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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/loglines-are-for-other-people).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 469 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show when two screenwriters uncover provocative research on loglines they must confront an industry determined to keep them silent.

**Craig:** I’d buy that.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a good logline. Plus, we’ll have questions and answers about lawyers, options, and ASL.

**Craig:** And in our bonus segment for Premium members, all of whose money goes to you, we will discuss gaming consoles. Oh, I’m so excited about that bonus segment.

**John:** Yeah. Because I know nothing and you’re going to teach me everything I need to know about gaming consoles and the next generation of gaming consoles.

**Craig:** Joy.

**John:** But there’s even more. So, since Craig missed out on last week’s pitch versus spec episode we’re going to do a bonus episode of extra listener dilemmas that were sent in because we got like 50 of these in and so this is a backlog here. So, if you’re a premium subscriber look for a bonus episode that’s going to drop in your feed that has more of those pitch versus spec dilemmas.

**Craig:** That’s great. We will sort through all of them.

**John:** Yup. Craig, what a week. So 10:42am on Monday morning I got a text from our friend Aline Brosh McKenna. And she asked, “Is CAA a done deal or does WGA still have to agree? I am confused?” And I was really confused because I had no idea what Aline was talking about.

**Craig:** And then you saw it. Yes.

**John:** Get us up to speed, Craig.

**Craig:** You know how it goes. The way I got engaged was I called all of my friends and I said I’m getting married to Melissa. And then later that day I told her. [laughs] No, that’s not how it works. At all.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No. Now, there was some good news sort of baked into this.

**John:** 100 percent. But let’s go through how it actually sort of broke and then we can talk about what the good news is. Because I think there is good news underneath this overall. So, CAA sent a letter to its staff that also went out to the trades and we can figure out what the order of that was, but in the letter it said, “Today we signed the same deal the WGA made with ICM several weeks ago. We delivered the signed agreement to the WGA and we assume it will be circulated to the appropriate members of the negotiating committee as well as the membership shortly.”

So it sounds like, oh, so they signed the ICM deal. And what it turned out is that they literally just changed ICM to CAA and sent that through, but they also put other stuff in there, too. So it says there, “There’s one change we have provided that we think the WGA will be able to agree to. With regard to our investment in the affiliated production company, Wiip, we are providing for a commercially practical time to come into compliance with the 20 percent ownership limitation contained in the agreement. We are unequivocally committed to achieving compliance.”

So basically they added one thing to that deal they signed.

**Craig:** Yes. That’s right. And they did so unilaterally. Now, in looking at it, I mean, the good news of course is that the stuff that we were generally arguing about and have been arguing about for well over a year they’ve agreed to. They are going to I think once ICM and UTA signed on and essentially said we’re out of the packaging business CAA understood that the packaging business was over. It was going to end anyway. That was the conventional wisdom. My guess is that, you know, maybe in five years there wasn’t going to be much in the way of packaging. But, OK, we get it done quicker and that’s fine. This is a good thing. Because going all the way back to our very first episode on this topic with Chris Keyser it’s pretty clear that you and I and Chris Keyser were in violent agreement that packaging is terrible.

So, it’s good that that is over. And also they are agreeing to reduce their ownership of their affiliated production company down to this 20 percent ceiling. Now, this may have been somewhat surprising even to people inside the Writers Guild, I don’t know, because what CAA didn’t do is say we’re will to get down but we want to see if we can make that ceiling go a little higher. Because that percentage of ownership had kind of crept up from zero to five to ten to 20. But they said, no, 20 is good.

What they are asking for also I’ve got to be honest seems a bit reasonable which is to say we can’t just do that tomorrow because it involves divestment of a corporation. So, can we come up with a timeframe for that that seems reasonable? Now, whatever they’ve proposed, I don’t know what their timeframe is. There’s a – what is it, a year and a half timeframe for–?

**John:** The sunset on packaging, yeah.

**Craig:** So perhaps it’s a similar kind of thing. I don’t know. But some sort of timeframe makes sense. So what they’re saying is good. And what they asked for, at least as far as I could tell, seemed fairly reasonable. The way in which they did it – why did they do it this way? I have theories.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I have theories.

**John:** So there really are two things to talk through. Why did they do it this way? Let’s have that as one topic. And then we’ll talk about the getting down to 20% and sort of like what is actually reasonable and what the concerns are about getting down to 20%. So let’s first talk about why they did it this way. I don’t genuinely know why they did it this way. And I’ve asked a bunch of people and there’s a lot of different theories. I don’t know that we can know. Craig, what’s your hunch on why they sent out this letter/press release without actually engaging the WGA?

**Craig:** I think that after ICM and UTA signed the deal the problem for CAA and WME was that it was a problem of face-saving. I mean, if you’re one of those organizations you can see where this is all going. You know how it has to end. What you don’t want to be is the person who then just says, “Well, OK, I will l just eat the sandwich everybody else made. You want to feel like you are somehow in control of it, driving it, in charge of it. And I suspect that whatever the communication was between the union and CAA it was not at a level that could have precluded something like this. So I think CAA decided we are going to announce this as if we had full choice in this matter. It’s actually quite savvy in that regard I think. Because otherwise you just kind of get stuck with it. And then one day you just passively agree to it.

So it seems like a very face-saving kind of thing. It sort of seems like, no, no, no, you’re not cutting my finger off. I’ve cut my own finger off. I didn’t want this finger.

Now, I’m happy about it. I think that this is the right thing to do. I’m so frustrated with the length of the process, obviously. But it’s not over yet. So, we do have to follow through now and get this done. I don’t see anything structurally based on what has happened here that would stand in the way unless this was somehow down in bad faith. I don’t think it was, but that’s just a hunch.

**John:** Yeah. So, the WGA did respond after this thing went out. And I think the WGA sort came forward saying we were surprised as anybody that they did this thing, because CAA sent a statement to the press and communicated with former clients saying they signed this franchise deal. This is not accurate. CAA has proposed changes as we’ve talked through. The WGA will assess CAA’s offer but not through the press. And basically CAA is unfranchised. Working Rule 23 is still in effect basically saying you can’t sign with CAA and so don’t think that you can magically today sign with CAA.

Also within that email the WGA sent out saying like, yeah, it is good news that they basically just agreed to the ICM deal, which is fantastic. The remaining issue, though, which is a good segue to this is how do you get down to 20% and do you let CAA sign writers again with this promise that they’ll get down to the 20%? Because how do you actually hold them to that promise? And who determines what is a commercially practical time to do that? What are the safeguards? Because one of the things, you know, you and I both encountered as the guild negotiates things is you have to get things in writing that are enforceable. Because as contracts have been negotiated if things are just verbal agreements or things are sort of vague, vague always hurts us.

And so I’m going to be really curious to see how do we get to a place where it’s clearly codified what this timeline would be because if it’s not clearly codified I also have the alternative perspective of just like, OK, well sell down the 20% and then you can sign your clients again. So, what do you think? What makes you feel confident that they will really get down to 20%?

**Craig:** I have the same confidence in that that I have that UTA will cease packaging when the packaging sunset period is over. I don’t see anything in the agreement that is particularly ironclad about that other than trust. You know, so if UTA and ICM have said that they will stop packaging on this date, I presume they will stop packaging on that date. And if they don’t then you have to, you know, pull the cord again and everybody at UTA has to fire their agent there again. Or at ICM. And it’s the same thing with CAA. Pick a date and if it’s not done by then per some sort of – you know, obviously you want some kind of independent what do they call those people, accountants or something? Forensic? I don’t know. Whoever decides how much a company owns–

**John:** An auditor.

**Craig:** Yeah. An auditor. Right. So some auditor will at that date look at it and go, yeah, they did it, or no, they didn’t. And then the WGA – but I don’t see the difference. I mean, is there a reason that the guild is more nervous about faith in that as opposed to faith in the sunset of the packaging?

**John:** That’s a good question. I think – let’s take a look at it. Sort of where is the information and how do we find out the information about ownership of the company versus involvement in a packaging deal. Yeah, I guess you do need some outside way to assess both situations. And so they’re similar in that way.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would be infuriated – so my normal position is just anger. But that’s I wake up angry. That’s no big deal. But I would be infuriated if CAA agreed to all of these things and said that they would reduce down to 20% and would be willing to do so in some reasonable amount of time a la the packaging sunset. Because, I mean, changing the ownership of a company is a fairly complicated thing to do.

**John:** No, TikTok, simple.

**Craig:** You just need the president to write a thing. If the guild said, yeah, well come back in two years when it’s done and then you can have your clients back I would be infuriated. And that would seem unfair and punitive. Like a singling out. I don’t think we want to be in that business personally.

**John:** And you need a date and you also need really clearly defined terms of what ownership means. And so there can’t be hanky-panky in terms of, oh, it’s a shell company that does all this crazy stuff. That’s why I do feel like you need some sort of outside auditor who is looking at this thing and really setting–

**Craig:** Well can I ask you – I’m going to flip the question around a little bit. We at the union have had a year and a half to be thinking about this. This is a term that we’ve asked for since the beginning. Do we not have already a kind of written up definition of how that would work since it’s a term that we’ve been asking for all this time?

**John:** We do have very specific language in terms of what we’re looking for.

**Craig:** Great. Terrific. Well, hopefully that works.

**John:** But also I think in the guild communications it has been very clear that it’s not sort of the guild’s responsibility to tell you how to wind down this thing. So the actual process of how you’re going from where you are is kind of [unintelligible] to the state you need to be at. That’s not our job to sort of solve your problems.

**Craig:** Seems pretty simple to me. But I’m merely a caveman.

**John:** So it feels like it’s up to the people sitting around tables figuring all that stuff out now.

**Craig:** And this would be – I think people are desperate for some reclamation of normalcy in their lives. A lot of us, I include myself, were CAA clients who would like to return. It’s not so much that we have this great fondness for the building or the corporation, but rather we have individual longstanding year-long, decades-long relationships with our individual agents that we want to return to. So, this is something that a lot of people would just like to have back, or at least would love the choice to have their agent back. And the same goes for all of the people represented by WME. I have no idea what the deal is with WME at this point. I assume that they are on the same track. I don’t know how they couldn’t be because this is the track. There’s one track.

**John:** One track.

**Craig:** There’s one track.

**John:** Let’s do some follow up. So last week in the episode you missed we have a listener named Niko. He pitched an idea for a series and then the day the episode dropped we got some follow up from another listener. So, let me play Niko’s follow up.

**Niko:** Hi John and Craig. It’s Niko Jacques, the Weezer guy from last week. Thanks for having me back on the show to follow up. Shortly after Episode 468 aired screenwriter Ian Sobel linked a Deadline article from August 2014 with the then Breaking News that Rivers and Psych creator Steve Franks sold a pilot to Fox called Detour. It set up a fictionalized account of Rivers’ return to college via character insert with a different name. It was completely shot but was never picked up by Fox.

It’s an unfortunate but common occurrence in the TV world. This actually bodes well for my idea because it shows Rivers’ interest and openness to a depiction of that part of his life. And the description of the pilot is so different from what I’m getting out of the real life story.

Detour’s punny title alone indicates a tone closer to Community, while I’m going for something like The Social Network meets 8 ½. Key differences are that my spec isn’t serialized like Detour. I’m writing to feature the character, Rivers Cuomo, himself. And I want to portray his creative process that led to the abandoning of his ambitious but ill-fated rock opera written on dining hall napkins. You can say it’s a bit different.

I’ve concluded that I’m going to finish it on spec and keep it as a writing sample. Although the rights ultimately belong to Rivers and Fox you guys have made it abundantly clear that I have a right to tell this story and I will. Odds are slim to none that my idea’s fate is any better than Detour’s, but I’m going to write a series that I’d like to see. That is why we write after all. Hashtag Weeze Writing. Thank you.

**John:** All right. So, Craig, I don’t know that you actually listened to last week’s episode.

**Craig:** You know I didn’t.

**John:** So, Niko’s pitch was for something that both Ryan and I really, really loved. So this is the front man for Weezer. He goes back to college to finish college. And so he’s already a rock star but he’s living in dorms again and sort of what that life is like. And so Niko was asking is this a thing that he should write as a spec or is this a thing that he should try to pitch. And so we said spec the hell out of this unless you actually have Rivers Cuomo there with you to go out and do that pitch.

So, what I love about this is he got some real time follow up that like, oh, that is a good idea. They actually already pitched that idea. It was actually already shot as a pilot. And what I like about Niko’s reaction is like, OK, yeah, that’s great. Even if this thing can’t sell I think it’s something that is going to show my writing well and can be a really good sample.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, this is a song that we’ve been singing for god knows – how long have we been doing this, like in years?

**John:** A zillion years.

**Craig:** A zillion years. So somewhere around year 50 of a zillion we started saying this and I think it is still true, you are writing to be noticed. You are writing to attract interest in you as a writer. It is not necessarily going to work the way it used to back in the day where it is the writing itself that will be bought and made. It sometimes is. And I would also say that if it’s so good, if it’s so undeniably brilliant, then they’ll be like, “We’ve got to go figure out how to get the rights and work this out.” But really it is about the writing and you. And a great calling card for yourself. So it makes total sense.

And certainly it helps that you know going in that this is something I’m not confused about. I know how this functions.

**John:** Absolutely. And another thing we brought up is that this feels like the thing that if the good version of this script ends up on the Black List at the end of the year because people like it a lot, there’s a long tradition of biopics where you don’t have the underlying rights showing up on the Black List and getting passed around. So there was a Matt Drudge script. There’s a Madonna script. There’s a history of this. So this feels like it’s part of that trend. I say go for it Niko.

**Craig:** I mean, you can write a biopic about anybody without any rights as long as you stick to what is public knowledge, public information. You want to go a little further than that then, yeah, you could run into trouble. And of course the other issue is you just got to watch out for defamation and so on and so forth.

But as we have also said somewhere around year 70 of a zillion if there’s any kind of legal ambiguity and a studio or network or streamer wants to make it, they will assume that risk. As long as you’ve disclosed it to them clearly they’ll make a legal judgment and then it will be their issue because they will be the writer of record. They will be the author.

**John:** Speaking of biopics and Madonna, this last week it was also announced that Diablo Cody is writing a Madonna biopic that Madonna herself will direct. I’m absolutely fascinated. Diablo Cody is–

**Craig:** I just want to chart my reaction to this. If there were a little line chart as you spoke, so on the bottom axis is time and the top axis is interest level, my interest level with Diablo Cody it went up, is writing a biopic, up, of Madonna, way up, that Madonna is directing, straight down.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a challenging combination of things. And Amy Pascal is producing it. So, a very talented producer. A lot of complicated things all together and we’ll see how it goes. I am absolutely fascinated to see what’s going to become of this because Madonna’s life and her rise is so fascinating and spectacular and we were kids during it, so we got to sort of see the whole thing happen. And it does feel very resonant to a social media star of today. I think it could be fantastic.

So, the difference though between the Black List script of Madonna where she didn’t sign on to it and this one is that the person can get all the music rights. Access to things in Madonna’s life that would not be public knowledge and you could just do things you couldn’t otherwise do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so it’s going to be great to see. And I mean Diablo Cody is such a great writer. We just watched Juno – my daughter wanted to watch Juno this last week and we watched it again. And it’s just so smartly done. And so smartly written. I’m fascinated to see what Diablo can do to a biopic story like this.

**Craig:** Yeah, you’ve got a big plus and a big minus. The big plus is that like you say you have access to all of this stuff of Madonna’s life that you wouldn’t otherwise get from public record. The downside is it will all be filtered through Madonna. So, A, who knows if she’s going to be – I don’t know what a version of her own life. We are all somewhat fabulous when it comes to ourselves. But also it can, you know, the trick is how do you keep somebody from making their own hagiography and just essentially making a movie about how they’re great.

So I’ve never seen, I don’t think, a good – anything like this that’s good that is directed by and controlled by the actual subject of it. That is fascinating.

**John:** Yeah. The closest is probably the Queen, the Freddie Mercury biopic this last year, because Queen actually had a lot of control over it. But they weren’t directing it.

**Craig:** OK. That’s right. But they weren’t directing it. That’s fascinating.

**John:** And also Elton John had a lot of control over Rocket Man. And that–

**Craig:** Yup. But wasn’t directing it.

**John:** Was not directing it. And so that definitely is a thing. So, you’ve got to balance out the Amy Pascal/Diablo Cody factors and Madonna directing it. Challenging. Really challenging.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, well, we’ll see how it goes.

**John:** I want to see the documentary behind the scenes. That would be just as fascinating.

**Craig:** That would be good. And if Diablo would direct that, please kindly. Thank you. That would be amazing.

**John:** That would be so, so good. All right, big topic for this week is loglines. And so loglines are a thing we’ve kind of avoided talking about on the show for 468 episodes because they’re just not that interesting to us and they’re not a thing that screenwriters actually write. So, I did a blog post this last week about loglines and basically defined them. So loglines are the one or two sentence description of a story or a screenplay. And the very classic form is when inciting incident occurs the hero must face a challenge against this antagonistic force for the stakes. That’s a really classic sort of like pattern to what loglines are.

They’re a thing that I wrote a ton when I was a reader. So that first page of coverage there’s just a logline there that just describes what it is. It’s like a TV guide sort of description of things. Once I became a professional screenwriter I never wrote them again.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But aspiring screenwriters often write in saying like, hey, talk about loglines or what’s a good logline.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** And it’s like I don’t know. I don’t write those things.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** But aspiring screenwriters are writing them I think because they are applying for competitions or they are emailing producers or potential managers and they’re supposed to put in these one sentence loglines for things. So I thought we’d actually talk through what loglines are and what they aren’t.

**Craig:** Yeah. I had to sort of write one recently. When we were putting the press release for The Last of Us HBO said can you – we’ll take a stab at it, but what’s your version of how we actually describe this. Without saying logline they were basically saying what’s the logline of this thing. I mean, the nice thing is when you’re doing it for a press release you don’t have to structure it in this very formal way. Because you’re right. There’s something so weirdly concrete about how loglines have functioned. When blank…or blah-blah-blah-blah. That’s kind of the weird – it’s like the way newscasters speak in that strange cadence. Loglines have their own cadence. They are artificial. And they’re essentially nonsense.

For some bizarre reason the kind of thumbnail sketch summary that people probably filled into a log as if to say we have received–

**John:** Oh it really was a log.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was just like we have received this about this. People now think that that somehow is going to determine whether somebody reads something or not. I think we probably are beyond that at this point. Loglines are stupid. In fact, the better the logline the worse I suspect the script will be.

**John:** So, getting back to this idea that loglines were literally written down into a thing, as I was going back through my stuff to figure out what loglines did I write I have these spreadsheets of the coverage I did. And so it was a database that would print the title page but also can just show it as a spreadsheet. And so I just have lists of these loglines for different things.

And so this was the first one I think I ever wrote. Which is when a prize-winning journalist makes up a source she pays an ex-con to be her supposed poet laureate. That was for a script called Pulitzer Prize by Sam Hamm who wrote Batman.

**Craig:** Sam Hamm.

**John:** So that was a piece of coverage I wrote for Laura Ziskin way back in the day when she was teaching one of my first screenwriting classes. That logline which is a very classically structured logline, when hero and antagonist situation. I don’t want to completely dismiss it because it gives you some sense of what it’s about. But it’s not story. It’s not a pitch. It’s basically just like an arrow pointing towards there’s a story here somewhere without any details, without any specifics really. It’s pointing towards a general story area. And that’s really all a logline can do.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not sure why everybody gets so worked up over it. Well, the same reason I think they get worked up over query letters. It’s all very out of date.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We live in a time where the way we transmit media information to each other is faster, it is plastic, meaning it changes constantly. And somehow people who are aspiring to be screenwriters insist on obsessing over these methods that date back to mimeographs. And it makes no sense. And I can only presume it is because a lot of the people that are doing this have learned to do it from people who did it that way once or who just keep passing this along as received wisdom when it’s no longer really a thing. If I were writing a spec script today I would not write a logline at all. I would make a trailer. And it wouldn’t even have to be a trailer of like I’m going out with my phone and I’m showing fake explosions. Maybe it’s just text. Maybe it’s a single scene with somebody reading it. I would just try and be creative. And then make people be interested.

And then just say, here, read the first ten pages now. If I can get you to read ten pages that’s so much better than you reading a logline I can’t even explain.

**John:** Absolutely. Because it’s the thing itself.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You’re able to tell does this person actually have writing talent. Can this person tell a story on the page?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Visual communication ability. All those things which are so crucial a logline doesn’t do. And so I would say like as you are trying to get staffed on a TV show the producers aren’t looking through your loglines. They’re looking through can this person write.

And so while – and people are going to write in saying like, oh, the logline was super important for me signing my manager, all that stuff. So I do want to talk about loglines in the sense that they may be a necessary evil for some people in certain circumstances. But they’re not the real thing. Professional writers aren’t writing query letters.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** They’re not writing loglines. It’s just not a thing you’re going to do after this first stage, so maybe don’t stress out so much about it because it’s not – just because it’s a thing you’re doing right now doesn’t mean it’s actually the thing itself.

**Craig:** That’s right. And don’t be afraid to be brash, to be ambitious, to be meta, to be sneaky about it. Because your logline if you are writing a traditional longline, well, it is competing against every other molecule of logline water in the ocean. And I don’t know how it could possibly stand up. I legitimately don’t understand how any of these loglines rise above any other since they are essentially empty advertisements for some reductive version of a story.

So maybe there’s – what’s the anti-logline? What’s a weird logline? I’m going to give you three words and you’re going to have to read for the rest. Be creative. I mean, that’s what people are looking for. Are they not? I assume so.

**John:** So I’m thinking back to last week’s episode, let’s talk about Niko’s pitch for – it wasn’t even really a pitch, but Weezer front man goes back to college. And that could be a logline. There’s a logline version of that. That’s a good idea. And so there is something about some ideas synthesize down to say like oh that is intriguing, I see what that is, I’d be curious to read that. I don’t want to go so far to say if you cannot summarize your story down to one or two sentences that you have a problem. I don’t think that’s actually true. Many of the things I’ve written don’t summarize down to one or two sentences especially well.

But there are certain, especially high concept ideas, that are hooky in one sentence because – where the premise is essentially why you would read this thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, this is the Sushi Nozawa method. So here in Los Angeles there’s a group of restaurants, Chef Nozawa. If you like it it’s delicious. And he popularized a kind of Omakase where it’s just called Trust Me. That’s what it’s called. Trust me.

Now, at the time that Trust Me came along menus in Los Angeles were turning into small novels. Novellas. With paragraphs describing every freaking ingredient. And it was so refreshing to not only not have that, but to not even have a choice. Hey, trust me. Sit down and trust me. You’ll get food and then you’ll go home and you’ll be happy. And that may be your best move on certain loglines. You can just say this is a story of Coal Country. Trust me, you’re going to want to read this. That’s a better logline to me than when a down on his luck union laborer finds that the mine has closed he needs to raise money to save his blah-blah-blah before such-and-such and the blah-de-dah.

Ugh. God. Get me my noose. I need to end it. I do not want to read anymore.

**John:** Let’s talk about the other use of loglines which is really the situation you’re describing which is you have to announce something in the trades. You have to basically publically sort of say this is a movie about this. And Keith Calder and other previous guests on Twitter were talking about, oh yeah, it’s totally the thing the producer is doing at 10pm the night before the press release goes out is trying to hammer out some logline for what the thing is. And I’ve definitely encountered that myself.

So it’s a tough thing because you’re trying to describe a future movie in a way that is interesting and exciting and makes it clear why you’re doing this thing without giving away crucial points, crucial details. It’s tough. And you’re trying to finesse things. And everyone has opinions. It’s hard to find what that is.

What was your process in terms of figuring out the essentially logline for Last of Us when that announcement went out?

**Craig:** First of all, it’s a good thing for the writers to be involved in this. I always tense up a little bit when I hear that it’s the producer, the non-writing producer doing this late at night. I just want to go just let the writer do the words. You certainly can have input. That’s the nice thing about in television you are the producer. So I’m looking online at the Hollywood Reporter. This is the paragraph that includes – I think what they did is they rolled the logline-ish that I wrote along with HBO into this paragraph. So it says, “Sony and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us which bowed in 2013 garnered critical praise for its engrossing tale of the post-apocalypse centering on the relationship between Joel, a smuggler in this new world, and Ellie, a teenager who may be key to a cure for a deadly pandemic.” Then I think they switch over to what we did, “Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle the 14-year-old girl out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey as they traverse the United States and depend on each other for survival.” And mostly I think what I was concerned about was making sure the word heartbreaking was in there. Because I don’t care about the rest of it. The rest of it sounds awful. I’m going to be honest with you. Like if I’m reading this and I’m like, oh, it’s a pandemic and it’s post-apocalypse, and he’s a survivor, and they have to struggle? Who cares? Legitimately who cares?

The word heartbreaking signals that none of that is actually the point. That there is something else going on that is far more interesting. And it’s the reason why people care about that story. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. No offense to post-apocalyptic hardened survivor stories, but that’s ultimately I’m not necessarily into survivalist porn. It’s not my thing. What’s my thing is character and relationship. And that’s what I needed to kind of be there to let somebody out there know it’s not just like – this is not what you think.

So, in that regard I probably should have done the logline I described. Trust me. It’s not that. Trust me.

**John:** But what you’re talking about though, that logline is for somebody who is not you. And so the point I’m trying to make is loglines are for other people. And they are just there to provide a handle for other people to grab onto this idea, this story, so they have just some sense in their mind about what this thing is. Because without that it’s just a title. They really can’t do anything with it.

So, you’re trying to give just enough that they can hold onto, but it’s not – I don’t want to conflate or confuse them with a pitch. Because a pitch is really, like when you’ve done the pitch competitions at Austin, you can really tell the people who can sell you a story and really get you engaged into a movie and really make you feel like who those characters are and what their situation is. A logline is just not going to do that. A logline is only, again, just an arrow pointing towards what that pitch might be.

**Craig:** Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

**John:** So we got a question from Kate. She writes, “After reading your article on loglines and listening to the pitch or spec episode of your podcast I wanted to ask your opinion on one of my projects please. There are two options for the logline. Option one, for most winning the lottery is a dream come true, but for one shy retiring social worker money can’t buy her true desire. In fact, the win brings death and despair to her door. That’s option one. Option two, after spending millions, Charlotte Eames discovers her husband’s big lottery win was a lie. And now her husband has disappeared.”

**Craig:** OK. I have a strong preference.

**John:** I have a very strong preference. My strong preference is for number two.

**Craig:** Is it really?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** My strong preference is for number one.

**John:** That’s so amazing. That’s so great. So tell me about why your strong preference is for number one?

**Craig:** I liked the fact that I don’t know this person’s name, weirdly. I get this weird thing about names as like somehow it’s like fake information. The name Charlotte Eames means absolutely nothing to me. But I do like that I know that she’s a shy retiring social worker. But I like that it brings death and despair to her door. I have no idea what comes next and I don’t know necessarily what she’s going to do or why. But death and despair to her door, that could be – is this a supernatural story? There’s so many possibilities of what this thing could be that I’m intrigued beyond what I hope it’s not, which is another kind of – I mean, we’ve seen a thousand monkey paw stories about how the lottery backfires on you.

**John:** The things you like about the first one are the things that drive me crazy about the first one.

**Craig:** See, this is why loglines suck.

**John:** So it’s so vague and hand-wavy. It’s like death and despair. I don’t know. So, things I do like about the first one, a shy social worker, I think that’s more helpful to me than Charlotte Eames. Because Charlotte Eames, that’s not information that’s actually useful to me in the second one. But after reading the second one I have a sense of what the story is. And that is helpful to me. That I know like, OK, I can see the ways that this story can go. Versus the first one is just so vague. It could be anything.

**Craig:** It occurs to me that maybe I like the first one because I don’t like the story of the second one.

**John:** That’s fair.

**Craig:** The second one when I read through it I think so this is a story basically about filling out bankruptcy paperwork. Because that’s what would happen. Just like, OK, so it turns out I overspent money, I’m maxed out my credit cards, I need to go ahead–

**John:** No, no, it’s about a shy retiring social worker tracking down that ex-husband and making him pay.

**Craig:** But how? He doesn’t have it either. It’s going to be bankruptcy. [laughs]

**John:** Maybe it’s not really about the money.

**Craig:** H&R Block Presents the Charlotte Eames Story. What happens when one woman–

**John:** So unfortunately for Kate–

**Craig:** We have no answer.

**John:** We have no answer. We have no firm answer.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Other than the fact that perhaps loglines are not the panacea that you might think in terms of being able to lockdown one clear vision of what you’re trying to say.

**Craig:** I will say this much at least Kate. It’s not like if my job were to pick these things that either one of these loglines would move me one way or the other. I would just sort of go, OK, lottery story. Let’s read and see what it actually is.

**John:** Yeah. Trust me.

**Craig:** Trust me.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some more questions. So this was a question from Nicole. Do you want to read this?

**Craig:** Sure. Nicole says, “I’m teaching undergrad screenwriting this semester and a student has a formatting question on researching. The student’s first language is ASL. He is hearing but his parents are both deaf. And he is writing a short with one deaf character that he will shoot at some point.” I think Nicole points that the film will be shot, and not the deaf character. So we got to talk about sentence structure here. [laughs] This is really important. I’m going to rewrite your sentence. The student’s first language is ASL. He is hearing but his parents are both deaf. And he is writing a short that he will shoot at some point with a deaf character. “He will also be writing a feature horror with deaf leads later in the semester. He would like to write versions of his scripts with the deaf character’s dialogue written in ASL Gloss. Meaning the dialogue would be written the way the actors would sign it for auditions and/or for going out to talent.

“Here’s a quick breakdown of what ASL Gloss looks like and how it works.” And we’ll have a link in the show notes for that. “I gave him the standard advice for when some of the dialogue will be performed in a non-English language to use in the all-English written version but now we’re wondering if there’s precedent for ASL Gloss in written dialogue. Since you have such a wide reach I thought maybe you could boost the signal and help me find somebody to connect with about it.”

**John:** Indeed we can. So first off I would recommend everybody do click through this link in the show notes. It’s what ASL Gloss looks like. Because it’s really cool. It’s a little slide show that describes what ASL Gloss looks like. And so there’s lines over certain words to indicate eyebrows going up. Because that changes the meaning of certain things in ASL. Also word order is different in ASL. So, I mean, ASL is its own thing. And it’s super cool language that doesn’t track one to one to English which is great. It’s designed for a very specific purpose.

But, yes, we do actually have the resource to go to, Shoshannah Stern, who was on our Christmas episode is a deaf writer and actor. So I emailed her and she says, “Sure. I wouldn’t encourage it for writers who aren’t fluent in ASL themselves. Or if there isn’t a clear rationale behind the inclusion. Most people wouldn’t know what it is, so the Gloss would probably need to be addresses/explained in the script at some point, which is why most of the time I just italicize signed dialogue and have the ASL master handle the translation with the actor.” So the ASL master is the person who is working with the actor to decide how the ASL is going to be handled.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** She says, “If the writer decides to include it they also probably need to make sure that it’s accessible to the non-ASL using reader. For example, on the couple of occasions I have used Gloss in my scripts I have made sure it’s accompanied by an English version for the purposes of an easier read.” So, a thing you can do if it’s helpful, great. But it seems like Shoshannah’s advice is because everyone else is going to be reading this script, too, maybe just do the English version and maybe do a special version with Gloss if there’s really specific ways you want that Gloss to be handled.

**Craig:** Yes. I completely agree with Shoshannah. And it seems like the most practical method. There are times when I will include a foreign language in a script meaning in the dialogue itself italicized. I will have words that are not English. And the reason I have those there is very specifically because I don’t want the audience to have the translation. That’s why. Meaning your experience watching this will be that somebody is speaking English and then they’re going to turn to their friend and say something in for instance Arabic. And you unless you happen to speak Arabic won’t know what it is and that’s OK. Not required for you. That’s why I do that.

If the point is that this will be translated through subtitle or by somebody who is translating ASL into verbal speech. I don’t see the point of doing it this way other than to kind of flex and say, look, I know this other thing. But that’s not really – I mean, always remember that the purpose of a screenplay is to be as functional as possible while being as artistic as possible. So I think Shoshannah’s method makes the most sense. I would use ASL Gloss only in situations where the point was that somebody who was not an ASL speaker was trying to follow along an ASL conversation between two deaf ASL speakers and failing completely and that we are in their perspective and we don’t know what’s being said. Then I would use it.

**John:** Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And again that’s the same thing you would do for a foreign language. If the point was the character who doesn’t speak the language is trying to keep up with it.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** All right. Questions about lawyers. So two of them sort of came back to back. Anonymous in LA writes, “Recently I’ve optioned two of my projects back to back and found it difficult to get a good lawyer. I first turned to Reddit. Was recommended a young LA attorney who offered a flat rate of $540 for a red line and review. Let’s just say he took a poorly written copy—“

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** “Let’s just say he took a poorly written copy and paste agreement and made it worse.”

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**John:** “In between I spoke to a few lawyers who claimed they could do it but had not film industry experience. After that I went through my limited network and found a ‘good’ LA lawyer at a reputable firm. A solid $600+ an hour.”

**Craig:** Wait, what?

**John:** “With someone who understood where I was coming from when we spoke once on the phone. It worked out, but I question whether someone else would be better in the future. Being a non-WGA, not represented or managed writer, trying to turn in scripts into films, what advice do you have for first time writers looking to find good legal representation?”

**Craig:** Don’t turn to Reddit.

**John:** Yeah. Reddit feels like a bad place to start for me.

**Craig:** Yeah, like what? Why? And nothing against Reddit. I don’t want Reddit to turn against me and destroy me. I really don’t. There’s all sorts of good purposes for Reddit. I’m just not sure that this is one of them. So, with all things you get what you pay for. I don’t have any particularly good advice other than to look around at some of the better known entertainment law firms in Los Angeles and call around and see who might be willing to take on a prospective client. You would certainly get an associate. You wouldn’t need more than an associate it sounds like to me. Options are generally speaking not complicated agreements. There’s a billion examples. And the nice thing about going to a place that’s a large entertainment law film is that that associate can always check through the files of all their other deals to make sure that something obvious is not going wrong or has been left out.

And, yeah, presume that you’re going to spend maybe a thousand bucks or something like that. The purpose is to protect yourself, of course. But, yeah, I don’t understand why you would go to Reddit, because who is recommending this young LA attorney to you? Do you know the person or are they just a rando on Reddit saying oh I love this person. It could be them saying that. You know how it is. That just seems a little nuts. Like I don’t go looking for doctors on Reddit.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Maybe I should.

**John:** I wish I had fantastic advice for Anonymous, but I really don’t. But I feel like we may have some listeners who do have some good advice. Who may have gone through this more recently and actually have a sense of how they found a lawyer who was right.

So I don’t need specific names of people, but I really would like to hear what was your process. Because I signed my lawyer more than 20 years ago, and you’ve had your lawyer for forever I’m sure, too.

**Craig:** Since the beginning.

**John:** It’s not the same process. But I would have had the exact same questions. And I got my lawyer through my agents. It was a recommendation there. So, there’s got to be other ways that people are finding lawyers right now, especially folks who don’t have other reps. So, write in. Tell us how you got your lawyer and if you’ve been happy and any other tips or advice you might have for anonymous and our other listeners.

**Craig:** That sounds great.

**John:** Cool. The question about options. We may have opinions on this.

**Craig:** OK. Matt writes, “I’m a budding screenwriter and I have an option agreement from my producer in my inbox. Some of the wording seems off to me and I was hoping you could shed some light on it. Just to start off on the right foot the spoken agreement we have is the gold old James Cameron Terminator style option. I give them the script with the provision that I direct it, give it to them for a dollar. My worries are they want the right to ‘use any part of the film or sequel in future works or promotionals.’ Shouldn’t that wait for the purchase agreement? Especially the part about the sequels? There’s an article that says ‘should preproduction be halted or interrupted by epidemic fire, action of the elements, public enemy, strikes, labor disputes, governmental action, or court order, act of god, wars, riots, or civil commotion.’” So in other words 2020. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. Indeed. Should 2020 happen…

**Craig:** “’Then the time lost during those actions will be added to the end of the option thus extending it.’ Is that normal? They want to be able to set up copyright in their production company’s name. Shouldn’t it stay with the writer unless it’s purchased? They have a provision that reads, ‘The writer will indemnify and hold harmless the production company, its directors, officers, employees, agents, licensees, and signs from any claims, actions, losses, and expenses including legal expenses occasioned either directly or indirectly by the breach or alleged breach to any of the above representations, warranties, or covenants.’

“This feels like I’m giving up my right to do anything should they breach the contract. Is that right?”

**John:** Yeah. So, all of your concerns are understandable and valid. Let’s talk about what option agreements are. So options are you’re buying a thing but sort of not paying for the whole thing right then. So it’s a purchase but it’s not a purchase. There’s a time limit. They’re not paying the full amount right then. So it’s not weird for some of this stuff to be in there. But you’re going to want to listen to the episode where we actually had people talk about how they got their lawyers because I do feel like you’re going to want to have a lawyer look through this.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t generally like what I’m hearing. The stuff that concerns me the most is the idea that they’re going to set up copyright in their name. Yes, it should stay with the writer unless it’s purchased. Typically the option is for the producer to have the exclusive right to shop this to people that would then become the copyright owners, meaning studios, networks, and streamers. So I don’t understand that.

**John:** There’s a shopping agreement and then there’s an option. So the option is really they can at any point sort of exercise their option to fully purchase the thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That is probably more of what this is.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And if they fully do that then, yes, transfer the copyright to them is going to be part of that because that’s your chain of title. That’s a thing they actually do need to do.

**Craig:** But there’s a big number attached to that. And you haven’t told us what that is. You just told us about the dollar which is generally speaking that’s that thing. It’s the kind of exclusivity where they don’t have to give you any money. Yeah, I don’t know about this indemnification. That seems like a lawyer thing to look at.

The halted or interrupted by acts of god and all that other stuff, yeah, yeah.

**John:** Force majeure. I don’t know that it makes sense in this thing. In other agreements you will see stuff that does postpone and extend.

**Craig:** I’m not sure it matters. I don’t love it. I mean, so halted or interrupted by epidemic, well, F-U man. Because you can do your job in your place with your mask on. And, no, you can’t use things like COVID to say oh now we’re going to extend our agreement for five years. Well, you can pick up your phone and do your job as the selling producer at any point during an epidemic. So, no.

**John:** All right. A question about formatting. Wendy writes, “Several of us are wondering what is the best way to format a Zoom call in our scripts. This can get very complicated when there are 16 or more windows/characters onscreen.” This actually feels very addressable and very relevant to today’s world.

**Craig:** Yeah. Probably lots of different ways to do it. I mean, my instinct is that I would do it pretty much the way I would do any meeting scene, the only difference is that I would leave out anything that would happen in a meat space meeting scene. Meat space.

So, Zoom call. And everybody is on. The camera will move essentially just like coverage, right? We did this on Mythic Quest. There’s the grid view, which is sort of like your wide shot or your master. And then it just occasionally will go into coverage, meaning speaker view. And then the meeting proceeds. That seems pretty much the way I would do it.

**John:** Absolutely. So really you’re thinking about an extra space. So, you know, if you are in the room with some of these characters and sort of we’re in their bedroom as they’re talking on Zoom, or in Mythic Quest when we were in Craig’s office, for some of that stuff there probably was a slug line for his living room or his dining room table where he was at. But there’s also probably a slug line that is just basically the Zoom call, or the grid view, and the characters are just in that space together. And that tracks and makes sense.

Just don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. Ultimately if characters are having conversation they’re just having conversation. And you can use – if there’s special Zoom stuff that happens you can call that out, but most stuff is just kind of normal people talking.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t even think – I mean, depending on what it is and how you want to do it, it’s all about perspective. If the idea is that a character is going to walk into a room, sit down, set up their laptop, take a breath, prepare for a difficult Zoom meeting, and then log on, then yes, you’re going to want to establish that in that room, in that space, and then you go into the Zoom. For something like just we cut to a Zoom screen, then where people are individually within the Zoom is not relevant. You can describe it. If their background is relevant you can mention it. But otherwise you’re just in the Zoom meeting.

**John:** Yeah. But like in Craig’s episode of Mythic Quest the actual layout of the final big Zoom call was important because there was stuff that was happening frame to frame to frame. So that’s a thing you would describe. But most movies, most times you’re doing a Zoom kind of thing you’re not going to describe what quadrant people are in Brady Bunch style. That’s just not going to be useful information.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** Chandler in New York City writes, “How would you go about determining if a screen adaptation of a true and high profile event from recent US history is already being adapted for the screen? The event I’m interested in adapting was the subject of much news coverage in the ‘80s,” so what is it, the girl down the well you think? “And a few award-winning docs.” Probably not. “And in-depth newspaper pieces, but none of my Googling IMDb searches or asking around has revealed anyone adapting it for scripted film or TV.”

Do you think it’s Chernobyl? Maybe it’s Chernobyl. And Chandler just doesn’t know.

“It would be very timely given our current political climate. So it could just be happening now. Any tips on how best to research this before undertaking the endeavor?”

John, what do you think about Chandler’s query?

**John:** I think you are just Googling. And I would say Google all the different parts of it and just try to look for any news that someone has optioned a book about this, has optioned any people’s life rights. People aren’t really all that good about keeping stuff like that quiet. And so if some major place was going to try to do it, if [unintelligible] was trying to make some version of that it likely would be out there somewhere and you could find it.

But you might not. And that’s also the reality of it. I’m thinking again back to Niko. If Niko had Googled he probably would have been able to find like, oh, the Weezer guy did set up a pilot that shot about his life and he might have known that and might have decided not to write the thing. But he wrote the thing and it’s good that he’s writing the thing. So, I would say it’s useful for you Chandler right now to do some Googling and see what other people are doing, see if there’s any big books about this topic that have been optioned to get a sense of what the landscape is. But don’t waste a week of your time doing this. Just do a little research on that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the answer generally speaking to your question is an event from recent US history being adapted for the screen, the answer is generally yeah. Yes. It has been already. And it’s being done again. Maybe you haven’t seen it actually come to fruition. Certainly when I was writing Chernobyl there was at least one other high profile Chernobyl project in development. And it doesn’t matter. Because there have been multiple Edward Snowden movies. There have been multiple – everything gets multiple coverage on these things. And so, yeah, I mean, I’ve seen more than one Hoffa movie and you just go about doing it. Your version of it is the value.

And, yeah, look, at any one given time can you have two movies in the theater about the US Hockey Olympic team Miracle on Ice? No. But there was a terrific movie. Could you do another one now? Yup. You could.

**John:** You could.

**Craig:** You could. So just do it. Just do it and do it as best you can. Because if that other project is super-hot or interesting somebody might just want to grab it to beat them to the punch. Or, as we always say zillions of times it would be a great writing sample.

Yeah, so no real way other than Googling around. But even if you Google around and you’re like oh my god somebody is doing it, you don’t know if they’re doing it at all. People announce stuff all the time. The trades are 98% nonsense.

**John:** Yeah. As is pointed out by this running with the news that CAA signed the deal and they had reached an agreement with the WGA. I love that headline. Oh, reached an agreement. Is it an agreement? It’s you proposing to your wife without – it’s your wife agreeing to marry you without actually agreeing to marry you.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have agreed that my wife will marry me. [laughs]

**John:** Ah, unilateral.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Let’s end on a higher note. Aisha from Los Angeles writes, “The Black List recently announced the Muslim List which is the same vein as their Indigenous List and their Disability List. I’ve been seeing some hate online where people insist that these lists, especially the Muslim list, are only being made because Muslim writers otherwise won’t be able to get any attention because apparently Muslim writers are mediocre. I don’t know what to tell them. It’s not my job to educate them. But it’s 2020 and people still think these lists/programs/labs for minorities will only hurt their chances of success. Stop being racist is the obvious response. Any other details I should throw in there?”

**Craig:** Well, I think – “I’ve been seeing some hate online” and I was like yup. So, look, there is a lot of good things that are happening in Hollywood. There are a lot of positive things that are happening in our world and in our culture. So, in Hollywood a lot of groups of people have been underrepresented and ignored and I would absolutely include Muslim writers in there. The fact that somebody like the Black List is paying attention by doing the Muslim list is a good thing.

And I think that you deserve, Aisha, to enjoy that. Meaning the rest of it, the haters, you can’t fix those people. And first of all a lot of them aren’t even – this is what’s so hard to grasp about some of these people online. They don’t even believe the stuff they’re saying. They’re just barfing. They’re literally barfing out. And they don’t know that you’re a real person. And they don’t know that any of this is actually landing on anyone’s ears.

It is profoundly consistent when I respond to some nut job troll 99 times out of 100 they will say some version of “I can’t believe you’re taking the time to respond to me.” That I’m an idiot for even taking them seriously. That’s how low their self-esteem is while they’re attacking me. And so what I would say to you is concentrate on the positive thing here. There’s nothing you’re going to be able to say to some idiot who is complaining about the Muslim List as if the Muslim List is going to ruin their job prospects which is insane. There’s nothing you can say. The best thing you can do is in your brain hit a big delete button and they’re gone.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re gone. Because these people will write something and stop thinking about it one second later. You will read it and not stop thinking about it for weeks. And that’s the power they have. So my advice to you is don’t worry about what to tell them. There is nothing you should tell them. You are not responsible to educate them, to correct them, to change them. You should enjoy this.

**John:** Yup. And what I’ll say about lists like these is the reason they exist, the reason why Franklin and company do them is because showrunners and other people who hire writers are looking for – they would love to include more people. Find me some great indigenous writers. Well it’s tough sometimes to find those indigenous writers. And so if you have a list of, oh, you want some really good indigenous writers, some really good Muslim writers, some really good writers with disabilities, here. Here’s a list. That’s helpful for them. And it’s because they want to hire these people, or at least meet with them.

So, that’s only a good thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we do this all the time in everything else. It’s not like we go, oh OK, well because there’s something like what are the ten best movies of the year. Here they are. List is done. We are obsessed with lists. You know I hate lists. But Americans are obsessed with lists. So if you go on IMDb there’s not just what’s my favorite ten movies of the year. What are my favorite comedies of the year? What are my favorite rom-coms of the year? What are my favorite action movies that star exactly three women and one men of the year?

This is what people do. They break things out into lists. And it’s nice to see that at least there’s some interest in creating lists around underrepresented people. And you know inherently that that’s not hurting anyone. You know all that is is just a nice thing that’s helping people. So like I say enjoy that fuzzy feeling. Feel good about it. Know that – and it’s just one of the unfortunate realities. Decent people aren’t going to say much. They’re going to look at something like the Muslim List and they’re going to think well that’s good. And then move about their day. And if they see the Muslim List come out they will read it and go, ah, I should think about hiring some of these writers.

And then idiots will go, ah-ha, here we go. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. And that’s what you see. So turn them off. Like a light switch just go click. It’s a nifty little Mormon trick. I think I could do that much before getting sued.

**John:** I was going to say. The stopwatch was going there. All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing, we’re not a very political show, but sometimes you have to get a little political. And my One Cool Thing I would urge you to save democracy itself. So this is as we approach this election one scary scenario that could come and because it’s 2020 anything could happen. Is that let’s say neither candidate actually gets to 270 electoral college votes, something like let’s say Florida never certifies it’s results. Stuff can happen. And we sort of all know that stuff can happen. And stuff probably will happen in 2020.

In that scenario where neither candidate gets to 270 votes it goes to the House where each state delegation gets one vote. And so right now democrats control 22 state delegations. The GOP controls 26. So in that scenario the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, would win. Which is just crazy.

And so the good news is that it’s actually not too hard to actually flip those state delegations. And so me and a bunch of other folks and other former Scriptnotes guests are throwing a fundraiser for seven specific House racings for those candidates to try to flip those seats. For Alaska, Montana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. So, there’s a fundraiser we’re doing October 4, 1pm Pacific Daylight Time. There’s a link in the show notes. It’s not one of those crazy expensive ones like the basic I’m a supporter thing is $100. So, if you are a US citizen who wants to spend $100 as some kind of insurance hopefully to not have one nightmare scenario happen on Election Day come join us for this fundraiser October 4.

**Craig:** Yeah. I believe this was the scenario that occurred in the election of 1800. Where there was a tie and it was thrown to the delegates. If you had to choose, if you had to choose…it’s up to the delegates.

**John:** I’m trying to remember like Veep was a similar situation, too. Veep ends in a tie. And it goes to the House if I recall correctly.

**Craig:** Yes. When I was a kid, which was around the same time you were a kid, we used to get Newsweek. And Newsweek after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, well, technically 1979, yes, the fall of 1979, they showed the three different covers they had to prepare ahead of time. And one was Carter wins. And one was Reagan wins, which was the one that turned out. And then the other one was Deadlocked. They had a cover that they created for deadlocked.

Now, in a normal circumstance the deadlock that you consider is just because there’s a mathematical deadlock the way that the electoral votes break out it’s 269-269. And that’s not what this is. What this is is, yes, is it possible? Yes. I don’t like the underpinning panic behind this in the sense that I never like accepting ahead of time that somebody could do something wildly illegal.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** However, these days I guess we kind of have to presume that somebody is going to do something wildly illegal because that’s the way it’s going. So in that regard he’s correct. And in general I don’t need much of a reason. Right now if he said here is a scary but possible scenario, here is a lovely but possible scenario, here’s just something that I think we should do, I’ll do it. Because that’s where we are. We’re in a situation now where – I have never in my life been in a situation where I could just go, OK, legitimately there is only one rational choice. There is nothing I can say accept you either do this or you’re out of your damn mind.

I have never been like that in my life. At all. You know that. But this isn’t close. So, hopefully you are not out of your damn mind.

**John:** I hope not to be.

**Craig:** Yeah. Oh, and I have a Cool Thing. My Cool Thing has nothing to do with politics.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** My Cool Thing, you know, every now and then I like to say oh here’s somebody interesting on Twitter. And you know who I follow on Twitter who I find fascinating? A guy named Chris Stein. Do you know who Chris Stein is?

**John:** I don’t.

**Craig:** If I said music’s Chris Stein? Rock and roll’s Chris Stein?

**John:** I don’t.

**Craig:** Chris Stein, one of the major songwriters/guitarists for Blondie.

**John:** Oh nice.

**Craig:** The great Blondie. And he has a very cool account. He’s a cool guy, obviously. He’s in freaking Blondie. Oh, I love Blondie so much. And by the way huge crush on Debbie Harry. Like as a kid, because that was, you know, they sort of came up in the late ‘70s. I’m like nine. And I’m just starting to look at girls and stuff. And I remember Blondie being like that. I want that. I think that’s a thing now.

So, anyway, and Chris Stein I believe dated Blondie for a long time. So, hats off to Chris Stein for that as well. But he also publishes these old photos that he took of himself and other people around that time, that kind of new wave era, New York City, CBGBs, late ‘70s. And it’s so cool. And there is actually just tying back into the mention of the Madonna biopic, there was just a random photo he had and in it is a very young Madonna who is just part of the scene.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** And you look at her and you’re like, oh man, she looks like she’s 16. And nothing has happened yet to the face or the eyebrows or anything. It’s just a natural human being. It’s a hell of a thing. And so anyway he’s just a great guy. Really smart. And he puts these wonderful photos up. So, well worth a follow.

**John:** Cool. That is our show for this week. So Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is by Michael Karman. 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 or recommendations for where people should find lawyers.

For short questions on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

We have a bunch of t-shirts. They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts. And 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 about gaming consoles. Also, the bonus episode we’re going to do which is more of the pitch versus spec. So subscribe now. Thank you to everyone who subscribed.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Craig, I am so confused about the gaming consoles and I know there’s a new generation coming out. There’s a new PlayStation. There’s a new Xbox.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I don’t want to buy both. Which one do I buy? Just tell me. Craig, help me out.

**Craig:** Sure. Well, so first of all what’s so special about these consoles to begin with? Because the gaming world has changed quite a bit. It used to be that you basically had two deals. You had the PC where you would buy a game that was designed to play on your PC, not really your Mac. Or a console where it’s just the console was a computer, and that’s all a console is is a computer that does nothing except process the game. That’s it. It has no other purpose so it can devote all of its resources, graphics, memory, everything to the game.

So, generally speaking your consoles are much better computers for gaming than your PCs except some people would take their PCs and go bananas, soup them up, and turn them into gaming engines that were even better than the consoles, because PCs are very customizable. So that was kind of the way it worked. And then you had this whole online gaming explosion with Steam and all the rest.

So the line between console and PC-based gaming systems has blurred quite a bit because of the way people have souped up some gaming PCs. And generally speaking if you’re like a hardcore gamer you’re going to have one of those.

I’m not that person. I’m more of the guy that plays what they call triple A video games. The large video game franchises. So I’m talking about Elder Scrolls, Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto, Ghosts of Tsushima. These big, big games. And those are–

**John:** Titles that cost – the games are $50 or more.

**Craig:** Exactly. They generally are going to run about $60. Assassin’s Creed. All those things. And those are console games. I can’t quite recall how many years we’ve been in this particular cycle. There was the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox. Those were kind of like the beginning of the big wars between Sony and Microsoft. And that turned into the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox 360. And now we are heading – for many years, many years. I think about seven, I think, is where we’re at. We have finally generation’d up. Which is a long amount of time because in the computer world things generation up much faster. But in the console world not so much.

So PlayStation 5 is coming and Xbox Series X is coming. They are both coming by the end of this year, in time for Christmas. They will both sell a lot. PlayStation will sell much, much more I predict because it’s more popular.

The differences between these things. Very little Very, very little in terms of hardware. They are both going to be pumping out – they use almost the same chips inside, with like little tiny differences. Oh, this one uses an AMD Zen 2 with an eight-core 2.5 GHz. And this one uses an AMD Zen 2 eight-core 3.8 GHz. But then the other one has more IO throughput. It’s got a 5.5 gig IO throughput and this one has got a 2.4 gig IO throughput. Whatever.

They’re both going to look amazing. They’re both going to have solid state drives, which are going to go faster than the traditional spin-y drives that we were using before. The output resolution will be gorgeous at 4K, probably 60 frames a second, maybe even 120 frames per second. I mean, it’s all being figured out, I guess.

So, they’re both going to look amazing. What’s the big difference then? Which one should you buy? It comes down to the availability of certain games. A lot of the games are for both. You can buy certain games and it will work on both of them. But then there a number of games that are exclusive to each system.

**John:** For example Halo was an exclusive Xbox I know.

**Craig:** Halo was the big like – that was the reason that you wanted an Xbox, if you really loved Halo. And similarly on PlayStation, PlayStation has more exclusives. The Last of Us is a PlayStation exclusive. PlayStation, just Sony in general seems to make more specific stuff. But then there are plenty that you can play on both. Look, MLB the Show is exclusive to Sony PlayStation and that’s kind of how it works.

In general if I were to recommend, if you could only have one you should get the PlayStation 5 because it’s going to have the exclusives. There will be more exclusives, I think, and it’s more likely that they will be exclusives that you will want. But you know I’m going to get both. You know that.

**John:** So right now I have an Xbox 360 which I haven’t used in years.

**Craig:** Oh god, yeah.

**John:** And a PlayStation which I do use some. I’m just back playing old Diablo 3. I started The Last of Us and it was just way too stressful for me. So, I needed to go back to something really comforting like Diablo where I can just run around and smash things. So that will probably be the one that gets replaced, at least with the 5.

The PlayStation 4 that I have still has the ability to insert a disk in it, but I’ve not inserted a disk in it for a very long time. So it looks like one of the options I have with the Sony PlayStation, there’s just no disk at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. The disks are kind of going away. So people are generally – a lot of people. It’s actually, I’ll take that back. There are a ton of disks. I mean, one of the reasons that The Last of Us 2 was delayed was because they had to deal with the manufacture of disks during the pandemic situation. And, you know, I asked Neil, people still buy disks? And he goes an enormous amount. Particularly overseas where for instance in Europe the PlayStation Network which is the system you would use to download a game was throttled and may still be throttled because during the pandemic essentially the European Union said yeah, yeah we’re not going to let Netflix and Sony just soak up all of our bandwidth while we’re trying to pump out information to people and–

**John:** Schools were online and all that stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. So, a lot of people do still want those physical disks which they can use to install. So, looking at some exclusives on the horizon, there’s going to be a new Halo. So if you’re into that, huzzah. Xbox has Forza Motorsport, so if you’re a big car race guy and you like Forza Motorsport as opposed to Gran Turismo which is the PlayStation one, then fine. PlayStation 5 will have Spider Man Miles Morales and right there I can tell you that’s going to be a massive–

**John:** That looks great.

**Craig:** That will be massive. But then I think Xbox will also have I think it’s the new game from the guys who did Witcher I think, Cyber – should know what it is but I don’t. There’s a new Harry Potter Open World game that I believe will be coming to both platforms next year.

Here’s what’s exciting. Apparently one of the big limitations of the consoles was how they created light. You would enter a scene and essentially as a game creator you would set a light, like a fixed lamp, in place and that was the light for the room. And if you moved around it didn’t matter because the light didn’t move around. The light was fixed no matter where you go and no matter what happens. And for a videogame author like Naughty Dog that makes The Last of Us, if they want to make it cool, like they want to have somebody – as somebody crosses a window they want to create a shadow, they need to specifically animate a shadow in. But now with these new systems they’re using essentially live ray tracing. So, now people walk through the room and the light knows what to do.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** And so it’ll look pretty great. But it already looks pretty great, you know, so. It’s going to be cool.

**John:** So we haven’t mentioned the Nintendo Switch. So I have a Switch that I got at the start of the pandemic. I really love it. It’s a delightful system. I like that it’s just not trying to play in that same space.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** They have exclusive titles that are just their thing and they’re great for that. Honestly I mostly play on my iPad. I’m playing Hearthstone on an iPad which just doesn’t matter that you don’t have a great system. You don’t need a gaming PC to be playing Hearthstone.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But for actual real videogames I probably will upgrade. It sounds like on your advice I will go for the PlayStation 5.

**Craig:** I think so.

**John:** And any existing games that I have, will my PS4 games be playable on the PlayStation 5?

**Craig:** Yes. So there will be backwards compatibility for both of them.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** That’s kind of always part of how they roll. You will also see some of the older popular games get remastered.

**John:** One thing I’m definitely looking forward to when I get a new system is that my PlayStation 4 I bought in France and it is region-locked to French for certain things. And so there are times where I’ll get to a place where everything else is in English. I get to screens that are just completely in French. And of course it’s really technical gamey French. It just breaks my brain to try to figure this out. So like Witcher 3 I got there and no matter what you do you cannot get it out of French. It’s a really tough game when you’re trying to follow it that in French.

**Craig:** Witcher Trois. Oui. Yeah, you know, the English in Witcher is also kind of French. It’s strange – there are strange terms–

**John:** Layers stacking on top of layers.

**Craig:** Yes indeed. But Nintendo, yeah, they will keep doing what they do. They’re sort of like you guys fight over there. We’ll be over here. One day I suspect Disney is just going to buy Nintendo.

**John:** Yeah. Nintendo is big now.

**Craig:** They’re huge.

**John:** Disney is huge now, too.

**Craig:** Enormous.

**John:** Everyone is huge.

**Craig:** Everyone is huge. It just seems like talk about a marriage made in heaven.

**John:** Getting really off-topic, Apple had its announcements this last week where they announced the new watch and the new iPad. It’s great. Lovely.

I always thought that Apple should just buy Peloton because Peloton is a really good product and feels very, very Apple-y. And so what Apple did is just like, oh no, we’re just going to make our own Peloton. And they spent clearly a fortune to basically duplicate what Peloton is already doing.

**Craig:** Yup. And they’ll win.

**John:** Totally.

**Craig:** That’ll happen. I mean, that’s kind of the way it goes. It just – Apple came out with the watch, I don’t know when it was, five years ago. And I think a lot of people were like what? Oh, Apple, stupid. They sell so many watches. They are not just the largest watch manufacturer in the world. It’s not even close.

**John:** Yeah. If the Apple Watch were the only product Apple made it would be a giant top tier company.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Yeah.

**John:** And so, again, looking at Sony, looking at Microsoft, when Microsoft was trying to buy TikTok I’m thinking that’s weird. Microsoft, they make Windows. Oh, no, no, they make Xbox, too. They actually do have a big consumer-facing brand. It would have made sense for them to do it. Sony I think of being an electronics manufacturer, but like PlayStation must be such a huge profit center for that company.

**Craig:** Massive. And whereas Xbox has always been tricky for Microsoft because it isn’t their core business. Microsoft has generally stumbled when they’ve made objects other than–

**John:** Zune.

**Craig:** Computers. So they tried the Microsoft phone. LOL. The Zune. [Unintelligible]. And the Xbox has stuck around. The Xbox is a really good product. Don’t get me wrong. I have owned every version of the Xbox and I will buy the new one. I like the Xbox controller generally more than the Sony controller. Oh, the controllers I should add are also changing. There’s going to be more haptic stuff going on.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Vibrations and stuff. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Cool. Craig, thank you for talking me through this.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. Anytime.

 

Links:

* [CAA Signed Deal](https://deadline.com/2020/09/caa-in-deal-with-wga-1234576395/)
* [Madonna to direct biopic, Diablo Cody to write.](https://variety.com/2020/film/news/madonna-to-direct-her-biopic-co-written-by-diablo-cody-for-universal-1234770633/)
* [Blogpost on Loglines](https://johnaugust.com/2020/loglines)
* Write in to ask@johnaugust.com share advice on finding legal representation.
* [ASL Gloss Breakdown](https://www.slideshare.net/MsAmyLC/glossing-in-asl-what-is-it-eight-examples)
* [Save Democracy Itself! Fundraiser](https://secure.actblue.com/donate/tie-breaker-candidate-fund-1)
* [Chris Stein](https://twitter.com/chrissteinplays) on Twitter
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Michael Karman ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/469standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can now be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/collapsing-scenes).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 458 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on this podcast we’re going to talk about why and how screenwriters find themselves collapsing and combining scenes. We also have a bunch of listener follow up about returning to production, portrayals of police on screen, and issues faced by Black writers. And in our bonus segment for Premium members we will talk about the return of professional sports.

**Craig:** Your favorite. I know you’ve just been on the edge of your seat.

**John:** I am weirdly excited about the return of professional sports.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**John:** A lot to get into.

**Craig:** If there was ever a reason for somebody to quickly subscribe to the Premium member feed it’s this. Because even I’m–

**John:** What is John excited about with the NBA?

**Craig:** I couldn’t possibly–

**John:** Only the Premium members will know.

**Craig:** I mean, I cannot wait to hear this.

**John:** But professional sports are not the only thing going back into production. So, on previous episodes we’ve talked about how actors are likely to be the deciding factors about when shows and movies go back into production with COVID-19 precautions. And we also noted the power imbalance between stars on the top of the call sheet and those listed lower.

But Joe wrote in. Craig, do you want to talk about what Joe–?

**Craig:** Sure. Joe says, “I’m an actor and a member of SAG/AFTRA and the truth is that virtually no actors make a consistent living from performing. The overwhelming majority of actors book one or two day-player gigs a year. That’s if they’re lucky. And then they have a regular job that pays the bills. So the question that actors in this situation, which is most of them, have to ask themselves now is do I risk my life for a non-life-changing role? Because getting COVID for an occasional day-player gig that pays a thousand bucks can cost them the job that actually pays their bills.

“Actors are so desperate to land that life-changing role. So my hunch is that they’ll continue to risk their lives for the day-player gigs just to stay somewhat relevant. It’s a sad F’ed up situation because the odds of deriving a livelihood just from acting are slim to none.”

**John:** Well that’s more depressing with each paragraph.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But let’s do talk about that, because I think it’s important to acknowledge that WGA writers who are working in Hollywood, some are working a lot, some are not working as often. But if you’re a working writer you’re a working writer and that can be your main source of income.

With actors there’s a lot more variability and there are a lot of actors who are a member of the union who really are in the situation that Joe describes where you’re booking one or two jobs a year. And so for them, god, do they take the risk of going to a set that they don’t feel safe on? It’s a hard calculation.

**Craig:** Well, go a little further. Because Joe stops his calculus at day player. So for those of you who don’t know what that phrase is, actors are hired usually week to week. That’s how your general cast is employed, either on an episode basis or a week to week on a feature basis. Day players are people that are hired for one day. So that’s the role of the waiter who comes by and says, “Sorry sir, we don’t have what you asked for.” That’s a one-day job. They’re paid one day.

But what about background? So extras. Extras are already working kind of in tough conditions. They’re not particularly well cared for by productions. They are often smooshed together under tents. And they eat separately from everybody. I wonder about them as well, particularly because extras are the ones that are in crowd scenes. So when you see a big crowded room and you think to yourself in our post-COVID mentality, oh good lord, everyone is going to get COVID in that room, almost all of those people are background.

**John:** Yeah. So all the precautions we’re talking about in terms of like, oh, maybe we can shoot two parts of a scene separately so the actors aren’t actually as close as they seem. Or we’ll do things, when we talk about not having crowd scenes, well in some cases you’re still going to have to have some background players moving through there. Even in a show like Brooklyn 99 there are people who move through the backgrounds of those scenes and those people wouldn’t be masked.

And so it’s tough. And it’s tough for those people to decide, OK, I feel comfortable being in this situation without a mask while this is happening. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** I’m afraid that Joe is right though that a lot of people want to be in show business. And not only will day players show up at risk to themselves to make as he says a thousand bucks, but background artists and extras will show up to make a couple of hundred bucks. Therefore it is kind of incumbent upon our business to figure out how to keep these sets safe because people will show up.

**John:** Yeah. And we should also stipulate that everyone working on a set, like everyone working overall, is taking some risk by showing up. It’s just that the precautions that a grip or a gaffer can have about masking up and other safety equipment, a background player may not be able to have those because they’re literally on camera. So that’s what we’re talking about here.

The same way that we see news people having to make the decision of are they taking off their mask when they’re on a camera shot or are they leaving their mask on, those are tough calls. And people are having to make those decisions in real time.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Yeah. Another thing we’ve been talking about a lot on the show is portrayals of the justice system. And we’ve speculated that networks and showrunners will be looking at shows that portray policing and the justice system more realistically or in different ways than they classically have. Bob Shane wrote in to say, “I’d like to call your attention to a really good series that was on ABC for two years and it got canceled this year called For the People. In it a group of young lawyers who recently passed the bar exam are hired. Some by the federal prosecutors’ office and others by the federal public defenders’ office in New York. The show cuts back and forth between the cases. It never pandered to the police or authoritarian law and order agenda. And it did a great job exposing the flaws in the system. It was created by Paul William Davis and produced by Shonda Rhimes’ company.

“I suspect that this would be the moment for fans of that show to ask ABC to bring it back, or for Shonda Land to get Netflix to pick it up.”

And so this was a show that I had in my head and I could not remember the name of it as we were talking about it. Because Paul Davies is actually a friend. His daughter and my daughter went to school together and I knew when he was actually just starting his career as a TV writer. He’s a lawyer who transitioned to that. And so he’s always been on my list of like, oh, I have to have Paul on the show to talk about transitioning from another career in your 30s. Because he made that transition and got to run a show really early in his writing life.

So, yes, I think that’s the kind of show I can imagining happening more often. But even in the description that Bob puts here I can see why it’s a harder show to program than the other 19 police procedurals.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the thing about police procedurals and we’ll also call them justice procedurals, like Law & Order, which was built around trials, which don’t exist, is that they’re easy to do. It’s built-in drama. I mean, trials are dramatic. They have an incredibly narrative-friendly structure. You make an argument. You make an argument. You cross-examine. There’s banging of gavels and objections and moments of drama. And then people go and decide. Who wins?

Well, that’s just perfect.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like sports. There’s a clear outcome. There’s a winner and a loser.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** In ways that reality doesn’t have winners and losers.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. Most of the time people are losers when they end up in the justice system and their loss is some kind of brokered loss that’s done a bit bloodlessly.

So, I agree with you. That does sound like a hard one. But I’m sure that, you know, look, if it got on the air, it was on for two seasons. So it was obviously doable. I think that will ABC bring it back? It’s unlikely. And I don’t think this is the time where we should be looking backwards and sort of dusting things off. Everything has changed quite a bit. It’s time we write new things. So it would be interesting to see what somebody like Paul Davies would do now if he continued working with Shonda Land or purely for himself or anything.

**John:** Yeah. Well on that topic of what we do now and do forward, do you want to read what Ryan in Florida wrote?

**Craig:** Ryan writes that “Episode 456 forced me to take a closer look at one of my characters, a sheriff, and to rethink his role in my story, which I believe was your intent. It occurred to me that the sheriff is a ‘the end justifies the means’ sort of guy. Where did this thinking, the end justifies the means, come from? And why is it so pervasive in a country founded on the principles of freedom, equality, and justice for all? Your podcast reminded me that the means is the end. Separation of the two concepts exists only in our mind. Here’s to hoping that America will rediscover the passion of its principles and pursue the ideals that changed the world.”

Here, here, Ryan.

**John:** Yeah. So I want to unpack a little of that because America was founded on the idea of justice for all and freedom, but it was also founded on this idea of like the frontier and the going your own way and sort of the lone wolf thing. So, it’s interesting that our sheriff mentality tends to be towards the hero/lone wolf person. And other parts of our justice system are more about the teamwork and justice for all. America has always been built on that duality of like we’re all in this together, oh it’s every man for himself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, this was a debate that was going on when they were coming over in the Mayflower. Literally they were having this debate. Because we are a nation of what we’ll call sort of progressive liberal thinkers, a guy like Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island among other things and who believed in the equality of all peoples, including Native Americans, with whom – he learned their language and he had good relationships.

And then you had the true hardcore puritan Calvinists who believed that people were born either good or bad, as babies. It had been predetermined by god. And so, of course, if that’s your point of view and you believe someone is evil, why in god’s name would you allow the means to disrupt what must be divine justice?

Similarly, if you believe that you are good then you should be able to take whatever you want. Hence, manifest destiny. This is the American duality. And it’s interesting to see writers starting to at the very least recognize the duality is there. And once you know it’s there you have choices to make.

**John:** Also this week I saw a discussion that Brooklyn 99 was talking about it needed to throw out the first four scripts they have written for this next season to shoot, because they just don’t make sense given the environment. And that is a thing that you’re going to see in every writer’s room. Those initial weeks’ discussions will be really challenging to figure out what is our show in 2021. What makes sense?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s tough to see. But I think it does come back to some of these fundamental American principles that are in conflict with each other. That we are a nation born of people who sought freedom who also enslaved people.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** We’re always going to be grappling with that. I think it’s just much more obvious that we’re grappling with it as we come up with this next batch of series.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, look, a lot of people are going to accuse Hollywood of virtue signaling. And I think it’s important to recognize the difference between virtue signaling and evidence of virtue. Because virtue signaling is a cynical act. You’re not virtuous. You’re not trying to be virtuous. You don’t even understand the virtue of the virtue you’re signaling. You’re just putting on a show in the hopes that people will praise you, or not attack you.

Evidence of virtue is just that. If you are making an effort because of the right reasons to be a more equitable employer, to be a writer who is more aware of other perspectives, to be listening, to be changing, evolving, including, then people will see evidence of what I would consider to be virtue. And the cynical tarring of all evidence of virtue as virtue signaling is also something dangerous that we need to keep aware of.

Not saying that we shouldn’t also be – because, look, there’s a lot of virtue signaling. So let’s not pretend. Even if 90% of it is virtue signaling, at least 10% of it is evidence of actual virtue. And so be brave enough to do that and hopefully you don’t get hit with that accusation.

**John:** Yup. Widening our clock back further, we started this year talking about assistant pay and assistant pay cuts. Nick wrote in this week a suggestion which I found really interesting. So it’s kind of long but I want to read through it because it’s systematic and it speaks to systemic ways of thinking about it that might be helpful.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So Nick writes, “I’m an officer in the air force and I’ve lived in a few different countries over the last few years. Pay in the military is rank-based, meaning no matter what your position is if you’re X rank with Y years of service you get Z pay. It’s a very simple formula and you can even look it up in military pay charts to figure out what that pay is because it’s public knowledge.

“But because the military is spread across the world it would be unfair to give everyone the exact same wage because being stationed in Los Angeles would obviously be extremely more expensive than living in Oklahoma. That’s where BAH, or basic allowance for housing, comes into play. Every zip code in the US has a certain BAH based on different factors that the Department of Defense updates regularly. If you Google BAH calculator you can input a zip code and find out how much the government would pay you on top of your base pay if you were stationed there.

“This is something our government already does and is supposed to represent the amount of money you need just for housing in order to live decently in that area. The studios could easily start using this data to determine what is fair to pay their assistants on top of whatever the minimum wage type salary they’re trying to pay their assistants.

“For example, using LA zip code 90038 and a pay grade of E2, air man, normally a high school graduate with no college education, and brand new to the service, the monthly BAH would be $2,079. Using the rank of O1, a second lieutenant, the minimum requirement for which is a Bachelor’s degree and probably more closely aligned with the education level of an assistant, the BAH gets raised to $2,430.

“Do you think this is something the studios could use as a starting off point when determining what is a fair wage for their assistants? I feel like it’s as impartial as you can get and ensures that assistants are getting paid enough money to live comfortably.”

**Craig:** Interesting. Well, double-edged sword there. So always have to look at the law of unintended consequences. If you rigorously format payment then what you end up with is a situation similar to what we do when we’re negotiating union minimums. The minimum becomes the maximum. So, the deal is we only have to pay you – this is what the chart says, so that’s what you’re getting paid. And, yeah, we’ll pay you a little bit extra for living there. But there isn’t going to be as much upward variability.

Now, people could argue that it’s the downward variability that’s been crushing everybody. And I think that’s reasonable. The thought experiment is what happens if we firm up the floor, what happens to the ceiling? And that’s an interesting economic question. I don’t quite know the answer. But I think that since everyone who is an assistant in LA is living somewhere in incredibly expensive LA, this is probably not as impactful as it is for the military where as Nick writes people could be living in vastly different kinds of environments in terms of cost of living.

**John:** Yeah. So what I think your analogy with scale is absolutely appropriate. It is setting a floor. And so when unions negotiate scale it’s to set a floor so nothing goes below that. And for assistants we’ve talked a lot about sort of like what is the minimum sort of livable wage in Los Angeles. And so we talk about for a 40-hour week is it $25/hour? For a 60-week is it $20/hour? Is there some basis for which a person can make enough to live? And something like this calculator is helpful for figuring out what is the actual expense of living in Los Angeles, or the expense of living in New York.

What I do wonder is if this variability based on location could be helpful in thinking about how much we’re paying crews who are living and working outside of Los Angeles. Because some markets are a lot more expensive than Los Angeles and some are a lot less expensive. And so we’d be thinking about how much does a gaffer who is working in Atlanta need to be paid versus a gaffer who is living in Los Angeles? What are actual livable wages in those places? That might be interesting.

But because each of those productions is sort of working as a one-off I don’t know that you’re going to have a bigger impact or the range of impact that you would hope to have by using this kind of calculation.

**Craig:** You start to feel bad for people who move to stretch their salary further and then the company says, oh you’ve moved, we’re cutting your salary.

**John:** And that does happen. I have friends who moved from Los Angeles to cheaper places and the companies they’re working for are like, “That’s fantastic. You had an allowance for living in London and now you’re not living in London.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Not easy answers there.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** I also want to point our attention to – this wasn’t written directly towards us, but a lot of people mentioned us in it. Nicole French had a Twitter thread from this past week.

**Craig:** Yeah, I saw this.

**John:** She writes, “Today a Black film editor posted in a Facebook group for Hollywood editors looking to connect with other Black editors as they’re severe under-representation in post-production and they can be hard to find. What ensued is a slew of white editors who immediately objected to the post, asked for it to be taken down by moderators, and accused the poster of breaking the law, discriminating against whites, fanning ‘anti-white racism’ against them. And insulted Black editors and white editors speaking up for diversity.”

And this just felt like a giant Yikes to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] I mean, I saw it. I went through it. I looked at it. I’m not on Facebook, but because the link was there I could kind of go through or somebody had maybe just sort of copy and screen shot it. Is that the past tense of screen shot? It’s not screen shut?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Screen-shotted those things. And so first of all there’s just a question is that illegal and the answer is no.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I mean, if somebody said, “Hi, I’m looking to hire people and I will only hire” and then lists a group, there are employment issues. There’s employment law and things like that. But saying, yeah, I’m looking to just have a discussion group or meet up with or talk to, I mean, what? Of course it’s not illegal. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

**John:** Yeah. An affinity group for underrepresented population, yes, that’s not illegal.

**Craig:** No. It’s not illegal. And then there was just stupidity. Look, there’s all sorts of levels of racism. This was not quality racism. I don’t know how else to put it. It was like dumb-dumb racism. It wasn’t like, oh, I don’t know, when some sort of super thinky person writes this very long essay that disguises their racism in rather thought-provoking terms. No. This was just dumb-dumb racism. Like, “What? That’s not…bah.”

And I just thought, well, this makes white editors look awful. It was every single one of those. I just want – I’m going to say this, because I can. Because this isn’t illegal. I would never, never – I will never – hire any of those editors. Not because they’re white. I’ve hired white editors before and I’ll hire white editors again, no question. And not because they’re men. I’ve hired male editors and I’ve hired female editors. I won’t hire them because they’re dumb. How about that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, anyway, you’re not working for me anymore. And I hope other people look at those names and go, yeah, I don’t want to work with you either. Because you’re a dick. There you go. And I want a new group that’s for not dicks. Is that OK? Is that illegal?

**John:** Now, Craig, it struck me that I was seeing these Facebook messages, these screen shots, and it’s like I can’t imagine writers who do that. And maybe it’s just because we’ve been in this a little bit longer, but I don’t see the same things happening among screenwriters. And I’ve definitely seen concern about, you know, you and I have both talked to young white men who are trying to get staff writer jobs and feel like it’s really hard for them to get a staff writer job. And I’ve heard that. I’ve listened to that. And I’ve also been able to sort of talk them through that. None of them would be so stupid as these people who are replying in this thread, how they were replying.

**Craig:** I mean, these people seemed like editors who had jobs. So it was like they were eating in a restaurant and someone came in and said, “Hey, for those of you who have not yet been served do you want to come have a discussion?” And they said, what, you’re excluding us because we’re already eating? No! We get to talk to anybody.

And you’re like, goddammit. No, writers tend to not be this absurd. Or at least, no, let me take it back. There have been writers who have been this absurd, but not in a cluster like that. It was this weird cluster. It was like a herd of dopes.

**John:** I also felt like that a lot of those things happened like 10 years ago, or five years ago. I think we went through that wave and those people got culled a little bit. So, there just wasn’t a culling yet in this ring.

**Craig:** It’s not really praise for writers as much as just more damning evidence of these guys. I just – it was just like, ugh, they were just dumb-dumbs.

**John:** Dumb-dumbs. All right, Craig, now this is a thing I don’t think you’ve read ahead in the outline, but I feel like it’s important that you probably read this message from Tyler because I want to see how you respond.

**Craig:** Sure. This is going to go great. Tyler from Bellingham writes, “I just became a Premium subscriber and I’m listening through the back catalog. I just listened to Episode 7 and made a horrifying discovery. Not only is John withholding from Craig the riches he’s acquired through the podcast, he owes him potentially millions of dollars for coming up with the very idea of Highland.” This is great so far. I like you, Tyler.

“Toward the end of the episode John and Craig discuss screenwriting software. This is prior to John creating Highland. As they’re wrapping up the conversation Craig says he believes there is an opportunity in the market for a mid-priced screenwriting software to compete against Final Draft and other smaller players. Shortly thereafter John released Highland.”

All right, Tyler, your argument is falling apart quickly. “If I’ve learned anything from Scriptnotes it’s that an offhanded comment in an informal setting is 100% copyrightable and stands as a legally binding contract. Thus, John owes Craig bigly. I look forward to hearing how John plans to right this wrong.”

Tyler, this is one of the best things anyone has ever written in. You’re great. [laughs] You’re great. And you’re right. An offhanded comment, and certainly an idea as we all know, is property. John owes me what I think is probably millions of dollars.

**John:** Yeah. Probably [unintelligible]. Tyler, it shows a good understanding of the entire dynamic of Scriptnotes to be able to retroactively apply to that conversation we had way back then. And probably Highland was in the works back then. I just may not have said anything about it. But we can figure out in the timeline when we actually – when I started talking about Highland. Because there was a public beta for like a year before we released it. So, who knows?

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I guess I probably am owed money for that as well. I’m a saint. That’s what I think. Eventually people are going to understand that–

**John:** Saint Craig.

**Craig:** I’m a Saint.

**John:** He’s a Jewish Saint.

**Craig:** Yup. I’m a Jewish Saint. We have those now.

**John:** All right. I want to propose a craft topic. So this was something that I was encountering this week. And Craig I feel like you probably encounter this too.

**Craig:** Oh, of course.

**John:** If you have not encountered this I will be so angry.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no. All the time.

**John:** All right. So the project I’m working on I have a detailed outline and have really good understanding of what all the scenes and sequences were and I felt really good about it. But then I still encountered a thing that I’ve encountered in most of the scripts I’ve written is that – and it often happens in the third act, but it can happen sort of anywhere is that there are two or three story beats that I intended to be separate scenes or sequences and in looking at it and looking at the overall length of things and how stuff was working I was like, crap, I need to compress these down to become one thing. These can’t be separate scenes. They need to be shrunk down into one scene. And I feel like I’ve done that in nearly every screenplay I’ve written. And yet I don’t remember us ever talking about that as a topic on this podcast. Have you done this?

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. Of course. Usually I think when I’ve been doing this it’s not as a result of the creative process within but as you point out it’s when we’re going through budget and the practicalities of shooting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So there was quite a budget battle on Chernobyl. It was a prolonged slog. It was a WWI trench warfare battle. And thank god I had Jane Featherstone and Carolyn Strauss and Sanne Wohlenberg to fight that fight and I never had to get on the phone to do that, thank god. Sooner or later they had to come to me and say, OK, well we have a list of things. We’ve gotten a bunch more but we have to make some concessions. We have a list of things that we could compress. So, let’s talk through them. And then my job – and this is almost I think every writer faces this at some point or another in production is you are the one who knows the difference between hitting an artery and hitting a capillary.

And so your job is to guide people away from the arteries and figure out how to kind of squish the capillaries back into other things.

**John:** Yup. So, let me talk through an example of this and offer some of the choices that a screenwriter might make. So here’s the example. Let’s say you have – this is the middle of a script. You have two characters. You have Denise and Alfonso and they notice a strange smell in their house. That’s one beat. Second beat. They search the house and eventually discover that a family of raccoons is living in the attic. That’s the second beat. Third beat is the animal removal guy hits on Denise in front of Alfonso. So that’s a third beat, which should hopefully be a surprise.

So those three beats, they might be fine. They might work really well. They could be funny. They could build on each other. They could be effective just as it is. But if for reasons of length or budget or just a sense like I can’t have these three beats you need to compress or collapse these. You have a couple of choices. And so let’s talk through what those choices might be.

You could move the first and second beat together. So scene, we’ll call it A and B, could be combined. So we might come into the scene with Denise and Alfonso already searching for the source of the smell. So we don’t see the discovery of it. We don’t see the realization that there is a smell. We come into the scene and they’re already looking and we just set up within the already looking that they smell something. So that’s a choice to compress and combine those two.

Second choice. You could move B into C. So it’s basically cutting out the discovery of the raccoons and going from I smell something to there’s the animal control guy who is getting the raccoons out of the attic. So within C you’d have to explain that there is a family of raccoons up there, but you can get rid of B.

Third choice. You cut A and B and you just do – if the important thing is C, like the animal control guy hitting on Denise, you just do C and you sort of build the setup into the start of C.

Or, if the raccoons were more important than the animal control guy you might cut C and just do A and B.

Craig, can you think of any more choices you might make in terms of getting through those three beats if you had to lose and compress stuff?

**Craig:** No, I mean, those – you’ve got the permutations. And the fact that you’re using A, B, and C kind of, that’s the giveaway that what we’re talking about here is essentially the multiple scenes being reimagined as multiple beats in one scene. Right?

So, setup a conflict, a reversal, a complication, and payoff. This is roughly how these things go. So, what we’re saying here is if someone comes to you and says we have to squish this down your job is to analyze these three beats and say what is actually the purpose of all of this. What am I trying to do here? Is my purpose to show that Denise and Alfonso are a stronger couple than they realized? Well then I need to see the guy hit on Denise in front of him and I need to see probably them already mid-search, freaking out over something together that maybe somebody insists isn’t there. So four people are searching but only Denise and Alfonso smell it. It’s the thing that binds them together. See what I mean? The point of all this can’t be the plot.

The point has to be, well, probably relationship of some sort or even if not a relationship some sort of internal character growth, that’s the part you need. And so now your job is to figure out what is the most essential other bit required to get that part to work.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And a lot of times what you find when you do this exercise is you’ve made things better. Because you’re essentially pre-editing with a good editor, not a dumb-dumb. And we don’t necessarily need to see lots of things. This happens all the time in the editing room where we’re not making these cuts or compressions to save money, we’ve already shot it. We’re making them to tell the story better.

**John:** Yeah. And if you were able to do this in the writing phase versus when it’s on the nonlinear editor in front of you can do a better job. I mean, you can do amazing things in the editing room, but you can do much more cogent and clever things if you do it while you’re writing. I should have said another option is you cut A, B, and C and just find a different way to achieve those same ends. Maybe there’s going to be too much shoe leather to get you through all those beats if you are trying to do this. Maybe you don’t need the animal removal guy and there’s a different way to achieve what you’re trying to achieve by that whole sequence that can be done as a scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** A reason why I often find myself doing this in scripts as I sort of think retrospectively about stuff I’ve written is the too many endings problem. Is that a lot of times when I’m compressing and collapsing things it’s because the movie wants to be over and I’m not letting it be over. And so if there’s stuff to pay off rather than have multiple scenes that are paying off one thing I need to get those all to sort of be part of one movement, as part of one action. Because the reader and the audience get tired of things just closing and ending. And they want to be done. And so sometimes you need to compress those moments down.

I’ll often find those beats though in the first act, too, where it’s like I know why I’m setting these things up, but if it feels like we’re just setting stuff up it’s not going to work. So I need to find ways to compress those beats and combine those beats into a single scene rather than have multiple scenes stacked up one after the next.

**Craig:** Yeah. The flow of this stuff wants to be concise. I think it’s a fairly common syndrome for people to want to stretch out. Maybe because some of the movies that turn them on initially are movies that feel very dialogue-y. Many people have remarked that Pulp Fiction gave birth to a million terrible scripts because it seemed like they were Shaggy Dog scenes that would just go on and on and people were talking. And some of them were. But the dialogue was fantastic. And things that were happening as it turned out were pieces of a fairly intricate clockwork mechanism.

A lot of times your instinct is to stretch out and just play through moments and find what matters and find what’s impactful. But ultimately things want to compress. You want less. And so you are going to start collapsing. Even as you’re writing inside of moments you’re going to start collapsing.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Until what you thought was a sequence of A, B, C, D, and E you realize is really just a sequence of A and B. That’s all it is. It’s just two things. So let’s just two-thing it, not five-thing it.

**John:** Yeah. Great. So that is collapsing scenes. Let us do a big transition to our special guests for this episode. So, about two weeks ago on June 12 the WGA Committee of Black Writers put out an open letter to the town calling for systemic change on a host of issues. To talk about those concerns let’s welcome the co-chairs of this committee. Michelle Amor, Hilliard Guess, and Bianca Sams. Now, we’re all talking on Zoom so we can see each other, but it’s challenging when we have five voices on a podcast. So, Michelle, can you introduce yourself so we can hear your voice and know who is talking?

**Michelle Amor:** Yes. Hi, I am Michelle Amor.

**John:** And Michelle, where are you from and how long have you been writing in Los Angeles?

**Michelle:** Oh, I’m from Chicago. I moved to LA in 2010 to attend UCLA to get my MFA. And I have been writing professionally since just right before that, but also I’m a fulltime professor of screenwriting over at Loyola Marymount University.

**John:** Fantastic. Hilliard Guess, talk us through how long you’ve been in Los Angeles and how long you’ve been a writer. What’s your background here?

**Hilliard Guess:** I’ve been in LA since ’96. I’m a former actor turned writer and producer. And I’ve been writing since about 2000/2001.

**John:** Excellent.

**Hilliard:** I now do film and TV. So I’m back and forth.

**John:** Fantastic. And Bianca could you introduce yourself and how long you’ve been in LA? What’s your background here?

**Bianca Sams:** Hi. My name is Bianca Sams. I am the vice chair. And I’ve been in LA about five years. I was a playwright and an actor. Moved into film and TV. I came for the Warner Bros program and have stayed. And yeah.

**John:** Excellent. Now, Michelle, let’s start with you. So in your letter you start off talking about the public statements that the studios and other companies made in the wake of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and other Black people killed by police. How important was it for you that these companies made these public statements, or saying that Black lives matter? How important was it for them to say that?

**Michelle:** It was very important. I mean, at the end of the day it’s very frustrating to be a Black American. I mean, I think a lot of people now are seeing how frustrated we’ve been. I mean, most of the people I know for example we’re contributing members to our society. We work really hard. And we’re just constantly oppressed in so many ways. So, hearing even just the words, it definitely helped. And it inspired us to think about responding to it. And that’s why the letter also had the historical context because it’s important to know where you’re going knowing where you came from.

So we couldn’t let that slide without talking about things like Birth of a Nation and all of the issues that we face every day.

**Craig:** Well I like the fact that you’re not letting things slide. Because I think for a long time that’s kind of been the nature of things, right? People complain and then everybody yes, yes, yes, and then they let it slide. That’s been everyone’s default position. And I want to read this line that you guys wrote which in and of itself is a gorgeous piece of writing. So that’s why I want to read it, because I like reading good words.

It says, you said, the three of you, “Basically either you commit to a new institutionalized system of accountability with and to Black writers, or you prove that you’re putting on just another strategic virtue signaling performance deemed necessary to survive the times.”

First of all, bravo. That’s awesome. And I love the clarity of it. And I particularly love the word prove. Because I think it’s fair to say at this point after about a thousand virtue signaling performances that that’s exactly what the studios and networks have done for all of these years. They’ve just done what they felt they needed to do so they could just survive and not be canceled as the kids say.

So, tell me about the thrust of that because I’m sure there was probably some debate about how to temper this statement. How strong, how aggressive, how not aggressive, how conciliatory. Talk to me a little bit about if there was just an automatic unity of thought of how you should proceed with this statement.

**Michelle:** So, yeah, the whole thing was like, OK, let’s come with facts. Let’s hit them hard. But let’s also leave the door open for real change. Like we understand that we want to work in this business. We’re not saying like blackball us and kick us out. We’re saying, listen, we’re here because we want to tell our stories, too. And now we want you to follow those statements up with some real action. And we used our numbers so you could understand that we understand where the problems lie. If, for example, we’re 15% of the population but we only make up 5.6% of the film writing jobs then that’s a problem that we can work to correct.

**Craig:** Right.

**Michelle:** And those are things that we really wanted to be sure of. And let me just be clear here. It was very important to me specifically that the statement not only said what we wanted to say but it said it very well. We knew we were going to send it out to a mostly writers community. And we didn’t want anyone, “Look at those Black writers. What are they saying?” We wanted to impress the hell out of all of you. We wanted you to look at those words like, “Ooh, look at the command.” That was very thoughtful.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** Now Hilliard one of the recurring points in the letter is about accountability. So, let’s talk about that because every year the WGA puts out pretty detailed reports about who is getting hired or not hired. We also see university reports about representation on screen. But that feels like a way of counting, and it feels like in your letter you’re really arguing more for a moral accountability that you’re looking for. That you want an outcome that’s not just pure numbers but is actually what you’re describing is a systemic change.

So you say, “We need to revolutionize the way our industry hires writers.” What does that look like? What are some parameters, some benchmarks? And what does the change look like if it happens?

**Hilliard:** Let me just give you a couple things, just to think about it like this. If we have people in higher places, more people will be hired. That’s just the way it is. The reason why a lot of white guys are being hired is because their white friends are there. So it’s the same thing. Which is why, as you see, my favorite line in the entire thing that Michelle wrote was this line. “You need more Black friends.”

So if you think about that, right, then the system will change itself. Because if you had more Black friends in your rooms and not just one, you know, that the system would change itself. So we need more people in places to hire. We need more people in rooms. We need more people in the place with a voice. And we need the opportunity to fail. You know? Three or four key things that I know if you just did that alone things would change.

**Craig:** We’ve been talking a lot about the opportunity to fail. It’s a weird one, because it might be maybe a first instinct to not talk about it, because it has the word fail in it. But there is nothing shameful about failing. Writing is – what is writing? It’s failing a thousand times in a row and then you get what you call your last draft. Right? What’s rewriting? It’s just fixing your failures.

And allowing people to fail, it’s how they learn. It’s how they learn. And I think one of the issues that we know as a town, we were talking I guess it was last week, we were talking about the difficulty of some of the diversity programs whether or not their heart is in the right place, it sort of makes it like come on in, and then if you fail, well, I guess you failed so that’s a diversity failure. Next person in, please. It just doesn’t connect.

**Hilliard:** One of the things that a lot of the TV shows forget when they staff, these writers coming out – and Bianca was in an actual program so she can speak to this specifically, but they forget that she got into that program as an example over like 3,000 or 4,000 other people. You’re talking to the top people.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Hilliard:** You know what I mean? So their script is better than every staff writer that’s staffed. Do you know what I mean? So you keep forgetting that. And I actually just told this to Jack Melbourne yesterday. I’m like, dude, you guys got to be better. [Unintelligible] it’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, go ahead Bianca.

**Bianca:** No, but it’s also even the idea of failure. Like that’s why they’re not moving up or why that’s not happening for them which is honestly usually not in fact the case. They’re only paid for for one year. And when they have to pay for them then they cycle them out for another free person and they’re not in fact encouraging the mentoring and moving them up. They’re seeing them more sometimes as tissue people. OK, here’s a spot at the bottom. You have the least amount of power. You have the least amount of ability to change the culture in the room. But you have a spot for the moment. Next. Onto the next.

But to go back to something that John said, actually I think the numbers are very important. And I think it’s a thing that if you want to make something better you have to be able to track it. You have to be able to analyze it. And you have to put your energy there to be able to improve it. So you have to be very specific though, right? Like if you have – we don’t have complete numbers, for example. So it’s hard for us to say OK here are really the problems. We’re kind of glossing over and you’re kind of maybe looking a little bit here, and maybe looking a little bit there. And it might appear on the surface that things were improving but in reality if you can’t tell me well how many Black writers are moving from staff writer to story editor, and how quickly? If they’re being asked to repeat four or five times then we can’t actually see that that’s a pattern. It happens year over year over year. How do you go back except for anecdotal information and change that problem?

And I know for myself, numbers again is my thing, I’ve asked for these numbers, I’ve looked for these numbers, and depending on where you go they’re all very different. And it’s hard to just be like what are the Black writers. What are the Black female writers? What are the Black male writers? We can’t get that kind of data. And oftentimes it feels like we’re putting Band-Aids over dams because it’s like, OK, we do this one thing over here and we have these two little things and everything will be fine.

**Craig:** Because there’s this sense that the companies are looking for an answer that will make this all be quiet. But there is no one answer and we’re missing certain – like baseball has a thousand new statistics. I love all of them. But we need an upward mobility statistic for writers in Hollywood in all groups who have been marginalized. Right? We just don’t have that – whatever that factor is, we don’t have it. Sorry, John, I cut you off.

**John:** Yeah. So it sounds like what Bianca is describing is we have good numbers that are trying to speak to equity and access, like sort of being able to get into the system, but we don’t have good numbers about equity of opportunity, equity of outcome. That the same person who is at the same job can move up the ladder in the same ways. And so tracking that and having meaningful statistics that actually follow the path of people through it will help, because like everyone else on this call I’ve heard all the stories of writers having to repeat at levels that they should not be repeating, or not being able to move from being paid out of a different fund out to being the real staff member. And we need to actually be able to chart that better.

**Michelle:** You know, I was talking to a showrunner yesterday about not just getting in as a staff writer, but how many Black EPs are in this town and how many Black show creators have shows on the air and how many Black writers have overall deals? Because that’s where the real power is. When you talk about that power seat, you talk about where are we in a position? It’s like Hilliard said, when you have Black showrunners nine times out of ten they’re creating what we would consider Black content. So they’re going to hire Black writers. And that’s really what’s happening on I would say like the white side or the mainstream side.

But, you know, we can write on any show. That’s the other thing, too. This idea that, oh well, I don’t have any Black characters, I don’t need a Black writer. It’s like excuse me? I love action. I love sci-fi. I love horror. We can write on any genre. And to assume that we can speak for voices outside of our own yet others always try to tell our story. That’s frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. White people aren’t shy about writing on Black shows, are they?

**Michelle:** Not at all.

**Hilliard:** Exactly.

**Michelle:** And I think some people, you know, really don’t get how insulting that is. Where you’re not even represented in your own way. Like I sold a show to CBS last year. I remember having discussions with executives about this Black woman. And they were like, mmm, they were not Black, they were not women, and they were really kind of pushing back on me telling them who I am. And I remember I was like, hmm, this is weird. So I’m saying that to say it’s frustrating because we’re constantly fighting to even just tell our own story because so much of who we are it’s like stereotype and frustrating.

**Hilliard:** And when I signed to one of the big four agencies I remember sitting down at the table with them and they were all excited about me. They were going to do all these great things for me. And before I left I said in front of everybody, “Here’s the last thing you need to know. Do not just send me out for things that are Black.” I live in a white world. I know everything about you guys. We’re consumed with you. So to assume that we don’t know you is the most ridiculous thing.

Now, for you to get me is where I’m impressed. For you to get the nuance that we have that’s when I’m impressed.

**Michelle:** Yeah. I always tell my students, I mean, I teach at LMU. Most of my students come from Republican/conservative white families. And I’ll say to them when they say, “I want to tell a story about a poor little Black boy.” My first question is why. Because I say to them you’re probably going to screw it up. You’re not going to get it right. And your reasoning is because you’re being told, oh, I’m won’t get a job in Hollywood because I’m a white guy. And I tell my white male students that’s a bunch of crap. I’m like, no, don’t go in there. You still tell your own story, whatever that is. Don’t feel like you have to try to tell mine.

First of all, you’re not going to get it right. And it’s frustrating because you’re seeing it even in the schools and that’s carrying over. And so professors like me, I’m constantly fighting to teach students to tell their own truth. I don’t care if you’re from a little town in Colorado. Whatever. Tell your story. Tell me about your funny uncle. Tell me about your experience. And that’s what we’re going to be drawn to.

But if you’re trying to force it, and I’m seeing too much of that now. And it’s honestly – it’s just frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s no lack of cynicism. In every corner of this business, I guess it’s endemic to who we are. But I’m wondering as you guys have gone through this process of witnessing and experiencing both the events of the last we’ll say month and a half but also the events of your entire lives, and looking at the way people are responding now, and I think there I’m pretty much saying white people and white businesses, are you feeling any sense of hope in that there’s a difference? Or is too soon to tell?

**Hilliard:** Well, I mean, a lot of people have asked us, you know, myself, Michelle, and Bianca, what has Hollywood’s response been. Guess what? We haven’t heard from hardly anybody. And by the time we’re through here. Now, we’ve heard from some showrunners going, “Wow, you guys wrote an amazing thing,” but we’ve not heard from the HBOs, the Netflix, the people that we called out going, hey, you guys are the ones claiming this stuff. Do you know what I mean? Let’s see what you guys are doing. Sit down with us. But nobody has done that.

**Michelle:** But I will say this. I have been reached out to several individuals, some of whom have a bit of power, and I think that there’s conversations that are happening. I’m hearing, for example I heard yesterday that one of our top execs in this town on a call and said that he wants to see all of his shows change as far as seeing Black writers on these shows. And it came from a pretty good source. I won’t say who it is.

But I’m saying that to say it’s coming – I’m hearing things. We just don’t want it to be something that’s sporadic all over the place. We really want systemic. And a couple years ago I actually pushed the guild for a Rooney Rule. I really wanted to go out to the studios and have them sit down and come up with a plan, similar to the NFL, where you have to interview us. I mean, again, we’re not asking you to give us anything. We’re saying at least have something in your company where you say, OK, for every job we have to go out to so many Black writers, so many writers of color, etc. And find a way to track that so you can say, OK, we interviewed these number of writers. We were able to hire these many. And over a period of time you can at least track to see how that’s impacted.

Because what’s going to happen is this. If the studios and the production companies and all the networks suddenly change the way they do business then the agencies have to. And we get right now the whole issue with agencies, but then the agencies will say, “Oh, we have to go and find some Black writers because everybody wants some.” We can then get the opportunities that we’re saying we simply would like to have. As opposed to, as Hilliard knows, we always get showrunners that come to our committee and ask us, “Hey, you got any writers? We’re looking for writers.” But they’re afraid to say out loud “Black.” Because they’re like, oh, we can’t just ask for Black writers. I’m like why not? You don’t have any. The first thing is being comfortable enough to have the conversation and say, “We have no Black writers in this room. And we need to change that.”

And so if you can say the words then you can start working to feel some of those positions.

**Hilliard:** And we need them in higher positions is the problem. They hire these staff writers with no voice.

**Bianca:** And if you have a voice you’re penalized for having said voice. You’re at the bottom of the table.

**Michelle:** But let me also add they are looking for Black showrunners. Here’s the problem. Due to the systemic racism – we had writers back in the ‘80s and ‘90s who were incredible writers on incredible shows. As you know the ‘90s had a lot of Black shows. Those writers were never allowed to get past story editor. If they were allowed they would now be showrunners. We would have probably 20, 30 additional Black showrunners in this town who are so talented. They’ve not lost their talent because they’ve gotten older. They just were not able to get the opportunities. And so part of what we’re trying to do at the guild is bring those writers back into the fold and bring them back up. Because they were really torn down. They were devastated.

They were done really dirty. We do stand on the shoulders of some truly talented people. And so part of it is things were taken from us and they need to be restored. The value needs to be restored. Because it’s one thing to say like, oh, we don’t have anybody. It’s like, yeah, because you intentionally prevented that from happening.

**Bianca:** But we’re also recreating those problems now. When people are repeating, and repeating, and repeating. Right? To repeat staff writer four, five, six, seven times you think about how many times are you supposed to, or more people normally. One, two times maybe. Four, five, six. You’re not getting script fees. You’re not [growing pension]. People leave. People fall out. People have a harder time moving up.

So if you think about somebody being four years at staff writer where would they have been in those four years if they were promoted like other people? Or six years? And so we’re doing it now to a new class of people. Last week there were people asking for mid-levels and they’re like, “Oh, well we can’t find any.” And I’m like well maybe look at somebody who has been here for six years, been working on shows every year getting scripts. They’re clearly capable of producing episodes. But they’ve also been kept back. And are you willing to say I’m going to look at an executive story editor who has been here who has repeated staff writer for four years, wrote three, four scripts. Repeated story editor a couple times. Now is an executive story editor. And might actually have more experience than somebody who is technically mid-level but their title says something different.

And so we’re doing sort of the same thing now where we have classes of people who have been stuck. I know myself I’ve repeated staff writer four times. I was asked seven times to repeat staff writer. And I literally had to walk away from things until somebody decided – like until somebody offered something else I would not do it.

And so there’s a system in place as well right now that’s recreating those problems in real time.

**Hilliard:** Which also goes to they always assume that the Black staff writer has no experience whatsoever. They forget most of us have shot movies and produced them. Have produced our own pilots. Have produced proof of concepts. Dozens of them. You know what I mean? So when we get in a room I’m already a co-EP in my head over these other people.

**Michelle:** I mean, true, everyone is not capable we get of running an entire show. It requires a lot. But there’s some pretty dope people out there who could do it. You know? And people do it all the time.

**Craig:** People do it all the time. I mean, it’s hard to get those jobs, but it’s hard for – I mean, it’s hard for everybody in a sense. Like everybody that’s playing here is playing at a professional sports league level. But, yeah, so it’s hard for everybody. The point is people can do it. We know that. It’s doable. So—

**Michelle:** Yeah. Has it been perfect? No. But we’ve done a really good job. And I think back to what Hilliard says, you know, we should be allowed to fail.

And let me talk about because of this we’re artists. Like who wants to create under these stressful situations? Just like everyone, like I want to create beautiful, vivid worlds. John, you don’t know this but one year I went to Sundance and we snuck away and went to go see your movie Big Fish. And I just remember thinking like, yes, like I love movies, I love television, and I just want the opportunity to create my own Big Fish. Like my own work that people can look at and be also as moved.

And that’s why we’re here. So when you’re creating and you’re constantly worried like, oh, I have to represent the whole race. That’s exhausting. Right? I want to get on a show. I’m sure you don’t think like, oh, as a white guy, I’ve got to represent all white men.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I’m trying to not represent white men. That’s my new thing. [laughs]

**Michelle:** We want to represent the world and have fun, you know. I know Hilliard loves like cool cars. I’m sure that would be something in his show. And Bianca probably has some like mad genius or something in her world. I don’t know. Those are things that made us want to come into this industry in the first place. And we get that Hollywood is a microcosm of America. But to your question, I do believe there is a change. It’s why the statement was written. We think that there is a paradigm shift. What we plan to do though is to hold them to it.

So we’re not done. We’re also preparing to, you know, take some more action.

**Craig:** Good. Yeah.

**John:** Let’s talk about those next steps. So, if I’m a Black WGA member listening to this and I want to get involved, what do I do next? How do I reach out to you? What happens?

**Michelle:** Well, we have a committee. And we meet – of course, because of the pandemic things were a bit off. But we’re going to have a new meeting in August. We also have an incredible meet and greet coming up in July. We have 100 of our brightest, most talented writers. There are going to be 33 showrunners. Like a speed dating session.

**Hilliard:** Meet and greet.

**Michelle:** So we have a lot of things that we do already for our committee behind the scenes. And a lot of people don’t realize. It’s like oh wow what’s going on over there. But because of the pandemic we had to, of course, slow things down. But we’re planning a bunch of virtual panels and events for the remainder of the year because as you know in America Black people are dying at the highest rate from COVID-19. So we are not going to take a chance on our lives.

That’s another thing. You know, with the industry opening, it’s like are they fully thinking about Black lives? Again.

**Craig:** The answer is no.

**Michelle:** You get the virus. Yeah, we get that you could live. But—

**Craig:** Yeah, right. I think, yeah, staying home is a good idea. I think staying home is a great idea, actually, for all of us.

**Bianca:** Another quick thing if they haven’t already, just for stats purposes as the number person, if you have not already self-identified on the website that is really, really helpful. I’ve been getting most of my staff from there. And some of it is that people have not self-identified. You can also email us and join the CBW if you are a Black writer. And come to the meetings and figure out how you too can get involved. We have a lot of great things coming up. Financial literacy things. Things outside that aren’t just about the industry straightforward.

So, get involved. Get excited. And, you know, we’re moving and shaking.

**Hilliard:** We have a Facebook page, too, that they can join.

**John:** Cool. Bianca, Hilliard, Michelle, thank you so much for joining us on this. It was so good to talk with all of you.

**Craig:** That was awesome. Thank you guys.

**John:** Thanks for all your hard work. And we look forward to hearing what happens next. We’ll keep an eye out for you.

**Hilliard:** Awesome. Thanks for having us man.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks. Keep going. Keep going.

**John:** And Craig it’s now just you and me. It is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** One Cool Thing.

**John:** You got one?

**Craig:** Yeah, I do. I don’t know, your dog Lambert – is Lambert a picky eater?

**John:** He was a very picky eater when he first came to our house. He’s a less picky eater now. What do you got?

**Craig:** Well, we have our wonderful dog, Cookie. She is fantastic. She is also just a little princess when it comes to food. Good, she’s so, mmm. So dogs can’t just eat treats all day. They need real actual kibble and stuff like that. Or some certain wet food. But she just literally will turn her nose up at it. She’ll look at it and then her nose will go up and she will walk away.

So, it’s getting frustrating, especially because sometimes she gets so hungry that she’ll barf.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** They do that. Because they have too much bile building up. And you’re like, well, if you’re that hungry just eat the food. But she’s like, no, I don’t want to. It’s gross.

So, in looking around I had some other stuff that I used to crumble on it and put on it. And it sort of worked a little bit but not great. Now – now I have Marie’s Magical Diner Dust.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Marie’s Magical Diner Dust is made my Steller & Chewy and it’s some kind of horrifying – it’s like basically the stuff that dogs like the most is the stuff that would make us puke the most. It’s like it’s made of skull and chicken dicks and stuff. So it’s just dried up little powder. So I sprinkled a little bit on there and it was like I had brought out some cocaine in the club. She just went bananas. And just immediately started eating. So, thank you Stella & Chewy for your Marie’s Magical Diner Dust for dogs. So gross. So effective.

**John:** Excellent. When Lambert first came to live with us he did not like our food. And so we experimented with different foods to get one that would work with his system well. But then he would still be really picky about eating it. When Megan McDonnell would dog sit him she couldn’t get him to eat at all and she would have to like sort of hand feed him kibble.

What we discovered was pretty useful which if other people want to try this before reverting to dinner dust is you take a tiny bit of peanut butter and rub it on the inside of his bowl and that was appealing enough that he would start to lick the peanut butter and he was like as long as I’m here I guess I’ll eat the kibble too. So we would soften his dry food.

Now he’s just gotten over it and so eats his food. We wet it down a little bit and he’s a good eater.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, so I’m envious. This dog, trying to get her to eat, ridiculous. What about you, John? You got a One Cool Thing for us?

**John:** I do. So mine is an immersive light field video with layered mesh representation.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** This is from SIGGRAPH 2020, so a big visual effects conference. Click through the link here, Craig, and it’s something I’ve sort of speculated we should be able to do soon but we finally now have the computer processing ability to do it. If you can imagine if you took a whole bunch of Go Pros and layered them all around a big sphere you could get a full 360 view of things. They’re doing that, but then they’re doing incredibly computational intensive processing to make a full field view from that. So, you can film something and then in real time move to any space in that video in any space in that world. You click through in the little sample videos you’ll see a guy with a homemade flame-thrower.

**Craig:** It’s really cool. Yeah.

**John:** And so you can move around in 3D space while it’s happening, so it feels kind of like a videogame, because it is kind of using videogame engines to take real video and figure out the surface mapping of stuff and create 3D models out of it. It’s really impressively done. So I would just say it’s a little preview of stuff you’re going to be seeing in movies in about six months.

**Craig:** In six months?

**John:** Well, I think you’re going to see application of this kind of stuff in movies coming really soon. Because the moment you can do stuff like this in a demo everyone is looking at this and it’s like I already sent it through to a director I’m working with. Oh, we’re doing this, aren’t we? He’s like, oh yes, we’re definitely going to do that.

**Craig:** Look, it’s awesome. I’m looking at it. It’s really, really cool. I can definitely see how it would actually enhance videogames for sure. I don’t know if I would want to watch a passively observed story like this.

**John:** Oh, no, no, no. I’m not saying you’re going to see the whole movie that way. But I’m going to say like bullet time in the Matrix, there’s things like that where I can imagine us moving through a space and moving through a battle sequence where the different fields of planes are in different timings. You could just do really amazing things if you had this kind of information.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s the kind of thing which, again, you could do right now with just pure visual effects. But to actually have the real photography behind it will enable some amazing things.

**Craig:** That’s very cool.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Very cool.

**John:** And that is our show for this week. So stick around after the credits for our discussion of professional sports. But if you’re not a Premium member you’ll have to just wonder. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is a classic Matthew Chilelli outro. He’s done some of our best ones. It’s actually how he became our editor is by doing a whole bunch of outros for us.

If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send longer questions or things like we read today. For short questions, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Just today Craig replied in a really great thread about someone’s question and concerns, so thank you for doing that, Craig.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** So follow Craig. We have t-shirts. We have t-shirts at Cotton Bureau. They’re terrific. You should check those out. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. Craig, thanks for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Craig, baseball is coming back. Basketball is coming back. I am weirdly excited for both of them.

**Craig:** Are you? [laughs]

**John:** I’m excited because it’s a new thing and I’m really curious how they’re going to do it. I also feel like I like when systems and structures try to react to the outside world and find a new normal.

**Craig:** Oh my god. That’s the most robot thing you’ve ever said. Sorry, that’s the second most robot thing you ever said. The first most robot thing you ever said was immersive light field video with a layered mesh representation. [laughs]

**John:** So, for our international listeners who may not be following what’s happening in American professional sports, the NBA, the National Basketball Association has announced that they are planning to kind of resume this season. They’re moving all the players and families and coaches and staff to Orlando, Florida where they will be playing a truncated version of this season and going into the playoffs. And we will have a national champion. Do you call it a national champion? What do you call the winner of basketball?

**Craig:** Oh man. It’s just the champion. It’s the champion. NBA champion.

**John:** NBA champion. That’s what I was looking for. So they’re going to do that but it’s going to be a highly tested environment. But even as we’re recording this today like a bunch of players already tested positive for it, so there you go.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** But so basketball I think will probably work. I mean, the teams are relatively small in these pretty controlled environments. Baseball is outdoors, which is great.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** But, you know, usually teams travel and so it’s not like everyone is going to go to one place where they will do all baseball.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** I just don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah, how will they do baseball? This is the most important question. Look, I think – I’m more worried about the NBA. Because basketball is a contact sport. We don’t think of it in the way that football is a contact sport where you’re encouraging contact, where it’s required on every play, but basketball players are in each other’s faces. They are up against each other physically. They are sweating on each other. And they’re smashing into each other and falling down on each other. Whereas baseball, everyone is actually quite far apart.

I mean, some players, when you’re in the field are really far apart.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, who is close together? And I’m going to remove the dugout from the situation. So in the dugout all the players are waiting to have their turn at bat if they’re in the lineup. You can work that out. You can have sort of a social distancing dugout kind of situation. In the field the catcher is pretty close to the home plate umpire and the batter. But if they are wearing – I mean the catcher is already wearing a mask. And you should be fine.

Beyond that there is not a ton of contact in baseball. People slide into base and they’ve already reduced the amount of contact just per the rules to reduce injury. So I’m not so concerned transmission during a game between players. It’s what happens in between the games that’s obviously the problem. Because it’s just hard to keep people who are working together from, you know, being near each other and potentially infecting each other. And all those players – sorry, many of the players have wives and they have children. And, you know, there’s more vectors for infection.

Obviously there’s not going to be fans. We’re not doing that. Have you seen what they’ve done, I think it was in South Korea where baseball is very popular, they filled the stands with stuffed animals.

**John:** Which is exactly how it should be at all times.

**Craig:** So great. It was so great. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. And then I saw one photo of an orchestra that was playing–

**John:** To potted plants, yes.

**Craig:** Yes. An audience of plants, which is very sweet. It will be weird.

**John:** Well, so baseball it feels like all your potential concerns and objections, like they have families, they’re going to encounter other people. Yes. And also everyone else who is going back to work in any capacity is going to have those same problems.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So it’s similar to that. Except there’s additional travel with baseball and it looks like they’re taking efforts to travel less than the other ones would.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think if they can reduce the travel down, because obviously far fewer games are going to be played. I don’t think anyone is going to look at this season as a “real” season, no matter who wins the World Series. It will have an asterisk a mile wide next to it because it’s just a weird year. There was a strike-shortened season where there was another asterisk World Series winner. So, it’s just a weird one. But the players want to play. And the owners want the players to play. And there is money to be made from the television rights. And I would watch, for sure.

I did years ago when–

**John:** Craig, one moment though. Because from a television viewer perspective, someone who is just watching a baseball game, it doesn’t necessarily going to feel any different. I mean, I don’t know that you would necessarily know there was a problem–

**Craig:** It will. Oh yes.

**John:** Tell me why it will feel different.

**Craig:** Because it’s silent. So, baseball games are loud. Baseball stadiums are much larger than indoor arenas where NBA teams play. They are not as big as football stadiums, but you’re talking typically about somewhere between 25,000 to 50,000 per game, outside, cheering.

**John:** If only we had a way to pipe in sound that wasn’t actually part of a scene when it was recorded.

**Craig:** That would be awful. If you had artificial crowd reactions it would be the worst.

**John:** Bum-bum-bum-bum. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would be just awful. It would all sound like a videogame.

**John:** So it’s going to feel like golf is what it’s going to feel like.

**Craig:** It’s going to feel like golf. There was a game that was played years ago when Freddie Gray died in the custody of police in Baltimore and civil unrest occurred which as we know solved the problem of police brutality. Anyway, just amazing, right? We’ve been doing this – that’s a whole – I’m not going to go down that road again. But just, argh, police.

So, Baltimore had a curfew. They were essentially shut down for a day or two. But I can’t remember which team, maybe the Angels, were in town to play the Orioles and they played a game in an empty stadium. And it was the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Because like you just heard stuff. It was weird. It was just like – yeah.

**John:** I watched, this past week was the worldwide developer’s conference for Apple. And so some years I’ve gone. I always watch it and there’s always a live keynote. And it’s a big thing and it’s a huge crowd. And obviously they couldn’t do any of that this year.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And they made choices like, you know what, we’re going to change the format completely. We’re going to lean into it and not try to do the normal things we’re doing and they did a much better job. So I think it will be weird at the start but I bet they can also just find ways to film it differently so that you’re not expecting some of the moments that you would normally expect with the crowd.

**Craig:** I am laughing at you, not with you. Because the thing is we don’t really film – I mean, yeah, occasionally you’ll look at, they’ll have a crowd shot. But by and large it’s just the sense of the crowd reacting as things are happening is part of what’s going on. And there’s always this low crowd hum.

It’s a little bit like when they show you–

**John:** The sitcoms without the laugh tracks?

**Craig:** Yes. It’s that eerie. It’s just eerie.

**John:** Oh, that would be so good.

**Craig:** Because it’s like, OK, it’s 3-2 and bases loaded and two outs. This the payoff pitch. And in those situations the crowd is at a fever pitch. Every little moment is just adrenalized. And in this one it will just be like…and he struck out. Silence. Everyone just walks back. It’s gonna be weird.

**John:** Yeah. It’s gonna be weird. But let’s talk about how weird basketball is. So they’ve made a completely different choice. It’s sort of New Zealand’s choice of we are going to isolate this group of people and not let them have any encounter with the outside world. In theory that should work. If you actually keep a tight quarantine on these people they can be as in each other’s face as you want because there will be no virus for them to transmit.

**Craig:** Right. Good luck.

**John:** Yeah. Good luck. I genuinely wish them good luck. But it’s going to be tough.

**Craig:** This virus, I mean, COVID particularly, it’s like water. It’s going to find any little crack and it will get through. It just doesn’t seem realistic. It really doesn’t. If they can pull it off, great. Just remember people are going to have to be feeding them. There’s doctors and there’s food service and there’s janitorial service and there’s shopping. You can’t – it’s not Bio-Dome. You can’t seal them up.

**John:** Yeah. My mom is in a senior living place and it’s kind of Bio-Dome-ish. They are pretty – they’re vigilant. And, again, I’m not confident that there will never be a case at her place, but they’re taking the precautions that they can take. And so I guess on the NBA side I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it’s worthwhile to try doing what they’re doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can theoretically Bio-Dome folks who generally have reduced mobility and independence anyway. Bio-Doming 20 to 40 year old men and their wives, their significant others, their children. Listen, obviously I’m not rooting for anyone to be sick. I hope it works. I really, really do. And weirdly I would say basketball – it will be less weird to watch without a crowd because basketball is a playground sport. It’s everywhere. So we all have the experience of watching basketball where there’s no crowd. You just go down to any of the basketball courts, like Venice. When you go down to Venice here in LA there are these famous basketball courts. It’s where they shot a bunch of White Men Can’t Jump.

And they play. You’re just used to it. You’re not used to seeing baseball games with no one there. It’s just not really a huge thing. And so it’s just going to be interesting.

**John:** Yeah. A good experiment. We’ll see how it all plays out. No one is expecting the NFL to come back. Correct?

**Craig:** If the NFL came back that would be madness. I don’t know. It would be absolute madness. But they might. I mean, that’s the thing. The amount of money behind all of this is extraordinary. Yeah. But until a vaccine happens – I mean, yeah, I don’t know. That one seems weird to me.

**John:** And so it seems like none of these issues will impact anything in our direct lives, but literally I was having a conversation with a network about plans for this thing I may be working on. They’re like, “Yeah, it’s really going to be a question of whether NBC does the Olympics or not, or when those happen.” We’re trying to think like two or three years out for where stuff is going to be. And it’s like, yeah, that’s right. The Olympics is a huge, huge – obviously it’s an athletic event, but also three weeks of solid programming. And if you don’t have that, that’s important.

**Craig:** I think a lot of the folks that are in those executive suites are doing the only thing they can do which is make plans. But as they’re making plans I think they’re all well aware that their plans are pointless. They are doing what – they don’t want to sit there and do nothing, but no one knows how this is going to go. No one. Anybody that has any kind of certainty is a lunatic.

**John:** Yup. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

 

Links:

* [WGA West Committee of Black Writers Call on Hollywood to Revolutionize the Way Our Industry Hires Writers](https://deadline.com/2020/06/wga-west-committee-of-black-writers-co-chairs-call-on-hollywood-to-revolutionize-the-way-our-industry-hires-writers-1202958013/)
* [Immersive Light Field Video with a Layered Mesh Representation](https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/)
* [Stella & Chewy’s Freeze-Dried Raw Marie’s Magical Dinner Dust for Dogs](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SM1QT2J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
* [Hilliard Guess](https://twitter.com/HilliardGuess?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [Bianca Sams](https://twitter.com/writesamswrite?lang=en) on Twitter
* [Michelle Amor](https://twitter.com/MichelleAmor?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/458standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here.](https://johnaugust.com/2020/the-empire-strikes-back-with-lawrence-kasdan)

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today’s episode contains a few bad words and also spoilers for The Empire Strikes Back, which really if you haven’t seen The Empire Strikes Back? That’s crazy. You should see that movie. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** And my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 452 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program it’s a deep dive into The Empire Strikes Back, looking back at how this 1980 sequel to Star Wars works on a script level and a story level. To help us do that we are joined again by screenwriter Larry Kasdan who not only wrote Empire and other Star Wars films, but also Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat, The Bodyguard, Big Chill, and so many more movies it’s just exhausting. Welcome back Lawrence Kasdan.

**Lawrence Kasdan:** Thank you. Glad to be back. I love this podcast.

**Craig:** We’ve arranged things so that you can see into everybody’s room. You requested that you could see into people’s rooms.

**Lawrence:** Some of them have stymied me there with their glossies.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, a few of these people have head shots up perhaps hoping to be the next Indiana Jones or something.

**John:** We are doing this live on Zoom. We love to do live shows for the Writers Guild Foundation. This is a live show for the Writers Guild Foundation, but instead of being in a big theater with a bunch of people around us we are staring into living rooms and bedrooms and other rooms of people here on Zoom. Thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation for putting this together. Thank you everyone who came. We have 200 and some people in this Zoom room watching us live.

**Craig:** On the way to 500 I believe.

**John:** That’s pretty exciting. Now, Larry we’ve had you on the show before. You were a guest on Episode 247. That was way back in 2016. A different lifetime. We were talking about Raiders. We were talking about the Star Wars movies you were working on. Today on this program we want to do a deep dive where we really focus in on one project and really the story and script behind that project. We’ve done this for The Little Mermaid, we did this for Raiders. And being the 40th anniversary of Empire Strikes Back we really want to talk about the process of getting from, OK, we’re doing a sequel to Star Wars to the movie that we saw.

And to do that we have you, but we also have your handwritten pages from that script beforehand. So at some points during this video I’m going to be showing you some of those pages and we’re going to talk through scenes that look like the final scenes in the movie and scenes that are very, very different. So I’m excited to get into this.

Lawrence Kasdan, talk us through how you became involved with The Empire Strikes Back. So, Star Wars was of course a phenomenon, but when was your first involvement with Empire?

**Lawrence:** I had just written Raiders of the Lost Ark and it had taken me about six months. And I took the script up to George, handed it over to him in a very ceremonial way. And he said, “Let’s go out to lunch.” And he said, “I’m in real trouble on the next Star Wars. Would you write it?” And I said don’t you want to read Raiders first? He said, “I’m going to read it tonight. If I don’t like it I’ll take back this offer.” But he did like it and almost immediately – I had to have a break – but a few weeks later we started this and wrote Empire very quickly.

**Craig:** And part of the reason that he was talking to you was because the first writer on Empire, Leigh Brackett, was pretty sick and did end up passing away. So you guys, even though you’re co-credited, you don’t really overlap in the creation of Empire.

**Lawrence:** No. And I wish I had met her because she’s a legendary writer, both science fiction and screenwriting, and written great westerns which I love. She’s got a credit on The Big Sleep, one of my favorite movies. So she was a giant. But I never met her because she was hired to do it and she became very sick. She handed in a draft which I maybe saw once. But when George made this proposition to me at lunch she had already passed away. He said there’s a thousand people working in England and we have no script.

**Craig:** When we hear someone say, or imagine ourselves on the receiving end of, “Hey, do you want to write Raiders of the Lost Ark,” it’s already nerve-racking. But Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn’t a thing when you wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Star Wars was the thing of all things.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** Did you feel anxious? Were you terrified? Or were you like, meh.

**Lawrence:** I was a little bit tired from finishing Raiders. I was worried about their reaction. So I was in kind of a haze. And when he said, you know, will you come on and help me with Empire you can’t really be shocked. At that point I had been trying to get into the business so long and had seen enough things. You know that once you get hired then things start to work. It’s murder to get hired. And no one wants to hire someone they’ve never heard of.

The second they have a decent credit everybody wants to hire you, even though they don’t know if you’re good or bad.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Lawrence:** So I sort of wasn’t surprised. He’s in trouble. He knows I just delivered a script. Maybe—

**John:** Maybe you’re the guy. So, we got to read through the transcript of Raiders, and so the conversations you were having with Lucas and Spielberg about the intentions going into Raiders, was there an equivalent session with you and George Lucas and other folks involved about what the goals were going to be going into Empire? The sequel to the surprise hit movie Star Wars. What were those initial conversations about in terms of intention, and hopes, and things you wanted to see this movie do?

**Lawrence:** My first real conversation was in private with George. And when I had had my little break and I came back up to the ranch and we were talking alone. And he said, “You know, Darth Vader is Luke’s father.” And I said, no shit. I thought that was just fantastic. And it was clear to me that that meant the second movie was going to be very different from the first. And you must know that I love the first one. I love The New Hope. I think it’s one of the great movies. And it changed the world.

But part of its fun and why it was irresistible to people is it was so light and fast. And you never stopped for a second to talk about character or to have very much intimate scenes. There are a couple things if you get three lines between two characters it’s a big deal. But everything around it is perfect and I learned over the years with George that that’s his greatest desire to move fast and entertain people. And anything else is gravy as far as he’s concerned.

Well that was not my point of view on writing. That’s not the things I had been writing. And I could tell when he told me about Darth and Luke that that opened up a whole different kind of movie than the first one. So without taking anything away from the first one, which to me is the greatest Star Wars movie, this was going to be a different animal. And he seemed to be receptive to that. And, you know, for the next year or whatever it was as they went into production and I was around sometimes it was clear that there was always this slight frisson, a tension between my desire to have the characters to be a little more – have a little more depth, to let the love scenes play a little bit, to let Yoda’s philosophy be heard. And always George’s instinct to go fast, or faster, faster.

And looking at the movie now I think it really combines those things pretty well. And I’m amazed by how much action there is in it. And how well it works. And I’m amazed that there is a chance to know these characters. And the actors embraced that idea, of course, that now they had something more to play.

**Craig:** There’s a moment early on in the film that I think hearing you talk embodies that for me. It’s a fascinating combination of let’s call it George and Larry. There’s a classic Campbellian story trope of the call to action. And we all know that George was kind of student of Joseph Campbell. And so early on in Empire Strikes Back there’s a call to action. Obi-Wan appears like a vision to Luke and says, “You’re going to go to Dagobah and meet up with Yoda and become a Jedi knight.” Classic. And it’s such a fascinating kind of your mentor reappearing and giving you this interesting challenge. At the same time he’s freezing to death and he’s just escaped from this monster that beat him up. And he’s going to die. And I remember even as a kid feeling like this is what movies do better than anything is they give you two stories at once and it makes sense on top of each other.

I remember just almost laughing at the thought that ghost Obi-Wan didn’t give a damn, which meant he was going to be OK.

**Lawrence:** Meant he’s going to be OK. You know, it’s a trap that people can fall into that maybe this character isn’t going to live, you know. But as soon as Ben tells him what his next chapter is going to be you know that he’ll be OK. Now you pretty much knew that anyway. This is Luke Skywalker. And you know that Han Solo is already looking for him. So you think [Obi pretty good]. But it’s an actual release of pressure like in a steam pipe.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Now, talk us through this early part of the process. You’re having these conversations with George. Was there an outline document? At what point were things being written down in terms of your marching orders and this is what you’re going to try to write?

**Lawrence:** Yeah, I don’t remember in detail, but I know that George – and he was under such pressure. And Leigh had passed away. And he got something down. You know, that’s a great habit to have. Get something down so you can talk about it. And George was a great one for doing that.

So I’m sure that we worked somewhat from his notes. And then very quickly Irvin Kershner became involved, the director. And he was an enormous influence on everything because he was such an unusual, eccentric character. He had actually taught George at USC briefly. He had made New York gritty human adult dramas before that. And when his name was announced to do the second Star Wars people were amazed. You couldn’t understand it.

But Irvin was the kind of guy, he would come in and just embrace. There’s a lot of his qualities in – all of us I think in Yoda. If you’re going to do something just do it. And it didn’t matter that he made The Eyes of Laura Mars or Loving or whatever. He was going to do this now.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And it was a big change for him, a big break for him in a way because it was a big expensive movie that he’d never made.

**Craig:** Well there’s something that’s happened culturally that I’m kind of fascinated by. In your mindset as a writer when you come on something like that you know you’re writing the sequel to the biggest movie of all time. It’s this cultural touchstone for every generation. But it’s still a time where a studio might say we’re making another Star Wars and everybody goes, “Great,” and they’re not particularly freaked out by the fact that somebody has been chosen as a director and this guy who has never written anything we know has been chosen as the writer.

So there’s a certain freedom.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** And it strikes me that now if there’s a property, a franchise that kind of exemplifies a kind of total scrutiny it’s Star Wars. And you’ve been involved in Star Wars since. I mean, you worked on what is it, I lose track of the numbers, on eight? Seven and nine? Is that what you worked on? Seven and nine.

**Lawrence:** I worked on seven.

**Craig:** Seven. And you see the hoopla.

**Lawrence:** And then we did the separate Solo movie.

**Craig:** And then you did the Solo movie.

**Lawrence:** So that was four of these that I was involved with.

**Craig:** Did you have any sense at the time that you were kind of working under an interesting shroud of anonymity even though the property was so famous and global?

**Lawrence:** Absolutely. And you know Skywalker Ranch was a heavily secured area. When people got into Skywalker Ranch they felt grateful. The same way I feel every time I drive onto a movie lot. I’m sort of surprised that they let me in and I’m OK and they’re going to tell me where to park. That’s a big deal. Because for years I looked at the gates to studios and just wanted to get in there.

But Skywalker was much more intense than that. And people did not wander around Skywalker. And we were working up there in Marin and it was private. And I didn’t write up there. I wrote at home in LA. But when we had any of these meetings we would go up to the ranch. And this group of people, Kershner for sure, and then some other people would join, producers, Gary Kurtz occasionally. But Gary was really focused in England. He is the producer and he had produced Star Wars. But things were really rolling in England and so he wasn’t much involved in the story.

**John:** Now how early in the process did you know that you were really going to follow two very different threads? So you’re going to have Luke going off with Yoda and his whole quest line and you’re going to have Han and Leia and Lando Calrissian. How early in the process did you know that those two storylines would be separate for most of the movie?

**Lawrence:** I knew it immediately because that happens in the first movie. You know, the secret and the fun of Star Wars is it’s never one story happening alone. There’s always somewhere to cut to. When you get bored with the scene you just cut to the other storyline and it gives you an enormous burst of energy. Now suddenly you’re back to the other thing. Maybe the other thing, the one you were on, is playing itself out, you’re out of ideas, and now you have a whole chance to make a different movie right butted up against it.

And there’s a lot of that in Raiders, although it’s mostly from Indy’s point of view. But Star Wars, the first Star Wars was like that, back and forth. And even when they were together they get split up in the Death Star. And you’re just cutting back and forth. And so I knew going in this is going to have the same contouring.

**John:** All right. So we’re going to start looking at your handwritten pages and your edits along the way. But I’m really curious about the actual physical process of writing a screenplay back in, this would be 1978, ’79, ’80. And so this is probably before Final Draft at that point. What were you actually writing on? Were things being typed up–?

**Craig:** Or computers.

**John:** Was this done on a computer? Was this done on something else? What was the actually writing at that time?

**Lawrence:** I had always been a terrible typist. And that’s what some people here won’t even know what a manual typewriter is, or an electric typewriter, but I never mastered it. And so I was always making corrections with White Out. It was a nightmare for me, because I was never a good typist.

And so I hand wrote everything I did up until Grand Canyon. My wife and I did Grand Canyon. That’s when word processing really came in around 1990. And I was thrilled. Because now when you made mistakes it was very easy to correct them. And it changed everything.

But for every movie I did before that I was dependent on a typist who was the middle person between my handwriting, which you’re about to see, which is not good handwriting. But I have everything – all those movies – in handwritten pencil on long legal sheets. And it’s sometimes amazing to me how few changes I made.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lawrence:** And I do think it gets to the heart of something that’s very important to me which is there’s a completely different feeling about writing longhand than there is working on a computer. And you’re very careful. You don’t want to go back and rewrite that whole paragraph. You can mark out some stuff, but basically you’re thinking about every sentence and every word very carefully. More like a novelist would do. And then you move on.

And, you know, at the end of the day – I’m left-handed which is a terrible thing to be when you’re a hand-writer – and my hand would be cramped and I could not even move it. But Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, Big Chill, they all exist handwritten in pencil on long legal pads.

**Craig:** Well it’s the difference in an analogous way to the way we used to edit on old Moviolas where you cut the film and you spliced the film together. And that’s obviously with the advent of nonlinear editing that goes away. And there is no such thing as a semi-permanent cut. Nor is there any more tolerance for the little glitch bits that used to be fairly common in the way that things used to be edited together.

**Lawrence:** And the impact on the art itself, whatever you’re doing, is enormous. You know, I often think, oh, I would like to work that way again, you know. Because not being able to change everything immediately, not being able to lift out paragraphs and sentences and move them around is completely different. So you’re committing emotionally and in your story to that thing it took you so long to hand-write.

And as you go through the process and people said, well, we want this to be different, and different, then there are typists who come in and it’s not quite as imposing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, thank god you had Gayle. I was looking through these pages and I was like is Gayle, was she like one of the producers that I didn’t know? Because you’re like, “Gayle,” and it seemed like you were talking to her like, Gayle, forget this stuff. This is no good. I’m so sorry I wrote that. This is what matters.

It turns out Gayle is the typist.

**John:** Yeah. And so I’ve been a hand-writer of scenes for a very long time. And so generally first drafts I would write by hand going back to Go and early things. And so Rawson Thurber and Dana Fox, they were typing up all of my pages. And I didn’t not because – I could type really well, but I did really like the fact that I was committing to a thing. And I wasn’t going back and editing stuff. I was writing the next scene and writing the next scene.

One thing I often notice if I start writing on the computer is that I will just keep rewriting those early pages again and again and again and won’t move on. And handwriting is a way to break yourself of that habit.

**Lawrence:** It really breaks – you don’t want to go back. You don’t want to go through that physical thing again. And when people cavalierly say, “Well just change all that,” it’s a much bigger thing. And you’re thinking about it. You’re going back to the pencil. And the same thing as Craig said, in editing the way movies are edited is completely changed by the way we now edit.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** Let’s take a look at this draft. And so if you’re watching this live you’re going to see this on your screen. We’re going to take it over. If you are listening to this episode after the fact we’ll have the slides as a link so you can see what it is that we are talking about with this. But this is an early draft and you can tell us when we would have started seeing this. So everyone on their screen should see, we’re going to start with Scene 8. This is your left-handed in pencil writing version of The Empire Strikes Back.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**John:** So, what are we seeing here? This is–?

**Lawrence:** And this was very early on in the process. It’s at the beginning of the movie. You’re in the Hoth which is like the first act of the movie. And I get everything – when I was handwriting all my originals and everything I always did it in sequence. It’s not necessary to do it that way, but I always did. I wanted to know what was behind me. I never wanted to jump ahead.

So I wrote Empire in sequence as I had done everything else. And so this was very early in the process. And because I was writing so fast, this is, you know, a few days in, and we’re in the Hoth, you know, in the corridors, which is an incredible set that I was lucky enough to visit. I had barely been on a movie set before. And then to have my first real experience be in the ice corridors of Hoth that was pretty amazing.

**John:** So, Craig, should we take a read through this for our listeners at home? I’d love to hear sort of both the scene description and this dialogue which is so iconic. So this is a long scene between Leia and Han. Really establishing the beginning of what their arc is going to be over the course of this movie. So, Scene 8, INT. ICE CORRIDOR. Han strides down a corridor covered from the ice. Leia follows quickly, agitated. Behind them, unnoticed, the arm of a Wampa Ice Monster suddenly detaches from a seemingly solid section of the wall.

Leia says – so do you want to be Leia or Han? Craig, you choose?

**Craig:** Oh, I want to be Leia, obviously.

**John:** Go for it.

**Craig:** Captain Solo.

**John:** Han steps in the quiet corridor and I can’t even read the next word. Going towards Leia.

**Lawrence:** And turns to face Leia.

**John:** Turns to face Leia. Thank you.

**Craig:** Captain Sol—Han. Why are you leaving us now?

**John:** That bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell reminded me of what I’ve got to do.

**Craig:** Does Luke know?

**John:** He’ll know when he gets back. Don’t give me that look, sweetheart. Every day more bounty hunters are – help me with the word?

**Craig:** Searching.

**Lawrence:** Searching.

**John:** Searching for me.

**Craig:** [laughs] Is this how it went on that day? We need Gayle.

**John:** If I don’t pay off Jabba soon – ah, Jabba – there’ll be too many to stop. Remotes – help me out there?

**Lawrence:** Gang killers and who knows what else.

**Craig:** Oh, Gank killers. Now just to pause for a second. Do we ever hear about the Gank killers? I don’t think we heard about the Gank killers in the movie.

**Lawrence:** You know, I’m the worst person to ask. And this has come up many times over the years because when you do gatherings or you’re promoting the movie or you’re at Comic Con people ask you questions. They’re very detailed. They devoted their life to knowing these details and I’ve forgotten. I’ve gone on to other things. So I’m a terrible reference. Pablo Hidalgo who is the head of the history of Lucas Film, he knows everything.

**Craig:** I feel like Gank killers didn’t make it.

**John:** Yeah. And who knows what else.

I’ve got to get that price off my head while I still have a head.

OK, so he’s setting up the danger for Han. Important in this movie, but especially important for future movies. Leia says–

**Craig:** Han, I need you here. The Rebellion needs you.

**John:** Oh, so it’s the Rebellion.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Not you?

**Craig:** Me? [laughs]

**John:** My little princess. I’m afraid you don’t know yourself very well.

**Craig:** What do you mean?

**John:** When I met you I thought you were not only beautiful but brave. Now I see you’re only beautiful.

**Craig:** I fear nothing in this galaxy.

**John:** You’re afraid of your own feelings.

**Craig:** And what are they? Please, tell.

**John:** And the parenthetical here is “flip,” so just like–

**Craig:** I thought I nailed that.

**John:** I thought you did, too. But I want to make sure for the folks who can’t read this.

You want me to stay because you care for me.

**Craig:** I respect you, of course. You’re a bold fighter. Maybe not the brightest.

**John:** No, you’re highness, those aren’t the feelings I’m talking about.

Leia looks at him. She knows exactly what he means. But pretends to understand only now. She laughs.

**Craig:** You’re imagining things.

**John:** Han steps closer and Leia instinctively steps back. She’s almost against the wall.

**Craig:** Whoever – if anyone had ever been inspired to write slash fiction about you and me, this is it, man. It’s happening now.

**John:** This is the John/Craig slash fiction people have been craving for 450 episodes.

**Craig:** This is hot. Keep going.

**John:** And I cannot even begin to describe what a terrible job I’m doing of this dialogue.

**Lawrence:** You’re fine. You seem fine.

**John:** All right.

**Lawrence:** When we did our last one on Scriptnotes and what you guys have probably done more than anyone in the world, you’ve created a library of reference about screenwriting that never existed before and it’s more voluminous than any book you can get or anything. And it’s a wonderful resource for people. And what I’m interested in talking about whenever you want to and whenever you can is the writing itself. And this scene that we’re in the middle of, in the corridor, is a perfect example, it’s in the movie. As you say, it sets up a lot of things. In fact, nothing really changes, which is her denying her feelings toward him. His being very cocky but uncertain. And that plays throughout the movie.

But what interests is me is there’s always two, three, four things happening at once. So that when he starts toying with her about your feelings, she denies it. But it’s clear from Carrie Fisher and from Harrison that she’s very much in love with him. She’s very drawn to him. And all her denials are baloney. She’s playing a role as a princess.

That kind of stuff is so rich, you know. If the audience – it doesn’t have to be explained to them at all.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** You just know. They look at human faces and they say he’s not telling her the whole truth. She’s not telling him the whole truth.

**Craig:** Correct. And it sets up a pattern. Because a great scene, and you know, I’m obsessed with relationships really. We talk about character and I’m always thinking really what we mean is relationships. Because that’s the only way character makes any sense. And that scene as delightful as it is, that kind of meeting, these two people recontextualizing their relationship, sets up a pattern that then influences and enhances every scene to follow between them. Because they will repeat this pattern over and over until he kind of gets it right.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which is wonderful.

**Lawrence:** And she is softening every time, too.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Lawrence:** It works on her.

**Craig:** And just like with Luke in the snow, dying, and Obi-Wan showing up and saying while you’re dying I have the exposition for you, they’re going to have this in the belly of a creature that they thought was really an asteroid while they’re hiding from the TIE fighters. So these layers of things make everything better.

**Lawrence:** And, you know, one thing I was reminded looking at the movie is there are two scenes about he’s going to split off and leave the Rebellion and she can’t rely on him and what kind of man is he. And what happens is they get into the Millennium Falcon and they’re together for the rest of the movie.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**Lawrence:** So all this splitting up turns out to be irrelevant.

**Craig:** That’s another kind of writing question I had for you. There’s a moment that you know about as the writer that nobody else knows about. And sometimes those are kind of the juiciest moments. You know that in Hoth, shortly before they get wind that the Empire is about to attack, that Luke and Leia are going to have the last discussion they’re going to have until the end of the movie. They’re not going to see each other again. And you know that. And sometimes I think writers don’t take enough advantage of the secrets they know that the audience doesn’t know. Because there are things going on in there that just make it all so much more interesting because you’re aware of that.

**Lawrence:** Yes. And that to me is a good part of the fun of screenwriting.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lawrence:** Because that’s always happening. If it isn’t happening then the scene is probably flat. The scene is probably too simple. It’s always – and the audience, which is so fast, it doesn’t need anything explained really. They get it from one look from an actor. And a lot of stuff is totally redundant when you say it. So they know, oh, these are people and they have mixed feelings about each other. And maybe he knows something she doesn’t know. That’s what gives it all the juice.

**John:** Going back to the scene with Han and Leia that we were just reading through, you talk about in the first movie Lucas was so obsessed with speed and just getting through stuff, this scene actually has more banter than probably any scene in the first movie does and more sort of romantic comedy kind of banter. And yet while we could see some of that stuff with a look, you also need those characters to be in a space and actually enjoying it and you need to see them playing the sport. Because we need to see them hitting back and forth.

**Lawrence:** You know, in A New Hope it starts, but because it was moving so fast and because it was a certain kind of idea of what a movie should be it never pauses to let that play. So they get two strokes and they’re out. And they’re wonderful strokes and people quote those lines for 45 years now. And they’re wonderful. But you really want a little more. What happens after she has that quick comeback?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So let’s talk about the relationship between Han and Leia and also between Luke and Leia. Because coming off of the first movie we could anticipate that this was going to be a love triangle. And it seems that that was maybe the initial conception of it. But in your movie it’s not that. So at what point was there a conversation about sort of what Luke and Leia’s relationship is going to be? And what point did you know what that was going to be like?

**Lawrence:** You know, there’s a gray area, a mystery area whenever you talk to George because to hear him tell it, and I think it’s true, he always thought this would be a trilogy. That there was more to the story. On the other hand, if Star Wars had failed there would have been no trilogy. So he wanted it as a standalone. No one really believed there was going to be a sequel to it. When it was coming out no one had any idea what it was going to be.

But once this enormous success happened, it changed everything in George’s life. Not only his acquisition of land and ILM and so on, but it also changed his attitude about what the first one was. And he can find the seeds of everything in the first one. And they’re there because that was his instinct. That was the story he wanted. But they’re not the details. And I honestly believe that he didn’t know about Leia and Luke when he was starting this.

**Craig:** Yeah. It doesn’t seem like it, but that’s OK. I mean, one of the benefits that it seems to me you had from a writing point of view, and I’d love to hear your feelings about this, is that because A New Hope was so compressed in its characterizations and sentiment and relationships that unlike a lot of sequels where you are trying to squeeze a little bit more blood out of something that was plenty bloody to begin with and isn’t so much anymore, you got to kind of create the real relationships. Like I’ve often said one of the reasons that my wife ultimately married me is because–

**Lawrence:** I’ve wondered so much about this.

**Craig:** Yeah. So here it is. But she is a huge Empire Strikes Back fan. And in particular when Han Solo says to Leia, “I think you like me because I’m a scoundrel.” You know, I was her scoundrel. And there was something about where in New Hope, and again an amazing movie, there’s no space for that stuff at all. It’s just sarcasm and fly boy and let’s get out of here.

So you had kind of a unique opportunity with the sequel that I don’t think many people ever get.

**Lawrence:** Absolutely. And that applies to everything in Empire because walking into that room with George and hearing about Vader you say, oh, this is going to give us room to do anything we want. And these characters who were so amusing and charming and fast in the first one, now let’s see who are they? And that was a great invitation. And the same thing applied to the story, because his resources were so much greater now. Every effect didn’t take forever. There were millions of people working on it which there hadn’t been before. So everything got more complicated.

**Craig:** You had this writing challenge of writing for a puppet. And–

**John:** We need to get into Yoda, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. We have to talk about Yoda because of all the stuff that – and I don’t know if we’re able to show–

**John:** We think we’ve got it fixed. I think we’ve got it fixed without people being able to hijack us. We’re going to try it.

**Craig:** OK. Try. If they do I’ll freak out again. But of all the stuff that’s handwritten and in this, it seems to me that the Yoda stuff is probably the closest to 1:1. So much of it is there. And it’s kind of goose-bumpy to see and maybe because Yoda was voiced by Frank Oz but not an actor/human being, the dialogue just carried through more linearly from your left hand to the screen. But it’s a remarkable challenge to write for this – it’s not just a new character. It’s not a person that you can even imagine.

**Lawrence:** I know. When George told me there would be a character who played that role in the story and he didn’t know what it would look like yet and he wasn’t sure about what it knew and what it could do, I was excited. Very excited. And he said this is someone who we’ve never seen. We didn’t see in the first one. And I need for him to talk in a new way. Need to have it be very distinctive how he talks. But more importantly and this – both George and I love Akira Kurosawa. The Kurosawa movies, which are the greatest movies in the world, and he is my favorite director, they are full of characters like this.

In fact, the first Star Wars, A New Hope, is practically a mirror of Hidden Fortress in that there’s two little droids, except they’re human beings, and so on. But all through the Kurosawa universe there is a mentor character and there is the son character. There is the innocent and the experienced and the wise and the naïve. And when we were talking about Yoda it was clear that this is a guy that’s in Seven Samurai, my favorite character in Seven Samurai, which is Shimada, the leader of the samurai. And he always has a different reaction to what happens in the scene than everybody else in the scene.

He always sees the big picture and his slower to react because he’s figured it out. And the brilliant thing, and this is good for any writer, is our introduction to him is a beautiful ballet [unintelligible] of violence. You know, it’s approached so calmly and he calmly cuts his samurai [nada] and it takes a long time.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And then it bursts into action and it’s over in seconds. And so you know before he starts being the wise patient one he is also this incredible samurai and physically awesome.

Kershner was such a different person than George. And that created this wonderful friction between them. And if you look at Kershner’s movies you’ll see a lot more run up to the joke. Run up to the gag. Run up to the action. He takes his time. And George likes to just go, go, go. And he ceded it correctly. But it makes all the difference in the world when you look at a movie how quickly you get to the [unintelligible].

**Craig:** Yeah. Well that’s, I mean, Yoda is a great example of Star Wars kind of taking its time. And so we have here the – and so this is a combination of typed and handwritten which is wonderful. So, this is INT. Creature House. So you called him creature. This is a question that we get all the time. When a character becomes revealed, their identity is revealed, what do you call them at first? Well, Yoda’s name was creature. INT. Creature House. The inside of the house is very plain but cozy. Everything is in the same scale as the creature. The only thing out of place in the miniature room is Luke who is cramped by the four-foot ceiling. He sits cross-legged on the floor of the living room.

The creature is in an adjoining area, which serves as the kitchen, cooking up some incredible meal. The stove is a steaming hodgepodge of pots and pans. The wizened little creature scurries about chopping this, shredding that, and showering everything with exotic herbs and spices. He rushes back and forth putting platters on the table in front of Luke.

**John:** Good this will taste. Wait and see, wait and see.

**Craig:** Luke looks around rather amused by his surroundings.

Well, it smells good anyway.

**John:** Why wish you to become a Jedi Knight?

**Craig:** Because of my father, I guess.

The creature gives Luke a questioning look.

My father was a Jedi.

**John:** Yes, yes. But why wish you?

**Craig:** I know it was meant to be.

The creature seems irritated, defensive.

I feel it, that’s all.

**John:** Think you Yoda will be satisfied with that?

**Craig:** Yes…I think so. Yoda will understand. Where is he anyway?

**John:** Very near.

**Craig:** When will I see him?

**John:** When you allow yourself to see.

**Craig:** The creature places a plate of steaming food in front of Luke. The young warrior studies the creature a long time through the steam thinking. Suddenly he understands.

You…you are Yoda?

**John:** That is my name. Why so surprised are you?

**Craig:** So let’s pause for a second. This is not how it works in the movie. And we were talking about this before. And so Larry I want to – this is one of these areas where the movie did a much sort of compressed, faster reveal of Yoda as Yoda. We hear Ben’s voice. Luke hears Ben talking. Then he realizes, oh wait a second, you’re Yoda.

But this was a different conception. And talk us through why this is a preferred way of doing it for you.

**Lawrence:** For me?

**Craig:** Yes.

**Lawrence:** Because the mood and the pace that all the Yoda stuff has up to this point, when he first encounters him out in the swamp, when he’s making the dinner, it’s all about this, which dovetails perfectly with Yoda’s character, which is you do one thing at a time and you take your time and you don’t rush anything. And it’s quiet. It’s very quiet. This is after you’ve seen a third of the movie already practically. And it’s been bang, bang, bang, and fast, fast, fast, and monsters and rocket ships. And here is this quiet place.

In fact, even up to the point where Luke splits off from Han and Leia at Hoth it’s different from that moment on for Luke, for Luke’s story. Theirs continues very much in the same tone.

**Craig:** Inside of this you are like the scene in the movie contrasting the essential problem Luke has, which is impatience, which is immaturity, which is therefore connected to fear, which leads to hate, which leads to dark. It’s all there in him being a young man who just—

**Lawrence:** And in fact even with this beginning that you’re talking about that never made it to the movie that is where it goes very quickly. It goes to a discussion about his patience. It is Yoda interrogating Ben in the after why does he believe in this guy. He seems so impatient. He seems so young. He seems so callow. And Ben is defending him. So that’s always, for writing again, this is a good rule which is when two other characters are talking about someone it reveals all three of them.

**Craig:** Right. Right. That’s a great way of putting it.

**John:** Larry, tell me about the choice of how Yoda speaks? Because it’s so distinctive. We’re so familiar with that now, but you had to come up with that. And so what was the process of getting his verbs inverted and what his voice was going to be like?

**Lawrence:** I think it was what I could think of.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Lawrence:** And it immediately got a positive response from George. And we never turned back. And I don’t know why. A part of it has to do, you know, it’s sort of Shakespearian in that you don’t start with the subject. There’s that. It slows things down. You have to worry through the sentence to understand. And then that way you’re paying more attention.

You know, it’s funny, in this pandemic we’re in a lot of people are trying to meditate and it give them some relief in a stressful day. But when you look at the introductory scenes of Yoda, he might as well be a meditation teacher. What he says to Luke from the time he lands in the swamp is you’re not looking at the thing itself.

**Craig:** Well let’s read that, because this is one of my favorite – I mean, so I’m reading this from your handwriting and this is what Yoda says.

“To become a Jedi takes the hardest work, the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. But you, Skywalker, I have watched for a long time. All your life have you looked away, to the horizon, to the sky. Never your mind on where you were, what you were doing. Adventure, heh,” I’ll add that in. “Excitement, heh. A Jedi craves not these things.”

That’s like, OK, so I just want to say from a sort of writing is magic point of view that’s magic. Because, again, your left hand put that there. And then it sort of went into the puppet and now it’s not just something that everybody knows and shares from a cultural point of view, it is in a weird way a fundamental part of our understanding of Zen, in the west. This is – you kind of gave us Zen through Yoda.

Talk about how – I mean, it’s one thing to say like, look, Yoda is 800 years old or whatever he was and he knew these things. It’s another thing to say that you were not 800 years old and how did you know these things?

**Lawrence:** Well, you know, I was very interested in, and my brother who is very deeply involved in it and from the second I learned some of these precepts. And they resonated for me. Because I was – to this day I have a problem with not doing one thing at a time. I’m always splitting my decision. And so you turn away. You knock things over. You forget why you came in the room. And it’s not just age, which Craig will say. You’re too distracted. The pandemic is an added distraction to a world that was already incredibly distracting. And so when you can focus and do the thing you really want to do, and feel it, and live it, it can be three seconds, but if you really live it and you pay attention to it it changes everything. And I like that speech.

But what’s unusual about that speech is it really goes to the heart of A New Hope and him looking into the distance, wanting to get away from the ranch, the farm. And you know. So the audience knows, because they knew A New Hope perfectly. Yeah, that’s what he was like on Tatooine.

**Craig:** That’s him. That’s him. Yeah. One other thing I’ll mention about this scene that’s sort of legendary, and a sign of how good of a writer you are, and a crystallization of what good writing is is that you have this wise character who is imparting these deep lessons of wisdom and there’s this young man who now understands that this is a wise old guy who is going to help him. And the ghost of his other mentor has appeared. These are all calming, stabilizing things.

And you understand inherently that in a movie, any movie, but particularly this movie that comforting, stabilizing, explanatory scene has to end in the most destabilizing, threatening way possible, which is Luke saying, “I’m not afraid,” and from your left hand Yoda says, “You will be. You will be,” which is terrifying. The freaking eyes go yeah. It’s always terrifying and I say that to my wife all the time as well, because it’s fun. But that to me is the essence of what it means to craft a great scene. You understood that it was going to begin here with a young man who doesn’t even know what this little thing is and it was going to end with that little thing terrifying that young man.

**Lawrence:** I always struggled to look and usually did not find. But you’re looking for the thing at the end of this scene that throws you into the next one, even if it’s different characters.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** You just want to be sling-shotted ahead. And when he says, “You will be,” it opens up the promise of, oh, this movie is going to be cool.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Had you left that scene earlier on a place where Luke was comfortable or at least like was excited about this next step you wouldn’t have had the same energy jumping into the next scene. You would have lost energy on that cut. And instead you gained a lot of energy by ending the scene on that moment.

So let’s jump ahead to Luke being scared and being afraid, which is this final fight with Vader. And he’s cocky in it and then he’s losing to Vader. And then one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history is the revelation that Darth Vader is actually his father.

Craig, let’s you and I look through the pages that lead up to that. But I’m really curious, you know, you say that Lucas told you, oh, Vader is Skywalker’s father – were you always anticipating that the revelation would happen during this fight, during this moment? Did you experiment with other places?

**Lawrence:** You know, when he said that in the sanctity of his office at Skywalker Ranch it was understood that no one was to know this for the next two years.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And that’s not so easy on a movie. You know, you’ve seen it, how hard it is to keep secure anything. And this was a giant thing that the whole world suddenly would be interested in. So, it was from that moment on never mention it. Never talk about it in public. Never say, you know, in the story conferences. You did not reveal that. And when it came to shooting there were fake pages. And then the very last second it was revealed to the actors.

**Craig:** Right. And a little slightly different here. The way that you reveal it is frankly more subtle I guess is what I would say, from your left hand.

**John:** Yeah, so talking through this, the pages that we’re looking at, it starts in Scene 140 and there’s a Zero-Cold Chamber. Some familiar dialogue here. Some stuff has changed a little bit along the way. And it looks like an addendum page, it’s called Insert A, add to the bottom of Scene 146 or whatever it is. Luke’s sword whistles past Vader and the young warrior is thrown off-balance, his guard down. Vader’s light saber flashes out with deadly skill and cuts Luke’s arm off at the elbow! Luke’s forearm flies away in the wind as the boy himself almost goes over the edge. He can barely stand.

He wipes the tears and blood from his eyes, but still can barely focus on his massive opponent.

And then the next page Vader says, “Search your feelings, my son. But you will know it to be true. Come join your father.” Luke is horror-stricken. Bewildered.

So, Larry, is this an example of that line and that information is being held back from the actors until the very last moment?

**Lawrence:** Yes. That’s right. They did not know. And I had written another ending. I don’t remember what we were dealing with all the time during production, but that was not in there.

One thing, you know, when you’re talking about it John, one of the things that interests me most in life and I try to get into screenplays is this feeling of you do sense things that are not told to you. And we all do it. And you walk into a room with someone and you get a feeling off that person. It could be good, it could be bad. Maybe like I’m getting nothing from that person. And when you think about your own life and you think why did I do that? That’s one of a million mistakes I’ve made. And you feel in your body what is that thing in you.

So, I think that George rightly from A New Hope was playing on something we all know to be true, which is you don’t have to say it, no one has to tell you. You have feelings about the situation. And so when Darth is working on him he’s saying you know this to be true. He wants him to admit it because he knows it is.

**Craig:** And that sequence I have a sense memory as a 10-year-old watching that sequence and knowing early on, like you say, you have a sense of things, even the audience as we’re watching, something is wrong. This is not the usual thing. Where like, good, it’s the good guy versus the bad guy. The good guy is going to shoot the bad guy and it’s over. Or they’re going to have that classic fist fight at the end of the movie and then one of them is going to get kicked off the, you know, the side of the thing and that’s the end of that.

Something is up. You can tell. And the reason you know something is up is because Darth Vader isn’t acting like Darth Vader. This is a guy who randomly just chokes out people. One of the very – by the way, the other thing about you I should say is you’re funny. You are a funny writer. You are a really good, strong comedy writer. And so things like for instance Vader’s, like the running gag of Vader choking out these successive admirals and captain is just funny. But then we get to the end here and he’s not doing it.

So what happens from a writing point of view is instead of us sitting there waiting to see how the inevitable battle concludes. We are now waiting to see why this relationship is not working the way we expect it. And then to satisfy people with what they were not expecting and to make sense of it all retroactively is just tremendous sleight of hand. It’s incredible craft.

And I think sometimes people forget because they think that all it is is like write-write-write, swing-swing, hit-hit, I’m your daddy. What? It’s not like that. Doesn’t work like that at all. There are a billion bad versions of that scene and it’s a credit to the writing that it works.

**Lawrence:** Well thanks. But in A New Hope, you know, the ultimate is in the scene “Feel the Force, Luke.” He’s trying to get the shot down the tiny little hole in the Death Star. And the entire movie is about being in touch with the Force. And he meets Ben who is very much in touch. And in his limited time Ben tries to get this kid to be open to it. And Luke and his father, Anakin, Darth, he knows it. He can track his son across the universe because of feelings that he’s getting.

And that to me is metaphorical for all of our lives. You know? And you just have – you go into a meeting and you have that funny feeling. Wait, this is not right. Why are we having it now? They’re going to tell me something I don’t like here. Or you have a conversation with your family and you say, “Let’s start again. I’m not getting this clear to you. And you’re reacting and we’re not hearing each other.” It’s all there.

The whole saga is about are you in touch with the feelings that are swirling around you.

**John:** That is our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who also did our outro. Thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation, in particular Enid and Dustin for getting us here.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** We love your outros, so Matthew is doing the one for this week, but you should send us your outro for these shows. Send them to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

Larry Kasdan, are you on Twitter? You’re not on Twitter. You should not be on Twitter.

**Craig:** No. But John Kasdan is on Twitter.

**John:** Yeah. Follow John Kasdan. He’s always there.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. We’ll try to put up some slides, the pages we showed. You’ll also find the transcripts. We get those up the week after the episode airs. And Premium members can sign up at Scriptnotes.net for the bonus episodes and bonus segments. Larry Kasdan and everyone, if you guys want to put yourself on video again and wave to Larry Kasdan.

**Craig:** Yeah, we can see you now. Let’s look back into your rooms.

**John:** Aw. We want to see all your rooms.

**Craig:** See, look at you in gallery view. Thanks guys. Thanks for—

**John:** Look at everybody.

**Craig:** Look at how many of you there are.

**Lawrence:** Goodbye everybody. Thanks for coming.

**Craig:** There’s so many.

**John:** Thank you very much for joining.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** And thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation.

**Craig:** Thanks everyone.

**John:** Thanks.

**Lawrence:** Thanks everybody.

**Craig:** Bye-bye everybody.

**John:** Bye.

[Bonus segment]

**Craig:** Well maybe we should get in touch with some of the feelings of the folks that are watching and listening. That’s my segue. I’m being Segue Man now. I’m very proud of myself. Yeah.

**John:** Matthew asks, “The ending of Empire Strikes Back is incredible to me because it feels so satisfying yet so many threads are left open. Can you speak to how that was constructed and what some of the challenges were in achieving that?

**Lawrence:** Yeah. That gets to the heart of the movie for me, because I was trained in classical dramatic construction. And if you think of the three-act-play which is what we worked with generally, the first act you get the situation, you get the characters. And then in the second act everything goes to shit. And you want, you know, ideally at the end of the second act it looks like doom. And how will those people ever get back together again? How will they ever forgive each other? Anything like that. It’s always open-ended at the end of the second act. And then the third act hopefully resolves in a way that’s very satisfying.

Well, Empire Strikes Back is the second act. And that makes it – when I realized that immediately I thought this is really fun. Because we don’t have to wrap everything up. We don’t have to tie it all together. We want it to be chaos at the end of this movie.

**Craig:** Right. Ties into this next question from Hillary who asks, “Do you approach writing ensemble dramas like The Big Chill and Grand Canyon differently than writing genre films like Raiders or The Empire Strikes Back? What is different, if anything, about the approach to writing for a franchise with a fantastic intergalactic story world as opposed to something that is very much feet on the ground like Big Chill or Grand Canyon?”

**Lawrence:** I don’t make a big distinction between them. I really think the job is always the same. Within the reality that you’re creating, it doesn’t have to be our reality. But within that there has to be some sense of logic to the world that you’re creating. And that’s true in The Big Chill and Grand Canyon and Star Wars. You know, it’s just – that’s what you want. You want the audience not to be comfortable, not to be put to sleep, but to say I recognize something true here.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** So I’m not just thrown out because the guy does something crazy. You know? Or if he does something crazy then it teaches me that he’s crazy.

**Craig:** Right. It’s intentional. It’s always intentional.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**John:** So Federico asks, “Any dos and don’ts regarding the weaving of world-building and story, especially when setting up a film’s universe in act one?”

So, I’m thinking about this in terms of Yoda, which we just talked about. You don’t do a lot of world-building about who Yoda is or what Yoda is. That universe – he existed in himself and you’re setting up his planet, but only the degree to which you need it. Did you have other documents that are other things thought through in terms of what all this is? Or is your world-building just what we see in the movie?

**Lawrence:** I’m not drawn to that. And the reason I don’t generally, you know, I don’t like development and I don’t like story conferences too much, it’s a very intimate thing to me. It’s got to be the principal is doing it. I don’t want to talk about it intellectually. I don’t want to write it. And I want to know in a material way what is going to happen, what are the props here. Where are we trying to get to within this scene from here to here? What will we use to get there? What will be revealed while we’re doing that about the people in the scene? Even if they just walked into the scene.

Those are the movies I love. It’s not my movie, it’s every movie that trusts the audience and says, “You’ll get it. Just relax.” And you do get it. I remember watching Gravity and thinking she’s doing things in the capsule, I don’t know what they are but know they’re really intense and that she’s running out of time. They don’t ever say that. You know, it’s all lights and stuff on the thing. And she’s working as fast as she can. And I so admired that. The presumption that the audience will figure it out.

**Craig:** Great. Let’s see if – want to do one more question?

**John:** I was going to do Jeff’s question.

**Craig:** Great. Do it.

**John:** Jeff asks, “It’s always fun to hear about discarded early ideas. What were some wild ideas you or George had early on that were never shot and were discarded?” Do you remember some things that came up early in this process that like what if we did this and you [crosstalk]?

**Lawrence:** No. I don’t have that kind of memory. And this scene that we talked about that did not get shot the way I had written it, it had been reprinted in [Unintelligible] Magazine, my handwritten pages. And when I saw it after many years, I thought, oh, that’s pretty good. You know, when you’ve come upon something you’ve written years and years ago you say that’s pretty good. And I thought it was in the movie. And then watching the movie the other night it wasn’t there. I was freaked out. I said well this other scene is there and I like mine better. You know? And they both end up at the same place, but they start completely differently.

So, memory is really tricky. And, you know, you think you remember something but in fact you’ve created a new history that you’ve convinced yourself is real.

**Craig:** Well, I’m sorry that we played any part in disrupting that history for you. [laughs] I feel terrible now. The movie had been perfect.

**John:** One of the reasons I was really excited to talk with you about this movie though is that I think we do rewrite a history and make it seem like everything was inevitable. That it was inevitable that off of Star Wars you would have Empire Strikes Back, but it was the furthest thing from inevitable. It went through Leigh had done a script and Lucas was struggling to get a script. You were able to sort of deliver a thing that could be shot. But it wasn’t at all obvious how you make a sequel to that movie, or even if it was a good idea to make a sequel to that movie. Because sequels were not a popular thing.

I mean, Empire was the reason why we have sequels to a large degree to these big franchise movies and we even come into some of these giant movies with the idea of like “and then we will make it into a trilogy.” That whole thing starts with Star Wars. So it’s so helpful to have you talk through these initial stages.

**Lawrence:** Speaking to that, I will say that I find, you know, I’m a big basketball fan, sports fan. When someone wins the Super Bowl, my guy wins the Super Bowl for the sixth time, you say well there’s something – he’s the greatest there ever was because who could do that? But what you know if you’re a really big fan, every one of those seasons if you watched every game there was a moment when they almost lost. You know, if it wasn’t a rout.

And somebody made a catch you couldn’t believe, or someone dropped a pass that you can’t believe. And all those things, it happens in basketball all the time. The last minute shot. The fumble. The turnover. And what looks inevitable when they’re standing there, him holding the championship trophy, was not inevitable at all.

And I feel that moviemakers are like that, too. When you put it out there there’s a sense of like well that’s going to be it for now. I’m not going to change this. And there is kind of solidity to it. But up to that moment in the cutting room everything is up for grabs. And there is no inevitability about it.

Very often the things you thought would make it inevitable are superfluous and the audience doesn’t need them.

**Craig:** So, see, that’s what good writers sound like when they talk. He knew that we had come to an end and proceeded to deliver a perfect summary. A wonderful anecdote with an analogy that wrapped everything up and made it perfect.

**Lawrence:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Outrageous. [laughs] It’s outrageous. You just know how to do it. God, it’s just–

**Lawrence:** You’re very nice. I love being with you guys.

**Craig:** We love you, too. We love you, too. Greatest living screenwriter, Larry Kasdan. I’ve said it a million times. And I’ll say it after you’re gone. [laughs]

Links:

* Find Lawrence Kasdan’s Handwritten Script [here](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/empire-handwritten-pages.pdf).
* [Scriptnotes 247, The One with Lawrence Kasdan](https://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-lawrence-kasdan)
* Thank you to the [Writer’s Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/events/all/2020/5/5/online-conversation-revisiting-the-empire-strikes-back-with-lawrence-kasdan) for hosting us!
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/452standard.mp3).