday casting.

**Al:** Again, this was in 2000. We sold it in the fall of 2000. When we sold it, it’s interesting. In old-time network television, they usually didn’t let you cast a pilot until they green-lit the pilot. Here they bought the project and they said, “We’re going to let you start casting.” We hadn’t written the script yet.

**Miles:** We hadn’t written the script yet.

**Al:** This was actually a great exercise, which we’ve done. We don’t really do it in features, but we do it in television. We wrote a bunch of the scenes from the pilot that they could audition with. It’s good, because you realize you can give them handles. We always call it secret lines, where if they get that right, it’s like, “Oh, they understand it.” We wrote a Lex and Clark scene.

**Miles:** All of which ended up in the show.

**Al:** All of them are in the pilot. It was a Clark-Lana graveyard scene, which is in the pilot. There’s a Lex-Clark fencing scene, which is in the pilot, the parents, which was great, because when we went to write the pilot, we had a bunch of scenes written already. They let us do that. We actually got to spend about four months casting. The other thing was, we knew exactly who we wanted to direct the pilot, which was David Nutter, who certainly at the time-

**John:** He was [inaudible 00:25:08] him or Michael Dinner [crosstalk 00:25:09].

**Al:** David was the Steven Spielberg of TV pilots. His track record of getting-

**Miles:** He’d done a lot of great… Not The X-Files. He’d done a lot of X-Files to start off with.

**Al:** He’d done X-Files to start off. I think he’d done Roswell the year before.

**Miles:** Dark Angel.

**Al:** He’d done Dark Angel. What’s great is Peter Roth, who had just come over from Fox, knew David very well. He literally got on the phone, pitched him, sent him the same-

**Miles:** David was a huge Superman-

**Al:** He was a huge Superman fan.

**Miles:** It was the perfect marriage. The process, as John suggested, it’s so awful, which is the person, or they have to sit in the room outside, and have to come into a room with probably 15 people watching them, which is the most artificial experience for TV performance, and have to perform like they’re auditioning for a school play, in front of these people. It is the most nerve-wracking experience. For example, Zach Levi was our top choice for Lex Luthor. He came in and was amazing. Then he came in to do this network audition, and he really just didn’t click. Then we ended up with Michael, who was fantastic. It was just the whole process and the idea of having to perform in this really bizarre way for a TV show.

**Al:** It was always very weird. It’s stressful all around.

**Miles:** Absolutely.

**Al:** So artificial.

**John:** Also, we have to remember that back in those days, these truly were pilots. They were going to shoot a bunch of pilots and only pick up certain series, as they were trying to figure out what are the elements that are going to be useful in this show versus that show. It’s not the same situation with something like Wednesday, because it’s the first episode, but how that first episode goes is not going to determine whether the rest of the series shoots. You’re going to shoot the whole series.

**Al:** Correct. We even had this on our last couple shows. Everybody now does it online. They self-tape. I think actors must think it’s great, because they can do as many takes as they want until they get the one they like.

**John:** They don’t get the feedback.

**Al:** They don’t get the feedback, but they get that.

**John:** Also, we’re seeing what do they look like through a lens.

**Miles:** Exactly.

**John:** It’s really what it is.

**Miles:** That’s the point, exactly. It’s the old-fashioned screen test is how you should do it. On Wednesday, I’ll say we did do chemistry tests over Zoom. We’d all meet with the actor, talk to them, and then our screens would go black, and then we’d watch the audition. Then we’d give notes and Tim would give notes. I think it was intimidating, because it was the first time they met Tim, and over Zoom. The first time we did it, Tim just gave them one chance. They were so nervous.

**Al:** We did it once, and it was a disaster. What’s great about Tim is Tim Burton doesn’t realize he’s Tim Burton. We’re like, “Tim, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll introduce them. We’ll introduce you, let you say hi. We’ll do it twice, so you can give them notes in between. Even if you don’t have notes, let’s just let them do it again.” Then he was like, “Great.” Once they got over the initial shock of the Tim Burton part, then they could ease in and do it. Even on the Brady Bunch screens, you could at least go, “Oh, okay.” You see what they look like side by side on camera.

**John:** Which is crucial. I want to back up in the process a little bit here, because you’d been in writers’ rooms before. You’d been in a writer’s room for Martial Law. You had that experience. This time you’re running a writers’ room on Zoom for your show. How did you go about thinking about who you wanted in that writers’ room with you? It was a mini room. Was that the only room you ever got together?

**Al:** That was a mini room. We frankly picked two writers, Kayla Alpert and April Blair. We knew.

**John:** Experienced.

**Al:** They were like, “We’re going to pay for a room. You can only have a couple writers.” It’s like, “We need people who we’ve worked with before, who we know are good, who can be helpful.” Obviously, we wanted the female voices in the room too. We heard a lot of Zoom room horror stories, but I think because it was a bunch of people who have never worked together, so I’m sure it was a lot of bad first date theater. We had that room. It was a 10, 11-week room. That was the only room we had.

**John:** What was your schedule? What was your writing process? How long were the rooms going for? What were you trying to get done in a day’s work in a room?

**Miles:** I think first it’s having a very clear idea of where the trajectory of the season’s going. We just had the first episode, so they had a sense of what the show was, which is important.

**John:** It’s crucial to set up… That first episode, you set so many plates spinning in terms of who these characters are, and each of them is going to have a thing. You had a sense of where they were going. You had to actually track out where that information would go. Those were the first weeks. You were just figuring out all the rest of those-

**Miles:** Yes. I think the first season, we certainly had ideas. I guess because we’re old-school TV people, every episode, unlike some binge shows, conceptualized. One episode’s about the school dance. One episode’s about Parents Weekend. Each one feels like a complete chapter of a book, rather than just… Sometimes shows are like mud. You couldn’t identify what the-

**John:** It’s like an eight-hour movie.

**Miles:** For us it’s much more compartmentalized. It’s figuring out the beginning, middle, end of each episode so it feels complete in itself, although it still leads on and has this propulsive energy, which is always something that we aim for, that it’s never boring. That’s our motto in terms of story breaking, that it has to keep going so it’s propulsive and delicious and you want to keep consuming. You want to be able to not turn it off at 3 a.m. in the morning and finish. That’s our goal as storytellers is that it has to be relentless. Then it’s really working out the beats and where are the characters going, so what’s the arc over the course of the season and how will that person get there.

The first week is just figuring out big ideas, what a great set piece is, where do you want to see these characters, what are the scenes you want to see with them. That’s something we learned from Carlton Cuse, which is what are the scenes you want to see in this episode, between these two characters. That was something that we always do, and just like, “What are the craziest ideas we can put Wednesday Addams in?” That’s something. It’s just an exercise. We always ask people when they first come to the room to bring a lot of ideas. I want to see a list of 50 ideas. Where could she be, what’s funny, and what situations or locations she could be at or just concepts for [inaudible 00:31:27].

**John:** What documents are you trying to get out of this? Ultimately, you’re going to get to scripts. At what point are you generating outlines? Are you generating beat sheets? How much are those shared outside of the room or just for your purposes?

**Al:** We do cards.

**Miles:** The first thing we do is we break out the stories. We do the little paragraphs.

**Al:** Paragraphs.

**Miles:** By the end of probably week two, we have eight one-page ideas for what each episode’s going to be. It has to be really quick and fast. You can adjust.

**John:** Is that a Google Doc, or how are you sharing that among your team?

**Miles:** It’s Google Docs.

**Al:** It is a Google Doc.

**Miles:** We have the writer’s assistant who takes notes every day and assembles that. We split up to write the one-pagers we call them, which is just each episode, so we have a sense of what the season is, because you can’t spend too long conceptualizing. We just need to start really thinking about the stories.

**Al:** We did the one-pagers. Then we do beat sheets. Those have, here are all the scenes.

**John:** The scenes.

**Al:** They’re in skeletal form. The other thing, we had never done a closed mystery, a cards down mystery, where you don’t know, it’s the whodunit.

**John:** Absolutely. We have the same information as the audience as Wednesday does.

**Al:** Exactly. We knew how it ended. Then it was working backwards. Then it was do we have enough red herrings. Even when we were shooting it, we’re like-

**Miles:** Oh, gosh.

**Al:** … “Oh my god, is this going to be too obvious?” It’s all the red herrings. You have to play by the rules, so that if you go back and did a re-watch, it’s… I remember there’s one thing we caught in the first episode. We’re like, “Oh, that character could never be there at that time, so we can’t do that.” You’re doing the math of it. There was that aspect. Then once we broke them out, then I think we verbally pitched out to the studio at that point, just to get their feedback.

**John:** The studio being Netflix.

**Al:** No, actually at the time, just MGM.

**John:** Just MGM, that’s right, because [inaudible 00:33:26]. You’re pitching them to make sure that they understand what the vision is for the things.

**Al:** Correct.

**John:** They’re not reading things.

**Al:** Not yet. Once we got their thoughts and sign off, then we went and we did 10-page outlines.

**Miles:** Our whole philosophy always is to, I’d say overshare. There’s no surprises is our thing.

**Al:** I think they got the one-pagers. They got the one-pagers.

**Miles:** For us it’s always about we have nothing to hide. If you try and hide things or keep people at bay… We’re really looking for great notes and not guidance, but it’s great to have some… You’re stuck in a room. Even if it’s a Zoom room, you’re stuck in this little bubble. To have some outside viewpoint about what you’re doing, for us is always very helpful. It’s true with the whole process in terms of what we do. We’ll take a good note from literally anybody.

**Al:** Because everybody’s a viewer. Even if it’s their job, everybody’s still a viewer.

**Miles:** It doesn’t mean we’re going to take it.

**Al:** It doesn’t mean we’re going to listen.

**Miles:** We’re incredibly open and say to the actors, to everybody that we want feedback and need feedback. It’s always about the best product. That process goes all the way to the end, to ADR, to the post, to everything. It’s always about evolving until you finish.

**John:** Let’s run through the documents again. We’re starting off with these one-paragraph synopses of episodes. Then it goes to a beat sheet. Then it goes to a 10-page outline. Then from 10-page outline, those are assigned to a writer to write the full 60-page script.

**Al:** Correct.

**Miles:** I will say before that as well, we have the bible, and then we usually do a look book as well, so they have a sense of what [crosstalk 00:35:02].

**John:** Before they got there, they were looking through that.

**Miles:** Yeah, so they have a sense of what the show will look like in our minds. We shared that with Tim. It’s always about the communication, and everyone’s on the same page about what we’re doing. It’s always about that clarity of vision, “This is the show we’re going to make. This is what we’re doing,” so there’s no confusion, and keeping the lines of communication open between every department, which is hard.

**John:** Are all these scripts written by the time this room finishes?

**Al:** No. I would say four of the eight were written, and there were four that there were drafts for.

**John:** Great. Let’s take a moment and contrast that back to Smallville, because this was not at all the schedule on Smallville. Smallville, you’re shooting, rather than 8 episodes over the course of however long it takes, you had 22 episodes to shoot.

**Al:** 22 episodes.

**John:** These are 40-page scripts probably?

**Al:** I think Season 1, they were probably 50-page scripts. Probably they were too long.

**John:** They were long. You’re responsible for delivering basically one of these a week.

**Miles:** It was an absolute nightmare. The first season of Smallville is a total blur of insanity and sleepless nights and just us hammering away. Also, in the middle of this, we had 9/11, and we didn’t stop shooting for that. It was just a really crazy time. That’s where we really learned how to run a show. The first season was absolute chaos. The writers hated us. We used to write all day, turn up at work at 6 p.m., work until 12. It was just [inaudible 00:36:29] horror stories of writers’ rooms, that first season was like, oh my god.

**John:** That was you?

**Al:** Yeah, that was us.

**Miles:** Yeah, because you don’t know. It’s like a freight train, and then it becomes a hit, so you have this added pressure and then the studio. It’s just overwhelming.

**Al:** You have a process that moves twice as fast, but you have two levels. You have a studio giving notes and then a network giving notes.

**John:** The other crucial thing though is you are also not writing these scripts in a vacuum like you were in this mini room.

**Al:** Correct.

**John:** You were trying to write these things while you’re actually trying to produce the show.

**Miles:** Exactly.

**John:** You’re dealing with all the fires happening on set while you’re doing this and dealing with the post. In this case, you had the luxury, you had these… How long was your mini room? Was it 10 weeks, 12 weeks?

**Miles:** Yeah.

**John:** To just focus on the writing and not focus on anything else.

**Miles:** I’ll say the difference is that I think [inaudible 00:37:13] on a streaming show, on a show like this, is every episode has to be a Faberge egg-

**John:** Wow.

**Miles:** … whereas on network, you know you’re going to have some clunkers. You know that not every script’s going to be great. It doesn’t take the pressure off, but it’s impossible to have 22 amazing episodes of network TV.

**Al:** What was interesting too with Smallville, it was the era where TV on DVD was starting to become a thing. We would say Wednesday is chapters of a book, where Smallville is short stories in a world. You have some mythology episodes and some bigger ideas that then tie the whole season together, because they tell you an avid viewer of a network show watches one in four episodes. There’s a certain amount of repetition, at least in the first season, where you’re starting, where you don’t want people to be like, “I watched the pilot, and then I’m coming in an episode. What the heck’s happening now?”

**Miles:** It’s not a sausage factory, but it kind of is, in terms of there is that repetition. Then once you get into the rhythm of a writers’ room, it’s still incredibly difficult to turn out 22 good episodes of TV. It becomes a machine. That’s certainly what we aimed for and achieved in subsequent seasons in terms of the writers’ room and everything else became a machine.

**Al:** We trained people. It’s another thing too. It sounds weird. The show tells you what it can and can’t do. I think in Season 1, we had to break so many more stories that didn’t work to get to the 22 episodes that did.

**Miles:** [inaudible 00:38:41] in terms of what it wants to do. Everything’s always too big.

**Al:** It’s too big, and I get blamed.

**John:** You’re learning what your cast can do. You’re learning what your crew can do.

**Al:** Exactly.

**John:** You’re learning, “Okay, we can do two stunts or whatever it is for your thing, so how are we going to budget our two stunts for this?”

**Al:** Exactly.

**Miles:** Exactly right.

**Al:** Exactly right.

**Miles:** You have to figure out what’s the pattern of what you can do. The first season of Smallville, we were resisting a pattern. It was like, “No, we’re going to do four stunts an episode. Then second season we’re going to make lives easier for ourselves. We’re going to find the pattern, then we’re going to do it.”

**Al:** We did, because at a certain point, a TV show either runs like a TV show or it implodes. Two of the Smallville stars are doing a podcast where they’re re-watching all the episodes. They had us do one. We watched this episode in Season 1, which literally four directors worked on, then we had to shut down for a week just to finish it. When we watched it back, it was actually a pretty good episode, but we’re like, “We were insane.” I’m like, “What were we thinking?”

**John:** Smallville was shot in Vancouver. For this show, you wanted to keep it nice and close and local, clearly.

**Al:** Absolutely.

**John:** You wanted to keep making life easy for yourself. Where did you choose to shoot Wednesday?

**Al:** We shot in Romania.

**John:** What was the decision for Romania?

**Al:** There’s a couple. One was, there was literally no studio space anywhere else in the world. We looked in Ireland. We looked in the UK.

**John:** If you were shooting this at the peak of coming out of pandemic…

**Al:** The studio wanted us to go to Toronto.

**Miles:** Toronto.

**Al:** The thing with Tim is, it’s the sets. You need the sound stages to be able to build these amazing sets.

**John:** Size.

**Miles:** It’s size. You’re looking at Tim’s work. It’s all about giant sets and physical sets. The studio was obsessed with us going to use The Handmaid’s Tale sound stages, but the roof with those sound stages is 12 feet or something.

**Al:** It was 19 feet.

**Miles:** 19 feet. [inaudible 00:40:37]. It was like, “We’re not going to do that,” because what you want with a Tim show is to have built sets. They also never accepted that. The show was budgeted like a CW show. As soon as you get Tim Burton directing the show, it’s not going to be a CW budget. They never understood that. The big fight with that show was always like, you don’t hire Tim Burton and give him that budget, because he’s not going to do it.

**Al:** We also said Tim doesn’t show up and go, “I’ll do the discount TV version of Tim.” Tim shoots as Tim shoots, one camera, very efficiently actually, but-

**John:** Romania.

**Al:** We ended up in Romania, because they actually had massive sound stages. There’s no tax credit there, but they do have crew. If you drew a longitude-latitude line from New England across, it actually hits Romania.

**Miles:** There’s an abandoned Soviet era studio, which was phenomenal, with huge sound stages. Then it had an area next to it of woods and a lake.

**Al:** Right outside the gate.

**Miles:** Then it had an area where you could build this huge town. It had these amazing architectural gems in the city of Bucharest, which we used as interior sets, with these beautiful decrepit villas. It just had such texture and reality to it. I went on a location scout with Tim. It was completely obvious we had to shoot there, and we did.

We’ve shot all over the world, in New Zealand and Ireland, Canada, but we’ve never shot in a country that didn’t speak the same language, the crew. It was challenging, and in the middle of COVID. Then we had the war happen in Ukraine, which neighbors Romania, which freaked out most of the cast. It was a very, very challenging shoot.

**John:** We were talking about the phases of getting things made. You have your writing phase. That’s all day. You have production phase. Challenging. Mostly done in Europe. Are you posting at the same time, or you’re waiting for all the post when everything’s done being shot? Were you shooting sequentially or were you cross-boarding the show?

**Al:** A couple things. We shot the show in blocks of two, but we didn’t go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

**Miles:** Unfortunately.

**Al:** We did one, two, five, six, three, four, seven, eight.

**Miles:** Makes total sense.

**Al:** Part of it is because Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman, who play Gomez and Morticia, are in Episodes 1 and 5, and we needed them to come to Romania once. Secondly, Tim was doing two blocks and needed time to prep.

**John:** A prep break.

**Al:** He wanted to do the first four. It was challenging, especially when you’re doing a mystery show and you’re trying to keep everything straight, and the actors are trying to keep their emotional arc straight. That was definitely a challenge. Tim’s editor was on site in Romania with us. We do all of our post at a place called Take 5 in Toronto. We’ve done that for the past three shows. What was interesting, even compared to our last show, is just all the technology.

**John:** It’s gotten so much better.

**Al:** It’s amazing.

**Miles:** Oh my god. In our last show, which is Into the Badlands, it used to be you go to a special studio and do a cineSync. It actually never worked. You’d talk to your editor live in Toronto, but the feed you’re getting back was slightly out of whack. It was never coordinated.

**Al:** Then you would have to go up for a week too.

**Miles:** I’d go up to Toronto.

**Al:** Just to sit in the rooms and finish everything.

**Miles:** Constantly fly up to Toronto. We were doing a show in New Zealand and Ireland at the same time, and then I’d fly to Toronto. It was an absolute nightmare. This was a dream experience. It’s completely synced up. You can talk to your editor.

**John:** You’re watching it on your laptop.

**Miles:** You’re talking to your editor on Zoom, watching the cut on your laptop. You can give notes in real time. It works incredibly well. The only thing you have to go for is now the sound mix. You go to a place in Hollywood, watch the sound mix. None of us went to Toronto. If we had to go from Romania to Toronto in COVID, you’d have to come back and spend 10 days in quarantine. It just wouldn’t have worked. Now technology is so… It’s really advanced in four or five years. It’s ridiculous.

**Al:** It was pretty incredible.

**John:** Great. We have some listener questions. I thought maybe you guys could help us out with some of the listener questions.

**Al:** Absolutely.

**John:** Let’s start with Hilary’s question.

**Megana Rao:** Hilary in Los Angeles asked, “I mentioned a feature idea I’m working on to an executive friend at a production company, and he said that if I tweak one insignificant bit of it, it’s exactly what they’re looking for for their new deal with a major streamer. He asked me to send him a one-pager of the feature and said that the streamer is paying for outlines and scripts. Is this different than No Writing Left Behind or is this essentially the same no-no, in that this executive could then use my one-pager at their will and cut me out completely?”

**John:** Let’s talk about No Writing Left Behind and when it’s appropriate to give somebody a written document versus not giving somebody a written document. You guys, you’re big on sharing. You’re big on showing stuff. In this case, it feels like Hilary’s written this original things, so she owns it and controls it. It feels pretty safe for her. What are you guys thinking?

**Miles:** I think maybe we’re dumb and naïve, but we always share. We have no problem leaving anything behind, because we’re fearless about what we have next. The chance of someone stealing something and executing something is minimal.

**Al:** I think again, she has the paper trail. The other thing too is you can always register with the Guild first so you have that stamp. Does that work?

**John:** It doesn’t really work. Let’s talk registering with the Guild, because obviously, I’ve followed the WGA for a long time. You can register your document with the WGA. Basically, they stick it in an envelope and say, “We sealed this envelope on this date.” It proves that it existed at a certain point in time. That’s no more meaningful than actually-

**Al:** Do it yourself.

**John:** … doing it yourself or showing an email that you sent it to somebody. It doesn’t do any more than that. It doesn’t provide an extra protection. I worry it’s basically what people feel good about, but it doesn’t necessarily do a thing. A situation where Hilary probably would not want to leave something behind, let’s say she’s one of six writers going in on a project, and you’re going out with your pitch, don’t leave them that pitch.

**Al:** Do not leave behind, because that’s when things can get used in the studio for parts.

**John:** Your details got moved into their thing.

**Miles:** That’s true.

**Al:** We have seen this, where you do have younger writers who are working with producers or a production company or a studio, and they’re just doing all this free work.

**Miles:** It’s just a bigger issue.

**Al:** You gotta stop. That’s just where it’s-

**Miles:** We worked with one writer. She hasn’t been paid. We’re supervising her. We were asked to come in for some producer friends of ours. She’s been working on this thing for three years. The pitch keeps getting delayed.

**Al:** It keeps getting pushed down. We’re like, “Guys, she’s been doing… This isn’t fair. She needs to be able to pitch this.” That’s incredibly frustrating.

**John:** Hilary should definitely, if she feels like writing up a one-page and sending it in, great, but if the guy keeps asking for more and more details-

**Al:** Do not. Do not.

**John:** … that’s when you start getting into problems.

**Miles:** That’s when you gotta say no.

**John:** Also, she has a whole script, so at some point just share the script.

**Miles:** Is it a script?

**John:** Yeah, she says it’s a script, or it’s a feature idea.

**Miles:** If it’s a finished script, then she’s fine.

**John:** Cool.

**Megana:** Mike from San Jose asks, “For someone who’s equally open to starting a career in either features or TV, does it even make sense to write spec feature scripts in the current environment? What I mean by that is, it appears that the vast majority of professional work nowadays is on the TV side of things. If a writer was to write a great feature spec, at best, it might lead them to an increasingly narrow field of work that appears to be getting narrower at a rapid pace, whereas a strong television pilot may perhaps help open the door to a much larger field of work opportunities. If equally interested in both, why would someone choose to write a feature spec in this current marketplace?”

**John:** This is a great question for where we were at 30 years ago versus where we’re at right now, because some people are writing TV spec pilots, but not really 30 years ago. Now, if you’re trying to staff a show, you might read a spec pilot, you might read a pilot, but you’d also read a feature. You’d read whatever, right?

**Miles:** Absolutely.

**Al:** Yeah, but I think it seems a sad reality that features are dying. I would never recommend anyone writing a feature, starting out now. I’d definitely aim at TV. That’s not a badge of shame anymore. We have Tim Burton directing now a TV show. It’s really changed everything. It’s an amazing opportunity now, what has happened. I think writing a 90-minute movie or a feature script is not the way to go, starting out.

**Megana:** Would you guys read a feature spec as a sample for a writers’ room?

**Miles:** Absolutely.

**Al:** Absolutely.

**Megana:** It’s not like what he’s saying.

**Al:** No, it’s not even church and state. We’d read it. It’s just the writer might have more opportunities with a spec pilot script to sell versus a spec feature script to sell. We read both.

**Miles:** Also, in terms of it takes half the time to write. It’s not as strict as a… It’s an easier option. It’s definitely I think the way to go. There’s more opportunity just for employment in television. What’s great, when you’re looking at a stack of scripts to read when you’re staffing a show, the shorter scripts are attractive. It really is.

**Al:** It’s true.

**John:** Although somebody could read the first half of the feature script and say, “Listen, I know this person can write. I want to meet this writer.” There are examples of TV pilots that are just… People read a random pilot, and they say, “I want to make this show.” Severance is a case of where it was just a great script and they said, “Let’s make this into a show.” That’s really rare from a person who has no TV experience, where they wrote a spec pilot and suddenly they’re shooting a show, where some movies can get made in different ways. There’s always cases of… Go was a spec script, and it sold and got made.

**Miles:** It’s just that I think the market for movies has shrunk and is shrinking. I think you have more opportunity in terms of selling, or even if you staff on a show and you have written three spec pilots that you can bring out and say, “Hey, I got this spec pilot that I wrote four years ago,” and present it as a new thing. It feels like there’s opportunities for your war chest of scripts.

**Al:** That’s where TV has gotten a little more like features, because it used to be with networks you’d write pilots every year. Then if that pilot didn’t go, it was like the pilot never existed. They didn’t go, “You had a great version of this last season. Why don’t you just do that pilot again?” Nobody ever did. Now it is more like you can have it in your drawer, because there’s not that machine of you’ve got to pick everything up in May, be shooting in July to be on the air in September. That whole system is gone with the wind.

**John:** One thing I think listeners may not understand is that… Let’s say you staff on a show. Let’s say you staff on Wednesday or staff on some other show, on a streamer show. You may have writing credit on some of those episodes, but those aren’t necessarily going to be good things for people to read, because they don’t know what you did on that versus someone else writing on that.

**Al:** Correct.

**John:** They may look at your work history and say, “It’s great that you worked on this show,” but they want to read something that’s original to you.

**Miles:** Hundred percent. That’s something that’s important. Usually, we like to read an original piece of work. In the old days, we also used to write spec episodes of shows that existed, which is a less-

**John:** Very uncommon now.

**Miles:** Yeah, but it was actually useful, because they could see if they could imitate your voice. That was something that I think has been lost. You can hire somebody who’s an amazing writer, but they have no aptitude to write our voice, because that’s what you want when you staff people is that they have that facility to be able to mimic you, which is an odd thing for some writers to do.

**Megana:** Jack says, “I’m Jack from England, and I’m a screenwriting student. I wanted to ask you about procrastination. I love writing. I’ve written several shorts and two pilots. I really want to take the next step and write a feature. I keep putting it off, and I know why. I’m terrified of it being terrible and discouraging me. Instead, I find myself procrastinating, and I’m stuck in a terrible place. Do you guys have any tips of squashing procrastination and finally getting around to starting that project?”

**John:** We’ve talked about procrastination a lot of times on the show. Episode 99, we have a big segment on it. I’m curious, the two of you together probably is a good barrier to procrastination, because you hold each other accountable.

**Al:** Exactly. We can also get together and kick around ideas, and it gets that process going, because a lot of times when people are like, “I have writer’s block,” you probably have story block, and you’re trying to work through things or you just hit something. I can see that getting in that cycle of like, oh, is it going to work or not? I think that is the nice thing about a partnership is you do… We always treated it like a job, so you do hold each other accountable.

**Miles:** If we get, as Al says, story blocked, we usually go get pie or doughnuts.

**Al:** Sugar’s great.

**Miles:** Sugar’s great. We just figure it out. The ability to talk it out with someone is often… How you get motivated is usually with a writers’ group or someone who can help you work through the story issues.

Also, often, it can mean that your story isn’t fully formed yet, so spending longer on the outline, making sure that works, so you haven’t written 40 pages of your script and realize the story’s not working, which that leads to depression and starting again. It’s really not launching too early. It’s always wanting to start too soon before you’ve actually… The heavy lifting is the story break, so making sure that you feel confident and you’ve pitched the story to people so you know the structure’s working. Once the structure works, then everything else should be much easier in terms of flowing.

**John:** Advice for Jack, what I hear Miles and Al saying is that having someone who you can work with is incredibly useful. If you don’t have a writing partner, having someone else who can be on your side or just hold you accountable to getting stuff done could be great to get you over the procrastination.

Jack’s also worried about, “The thing I write is going to be terrible,” and it’s going to be discouraging to him. Maybe try approaching it from the opposite way, like, “This is going to suck. This is going to be terrible. This is going to be awful, but I’m going to just do it anyway. It’s going to be bad. I’m going to learn from it.” Try to get yourself started that way, but don’t hold yourself to some impossibly high standard. Hold yourself to actually a pretty low standard [inaudible 00:54:58] to get the work done. You’ve already finished two shorts and two pilots. Great. You know you’re able to actually get stuff done. A feature’s a longer thing, but you can get a feature done.

**Al:** We were talking about this the other day. When we got Lethal Weapon 4, and it was our first big thing, and then you’re like, “Oh shit, how are we going to write this?”

**Miles:** You’re overwhelmed and intimidated.

**Al:** Overwhelmed and intimidated, because movies you loved in college and things like that.

**Miles:** Mimi Leder had written an article actually in Written By, which is the Writers Guild magazine, about this movie Deep Impact and how she got through that. She got through it one scene at a time. It’s really not thinking about the big picture. It’s thinking about every scene is a building block to something. Really, what got us through that script was just focusing on the scene where it was ahead of us and just writing that. We just accumulated scenes.

**Al:** It got you past the intimidation of the-

**Miles:** You just needed to get through a page and a half of a scene, and then you’re fine.

**Megana:** I really like that distinction of story block. Is that something that you’re encountering when you’re going from outline to scriptwriting phase?

**Al:** Our outlines are pretty detailed. When we look at the paragraphs for the scenes, sometimes there’s dialog in them. In some ways it’s kind of a little like a first draft, because you’re trying to work through… We say if it’s a roadmap, it’s giving you all the interstates, so that when you sit down to write, it’s like, “Oh, I can go off to this back road and try this.” It actually frees you up to I think be more creative when you’re actually writing the scenes and not be worried about the math and the architecture, and just being able to focus on writing the scene and knowing it works, so if all else fails, you can go back to this. It does give you opportunities.

**Megana:** You’re figuring out more of that before you even start the outlines.

**Miles:** Absolutely. That’s the key element, that you don’t start before you’re ready. It’s knowing when you’re ready. We’ll spend weeks, months, years sometimes working on just the architecture before we launch in, because you don’t want to launch in and realize, oh, that’s where the story block happens.

**Al:** That’s a lot of what you’re working through in the writers’ room. This was interesting, because we love Zoom rooms, and it’s great when you got the big picture stuff, but then sometimes when you’re writing and you’re getting into the more granular pieces… We’ve said this a couple of times, “I wish we’d all just get in a whiteboard, and we would totally figure this out in a couple hours.” I think there’s that element of it as well.

**John:** The two of you, what is your process for that early stage stuff? Are you guys index carders? Are you whiteboarders? Do you have a thing you go to, or is it just conversation and notes?

**Miles:** A lot of conversations at cafes. We go to the [inaudible 00:57:37] and sit upstairs and eats doughnuts, just sit there for hours talking through the store.

**Al:** We’re like, “Let’s write this down before we forget.” It’s a lot of that. Again, we’ve been writing together for nearly 30 years. I always know if we get together, whatever kind of problem or block we’re having, we will ultimately figure it out. Might not figure it out today. Might be two days from now. It takes a lot of talking through it.

**John:** Either you’ll solve the problem or you’ll realize that you’re trying to answer the wrong questions and figure out something different.

**Al:** Exactly right. You’ll, exactly, do something different.

**Miles:** It is just hours of talking.

**Al:** Even in the writers’ rooms, like we said, we really want the outlines. Everybody knows what it is. The writer knows what the scene’s about. It’s not just the logistics of the scene. It’s what’s the scene about.

**John:** Let’s talk through the last stage of what the scene’s about is really that tone meeting discussion. The script’s been written. It’s there. Everyone can agree on what the words are that are going to be said. The actual approach to how you’re going to shoot the scene and how you’re going to edit the scene, that last conversation is really important too. Can you just talk us through, working with Tim or working with any of your other directors, what is the tone discussion going into a given scene or a given day’s work?

**Al:** What’s interesting is what we… Tim is different than obviously the directors, because what we would do with him… We worked this out, because he’s obviously never had showrunners before. We wanted to respect his process but be available, because it’s keeping a bigger story in your head. What we would do is, we would meet with him in the trailer in the morning and go through all the scenes. He would ask any questions he had. he would then say, “Are there certain things you want to make sure that I hit?”

**Miles:** That’s right.

**Al:** He was also like, “You guys are keeping the big mystery, and so I want to make sure I’m getting all the… ” We’d say, “This is important. That’s important.”

**Miles:** He was amazingly collaborative in all stages, except when he was directing, when he got into his whole directing… He was different in terms of he got into…

**John:** I knew that from Big Fish. I was really curious what that was going to be like on the set, because on Big Fish, it’s like this garage door goes down in front of him.

**Miles:** Exactly.

**John:** He doesn’t want to have that conversation.

**Al:** There were a few days of a pre-shoot so the crew could get their feet. We realized on the first day, we’re like, “We gotta figure out… ” It was a little awkward. We went to him and said, “Look, we want to figure out a system so that we’re respectful of you.” He was like, “I’m glad you guys talked.” He said, “Let’s do it this way.” In the old days, we would just have one big, long tone meeting with the director, and they’d go off and shoot. Then what we started doing, I think it was on Shannara, is we would meet with the director on the weekends, because it’s a block. It’s actually two episodes you’re shooting.

**Miles:** There’s a long-

**Al:** It’s a long-

**Miles:** It’s like 35 days.

**Al:** To keep in your head. We’d go and meet with him and just go through the week’s work when it was a Sunday afternoon and there was no meter running.

**Miles:** They’ve now worked with the actors. Also, we’d sit there and say, “These are the actors’ strengths and weaknesses. This is the crew’s strengths and weaknesses,” just so they have a full picture of what we’re doing. Then we also talk about how we want the scenes shot. We usually have a specific way we want them shot and understanding the visual effects element or whatever it is. It’s making sure that’s communicated so it has a consistence. It’s all about consistency, so every episode feels like it’s the same vision rather than five different directors. That’s always the goal.

Each thing you do, I’m sure John would agree, you learn something new about the process. You never get there. It’s always like, “Oh my gosh.” This one was all about the camera operators, how important they were. It’s always a fascinating learning experience.

**John:** The most difficult people, the most dangerous people you’re going to meet in this business are the ones who’ve had some success and will never change from the way they’ve always classically done things. Those are the situations where you cannot convince them otherwise. The ship can be sinking, and they’re going to stick to their plan, because that’s what’s always worked for them.

**Al:** Exactly right. It’s so true. The other thing too, on this one specifically, is the other directors got all of the dailies. They got to watch all of Tim’s dailies, just to see his process.

**Miles:** [Crosstalk 01:01:59] to match the style.

**Al:** To match the style.

**John:** Great. You have an ongoing crew that’s going to help with everything else, but still, you want to make sure they’re making the same choice about how you’re coming into scenes.

**Al:** Exactly.

**John:** It’s not just about lenses. It’s really what the approach is.

**Miles:** Exactly.

**John:** Great. It’s time for our One Cool Things. Do you guys have things to recommend to our listeners?

**Al:** My One Cool Thing, because I have a one-track mind, I’m reading a book. It’s called The Way They Were, which is about the making of the movie The Way We Were. It is a fascinating look at the studio process in the ’70s. That movie is a total studio movie. It’s not an auteur movie.

**Miles:** Say what the movie is.

**Al:** The Way We Were.

**John:** The Way We Were.

**Al:** The Way We Were.

**John:** The Redford, Streisand movie.

**Al:** Redford, Streisand, Sydney Pollack.

**John:** I remember that there was a poster of that in our Stark classroom.

**Al:** Yes, there was, because Ray Stark, who was the benefactor, it was his movie. I always forget Art Murphy, who was the first head of the Stark Program, who used to review movies for Variety. He met Ray Stark when he wrote a review of The Way We Were, which he didn’t like. His first line of the review was, “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.” Anyway, it’s a fascinating book just looking at an actual studio movie getting made. It was rewritten by every top screenwriter in town in the ’70s. You had Sydney Pollack as the director, who was a classic studio prestige movie director. It’s a great read, because everybody talks.

**John:** The nice thing about a movie with that much time going past, no one has an ax to grind.

**Al:** Exactly.

**Miles:** Mine’s a little more practical, which is I always use a Moleskine notebook, which is lined, for just jotting down lines or observations or lists, just so it’s actually not just a random thing, so it feels special. I always keep it with me. I think it’s a really good writer’s tool, that you actually physically write stuff, not just note it down on your iPad or iPhone, so it really feels like you’re writing. I think that’s something that’s very useful and I’ve really come to love as a tool.

**John:** Let’s get very Moleskine-specific here. What you’re talking about is about six inches wide, eight inches tall?

**Miles:** Yeah. It’s the hardback small book.

**Al:** It feels like it’s a book.

**John:** Are you a both sides of the page or one side of the page?

**Miles:** I’m both sides.

**John:** You’re both sides of the page. Do you date the pages?

**Miles:** I don’t.

**John:** It’s just continuous going through it all. When you’re done with the notebook, what do you do with it?

**Miles:** I keep them in a stack.

**John:** Are they labeled on the spine, or how do you find them?

**Miles:** No. I got five of them. They’re all full.

**Al:** It’s like a serial killer book.

**Miles:** Each one’s a horrible memory of a different production. They’re sitting there like scars. They’re incredibly useful. I think that’s a really valuable tool, just the physicality of writing what you need to do. That’s my One Cool Thing.

**John:** Absolutely. I use the notebooks for actually taking notes, not just my to-do list kind of stuff, but for taking notes. I’ll find it’s really useful in meetings just to note who said a thing, and a lot with WGA stuff, who made a point, and so you can go back to it and remember that person was actually a smart person. I have found that being able to go back through and actually find my old note has been really, really useful.

**Miles:** I always do that with casting, when I’m looking at Zoom stuff. I can write all the people down, because sometimes you don’t get the person you want. Just having that physical book rather than just a piece of paper, you can go back to refer to. Even years later you can go back and say, “I like that kid,” or, “I like that actor. What was their name?” You’ve starred that person. It’s really a great tool that’s been lost. I think that’s something that’s great.

**John:** Yeah, because the casting sheets we always used to get were two or three sheets of paper stapled together. You don’t hold onto that. You might take little notes on it, but you’re not going to hold onto it for a while.

**Miles:** The person you like is the one you pick. There could be three other people that are actually pretty good. Also, you don’t necessarily get the first person you want. People can evolve. It’s really I think useful.

**John:** I remember Josh Holloway, who became Sawyer on Lost, came in for a pilot of mine. He was supposed to be playing this Alaska State Trooper. He’s the least Alaskan person you’re ever going to meet. I think I said to him in the room, “You’re not right for this, but you’re fantastic. You’re absolutely going to kill it.” I was right. Those are the kind of people you star and you remember and you keep-

**Miles:** Who did we have? Rachel McAdams came to see us.

**Al:** Rachel McAdams.

**John:** Wow.

**Miles:** For Lois Lane.

**Al:** Lois Lane. This was in Season 3 of Smallville. We didn’t get Lois until Season 4. We met with her, and she had just done a pilot for ABC.

**Miles:** She hadn’t got it, remember?

**Al:** Nancy Drew. Was it Nancy Drew?

**Miles:** She was up for Nancy Drew and she hadn’t got it. We said, “You know what? That’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you, because you’re going to be a movie star. Don’t worry about it.”

**Al:** You said, “This has been a great meeting. A year from now, you will not be here.”

**John:** I’m sure you’ve had this experience where the network of the studio will have an actor they absolutely love, and they’ll send them to you, and you’re like, “I don’t understand what you see in this person.”

**Al:** A lot.

**Miles:** A lot.

**Al:** We got a lot of that from The WB.

**Miles:** We’ve put people in the show as well. I won’t mention names. It’s like, “Oh my goodness, what were we thinking?” We want to play ball. Whatever happens happens. We don’t really now take that pressure, do we?

**Al:** No. Also, shows are different. Obviously, ’22, you had a lot of guest stars. You had a lot of those, more opportunities.

**John:** We’ve all been there. My One Cool Thing is incredibly self-serving. For Scriptnotes, we have our Premium subscriptions where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record. People can sign up for that scriptnotes.net. Also, scriptnotes.net, you can click on the Gifts tab, and you can buy a $29 gift pass for Scriptnotes Premium for six months or $49 for a year. You might want to give that as a gift.

Actually, I think the more clever thing to do, as many of our listeners have done, is… You know how you always have that parent or that grandparent that’s like, “I want to get you something for Christmas. I don’t know what to get you,” and you’re like, “I have no idea what to get me.” Ask them to get you a Scriptnotes Premium subscription, because you’ll actually learn something about screenwriting. They’ll feel happy that they got you something that’s going to advance your career. You’ll be happy because you’ll get to hear all the Bonus Segments and Megana laughing at the things we’re saying in the background. If you would like a gift subscription to Scriptnotes or just general Scriptnotes Premium, scriptnotes.net, and there’s a Gifts tab at the top. Al and Miles, thank you so much for a fun show.

**Miles:** Thank you.

**Al:** Thank you. It was great.

**Miles:** Great.

**John:** It was really great. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Adam Locke Norton. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions, Craig is no longer on Twitter, I’m still @johnaugust for the moment. Are you guys on Twitter or any of the social medias?

**Al:** Not on Twitter, no, on Instagram.

**John:** We’re going to probably take this out of the outline, because no one’s on Twitter anymore. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back-episodes, the Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on film school. Al and Miles, thank you so much.

**Al:** Thank you.

**Miles:** Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** The three of us met in film school. I applied to the Stark Program coming from Iowa. I knew nothing about the film industry. I knew what I’d read in Premiere magazine, and that was it.

**Miles:** Premiere magazine.

**John:** I miss Premiere magazines.

**Miles:** I know.

**Al:** Me too.

**John:** Oh my god, it was so good. We all showed up here. We knew nothing, and we came. This was an era before the internet. One of the reasons why I loved USC film school was it had this giant script library. I remember checking out scripts in the library and learning so much. [inaudible 01:09:55] had her own script library. You could check out two a week. It was an invaluable resource. Now that’s just the internet. Any script you ever want to read, it’s there.

Let’s think about recommendations for people who are thinking about film school, pros and cons, who should, who should not be thinking about it. Would the three of us go to film school in 2022 if we were similarly situated? Would you, Al?

**Al:** I probably would. We all have now college-age or almost college-age kids. I don’t think I’d go to film school undergrad.

**John:** I wouldn’t either.

**Al:** I think that’s kind of a waste. I think that was great about our program was it was 25 students. They were all type-A personalities. It was like a reality show before reality shows. I think a lot of these schools cater to the graduate students. I certainly felt like we got all of the information, equipment, everything we needed. It did open doors. We all had internships. We were able to really learn the business. I only wanted to go to film school in Los Angeles. I only applied to USC and I applied to UCLA, both to the producers’ programs, and got into USC, thank god. That really was the entrée in, because we were all coming up together. None of us knew anybody.

**Miles:** Or anything.

**Al:** Or anything, because like you said, it was pre-internet. I would still do it again.

**John:** Miles, would you do it again in 2022?

**Miles:** I would a hundred percent do it again. I would be absolutely nowhere without that experience at film school in terms of a career. It was really what launched us totally, utterly. We still have friends who employ us every now and again from that experience.

For me, it was literally a kid in the UK, “How do I get to Hollywood?” because I had no interest in making films in the UK, because that sensibility was not mine. It was a way to come to America, which was a huge deal as an international student. That was great. I always loved Hollywood movies, so being in LA, that to me was like… It makes sense to come to LA, because that really is still the center of this business. I know there are great film schools all over America and all over the world. I always wanted to make Hollywood movies and be here, so for me it made total sense.

Then I also didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do within the business. Our program in particular was like a grab bag of writing, directing, producing, all of it. I think looking back now, I would like to have directed a lot more. Would I like to have gone to a directors’ program? Probably. That’s what I should’ve done. I’m not complaining about my writing career. It’s an interesting thing.

What I didn’t realize before I came to film school and what I learned very quickly at film school was writing is the essential element of this business. Without a script, without an idea that is executed well, there’s nothing. Writers really are kings. I think that’s amazing that we’re still so undervalued and underappreciated and our lives are hell most of the time. It’s still true. That’s still the lesson I think I learned, which is a revelation when I came, because I always thought the director was everything. Oh my god.

You read the scripts, as John says, from the film library, and you see everything is in the script. You read a great script for everything. There it is, written down, interpreted and executed by the director, but it actually comes from the mind and imagination of the writer.

**Al:** It’s funny, I thought that was interesting. The Oscars I think a couple years ago put the page all the description and answered the question, which we all get, “Do you guys just write the dialog, or do the actors just make that up?” No, they do not.

**Miles:** Exactly. It’s, “What do you guys do?” It’s like, you work it all out.

**John:** Miles, would you go to undergrad for film school?

**Miles:** I wouldn’t, no.

**John:** I agree with you both. I don’t think undergrad film school makes a lot of sense. I think if someone who is an 18-year-old is super into films, great. Go get a liberal arts degree in something else that you also really enjoy. Makes film on the side. Do a bunch of stuff. That should be your complete hobby is making films and learning about films, but it doesn’t have to be your main focus of those four years. Maybe save some money in those first four years. Go someplace that’s not super expensive.

If you really want to go to film school, go to film school for grad school, because that is where you’re going to meet a group of people who are trying to enter into this business at the same time, because as much as I learned in my two years of Stark, it was my classmates.

**Al:** Totally.

**John:** 100%. It was you guys being successful and incredibly competitive at the start. It was all of the drama and all that stuff. It was really helpful.

**Miles:** Of course. Absolutely.

**John:** Of our 25 students, 12 or more are major players in the industry now, because we all rose up together. You guys read my stuff. I read your stuff. Finding a core group of people was essential. I could not have this career without it.

**Miles:** That’s right.

**Al:** Agreed.

**Miles:** It is always a class of 25. 12 of us have been very successful. I feel bad for the others, because it’s a big financial commitment. Nowadays, obviously, you can sit in a room and make amazing stuff on your computer. You have an iPhone, which is incredible. If you want to be a director, there’s no excuse. You can go make a movie tomorrow, five minutes or an hour. Whatever you want to do, you can… The technology is there, and it’s dirt cheap. That’s a difference from our period. You can put it online. It can go viral. It’s amazing what people do. The guy Wes Ball, who did Maze Runner, it’s all from his thing he did in his computer at home in his basement. It’s huge opportunity. I think film school is great in many ways, but that networking element for us was critical.

**John:** I want to circle back to something you said, Miles, because you said as a person coming from the UK. Our program that we went through is now mostly international students. If you are a person who wants to get to Los Angeles, who wants to get to America just to learn about doing stuff, getting into a college is a way to get yourself into the US. You wouldn’t have been able to get a work visa to come here and do stuff.

**Miles:** No, it’s impossible. It wasn’t my motivation for coming, but in terms of coming to Hollywood, it was like, “Oh my god.” I couldn’t believe I got in, for one thing. It was a dream come true to come here to the epicenter of the movie business. It was a big deal.

**Megana:** Would you choose to do a producing program again?

**John:** It was the right choice for me because I didn’t know anything about anything. I think I imagine myself as a 22-year-old in 2022 who has listened to Scriptnotes and knows that I want to be a writer, maybe I would’ve done that. I may have done a more true production program. I’m sometimes skeptical of the pure writing programs in that it’s a lot of theory and you may not actually get a lot out of it. The nice thing about the program we were in or a production program is that you’re around people who are making stuff and that you’re seeing, “Okay, from what I just wrote here, this is the scene that actually come out.” You get [inaudible 01:16:55] a lot more.

**Al:** Also, I think what the Stark Program was was incredibly practical. Very few of our classes were actually at USC. They were out at Sony. They were at lawyers’ offices. They were at different things. You were just immersed in it right away.

**Miles:** From what John said, a lot of writing programs are navel gazing, over-intellectualized. That’s great if you want to make arthouse movies, but if you want to make commercial Hollywood movies or TV shows, that’s not a great place to start. You’re always going to be resisting, like, “This is my personal story.” It’s like, “That’s great, but that’s not going to be a global sensation or it’s not going to travel. It’s a small movie.” I think for us, USC was about commercial, like Spielberg, George Lucas. That was the goal, wasn’t it?

**Al:** Yeah.

**John:** The other crucial thing people need to remember is that unlike law school or medical school, how you’re doing in your classes does not matter at all. I have no idea what grades I got. I’m sure I did great, but I don’t care.

**Miles:** Remember the documentary class?

**John:** Oh yeah. Classically, people who don’t know the stories, we had this documentary class. Mitchell Block I think was who was teaching it.

**Miles:** Exactly.

**John:** He was so great and so dedicated about how you make documentaries, really about how you raise money to make documentaries. I remember one night he was talking through about PBS grants and how you can get up to $6,000 from PBS for this kind of thing and talking about how you cobble it together. Net to me, our friend Jen, her cellphone goes off. You should not have your cellphone in a classroom. Her cellphone goes off. She runs out into the hall. She comes back, she says, “Al and Miles just sold their script for a million dollars.” Poor Mitchell Block then had to go back to saying how you could get $9,000 from this other little-

**Miles:** Remember he had a great thing about, “You can become your own church and get a grant.”

**Al:** That’s right.

**Miles:** It was like, what are you talking about?

**Al:** I know.

**Miles:** You can’t be serious. Oh my god.

**Al:** So funny.

**John:** The other thing which I would say was really helpful that I got out of Stark, which I would never have really learned otherwise, is that budgeting and scheduling class. It was a drag. I did not enjoy doing it. The fact I can actually read a budget and a schedule and understand what those choices are how to make them… I don’t ever want to do that again, but I can actually understand. I would’ve had a hard time learning how that all worked if I hadn’t had a class that really just walked me through the whole thing.

**Miles:** That gave us a global view of everything, didn’t it?

**John:** Yes.

**Miles:** In terms of the TV thing and the legal element, which is really useful in terms of contracts. It was really a great thing. I think the issue for many people though is just owning what you want to do. Sometimes you don’t know it. I want to be a writer is a hard thing for someone to say and admit, because people will think you’re… Like, “Really?” How do you prove that? It’s like I think declaring you want to be a director. Then you’ve gotta direct and do something, which you can do on an iPhone. If you want to be a writer, you’ve gotta write. It’s not talking about writing. You’ve actually gotta do it. I think that’s something that is difficult for people. I understand why it’s difficult, because it’s really a declaration of your life, a life choice. It’s hard.

**John:** Let’s think through some of the below-the-line skills as well. If you want to be an editor, should you go to film school, if you want to be a cinematographer? I’d say maybe. The pros of it is you’re going to be taught by people who actually have some theory behind stuff, which is great. You may make relationships with people who will actually make a lot of movies down the road too. That could be great. You could DP on their things while they’re in film school, and they keep you around. There are people who have been building whole careers out of that. Yet that’s still not the same kind of practical experience you’d get just working on a set. Being a PA might teach you more about what that all is than [crosstalk 01:20:37].

**Miles:** I agree. The best experience is practical. There’s also a wealth of production now. I think if I were in the UK right now, this is the dream period. There’s so much production in the UK. It’s like, why to go film school? You can work on a Marvel movie or a Star Wars show. It’s about persistence. It’s about the hustle. That’s a great lesson.

I love this lesson from film school. We had this really aggressive producing instructor. He was an old-school Hollywood. He drove this huge Mercedes. He came to his class and said, “I was just pulled over in Beverly Hills speeding to this class. It was the best lesson I’m going to teach you right now about producing, which is beg. When the cop pulled me over, I said, ‘I’m going to get out of this ticket. You know how I’m going to do it? Beg.’ That’s what Hollywood’s about. You beg until they say yes.”

**Al:** Is this Jack Brodsky?

**Miles:** Yeah, Jack. He said, “Guess what? I got no ticket. I bluffed my way out of it, and no ticket.” It’s like, oh my god, that is such the Hollywood hustle.

**Al:** It is true, yeah, because that’s the thing sometimes I think writers forget is that you are an entrepreneur. You do have to really generate your own material. Again, you can change the perception of you with one script. It’s always that. You can’t wait for people to hire you or put you on staff or rely on agents or managers. You really do have to do it yourself. Then the rest comes from that.

**John:** Great. Thanks.

**Al:** Thank you.

**Miles:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Al Gough](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0332184/) on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/goughalfred/?hl=en)
* [Miles Millar](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587692/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/milesmillar)
* [Wednesday on Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/81231974)
* [The Way They Were](https://www.amazon.com/Way-They-Were-Battles-Hollywood/dp/0806542322/ref=asc_df_0806542322/) book about the movie The Way We Were
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* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

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