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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/writing-about-mental-health-and-addiction).

**John August:** Hey this is John. Today’s episode comes from a panel recorded last week in cooperation with Hollywood Health and Society. If you want to see video from the panel there’s a link in the show notes. But realistically if you’re already listening to this audio you are fine. You don’t need to see the video. There’s no slides or anything you’re going to miss.

Now, Craig was planning to cohost this panel with me, but he has had a family medical situation, so I did this one solo. But I think Craig is really going to enjoy this episode, if he listens, which I hope he listens to it because he really will like this episode. We have a remarkable showrunner, Gemma Baker, we also have a medical doctor who can talk about the science of addiction. We have a therapist who can talk about young people and mental health. And we have a journalist who writes extensively on drug policy. It’s a really great group.

We talk about writing protagonists dealing with mental health and addiction issues, their impact on other characters, the responsibility of writers addressing those topics, and what writers need to keep in mind about their own mental health.

This episode pairs really well with Episode 99 if you want to go back and listen to that one.

Today’s episode was produced by Megana Rao, with music and editing by Matthew Chilelli. Special thanks to Marty Kaplan, Kate Folb, and everyone at Hollywood Health and Society for putting together the event. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August. I host a weekly podcast with Craig Mazin called Scriptnotes and we talk a lot about writing and things that are interesting to screenwriters. And as we talk about screenwriting we’re always trying to focus on specifics, like what is the specificity of this moment, what is the reality behind this thing? Why are characters doing what they’re doing? We will talk about the words on the page, but we’ll also talk about the experience of watching the stories that we’re trying to tell. And we’ll bring on guests sometimes to talk about very specific things that they wish we as writers could do a better job at.

We had Rachel Bloom on recently to talk about how we portray sex on screen and how we can portray sex more realistically on screen.

So when I found out this panel was happening I virtually threw myself in front of Kate to say like, hey, do you need a host, because I really wanted to talk with these very smart people about addiction and mental health.

Another thing we talk about on Scriptnotes a lot is structure, so let me talk a little bit about the structure of tonight’s evening. I want to start by talking about the experience of a character facing addiction or mental health challenges. Then talk about the characters around them, sort of how that character is impacting the world around them. We’ll then step outside a little bit and talk about how the stories we tell are perceived by the world out there and what is our responsibility, what are our opportunities as we’re telling these stories. And finally as we’re talking about addiction and mental health, how do we as creators have to be mindful of our own mental health? And things we can be looking out for for ourselves.

So that’s sort of the structure for the evening. There will be questions and Q&A at the end, so if a question comes up along the way remember it because we’ll get to that at the end. But I want to start by talking about how our characters come into our stories and I want to start with you, Gemma. So, Gemma Baker is a writer and producer and the co-creator of the hit CBS comedy series, Mom, a show lauded for its portrayal of addiction. She previously wrote on Two and a Half Men. She graduated from Tisch with a degree in theater.

**Gemma Baker:** Hello.

**John:** My question for you, so the two lead characters on Mom both have addiction issues. How early in the process of coming up with Mom did you know that this was a thing that you were going to want to explore?

**Gemma:** In the very, very beginning. So when it was first being talked about the idea was for the character to be a mom who has addiction, active addiction and drug problem. They knew they wanted – it was Chuck Lorre and Eddie Gorodetsky – and they wanted to do a show about a mom and they thought we’re going to bring in a mom. And they asked me if I thought that could be funny. And I just thought, well, if people don’t think that the kids are safe they’re not going to feel OK laughing. And so what if the character was in recovery? And you could root for her, because you knew she was trying to change. And so that was our starting point.

**John:** What was the starting point for your research into this? How did you find out about what recovery would look like and sort of where the opportunities were and where the challenges were for these characters? What was that research process like for you?

**Gemma:** I think one of the things that was really important for us was that a lot of times when recovery is portrayed, not necessarily now, but then it felt like it was dreary and that there was no joy and light and there wasn’t a lot of hope in the portrayal of it. And I think that that is what we felt was missing, you know. And that anyone who knows and loves someone in recovery knows that that’s such a huge part of it. And also so often recovery is the end of the story. You know, you watch a whole movie about addiction and it’s so awful and painful and heart-wrenching and then at the very end it’s like and then they got sober, the end, roll credits.

**John:** Sometimes they’ll give you nice little title cards.

**Gemma:** And then they got sober and it worked out.

**John:** Yep.

**Gemma:** And I think that recovery is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the story. It is having a chance. It is where it’s the beginning. And so we wanted to tell a story that started there. That was really important to us.

**John:** That’s great. Well let’s talk more about recovery. So our next guest, Dr. Corey Waller, is a nationally-recognized addiction expert and currently practicing specialist in addiction, pain, and emergency medicine. Through his work with the Health Management Associates and the National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs he has developed addiction treatment methods, provider training, and educational outreach delivered by that center. Dr. Corey Waller, thank you for being here.

**Dr. Corey Waller:** Thanks.

**John:** We’re going to be talking about addiction and mental health. And because you’re the actual doctor here can you help us get our terms straight. When we say someone is dealing with addiction what does addiction mean in a medical sense? Or what’s helpful for us to be thinking about when you use the term addiction?

**Corey:** That’s a great question and I think a lot of people misinterpret what addiction is. Addiction is not the presence or absence of a drug in somebody’s system. It’s the way in which they behave in obtaining and using the drug. And we actually define addiction based on nine very specific behaviors. That means they’re predictable. I mean, in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual we’ve identified nine specific behaviors associated with both drugs and/or a behavior like gambling that ultimately tell us whether or not someone has addiction. And we can use those behaviors and the presence or absence of those to determine how severe it is.

And so with that, that’s how we create our interventions and have done all of our testing to identify how to appropriately treat people at the beginning because they have predictable behaviors that we identify as addiction. And unfortunately those behaviors many times are misinterpreted as frustration or anger when in actuality they’re just symptoms of a disease. And so I think that’s the big piece around addiction is that it’s definable, it’s identifiable, and it’s not because somebody is mean or it’s not because somebody got drunk at a party. And it’s not because somebody used cocaine on a Friday. It’s what does that look like in their life in general and do they have control over that drug. Do they have control over their behavior when obtaining that drug? Do they try to obtain that drug over their safety or over the safety of their kids? Or do they lose their job because of the drug? These are the ways we define it.

And so many times that term is slung around in a pretty messy way. But medically we have very specific criteria for what addiction is. And we actually know more about the neurobiology of addiction than any other chronic brain disease.

**John:** So as we’re talking about terms, addictions can have a pejorative context. Like someone has – and we need to get past that. That’s the stigma thing we’re trying to get past tonight. But a word like addict – is addict a useful word or not a useful word? What’s helpful for us to be saying when we’re talking with somebody who is dealing with these issues?

**Corey:** Well person. If we just start with that. But in general people aren’t defined by their disease. We’ve gone really far to make sure that people with diabetes and cancer and other medical illnesses aren’t defined as their disease, because they’re a person with that disease. And the disease is a part of who they are, but it’s not how we define them.

So we don’t in a perfect world call them addicts. We call them a person with addiction. And then we can get very specific in healthcare terms. They have an opioid use disorder, or a substance use disorder. Terms like clean and dirty, those are terms that are utilized that have no medical connection whatsoever. Even like a urine drug test. They dropped “dirty.” I have doctors say that. There is no clinical terminology. What does that mean? It get mud in it? I don’t really know.

What we have to start doing is not taking on how the patient’s very self-stigmatizing language is utilized. And it’s used a little bit to combat the shame and the fear of this disease and not take that language and somehow weaponize it toward them. Because as people in healthcare and even just society in general, using a term like a person with addiction is just – it is what it is. And that’s where I think we should start.

**John:** And thinking about this as writers, as we’re coming up with character descriptions, we’re trying to describe what a character is like, if we use a word like addict that just stops us dead it’s very hard to see anything else around that character. We’re not seeing what they’re doing and we’re not seeing the choices they’re making. It’s taken all the agency away from that character. And so finding the right words to use feels really important.

The other part of our panel tonight, our discussion, is about mental health. Where are the overlaps between people with problems with addiction and mental health things? Is there a big crossover between the two?

**Corey:** Yeah. And so the crossover seems to really be identified in those with what we call adverse childhood events. So early life trauma. I ran a clinic dedicated to pregnant and parenting females. So we saw hundreds of females who had addiction while they were pregnant and all but two of those hundreds had a significant early life trauma, most of that sexual trauma. And so the early life experiences that occur to someone increase the chances of them having not only addiction but a co-occurring mental health disorder.

And that mental health disorder if not treated while you’re treating addiction will make the addiction unstable. And if you’re treating the mental health disorder on one side but not addressing the addiction you’re never going to get the addiction stable. So it’s a matter of most people who have addiction also have a co-occurring identifiable mental health disorder.

It’s unclear early in treatment if that’s going to be there after we stabilize them in treatment. And so you have to go through a pretty significant process. But quite honestly as you’ll hear, one side doesn’t necessarily talk to the other. You hear, “I treat addiction,” or “I treat only psychiatric ailments.” But rarely do those ships meet in the night. I mean, honestly, it’s crazy because that one book has all of the descriptions and a third of it is about addiction but then there are psychiatrists who are like, “Eh, I just kind of ignored that part,” and moved on. And then addiction medicine providers who don’t read the other stuff. So it’s very disconnected where it really shouldn’t be.

**John:** All right. Let’s keep looking for that crossover. Our next guest is Dr. Holly Daniels. She is the managing director of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, supporting 32,000 clinicians. She has worked as a clinician, teacher, therapeutic consultant for over 15 years, specializing in addictions, eating disorders, and other mental health issues using her extensive knowledge with treatment programs on university and college campuses to help young adults thrive. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from Sophia University. So you’re working with younger populations, what are some things that we as sort of non – older than college students – might not be aware of that are happening on campuses, college campuses and high school campuses? What do you see that we may not be aware of? What are the things that young people are facing?

**Dr. Holly Daniels:** Well there’s a really interesting dynamic right now in that our society as a whole has embraced talking more about mental illness in general and substance use disorder. And that’s really prevalent in the younger generation. So kids are actually talking more on campus about – even about their mental health issues, about having anxiety, about being depressed, and there’s more of a discourse. And I would say thank you to television and film, actually, for opening up a lot of that discourse. Kids feel more free to talk about it. But, you know, there is kind of that backlash of the more they’re talking about it and there isn’t really the science-based support to help them through it, right, there’s still a lot of issues with drug and alcohol abuse, you know, from age 10 up. And there really isn’t unfortunately enough support in our school systems or in our education system. And the education that they’re getting about mental health issues and substance use issues is coming from the media, right.

I mean, that is their discourse. The film and television and what they’re watching. And so sometimes it’s a really helpful education. And I don’t know if anybody has seen Eighth Grade, but I loved Eighth Grade by Bo Burnham which talked a lot about anxiety. We have shows like Euphoria which I’ll let us – maybe I’ll talk about that later. I have different ideas, I have thoughts, too.

But overall I would say the big positive is that, just like Corey was talking about, we really need to chance as a society and stop penalizing mental health issues and criminalizing substance use. And the great thing is when we can see those stories in television and film and we can see people having compassion and leaning in to support the people who are struggling that gives our young kids, our adolescents and our young adults, that model to be like, oh, if somebody is struggling I reach in and help. I don’t call them a bad person or say that they have a moral failing. I want to help.

And that’s actually really a hopeful thing that’s happening on campuses is that kids want to help each other. They want to be there for each other and that’s a beautiful thing.

**John:** Yeah. I definitely noticed that kids, teenagers, want to help each other but sometimes don’t have the actual skills to be helping each other.

**Holly:** Right.

**John:** And to what degree do we need to be aware of contagion or the sense of like a person with a challenge spreads to other – like how as a person who is dealing with young populations what are some things that we have to be aware of with teenagers? Are there are different things that happen with them?

**Holly:** Such a good question. And this is why the work that Hollywood Health and Society does is so important and being able to as film and TV writers reach out to experts to understand where that fine line is when you’re portraying heroin use, or when you’re talking about kids committing suicide. What are the things that you can do so that the visuals, right, are not more triggering than they need to be? It’s a fine line of we want to be able to talk about this, and we want to be able to portray it because that’s important. But we also don’t want to cause children out there to hurt themselves, right, or create an atmosphere in which they feel like it’s glamorized or it’s cool to self-harm.

**John:** So finding that balance between realism and glamorization is a challenging thing. We’ll keep talking about more of that tonight. But I want to introduce Zachary Siegel. He is a journalist who covers public health, mental health, and criminal justice. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New Republic, Slate, Wired, and Politico Magazine. He’s currently a journalism fellow at Northeastern University, the university’s Health and Justice Action Lab where he has spearheaded the “Change the Narrative” project. He cohosts Narcotica, a podcast about drugs that’s informed by science, policy, and the lives of real drug users.

I have a rival podcaster on the panel. I’m not sure I—

**Zachary Siegel:** That’s OK.

**Kate Folb:** That’s why we put them as far away as possible.

**Zachary:** We’re hoping to steal this audio, too, for our own podcast so we’ll talk later.

**John:** All right. It all crosses over. Zach, could we talk about sort of your experiences with addiction and sort of the degree to which Hollywood and the things you saw in movies and television influenced the start of that, the progress of that, the recovery from that. What did you see as you were encountering it for the first time?

**Zachary:** Yeah, so I’ll try to keep this brief because it’s a long story. So, full disclosure, when I was about 17 had opioid use disorder as we call it now. And it really started with friends and I exchanging pharmaceuticals and really what happened was as a young, anxious, sort of nervous Jewish teenager trying to figure out what the world was like I took an opioid and finally felt normal. Like I finally felt OK. And it’s a cliché at this point, but it is really true. When most people take opioids they get kind itchy and constipated and they don’t really like them. When I take an opioid it was like, OK, the clouds have parted and I feel very, very comfortable, which can be a very dangerous feeling for a teenager.

And so that progressed and progressed and progressed, like all the way up to heroin use, but to not like [unintelligible] with that story because really I was just like watching movies like pretty zonked out five hours a day. It was not a productive time of my life. But I did watch a lot of media. So I can talk about, for example, like how maybe the first time I ever saw injection heroin use on screen was Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio. And I think that had a huge impact on me and I wanted to be a writer and be in like sort of the beat scene in New York and that whole thing was very attractive. But, you know, the sort of delusion that has to be confronted is like people on drugs typically, you know, life is really hard and you can’t necessarily be productive.

Like I was not a successful writer when I was using heroin because I had to think basically in six-hour timetables where, OK, here’s one fix and where’s money for the next one. And to live in this sort of collapsed time where you’re very much encased by the next one and the next one. It was incredibly difficult. And so I can talk more about media, but yeah I do think the way that I consumed media and the things that I saw were very impactful.

It may sound random, but there’s a documentary called Methadonia produced on HBO. I don’t know if anyone saw this, but it was a horrific portrayal of a drug called Methadone. And just the quick facts, Methadone saves lives. It reduces someone’s risk of fatally overdosing by 50% or more. And this documentary however portrayed it so negatively and I think I was a teenager watching that before I’d ever really like thought that one day I might need this drug. But as the recovery process sort of unfolded for me and I didn’t wind up in a Methadone program I had to confront my own stigma about people who take Methadone because of that documentary.

So these things have – it’s just a huge responsibility to portray this.

**John:** So I thought we would start by talking about the experience of a central character in our story, so either a movie or a television show, who is dealing with an issue and sort of talk about the timeframe, the things, the challenges, what are the realities there so we can then think about how we are going to portray them and sort of what are the opportunities. And so my hypothetical character I want to introduce is a character named Jane. She’s 28. Boyfriend, not married. An alcoholic. And we can talk about where her alcoholism is. I use the term alcoholic. I probably should use a person dealing with alcoholism. But this is where the character is that we’re meeting. But we could meet her at many places along the spectrum.

So Gemma, you decided for your show to show somebody who is already in recovery. Corey, can you talk me through someone who is dealing with alcoholism where are some points along the way we might meet that character? What are the stages where we might meet a character who is grappling with it?

**Corey:** Well, I mean, a bar. Common location. So a couple of things—

**John:** The timespan. The stages of—

**Corey:** I know. So as we look at this, alcohol use disorder is the most prevalent addiction period. You add all the other ones together, it’s still not as many people that have alcohol use disorder in the country. So it is still the most prevalent, but it’s also the one that is more normalized. And so people can go to a bar and get barely able to stand or walk and we’ll call them an Uber and send them home, but we don’t think about that in the context of alcohol use disorder a lot. So somebody tied one on, or you’re hungover this morning, or that kind of piece.

But generally speaking the first time that we interact with them in a healthcare setting is going to be when they accidentally fall and break an ankle. Or they get picked up by police and are incoherent and show up – you know, I’m an emergency medicine doctor, I still practice – and so I’ll see people in the emergency department and that’s how I first encounter them many times is intoxicated. And just being intoxicated doesn’t mean you have an alcohol use disorder, but it starts to really add up a lot of those points that we talked about when you are intoxicated, and you fell, and you hurt yourself, and you ended up in the emergency department because of the intoxication.

So it’s not always just the homeless intoxicated person who shows up to the emergency department. The early part of the disease means that there are times in which things are stable. They’re still able to generally go to work. They’re still able to have an interaction. They’re still able to have friends and connections. And over time those things start to wane. So that first time that we get them is the best time to intervene because we generally have milder disease than if we wait this out.

And so this concept of they’ll come and get help when they’re ready, or this concept of rock bottom, basically means we’re going to see if they wash out through dying before we treat them. And so the times that we’re going to interact are going to be the times that they drunk dial mom at three o’clock in the morning. The times that their boyfriend confronts them because they’re frustrated about how they embarrassed them at these places. Or the boyfriend or significant other also has an alcohol use disorder and maybe they’re perpetuating this.

Those are the times that we’re more likely to make the biggest difference in someone are those early signs of addiction which is they’re missing work. And so I have a staff of 30 people and I was the chief of pain medicine for a health system, so if a doctor started having odd behavior I would pull them aside and have to be like, “What’s going on?” We are scared to do that in society. We’re scared to call people out because we don’t know how to do it many times. But an empathetic ear and somebody just saying I care about you, if you want to chat about this, really opens up the door for that early interaction to occur.

By the time I get them, I mean, the train has crashed at that point. This is a point where they’re either mandated by court or intervened by family or their life is in complete shambles and they have nowhere else to go. And that’s just too late. And so I think recognizing that 60% of people who at some point meet for an alcohol use disorder self-resolve.

So, I always use the anecdote of when I was in college I tried really hard to be an alcoholic. It just didn’t work. And that’s good for me, but that’s a lot of people. If you think about back in school and that the number of people who drank to the point of failing a class or missing class or failing out of college but then kind of bounced back, early in life – in adolescence and in early adulthood we have kind of resolution of an acute version of addiction. Now that is an increased risk for later that something may recur, but if you can catch them at that phase and really kind of work with them we don’t necessarily have to even label them long term.

I mean, I have a roommate who drank just as much as I did. He has a label of an alcohol use disorder. But I don’t. And we have the same trajectory in the end. So it’s just a matter of when you catch them. So I think early and it’s those little pieces where we find them the most. And that’s where they start to struggle with isolation which we find is the early form of kind of the fear and stigma they put on themselves. And from a character perspective, being able to portray that shame and isolation that occurs very early in this disease that is the path to the more severe version of the disease that leads to bad outcomes that I would see.

And so that guilt and shame keeps them – they hide. They start to drink alone. They start to separate from people. Go to different bars where they’re not going to be noticed. And it’s not a control issue. It’s a part of the brain. You know, we know exactly what part of the brain it is. It’s the default behavior for an input called cue associated relapse. And it’s not a decision like we think about. It’s not a pros and cons sheet. It’s a reflex once they’ve started using.

**John:** Gemma, he’s talking about self-stopping and sort of control. And we always as we write our characters we want our characters to – we’re sort of cruel gods aren’t we as writers? We’re always creating these challenges and obstacles for our characters to face. As you look at the characters you’re dealing with in your show how are you as a writer and as a writers’ room talking about characters’ awareness of the behaviors that they’re doing? Awareness of the problems that they are encountering for themselves? Because it sounds like any one of the characters we set off in our stories could end up in a very dark place. And yet you are mostly responsible for getting them back to a good place by the end of 30 minutes. So how are you talking about that in a writers’ room? How are you figuring out sort of how to get a character through these situations?

**Gemma:** Well, I think, you know, one of the things that sitcom characters are not known for is growth and change. So, but we have this amazing opportunity, and I think responsibility, to say that these characters, now we’re going into season seven, they have grown. They have changed because they’re sober and because they’re facing life in a new way and because they’re doing it together and because they’re using certain principles to change and grow.

And so I think that’s been really fun. When we feel like they’re starting to get stuck we’re like, oh, you know, that season two Bonnie, that’s not season seven Bonnie. Season seven Bonnie is going to handle that better. So we keep ourselves sort of accountable to that. We sometimes have the actual meeting portrayed. We have this device of people sharing. Also on a sitcom you don’t necessarily see someone just tell you where they’re at for two minutes, but we have that ability to do that because our characters literally are sharing where they’re at. And so that helps us to – they might begin their share thinking one thing and then hear something and get to another place quickly.

**John:** So the idea of a group meeting, a 12-step meeting, or some other place where people come in and describe what they’re going through, Holly could you speak to sort of what the role of group meetings is in Jane’s life. Let’s say that Jane is making progress. What would that meeting really be like and what are the things you don’t see that we might be showing better?

**Holly:** Well, there’s really huge power in group share. And that’s why the Alcoholics Anonymous movement has been so successful actually in helping a lot of people get sober and get better. And it’s a place where you can feel like somebody sees you and somebody gives you space to be who you are and be going through what you’re going through. And that is huge and that actually is what television and film does for us, too, right. When there’s a representation in a television show or a film of what we’re going through and how we can identify that’s just so very powerful and empowering.

And so when we’re working with people who are dealing with mental health issues or substance use issues definitely we want to employ groups and as an individual therapist I would definitely and do definitely encourage my clients to find a group and to utilize the group and the support of the group. But that is kind of on the recovery side.

And I did want to mention, and maybe you’re going to get to this John, but what I would like to see more in film and television is the group that the person is with while they are in their addiction, while they’re really struggling, because we are systems people. Right? We’re in a system. And there are always people who are enabling or ignoring what we’re going through, or you might meet Jane at a bar but then fairly soon you’re going to meet Jane in her room drinking by herself and she’s waking up and shaking and her boyfriend is going and buying her some alcohol because he wants to help stop the shaking. But he doesn’t realize that he’s actually perpetuating her illness.

And there are some really complex dynamics that go into the system that is supporting the person who is struggling to continue to struggle unfortunately. And that’s something that I haven’t seen really deeply portrayed in all of its complexity which would be really neat to see.

**John:** Zach, as you watch film and television and you watch individual therapists or you watch group settings what are we getting right and what do you think we’re missing? And what is the ideal role of the expert, the therapist, the person who is there to help the person. Again, I think we idealize them so much in Hollywood, but what is the real function of that person that you see?

**Zach:** Well, I think to, yeah, be scientifically and medically accurate and grounded as any expert in this field treating addiction should be. And that means oftentimes not sending people to Malibu for 30 days and pet horses on a ranch. Like that is not how we treat any other addiction or any other medical condition.

**Holly:** I used to work at one of those places so I take offense.

**Zach:** Sorry. And especially in terms of opioids which it’s on my mind a lot, there’s an overdose crisis, and I think that there’s a lot of opportunity to communicate health messaging with media by having a therapist say, “You know what? Actually you’re a perfect candidate for Buprenorphine. And let’s get you to the right doctor who can prescribe this drug and, you know what, maybe when you go to a recovery meeting or group share on Buprenorphine you might be stigmatized because within this community frankly they don’t often have most science-based approach to things like medication.”

So I think to see that play out in a narrative would be very powerful.

**John:** Well, I should say writers, we love conflict. So if there is a conflict that can be introduced that could be a useful thing. And do you–

**Zach:** This one has been going on forever.

**John:** Yeah. But I would say that most people don’t realize it exists.

**Corey:** Well, I think two pieces that I would pull out is, one, for our 28-year-old female character she’s prey in these settings sometimes. If you get into the wrong meeting and you’re very unstable in your disease people that are also unstable in their disease can be a predator in that setting. And so it can be very unsettling for that person to show up to that meeting to someone to seems to get them unlike their boyfriend or maybe unlike their parents. And they use that angle to actually connect themselves in a pretty pathological way. And I’ve seen that happen a number of times for females in recovery going to some meeting. So they need to find the right one, right? It can’t just be any random place.

And I think the other portion is to understand that everybody has their path to recovery. But at this point for opioid use disorder 12-step abstinence-based treatment is only 8 to 12% effective. Now, for alcohol use disorder it has a higher rate of effectiveness. But the research was done on generally speaking doctors, pilots, and lawyers of white origin, so when we start to think about what modalities we’re looking at and what the data looks like that data looks very clearly good for doctors, pilots, and lawyers, especially those that are Caucasian. It’s about 85 to 90% effective for alcohol use disorder.

But for the population that I see when I was in Camden or when I was in Detroit or Philly, wherever that is, that’s not effective treatment for them. But it’s also about timing and dosing. So thinking about somebody who is really unstable, that’s probably not the best time for that. We do find, however, when they need to reconnect that may be the perfect time to add something like that. So just recognizing that it’s not the default treatment for everybody. Most people get treatment outpatient. Most people don’t go to residential treatment. Most people get their treatment in an outpatient setting just like they would for congestive heart failure.

So sometimes creating less conflict with it, because there’s plenty of conflict in their life otherwise, so the treatment of their addiction doesn’t have to be the conflict point. There are so many other pathways because this disease is such a socially connected disease. It creates conflict in families. Conflict at work. Conflict in just going to the store and walking past beer. I mean, those are conflicts that are there.

So creating the conflict in the treatment sometimes stigmatizes the treatment. So I think that it’s a little lazy, to be honest, because it’s not the place where drama has to be. We know how to treat it. We have effective treatments. It’s pretty matter of fact. And we know how to know where they go. I mean, so that part of it and understanding where meetings are and what role they do play, it’s not the treatment. It’s just a part of a larger normal approach to treatment that we would take.

**Holly:** And if I may add to that, Corey, I agree. Not only is it a place where people could be preyed upon or, you know, but it also is a place that you actually don’t want to go into a group setting – to piggyback off what Corey said – until you really are stabilized internally. Because it might be very difficult and re-traumatizing for somebody to hear everybody else’s stories about their trauma. And when we’re talking about trauma I’m not talking about getting shot with a gun or run over by a car, I’m talking about complex emotional relational trauma we call that which goes back to the adverse childhood experiences which so many of the people struggling with substance use have.

And so you have to maybe work one-on-one with medication, get yourself stabilized, before you go into a group where you’re going to hear a bunch of stories about a bunch of other people’s really difficult times because that can be very triggering and re-traumatizing.

**Corey:** By the way, you guys portray – it’s the only show I can actually watch with addiction, to be honest.

**Holly:** Love your show, Gemma.

**Corey:** The rest of them are triggering to me, honestly, as a practitioner, frustrates me and gets me angry so I can’t watch it. But so this one is one that does it in a way that people in recovery they do well in those situations.

**Gemma:** Thank you.

**John:** And I think it’s because you’re offering hope. There’s characters who are dealing with a thing and it’s never going to be completely resolved. It’s not like the monster is ever fully killed. But they are able to have productive lives. And that’s obviously an early decision you’ve made that you’ve been able to keep up for eight seasons.

**Gemma:** Yeah. To be able to watch someone’s life get bigger. To have our main character. If I could go back in time in the pilot we said that she wanted to be a psychologist and then we quickly changed her into a lawyer. If I had a time machine and I would go back and just correct that one line in the pilot to say she wanted to be a lawyer. But I can’t, so we just ignore it. And pretend that her dream was always to be a lawyer.

And it was important for us to do that. It takes a while to become a lawyer and it’s hard to write becoming a lawyer stuff. But we’re doing it – and make it funny – but we’re doing it in real time because we hope that we are going to be on long enough to see that happen and to watch that whole process. And for her the ups and downs and the doubts and just showing up for all of it sober.

**John:** Cool. Let’s try and experiment with a different character. Carlos, 35, depression. And so this is a character who is dealing with depression. What things will we see outwardly as we’re looking at the character of Carlos that might tell us that he’s dealing with depression and help me figure out both his inner state, so what he’s going through, but what externally we would see for Carlos. What would be the things that we would be noticing? Holly, do you have a sense of what we’d see first?

**Holly:** Yeah. I think that, you know, it’s not totally unlike symptoms of substance use disorder in that you’ll see changes in behavior that suddenly Carlos isn’t around very much, or he made plans and he didn’t keep them, right, that his circle will notice. That he’s just not feeling up to doing the regular activities that he might want to do. And when it really progresses he might lose his job because he can’t get into work and he can’t get out of bed and doesn’t want to return phone calls. And maybe then when is confronted is able to like buck up enough to be like, “I’m fine, I’m fine, everybody don’t worry. I just need some time alone. Don’t worry.” And it really takes a supportive person in Carlos’s circle to say, “You’re not fine. Can we help you get some support?”

Because depression is one of those things. It can be a little bit under wraps. You know, people can be really struggling with depression for a really long time and still show up to life just enough that they’re not going to get into a car accident or break their ankle or do something that’s so big because of being high or drunk that it can really go under the wire for a long time.

And that’s what is so scary about it, too. And especially if Carlos starts to become suicidal. And most people who die from suicide don’t leave a note or give any signs beforehand. And so it really takes a community, right, to be around Carlos to say, “Hey, you know, this is the fourth time you haven’t come out and you usually came out with us and ate dinner every Friday night and now you’re not doing that anymore. What’s going on? And can we help?” Because Carlos can hide it for a good deal of time.

**John:** Quite a few people I follow on Twitter self-identify as dealing with depression and they’ll talk about medications they’re on. They’ll talk about the struggles that they’re going through. I admire them for doing it. Is that useful for them? Is it useful for everybody else? I always wonder the degree to which self-identifying as this can become an identity of being a depressed person. What is the current science and best thinking in terms of when a person who has depression is in treatment and is improving talking about it? What is the best way to interact with that character?

Let’s say Carlos has started getting some help. What do we do with Carlos? And what changes do we see with Carlos?

**Holly:** That’s a really good question. It’s a personal question, right? So sometimes the diagnosis can be really empowering and it’s something that you can share and you can say, “Omg this is what’s going on with me. I have this chemical imbalance and it is a disease and it’s an illness.” And so it’s a little bit freeing. For some people having a diagnosis is very shaming and it’s very difficult for them to carry that with them. So that’s part of our job as mental health workers to kind of be there with each individual and decide is this somebody who is going to feel empowered with the diagnosis? Is this somebody who is going to feel shame with the diagnosis and to be able to talk through all of that with them?

But for the most part I think it is, for the people I’ve worked with, it’s empowering. And it’s a way to build community because mental health illness and substance use disorder they are isolating. That is one of the things that happens is people become more and more isolated. So if you can say, “Hey, I’m struggling with this thing” and find other people in the community that say, “Hey, me too.” And you can have that back and forth and connection. It can be really a powerful help. Yeah.

**John:** Let’s point our discussion and talk about the community around Jane and Carlos and sort of how they’re interacting with family, with friends, with the medical establishment, with the police. What do those interactions look like? So we talked about earlier that Jane would come into a medical situation because she’d broken her ankle or law enforcement if she was drunk driving. There’s natural ways to do that. How would Carlos come into a medical community? How would he come into a law enforcement community? What are the interactions that we see with these characters as they’re doing their thing and the impacts they’re having around other people. Zach, what do you see as Jane’s – the circle that she was drinking with? The social circle that was helping her stay there. How do we portray them responsibly and accurately?

I mean, the people who are in some ways helping her stay the way she is.

**Zach:** I mean, I think it’s super contextual. And I think there’s one very recent example of a portrayal of depression is Euphoria. And in a recent episode of Euphoria, so Rue is the main character and she is so depressed that she has watched 22 hours of Love Island straight. And there’s this sort of ongoing, very painful experience of being too depressed to walk up to go to the restroom. And so her bladder begins to hurt and so I think one thing that was really interesting and somewhat playful there was that depression hurts. It’s not just an emotional/psychological pain. It is physical. Like if you really miss someone, like it hurts when they’re not around. And I think that having different ways of portraying psychological pain manifesting as physical pain could be an interesting thing to show onscreen.

**Corey:** I would say that the science backs that up 100% because the two chemicals responsible for depression are norepinephrine and serotonin, these two chemicals. Dopamine can play a place in one type. But those are also really important chemicals in pain. So, in theory if you have a low serotonin level and a low norepinephrine level you’re going to have depression. We find this really commonly. Interestingly, if I decrease those in the spinal cord that also makes your pain sensor higher. Everything hurts worse, literally.

So, when somebody has depression almost always they have physical pain. And it may manifest—

**Holly:** Which is why they want to use drugs.

**Corey:** Right. No, exactly. And here’s an opioid and I’ve just wrecked your life. So the pieces, there’s really hard science to back up physical ailments that go with anxiety or depression. The place in the body with the most serotonin is not your brain, it’s your gut. So this why we see nausea and stuff in people with low serotonin states because it’s not working properly. They don’t digest food properly. It’s one of the most common complaints I would get for patients with depression. They wouldn’t complain about being sad or crying. They would complain about their belly. And then when you dig into it a little more it’s major depressive disorder.

**Holly:** Especially for young kids, right?

**Corey:** Absolutely.

**Holly:** When a young child is dealing with a mental health issue they’re almost always going to tell you their stomach hurts. It’s a big thing to know.

**John:** Great. So let’s talk about a young child. Let’s talk about a young child dealing with depression or anxiety or these issues. What are the idealized perfect Hollywood parents and what are realistic parents that we’re maybe not seeing as much onscreen? Holly, what’s your take on those parents?

**Holly:** The perfect parent would say to their young child, “How are you feeling? Can you talk to me about what you’re feeling? If you can’t use words can you give it a color? Can you describe it in some way? All feelings are welcome here. We want to talk about all feelings. They’re important. Your feelings are important. And if you’re having some painful feelings, or if your stomach keeps hurting well guess what? We know where we can go and find some help and find somebody who can support you and help you feel better because as your parents we’re here for you, but we don’t have all the answers either. And sometimes we hurt, too. And so let’s go to the experts and find somebody who can help us out.”

**John:** That’s the perfect. That’s the dream. But let’s talk about more realistic things, because in real life parents don’t know what they’re doing. They’re busy doing lots of other things. They have jobs. They have other stresses. They are going through their other issues. On your show Allison Janney’s character is dealing with addiction herself and has a daughter dealing with it. So, and yet you’re trying to be a comedy. So, how do you find the balance of talking about these things and still finding the funny in there? And dealing with the fact that she’s not a perfect mother?

**Gemma:** We don’t have perfect parents on our show. No. I think that’s why people like it. I think it’s a relief. I think I don’t want to after I’ve made a mistake as a parent tune in and watch a perfect parent. Like that just makes me feel worse. Really just, oh, I could have done that and I didn’t.

I like characters that are flawed. That are trying but who fall down and make mistakes. And I think that that is where we find humor is in the trying. And, you know, we deal with a lot of difficult subjects. And those are the scripts that I want to write. Those are the ones that are so much fun, because there’s something to hold onto. And those are the ones where you can go into some really deep, painful places. I’ve always loved like a lot of sadness in my comedy, which did not make me a successful standup. But I found a place where it’s working.

But I think that’s – I don’t know, I think that’s the fun stuff to write. The pain.

**John:** And there’s also a lot of fear. I know as a parent there’s also a tremendous amount of fear. So it’s not that you’re just ignorant to what’s going on, but you’re also afraid of what’s going on. You’re afraid is this a small thing or is this a giant thing? Where does this all lead?

And one of the other fears is the cost of things. And so if we have a character with a child who might be having these issues what is the reality of going to get help? And so would they first go to their pediatrician? Would they then go to a specialist? How much of that could be covered by whatever insurance? What are the realities of someone seeking treatment for addiction or for mental health? Where does that money come from?

And Zach you may have some sense of this, too. You’ve done reporting on the realities of this. What does it look like right now in 2019 at least in the US for someone dealing with these things?

**Zach:** Well so there are too many uninsured people in this country. Too many people who are underinsured in this country. And I think getting into healthcare policy and portraying that rightly in an entertainment narrative would be quite difficult. But I do think that having conversations about insurance do work and is done. In 6 Balloons, did anyone see 6 Balloons? It’s like a day in the life of a heroin user played by Dave Franco and Abbi Jacobson from Broad City is his sister and they take him to detox which is kind of the wrong thing to do. Detox for opioids is not really a thing. But they take him to detox and there’s this whole rigmarole because insurance isn’t paying for it and they don’t have the right coverage. And then someone says, “Well, go down to this clinic. They might have the right coverage.”

And so I think that’s actually a very realistic run-in with the bureaucracy of American healthcare. And I think that’s actually very realistic because I think people do have a lot of trouble what’s in their provider, what’s out of their provider. I think health insurance adds a very complex layer to this. We can also get into parity insurance. It’s forced to, but sometimes doesn’t cover mental health as it should like they do with physical health. These things are separate and I think it’s very critical that we don’t separate these things. That they’re all part of hospital treatment and primary care and that these are all treated by doctors like this guy.

**Holly:** And when they aren’t treated by doctors, I mean I think there’s a very common experience that I’ve even had working with young adults, even in Los Angeles which is not the poor rural area where I grew up in that people, like adolescents and young adults, want therapy but their parents can’t afford therapy. And it’s like this lament, the young adult lament of like I want therapy or you’re 26 and you’re no longer on your parents’ insurance and you want therapy and you can’t find it. And it’s really sad. But this is actually – and I don’t want to get too tangential, but this is where the social media platforms actually can be a positive.

Because I’m not saying anybody should go get therapy on a Facebook group. The kids don’t use Facebook anymore. I don’t know what I’m what I’m talking about. But there are Reddit, I don’t know, listservs somewhere. Kids are able to find support groups. And I, through some of my clients, and I also have two teenagers, have been able to look into some of these online support groups and they’re not terrible. You know, the kids are like offering each other some support and some good advice. And it’s really interesting how the support that our community is offering is changing in this way because of social media. Social media is not all bad. There’s actually some really positive things that can come from it.

**Zach:** So I don’t go to AA or NA meetings, but Twitter is my support group.

**Holly:** There you go.

**Zach:** No joke. A bunch of my good friends on Twitter are in this room and we are always on it. And we’re working together. We’re part of something bigger. It’s really important to me.

**Corey:** For young kids, I had three in my clinic that were pretty recalcitrant and very difficult to treat. And I started playing video games with them on Xbox and we would play Halo and have a closed chat. And actually they told me everything there, but when I was in front of them as an old guy in front of them they didn’t want to say a word. They were clammed up. But when I game them my gamer tag and they came on and we literally sat down and played Halo, you know, in the evening sometimes I got everything from them. And then they would come in and tell me more there.

So it’s about building a connection, which means you have to break down these preconceived barriers with kids. And I think we don’t really build – we haven’t built a system for that. We’ve built a security for adults that we somehow adapted to kids and it doesn’t really work. I mean, I use this now even with my kids. When I’m on the road we play Apex and just can chat. And they’ll tell me more things.

So I think there are some things with gaming and social media and a new path that have real potential to make big change. And just kind of throwing those out there as nuggets for what connects to kids and allowing kids to inform that because the minute that they break down those walls they’re ready to talk about stuff. They don’t like where they are. They’re frustrated. They’re scared. They’re sad. They want to be successful. They want their peers to see them in a certain way and they hate that they’re being seen as this person. But the minute they’re that person they will fully embody it because they have this need to own it. Which many times can rapidly create severe illness. And so just figuring out these other ways that we can come at it would be really important.

**John:** Classically we talk about our protagonist, generally our hero who is – the character is going on a journey. The character who is changing over the course of the story. And there’s an antagonist. And sometimes we think of that antagonist as being a villain, like the bad guy of the story. But it sounds like what you’re describing really is a therapist as antagonist. The person who is helping the protagonist change, is causing the change. And so there can be friction there at the start, but ultimately you’re trying to get to a relationship there so that you can help this person get to the next place. That sounds like the nature of that relationship there. Great.

We are mostly talking about characters, but we are also writers who have minds ourselves. And sometimes deal with these issues ourselves. So before we get to questions I want to ask you guys – if someone is watching this from the Facebook stream or they’re here in the audience and they’re saying like, oh, you know what, I think this has made me realize that I may have a substance use problem, that I may actually have some mental health thing that I should be doing something about. What is the thing they should do tonight? Like what is the first step that somebody who is watching this or listening to this should be doing if they have that moment of awareness?

**Corey:** Don’t go to Google. I mean, honestly, this is the problem because at this point in time mainstream medicine is still really crappy at this. I mean, the vast majority of people aren’t really trained. It’s not mandated in medical schools for a doctor to be trained. I mean, I’m board certified and I’ve done it for over a decade. I feel comfortable in the neuroscience of it. That’s kind of not the average person who sees a patient when they walk into a hospital and there’s still this stigma that we have to break down.

And so what I would say for a person in here, first is get my LinkedIn and call me. I’ll hook you up. I mean, I know everybody who does this work. I mean, honestly it comes down to a provider being available to help a person in need, but more importantly a friend being willing to walk with them through this. And I think that’s one of the biggest pieces, and you talked about not only the character but the people around them. The thing I’ve never seen portrayed truly effectively is a non-family member friend having a truly empathetic connection with a person with addiction to help them take that next step. What we call the trans-theoretical model of change.

And moving them from this pre-contemplative state to actually going and get help. And it’s very simple. You look at them and you say I care about you and I have your back. Because they feel so isolated that they don’t do it. And as a physician when I say that in the emergency department it’s amazing the switch that flips in people when I’m treating them in a time of crisis to actually want to get help and kind of empty themselves a little bit at that point.

And so I think the biggest thing that I would say is I could give you the one-liner of go to the SAMHSA website, Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, and type in your zip code and it will give you providers. Or I could say go to the – if you feel unsafe. But find the person you trust the most and connect with them. And ask for them to walk with you through this. And they really will. That’s the first step. And then together you can start to find the pathway for treatment because it’s not predictable yet. We’re just now building these systems appropriately and that’s why these billions of dollars from federal government are coming in because the systems don’t exist.

It’s been kind of an on-your-own pathway. And so don’t let it be on your own. The first thing is to make that strong connection with the person you trust the most. And then start the journey together. And that can be a family member. It can be a friend. Whoever doesn’t trigger you and enable you, identify them. Not the person who just says yes to whatever you want to do. But somebody who cares about you. And I think that’s the first step that I would say for anybody in here who is struggling with this.

And you know what? 10% of you are. And so this is just a reality. And so that would be it. And honestly find me, call me, I’m happy to answer those questions with you. I still have my homeless population in Camden that I see that still calls my cell phone sometimes randomly.

**Holly:** And as the therapist I’m going to say if somebody feels like they might be struggling and they don’t know, if they are and they’re wondering if they should take that step to reach out to take a really deep breath, to love yourself, to understand that we are all experiencing pain and we’re all going through something and that it’s OK to be struggling. And that you deserve a good life and happiness and allow yourself to reach out for help. Because sometimes that’s the very first step that has to happen because the self-loathing is so great that people feel like they don’t even deserve to be able to ask for help. And that’s sometimes the biggest hurdle. Love yourself. Allow it to be – we’re all human. We’re all in this together. None of us really knows why we’re here, right? And we’re doing the best we can and it’s OK to be struggling and it’s OK to need help.

**John:** Zach as a writer you’re often dealing with the struggle of getting stuff down on the page. Is there any special thing you want to say about sort of the writing process and how it ties into these two things and the desire to recognize when you need help? Is there anything that’s different about that?

**Zach:** So I work from home and I joke that I’m a stay at home dad with no kids. And so it’s really nice that I have a partner, Logan. She gets home at around five. So I try to simulate as best I can a 9 to 5 job. Because if you’re writing it’s not 9 to 5 and it’s whenever you get an email or it’s whenever someone shares the doc and you’re in it.

So, I think because things are unstable and not exactly steady I would try my best – and this is just what helps me is get structure. I think – any writer I think is very obsessive. Reading the same sentence a hundred times and it doesn’t look any different and I keep reading the same sentence. I think there’s just part of the process that for someone like me who has had addiction that I have found a way to channel some of the obsessiveness that is part of addiction into something that I think is helpful and something that I think is useful.

Like I don’t really have a big writing process because journalistically things are just moving too fast sometimes to have a cup of tea and put on the right music. It’s like, no, it’s just like–

**John:** The deadline.

**Zach:** I’ve just got to go.

**John:** Gemma, now you get to work – you don’t have to work all by yourself because you get to work with a staff.

**Gemma:** Oh thank god.

**John:** But there must be some aspect of the caretaking that you guys are doing of each other and sort of watching out for each other. And there’s the whole production of the crew that makes your show. As a person who is managing these people how do you look out for these folks? And how does a writer on your staff, how could she feel comfortable speaking up if she’s struggling, if she’s having an issue? What guidance could you give to somebody who is on a writing staff, not yours necessarily? But in general what should they do if they’re struggling?

**Gemma:** Well first of all I mean in our room we get taken care of so well. Like we are fed and watered and coffee’d. Like over our hiatus I almost starved to death because I didn’t know how to get lunch. Sort of a joke but not totally.

**John:** I know it.

**Gemma:** So I think self-care in general is so important. And I think – I don’t know necessarily about other people, but I know for myself there’s a lot of gymnastics that I have to go through to get to the point that I can, I don’t know, find the funny, you know. And I’ve had to face a lot of stuff and deal with a lot of stuff on my time and get through that. Because if I don’t get through that I’m going to bring that – I’m just going to come into work and weep. And I need to find another way.

You know, so I do things every day. I try to meditate before work. I try to get some exercise in. I try to do that book, The Artist’s Way.

**John:** Five minutes–

**Gemma:** The three pages. I’m on week one, year eight. I’ve never gotten past week one. But week one is great because she talks about the morning pages. And I do that which is like the three – and if take a moment, and a lot of moments, 30 moments in the morning to do that. To just write down the voices in my head that are like you don’t deserve anything. You know, if I can just write that down so that I don’t bring that into the room I do so much better.

And my husband and I have a deal if I meet an untimely death that he will never read my morning pages notebook because he will so worry about what I was going through. But it’s just that yammering to get that out.

And then certainly if anyone in our room is going through something I think that we give them the feeling that they can come to us and that, you know, there’s a lot of trust that has to happen in a writers’ room. And you’re sharing your personal stories and experiences and some of them are funny and a lot of them are not. And you need to be able to trust that that is sort of a sacred space where that stuff isn’t going to get shared elsewhere. And the people in my room know me really well. You know, they know a lot. And there’s something wonderful about that. It’s also difficult sometimes because they know me really well. But I don’t know, it’s a very cool relationship.

**John:** Now usually on the podcast we would do a One Cool Thing, but for tonight I wanted to do a new segment called Please Stop. And so I asked everyone to prepare a Please Stop for something that they see in films and television that they wish they would not see ever again, or that people would cut way back on.

So, here’s my Please Stop. Can we please stop with the actual quantity of alcohol we see characters drinking in movies and TV shows? Because it’s physically impossible. You see these characters, I mean, this is really an appeal to writers and directors, but also like the prop people. Because people will drink these massive quantities. And we all know that it’s like tea or something in there, so they’re not actually drinking bourbon. But characters drink so much that they would be dead in some of these things.

So if we could keep an extra eye out for the actual volume of alcohol we’re having our characters drink that would be my appeal and ask to Please Stop overdoing the alcohol.

Gemma, do you have a Please Stop?

**Gemma:** Yes. Can we Please Stop when people are, you know, identifying in a 12-step meeting and they say, “Hi. My name is Bob.” And then everyone says, “Hi Bob.” That, I just, I don’t like it. I don’t like it. It’s so depressing and it’s so – I don’t know.

**John:** It’s cliché. Corey, what do you have?

**Corey:** I’d say the biggest one is Please Stop portraying someone who is in recovery from addiction as having a weakness inherently. And on the opposite side of that just to add to it, don’t portray people who decide not to use drugs or drink as lame. Because what it does is it portrays, one, that those who did drink and it happened to be the thing that made them feel normal for the first time and they develop addiction, but then they went through all the work and frustration and pain in that to get well. Treat them like they’ve overcome cancer because this disease has the same mortality rate.

So, as we start to look at it they have fought to get there. And they should actually be as someone who has really been through a battle and won. And it should be portrayed positively as like this is a person I want on my team because I’ve seen them fight a fight and win. But on the other side don’t make the dude who’s like, “Yeah, I’m cool, I don’t want a drink,” as like the lame-o that night. Or “I don’t smoke weed” is like boo, he can’t go to White Castle. Like I still go to White Castle, I don’t smoke weed. So it’s OK.

And so I just think those two pieces go together.

**John:** Both in our media but also in real life. I mean, a thing I often say is if someone says they don’t drink you don’t have to ask a follow up question. They’ve said, great, so they can have something else and let’s move on and have a great night. Holly?

**Holly:** Please Stop portraying mental illness and substance use disorder as anomalies. Almost 25% of people have a diagnosable mental health issue. I would say millions more have maybe a sub-clinical anxiety or depression issue. So, it’s a lot of us and it shouldn’t be like that character has a mental health issue, or that character has an addiction. It’s much more ubiquitous than that and would love to see a more realistic portrayal of that.

**John:** Zach, what’s your Please Stop?

**Zach:** OK. I would say to stop glorifying DEA agents and criminalizing the US/Mexico border.

**Holly:** Here here!

**Zach:** So just one thing, obviously DEA agents, like we make them look tough. And their job is futile and they’re abysmal at doing it. So, let’s just not make them cool people.

**John:** Thank you, Zach. All right. Sicario [as a comedy]. Now we have time for some questions. So if you have a question – a reminder that a question is a question. It’s not a story with a question mark at the end – raise your hand and I’m happy to call on you. Right here?

**Male Audience Member:** Well I guess this is for all of you. I’m just curious, I read Michael Pollan’s new book How to Change Your Mind, which I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that, but they start talking about drug addiction and the use of psychedelics and other drugs. I haven’t gotten all the way through the book yet. But I’m just curious if you’ve researched any of that or could talk about that for a second.

**Corey:** So the psychedelic research is kind of resurgent. There was a time in the ‘60s in which it was actually done quite a bit and looked pretty promising even then. I think that the research that’s now coming out looks equally as promising. So I think it’s about dosing and timing and you have to do science. And science is you have to identify whether or not if I give somebody this versus somebody who got a placebo, like a sugar pill, does it work in that scenario? Because we develop an idea of should I use this based on if nobody knows what’s happening do they do better. And if that’s the case then game on. I mean, there’s nobody really against this in medicine. Medicine is pretty straightforward. I mean, we just like to see a randomized control trial in a population we can believe by a scientist we can trust. And we’re like, OK, cool, this is great.

So, yeah, I think it definitely has a future. And in the mental health there’s a lot of research there where I think for depression and stuff looks great.

**Holly:** Absolutely. Depression, trauma, PTSD. It’s very effective, ketamine treatment and LSD micro-dosing. Very effective. And it’s hopefully going to just be allowed to be used more. Unfortunately it’s over-regulated right now.

**Zach:** One more DEA thing. It’s because of the DEA that we cannot research these drugs.

**Holly:** Yes. That’s true.

**Zach:** So let’s de-schedule these so we can actually research and see what kind of potentials they have.

**Holly:** Right.

**John:** Another question, right here.

**Female Audience Member:** I’ve been researching neuro feedback that people do. I did it as a kid and I didn’t realize I was doing it. I was just brought by my mom. But I just listened to a podcast about it and they claim that there’s no such thing as a chemical imbalance. And I’m confused by that because I currently take medication and it works great. And the neuro feedback I do not remember working at all for ADHD.

**Corey:** I’m a neuro molecular biologist at grad school, so this stuff is really interesting to me. So sometimes we oversimplify things to the point of being wrong. And it’s not necessarily an imbalance, because neuro feedback has very little to do with the actual neuro transmitter, the chemical, and more to do with actually building certain signal pathways. Because if you do neuro feedback you’re creating a default reaction to a cue. I mean, we know the lateral habenula. We know exactly what part of the brain we’re working on because it’s the default reaction to a cue that we’re trying to change. And so neuro feedback is I’m feeling anxious but let’s focus on your heart and see if we can decrease your heart rate during that moment.

And so that cue would be to switch from being anxious to thinking about this, which would then lay down new tracks. It would then lower your heart rate and decrease your anxiety. It’s not a chemical imbalance to be depressed because I may – it’s a chemical imbalance in the sense that for your brain the chemicals are a little bit out of whack. And whether that’s structure, or chemicals, we never know. Because some people have – like schizophrenia is a structural problem, not a chemical problem. It’s what we call arborization which is where over time your brain connects a bunch of nerves. And then it trims a bunch of nerves, too, so that you don’t have too many, so that your brain can communicate. So you can have internal thoughts while you’re having external thoughts.

If you don’t trim those branches then you can have internal thoughts way too loudly while you’re having external thoughts and you get a different voice. So it’s these changes in structure. So mental illness is not a chemical imbalance, unless it is, which in that case it’s a lower or higher serotonin. It could be structural or this. So it’s an oversimplification.

The heterogeneity of mental illness has a lot to do with trauma. Has to do with is it group trauma, meaning a whole group of people experience this versus an individual. It changes the whole dynamic of the brain is wired. So, oversimplification, but they’re also wrong because they became black and white. So if anybody is black and white in this space they’re wrong. It’s all grey. Because the science we know a lot, but we don’t know everything.

So if they’re not speaking in – if they’re speaking in absolutes turn it off, because it’s just wrong.

**Zach:** And pharmaceutical companies wrote the copy for chemical imbalance. Like it’s not a thing.

**John:** All right. A hand right there. Yes?

**Female Audience Member:** Thank you. The thing I’ve personally experienced a lot is somebody whose friends and family think they have an addiction or mental health issue but that person either doesn’t think they do or doesn’t want treatment. What does the ideal friend or family member do in that situation and how does that fit in the timeline of issues that we’ve been talking about?

**Holly:** Should bug them every day. Tell them they have to go to treatment. The people around them should spend all their time worrying about whether the person is in treatment yet.

**John:** Just badger, badger, badger.

**Holly:** Yes, badger, badger, badger. That’s what works. I’m good.

No, yeah, you know, grownups make their own decisions. And if somebody is not ready to get treatment they’re not ready to get treatment. And we have to respect that and live our own lives and take care of our own selves. But you can still be there in a way to say, “Look, I’m here when you are ready to get help. I’m here if ever you want to get help.” And you might want to say that every couple of weeks, but probably not every day, right? So that they know when they are ready to get help that you’re there. You can’t force anybody to be ready to go to treatment, right? Or to get any kind of help.

What you’re talking to, and I don’t want to get too complicated, is actually though one of the systemic problems of something that might keep somebody sick. Because there might be what we call enablers, and I hate that word, but it’s a good word, who are spending their entire lives worrying about that other person. Wanting to make sure that they’re OK. Resentful that they’re spending all their time worrying about the other person being OK. And in that system the sick person almost might want to stay sick unconsciously because they’re getting all that attention around them and there are these weird payoffs. So actually the healthiest thing to do is to step back, be your own person, you know, say when my loved one is ready to get treatment he or she will. And until then I’ll live my own life. I’ll be a model of setting good boundaries and living my best life. And as long as they know I’m here that’s all I can do.

**Corey:** And from a provider’s standpoint we use a technique called motivational interviewing which is basically a science-based interaction technique. It’s like The Force. It’s awesome. I mean, literally these are not the droids you’re looking for. I mean, you can get someone through just appropriate empathetic questioning, but it has rigid structure in the way in which you approach it. So, if you want to know the right way to say things that might help someone move through those stages of change and get ready faster rarely can a family member do this because there’s too much emotional connection and discourse.

**Holly:** Can be shaming, sorry Corey. It can be a little shaming.

**Corey:** Yeah. It can be, if overdone. But at the same time motivational interviewing is the basis for getting someone to start to slowly move through these stages of change. And it’s the language that should be mimicked if you’re going to try to portray someone who is kind of doing the right thing. Not overdoing it. But the basics of it.

**Zach:** A last thing I’ll add is if someone is actively using and they are not ready to stop it’s a good time for them to learn about harm reduction. It’s a good time for them to find out where the local syringe exchange program is, where they distribute in a naloxone, where someone around them can naloxone which reverses the effects overdoses which someone who knows how to do the proper breathing in case this person isn’t breathing. So there’s ways to keep this person safe and know that they’re cared for even though treatment isn’t on the table right now.

**Holly:** That’s a huge important point. If you have somebody in your life who has an opioid addiction or might have an opioid addiction get some Narcan. And will you explain more what that is? And you can get it at your pharmacy. You can ask your pharmacy for Narcan to be there. If there is an overdose you can help them stay alive.

**Corey:** Yeah. So an overdose is when the opioid or other substance, or a combination of substances, in fact most overdoses are not just opioids. They’re an opioid plus like a benzodiazepine like Xanax or Valium or alcohol on top of it. And it suppresses the breathing in the brain stem. And so when that occurs if that’s not reversed then the patient will die because you’re not breathing.

Narcan, or naloxone, which is a nose stray or an injection. In fact, what’s out in the public right now is just a nasal spray.

**Holly:** It’s easy.

**Corey:** It gets to the brain. It blocks the receptor that the opioid goes to and reverses that. So, what it does is it wakes them up and puts them into [floored] withdrawal, but it keeps them from dying. And that’s the important part. Because I can never get somebody who is dead well. So, we need to make sure that any chance that we have this. My seven-year-old knows how to deliver this. My nine-year-old knows how to deliver. They carry it in their backpacks. And I live in Ann Arbor, which is not really a place where you’re most likely going to find as much of this in density. But it should just be that ubiquitously.

So if I asked the question how many of you have Narcan on you, it honestly should be kind of everybody, because it is the one thing that literally is a life-saving drug that anybody can give that nobody is going to steal. It has no street value other than keeping somebody alive. And if I’m walking back to my hotel tonight, you know, you need to be able to give that.

**Holly:** Go to your pharmacy and say I’d like some Narcan or some naloxone and your pharmacist will help you figure that out.

**John:** There are going to be so many scenes with Narcan in these people’s scripts and it’s going to be great.

**Zach:** That’s good. That’s very good. More naloxone.

**John:** Question right here.

**Female Audience Member:** So, as you know what happens to people of color who have mental health or addiction is very different from what happens to white people in this country. And I’m wondering what you would like to see be different in the program that we have around race and mental health and addiction.

**John:** Let’s talk about both sort of portrayals right now and also reality, so we make sure that we are addressing both things.

**Corey:** The data is very clear that medicine is racist. I mean, very racist. Not a little bit. This is not unconscious bias. It’s racism. And so racism is shown to be systemic in even doctors of color. And so it’s not just everybody. It’s the field of medicine that is racist. And this has been well studied and it basically shows that if you are an African American female you are going to receive the least effective care that we can deliver as compared to anybody else. And the spectrum changes. So poverty and the appearance of poverty and color also put you even below that.

So the minute you come in and you code as impoverished or you code as African American from that culture, or you code as American Indian or Latino, you’re going to get worse care. And so that’s a reality and I think quite honestly is worth beating up in TV shows. Meaning this needs to be called out.

I have this conversation with my patients, because obviously they’re going to look at me and be like well what do you know about this. I’m a white male doctor. I can walk into a room and have immediate power without having done anything, right? That’s just a reality of America.

And so I think what I would love to see is how to actually have that conversation from someone like me and someone like that to cross that bridge because it’s crossable. It really is. But you have to call out the fact that the entire system is actually built against that population. And that’s a systemic historical problematic issue that we’re going to have to deal with. And until we really beat it up in anecdote and emotion and story it’s not going to change in the bigger picture. That’s a great question.

**Holly:** It is a great question. And something that I wish – we all wish – was more addressed in television and film, too. Because it’s just so empowering to make sure that there is representation in our media. Mental health wise, too. It’s really unfortunate that there is a bias within the system and there are also cultural biases, some groups are more prevalent to ask for help or reach out for help. And I wish that story was told more, too, because it’s really, really important.

**John:** Yeah. This panel is set up to talk about stigma and I think it’s also important as we do our research on these things make sure we’re looking at cultural groups and what are the stigmas about these specific things within that group that would cause different outcomes or cause people to make different choices, be it for getting help or other things. It doesn’t stop at sort of doing the research on what is the issue, but like what is that issue within that culture is crucial. And that’s why you have to have representation in your room to figure out what’s going on there.

I think we can take one more question. I didn’t anyone in the back, so I see one hand in the back. I can’t even really see your face, but I see your hand up very, very high.

**Male Audience Member:** Back to screenwriting, within the 12-step programs there’s actually a tradition in not talking about the 12 steps in radio, television, and film. So as screenwriters how do you approach that because you would want to be responsible to that. And like Zach said with the doc he watched that gave him an unconscious bias on wanting to take methadone, so if as screenwriters we do the best that we can, or don’t, like what is our level of responsibility? And is there a higher level to the networks and studios to oversee how we’re portraying these 12-step programs or recovery in general?

**John:** I can start answering the question, but I think we have very smart people up here who can also answer it. I think as screenwriters we’re always looking for that balance of what is realism versus what is the point that we’re trying to make. And what you’re describing is that sometimes the absolutely realistic version of what that 12-step program might be like might be divulging stuff that is not helpful for the community as a whole. So you may want to make some choices that are different.

You’re always going to approach the scene from what are you trying to do for that character. What is the essence of that scene for that character? And there may be ways to use the nature of that scene or sort of what’s the arc of that scene to get at that thing without revealing things that you don’t need to be revealing. Or getting into esoterica that’s not meant to be discussed. But what do you guys think? To what degree is talking about the specifics of recovery, or sometimes the specific of a certain kind of treatment where you can’t walk somebody through the whole thing and you’re going to be doing some short-handing.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show I loved and in this final season Rachel Bloom’s character is going through a program and you can sort of squint and probably figure out what she’s going through, but they weren’t specific about the nature of the program. Is that an appropriate choice to not give it the name? Where do you guys land on this?

**Gemma:** Well I can speak to that. My understanding of that tradition is that it is not to break personal anonymity but not that you can’t discuss the program. So, that is a difference and we’re dealing with fictional characters. And to do it in a responsible way I think is definitely important. But I don’t think it breaks that tradition. And that’s sort of the stigma of recovery that I was sort of talking about earlier is something that is real and it gives people a sense that there isn’t hope and that if you seek recovery that your life is over and that you won’t find joy or happiness again. And I think that that is false.

**Corey:** It’s national security. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to divulge something that’s going to make every person with addiction suddenly worse. I think transparency is really important for all aspects of treatment. Both for addiction and mental health. And in that because the more we normalize these things the more likely it’s less stigmatizing. And I think hiding it and separating it and keeping it under the covers just continues to perpetuate that stigma about people who are in recovery and what these things mean.

And if somebody goes to a cancer support group then we talk all about that. In fact, that’s entire storylines of pathways for people in shows. So I think that with this it’s a step. It’s a pathway in their recovery. And sometimes and for some people it’s not a part at all. Some people it’s a big part. Some people it’s transient. And it just is what it is. So normalizing it as much as you can through the stories that you tell becomes really important for destigmatizing the treatment of addiction and not keeping things under wraps and scary in a sense.

**Zach:** Yeah. I just think anonymity, it’s important for people who want to protect their identity, obviously. But I do think we are in, like that book, The Traditions, I think it was written in the 1930s or the 1940s, and I don’t think these traditions are mapping super neatly onto where we are now as a culture in society, namely that when there was an HIV epidemic a saying was literally Science = Death. That was the slogan. And right now there’s an overdose crisis where 70,000 people are dying every single year. And I think that there’s a responsibility to not be quiet about that. And to speak up. And the more that people like me are in places like this and the more that there’s people who use drugs, people who are using drugs, we need to hear from them. And, yeah, so I don’t think they should be anonymous. But that’s just my take.

**John:** I want to thank our fantastic panelists for a very great night.

Links:

* [Hollywood Health and Society](https://hollywoodhealthandsociety.org/events/addiction-mental-health-breaking-stigma)
* [6 Balloons with Dave Franco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uF4XjvS_Z0)
* [Motivational Interviewing](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/motivational-interviewing)
* [Narcan](https://www.narcan.com/)
* Follow Corey Waller on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/rcwallermd).
* Follow Holly Daniels on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/drhollydaniels).
* Follow Zachary Siegel on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/ZachWritesStuff). Follow his project Changing the Narrative on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/hijaction) or using #ChangingtheNarrative.
* [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))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_412_mha.mp3)

The original post for this episode can be found here.

Craig Mazin: Hi folks. On today’s episode there is some language, some salty language, so if you’re in the car with your children go ahead and stop playing it or put the earmuff’s on them.

Male Voice: What the F are you talking about?

Craig: Wow.

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

Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 400 of Scriptnotes.

Craig: Wow.

John: A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: Today on this, our quartercentenary, we are going to be talking about movie genres and sub-genres that aren’t getting made anymore, and how we can fix this. To help us out we are joined by a guest from exactly 100 episodes ago. Chris McQuarrie is a writer and director whose credits include The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie, Jack Reacher, the last two Mission: Impossibles, the next two as well. Chris McQuarrie, welcome back.

Chris McQuarrie: Thank you very much for having me.

Craig: So the deal is every 100 episodes we have worked up enough tolerance to have McQuarrie back.

Chris: You know, Craig–

Craig: Here we go.

Chris: You weren’t here for the last one.

Craig: That’s why it wasn’t very good. [laughs]

Chris: And I miss that.

Craig: I can tell. Chris McQuarrie and I have been engaged in a, what, 15-year-long argument about everything.

Chris: About everything.

Craig: Literally everything.

Chris: I don’t think it’s even much – it’s not so much an argument as it is a–

Craig: It’s a love story at this point.

Chris: It’s the duelists.

Craig: Yes, exactly.

Chris: I think that’s how you would describe our relationship.

Craig: Correct. You wake up in the morning, you go to work, fighting this man you must fight.

John: So back in Episode 300 I was talking to you and we were both living in Paris because you were directing Mission: Impossible. It hadn’t come out yet. You were in the middle of shooting it. It turned out really well, so congratulations on that.

Chris: Thank you.

Craig: Amazing.

Chris: Thank you very much.

Craig: And two more to come.

Chris: Two more to come.

Craig: So the idea is you’ll make these until they kill you? Meaning the movies are going to kill you.

Chris: It’s more likely that they will kill me than they will kill Tom Cruise.

Craig: No, nothing kills Tom Cruise. You’ve proven that. By the way, openly attempting to murder him through film. I mean, everyone knows what you’re doing.

Chris: I have been described as his enabler. He describes me as his enabler. I’m not actually trying to kill him, I’m just trying to–

Craig: Could have fooled me.

Chris: I’m trying to just – no, he would – he would be doing most of this stuff–

Craig: Movie number one, let’s drown him. Movie number two, oh, hang him off a plane–

Chris: Well the drowning I don’t think he would try to do.

Craig: Oh, hang him off of a plane. Then let’s drown him. Then let’s make him hurtle from a roof. Oh, he broke a bone. Too bad. Keep going.

Chris: Yeah, that’s true.

Craig: Wow. You’re killing him in front of us.

Chris: I’m whittling him away. But when you see him in Top Gun–

Craig: That’s right, Top Gun Deuce.

Chris: Top Gun Maverick.

Craig: Maverick.

Chris: He looks younger in Top Gun than he did in Fallout. And I can tell you it’s not surgical because there was absolutely no time in between for him to do that.

Craig: So magic?

John: Just magic.

Chris: No. You know what it is? It’s incredible. It’s diet and exercise.

Craig: No, I don’t like that.

Chris: He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t drink booze. Look, we know what the agers are. Stay out of the sun. Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t smoke cigarettes.

Craig: You just said three things that I hate.

Chris: Love what you do.

Craig: Love what you do, exactly.

Chris: And there’s a book you can read called Younger Next Year and it’s all about–

Craig: I’m not reading that shit. [laughs]

Chris: You should definitely read it.

Craig: Not gonna.

Chris: Because guys our age, we all have to read it. And essentially what the book says is once you start rounding the horn into your 50s you just start–

Craig: Dying.

Chris: Not dying. It’s decay. And that the more you exercise–

Craig: Sweet decay. Sweet decay.

Chris: The more you exercise the more you hold off that decay. Tom has been on a regimen for 30 years now that’s–

Craig: I’m going to argue that none of us are going to do that. That we will be here at 500–

Chris: Sitting at this table I can tell you there are three guys sitting at this table who don’t work out the recommended one-hour a day, six days a week.

Craig: Not a chance. Nah, but you know what, we know words.

John: We do know the words.

Craig: I mean, the vocabulary between the three of us is astonishing.

John: It’s got to be a lot. All of those words. Craig?

Craig: Yes.

John: This episode is a milestone not only in that it’s 400 but it’s also the first episode we’re recording after Chernobyl has reached the air.

Craig: Yes, we are post-Chernobyl.

John: We are post-Chernobyl.

Chris: Has it reached the air?

John: Yes.

Craig: Last night.

John: We’re recording this on a Tuesday. Monday was the first night that it aired.

Chris: I cannot wait to see it.

Craig: You don’t have to wait. It’s on the air.

John: It’s on demand already.

Chris: No, I know. From where we’re sitting right now I will run home and watch it.

Craig: Very good.

Chris: This evening on HBO.

Craig: You’ve always been a big backer of the show.

Chris: I have deep personal feelings of resentment about Chernobyl.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: I wanted to make that show.

Craig: Here’s what Chris said. Chris said, “I would like to direct Chernobyl.” And I said, but Chris, you’re making Mission: Impossible. And he said, “No problem.” And I said, I think a problem.

Chris: Well, actually, before that though I wasn’t making Mission: Impossible.

Craig: Sure. And then you were again. And you kept saying–

Chris: But in the window where I wasn’t making it.

Craig: Right.

Chris: I went to HBO and said I’ll make it. And HBO, they were very polite but I could see in their eyes they were thinking, “Well if he wants to direct it who else can we get?”

John: No.

Craig: Oh no. I don’t think so.

Chris: For sure.

Craig: I think maybe what they were saying was, “So in post he’s going to be prepping a Mission: Impossible movie.”

Chris: I would have been–

Craig: I think that may have been what it was.

Chris: Is this why I can’t get a job doing anything else? This is why nobody else will offer me movies just because they all think I’m just going to be in post on Mission: Impossible.

Craig: No, it’s because I’ve gone around town just killing you.

So, Chernobyl on the air at long last. Five years. I looked in my little folder. Do you guys keep a folder of all your–?

John: Old drafts?

Craig: Yeah.

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: And so the oldest document I have in my Chernobyl folder is from like May 12, 2014. Almost exactly five years ago. And it was actually very comforting because the header was “Stuff to Figure Out.” And it was just like what’s this about, who’s in it, what would the episodes be? It was just a bunch of questions that any idiot could ask. I guess they all start that way, don’t they?

Chris: No. I need to do that more often. I don’t ask myself those questions, which is probably why–

Craig: We’ll get into that.

Chris: Yeah. I will say this, the other thing I said, you remember you sent me the script. I was on the east coast getting on a plane.

Craig: Yes, you read them on a plane.

Chris: And you texted them to me just before the plane took off so I had two scripts to read. And I landed and I called you up and I said I would cut one word and I would change one word.

John: That’s why you did not get the job.

Craig: I threw a fit. How dare you?

Chris: Exactly. I guess the guy who they hired didn’t cut that word or change that word.

John: You’re not to do those things.

Craig: By the way, I tried to change that word many, many times and could never do it. I couldn’t come up with anything better.

Chris: Just couldn’t come up with anything better. Well, I could have made a suggestion.

Craig: Probably.

Chris: But more importantly that was a damn good script. Scripts. I read two episodes.

Craig: So now it’s a show and I don’t know what like ratings are per se, but the response has been very positive.

John: Part of the reason why you’ve gone for some episodes is you were talking at the UN. You were at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Craig: Yes.

John: You got to do all these amazing things.

Chris: Dear god.

John: You recorded a whole other podcast series with Peter Sagal.

Craig: Yes.

John: Which I started listening to which is great.

Craig: Yes, yes. So the idea there was because so much of what the show is about is the cost of lies and narrative and the way narrative distorts truth I felt that it was important that we hold ourselves accountable for the ways we changed things to be able to tell the story. So Peter Sagal of NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and I recorded a companion piece. So after each episode airs on HBO or on Sky Atlantic over there in the UK then there is this little companion piece that comes along that you can download from Stitcher or Apple or any of those podcast places. I’ve learned, by the way, that Stitcher is a thing. I had to learn that for this.

And we just have a discussion about what we changed and why and illuminate other various topics of interest.

Chris: We did something like that on Valkyrie actually. Nathan and I did a second commentary track where we went through and said here’s all the things we changed and what really happened.

Craig: Why do you think people – I think it was incredibly – I thought very satisfying to do it. I felt honest and good. And I didn’t sense that, and John, you listened to it so I’m going to ask you. Did you feel like maybe by learning that some things had been changed that I had in any way undermined the experience of watching the show?

John: No. In the first episode you talk–

Chris: You mean the fact that Chernobyl didn’t really happen?

Craig: There is no place called Chernobyl.

John: It’s all made up in fairy land. For example, that a key character actually had a family and you portray him as not having a family.

Craig: Correct.

John: That is a big distinction in a character’s life, but it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the event that happened.

Craig: Correct. And that kind of was the rule that we tried to follow which is I really did not want to change anything that would fundamentally make things more dramatic or–

John: You didn’t want to chat to make it more exciting.

Craig: I didn’t want to cheat.

Chris: Because the events surrounding Chernobyl need punching up. [laughs]

Craig: Yeah. Kind of like let’s just let the truth be the truth here.

Chris: Well, and I remember calling you and saying, OK, what of this, having done of adaptations of like what is true, what did you gin up? And we had had a conversation very early on before you started writing it.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: You were in London. We all went out to dinner.

Craig: Yes. And then I think you were on a plane to Alaska or something like that.

Chris: Yes. I was going to the Ice Cap, which didn’t happen.

Craig: As one does.

Chris: As one does.

Craig: That’s what McQuarrie does.

Chris: I was going to do research and I was on my way to the Ice Cap and from London to get to the Ice Cap you have to fly from London to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to Seattle, Seattle to Alaska, where you get off the plane and go across the airport to where the military C130 with skis on it is waiting to take you to this ice station.

Craig: Jews don’t do this. Ever.

Chris: And the Ice Cap – I got to Vegas and turned my phone on and there were all these text messages saying the Ice Cap is breaking up and they are going to evacuate the ice station and you’re not going this year. And I have never made it.

Craig: Well, at the very least it was a short flight from London to Las Vegas.

Chris: Well, I got to spend the night in Vegas.

Craig: Oh, hey!

Chris: Which is better than an Ice Cap.

Craig: This podcast is absolutely out of control. John’s eyelid must be twitching by now.

John: It’s fine. We’re vaguely on the outline still. I mean, the Ice Cap was a diversion, but–

Chris: Yes. I see on the outline it says lose the plot.

John: Lose the plot.

Craig: Exactly.

John: To get back on plot, we should also say that we actually have a live show coming up.

Craig: Yes.

John: Every year we do a benefit for Hollywood Heart, which is a great charity that provides services to homeless youth and youth with HIV. We always have great guests. This year we will again have great guests for our live show on June 13th. The big change this time is we are trying to sell out the Ace Hotel. Which is a much bigger venue.

Craig: It’s a great theater. It’s a big venue. It’s a great venue. Definitely please come see us. Buy tickets. We always deliver on the guests. Don’t worry about that. But really aren’t we enough?

John: We should be enough.

Craig: We should be enough.

John: But the guests are really the topping on the ice cream sundae.

Craig: The guests are the topping.

John: So it’s Thursday June 13 at the Ace Hotel. Tickets are available now and there will be a link in the show notes for those.

Craig: For charity.

John: For charity.

Craig: And this is a charity that our good mutual friend, John Gatins, is on the board.

Chris: Oh lovely.

Craig: So this is all part of Gatins’ world.

Chris: We love John Gatins.

Craig: We do.

John: Also in celebration of 400 episodes we have new Scriptnotes shirts. So I’m showing these to Craig and Chris right now. So this is–

Craig: Those are so great.

John: This is the light version of the shirt. This is Scriptnotes 400. It has a sort of blank VHS videotape, was the feel I was going for with these shirts.

Craig: You nailed it.

Chris: You nailed it.

Craig: That’s amazing. I love it.

John: The dark version of the shirt.

Craig: Ooh, dark is nice. Dark kind of gives me a little bit of an Atari vibe. Yeah, I love it. That’s a little bit Breakout. I love it. This is a good shirt.

John: Good shirt.

Craig: Percentage of proceeds that go to me?

John: Are none.

Craig: Consistently zero. 400 episodes.

John: Still not making any money out of this.

Craig: Still not making any money.

John: But at least you don’t have to pay money. Early on in the first like 50 episodes Craig would have to write a check for hosting fees and all that kind of stuff.

Craig: Now John drives a Rolls Royce that’s tacked on top of a Maserati.

Chris: Is it sponsored the podcast?

Craig: No, we don’t do ads.

John: We have no ads. We have nothing.

Craig: We are free in every freaking way.

Chris: In every freaking way. You do this out of the goodness of your heart?

Craig: This is the only thing I do out of the goodness – first of all, I don’t have a heart, as you know.

Chris: Or goodness.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: I was looking at John.

Craig: But I simulate – it’s how I simulate humanity.

Chris: Yes.

John: So these shirts which Craig gets no money for are available in black and white and navy. We also have hoodies this time, so check them out.

Craig: Ooh, I’m getting a hoodie. You know I love a hoodie.

John: We all love a hoodie. Now we finally get back on outline to talk about the feature topic. And so every once and a while we do a This Kind of Movie, where we took a look at a genre, a sub-genre of movie that is not currently popular and we discuss how we would make that movie in 2019 or really 2020, or 2021 realistically. As we’re recording this Disney just put out a list of all their upcoming movies through 2023.

Craig: Right. Which are all Star Wars.

John: They’re all Star Wars or princess movies. But if we wanted to try to make one of these movies what we would need to do to get those on the Disney schedule?

Chris: Oh, onto the Disney schedule?

John: Or really any schedule. Any schedule.

Craig: Witchcraft at this point I think.

Chris: Not true.

Craig: Oh, here we go. Oh, look, I’m having an argument with Chris McQuarrie.

Chris: It’s not an argument. An argument would be a conflict of two different opinions.

Craig: He’s arguing about us having an argument. [laughs]

John: No, no, we’re not having an argument. You don’t understand. This is not an argument.

Craig: How dare you?

Chris: I’d like an argument please.

Craig: I love that sketch.

Chris: See, an argument would be if you had an opinion and I had an opinion, but you’re not allowed to have an opinion anymore.

Craig: Ugh.

Chris: If you just avoid opinions and stick to facts.

John: 100 percent facts.

Chris: Yes, then I can’t get into any trouble.

John: Chernobyl.

Chris: Don’t have an opinion. And that’s why we are not arguing.

Craig: The truth matters. The truth matters.

Chris: Because I’m right.

Craig: Let’s get back to the topic at hand. It’s turning into The Morning Zoo.

John: In previous installments of this segment we have saved romantic comedies. I mean, I think we can all agree that romantic comedies were dead and then we brought them back to life.

Craig: We did. We resuscitated them.

John: I think we also did some work on westerns.

Craig: They’re back.

John: So I went on Twitter and asked people for other genres or sub-genres that need saving.

Craig: That have been sort of underserved.

Chris: So I have a long suffering script. A script that’s been sitting around for years and years and years. I don’t own it. I was commissioned to write it by a producer. You would put it in the category of it’s a redemption story, personal drama, you put it in that kind of Verdict sort of–

Craig: Oh, OK. What is the genre-genre?

Chris: It’s a drama.

Craig: Just sort of people?

Chris: It is a female-driven drama. Woman goes to prison.

Craig: OK, prison.

Chris: No, beginning of the story she goes to prison. Two scenes later she gets out of prison 14 years later and is trying to reconnect with her sister who was four-years-old when she went into prison and has been lost in the system.

Craig: OK.

Chris: OK. So the kind of movie that in 1973 would have been released every other weekend.

John: Totally.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: And Netflix. Post Mission: Impossible Netflix said we want to do this. And what Netflix is after now, they’re fairly genre-agnostic. They’re really looking for, A, content.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: They’re frantically trying to line their pockets with content.

Craig: That appears to be the case.

Chris: Before Disney fires up the whatever they’re doing. But also building relationships with talent. And they looked at this thing and said this is imminently cast-able. There is now, I can’t say who but there is a great actress interested in the role. And Netflix is just standing by and they’re going to do it.

Craig: That’s awesome.

Chris: The kind of movie that even two, three years ago would have been inconceivable. Another project that I was briefly attached to, I’m attached to it now as a producer, was a WWII movie, but a WWII drama. It’s not a WWII–

Craig: Shoot-shoot-bang-bang.

Chris: It isn’t Saving Private Ryan. It’s a guy behind enemy lines personal drama. Again, the kind of thing, you hear WWII and you just start falling asleep.

Craig: Even if there were explosions it would be a hard sell.

Chris: Yes. It’s dead in the water. And so you have with that mechanism if you can attach the right elements to a piece of material–

Craig: You can get yourself on Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or HBO.

John: With each of these categories I want to talk about venue basically. Is it still a big screen idea or is it something that is more designed for a smaller screen, be it streaming, be it some other way to do it. But also I want to talk about what is the essence of this kind of movie. What is the biggest difference between making this movie now versus when it was originally popular? Who are the characters and then with those characters who would you cast in this kind of movie? Who writes it? Who directs it? And what are the big obstacles getting in the way of making this kind of movie again?

Craig: All right.

John: So, let’s start with sports comedies. Sports comedies used to be incredibly popular.

Craig: The Ron Shelton area.

John: So Ron Shelton had Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump. But we also have things like Dodgeball. Happy Gilmore. Major League. Caddyshack. Bad News Bears. A League of Their Own.

Craig, I’ll start with you. What is the essence of a sports comedy to you?

Craig: Underdogs. Generally speaking we have underdogs. And usually there’s somebody struggling with a – you know, there’s a term in baseball, I don’t know if carries to other sports, the yips. Oh, yeah, actually in golf too the yips are when you just psychologically are struggling with something and so your game falls apart. So typically in these movies somebody with innate skill is struggling with something and so–

Chris: Tin Cup.

Craig: Tin Cup is the best example because it’s literally about a therapist helping a guy with the yips.

Chris: Bull Durham.

Craig: Bull Durham. I mean, all of them. All of them. There’s a romance falling apart in White Men Can’t Jump. And Caddyshack which is I guess probably the broadest of these there’s still a romance at the heart of it that goes bad and has to be put back together. So it’s really about – the essence of these things is an athlete’s personal life is disrupting their game. And they have to fix their personal life to fix their game.

Chris: Wow.

John: I think that’s a fair assessment.

Chris: I hate to say this. Craig is right.

Craig: Hold that. Repeat it.

Chris: Pains me. Pains me to say it.

Craig: Put it on a loop.

John: What’s so interesting is the sport itself is incredibly important for the marketing and sort of what the visual language of the movie will be, but it’s probably not very important for what the actual story will be. The sport rarely has a very direct connection to what the character’s journey is. The unique thing about that sport is probably not a big factor. I guess whether it’s an individual sport versus a team sport that’s a big factor. But, you know.

Chris: It can’t rely on the sport.

Craig: Right.

Chris: Somebody who doesn’t know anything about the sport ideally would be able to watch the movie.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Which means you generally–

John: You teach them the rules of the sport.

Craig: And one of the stock characters in these movies is somebody that doesn’t know the sport.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So they are the people that are asking questions or just looking around going well none of this matters, but that personal part matters.

Chris: Yes.

John: So looking at the biggest difference between doing it now versus doing it then, one of the things as we list these movies is they’re almost all male characters driving this. And so–

Chris: My next question.

John: So I think honestly centering this around a female character is going to probably be your best way in. Whether the whole team is women or it’s unusual for a woman to be in that sport. Something about a female athlete feels more promising.

Chris: Is that going to alienate the men as well? Are you trying to make a four-quadrant movie?

John: That’s a great question. I mean, I think we always use to think about big screen comedies needed to, if not four-quadrant than sort of broadly successful. But if you’re making it not for a big screen movie maybe it’s even better that it’s not kind of for everyone.

Craig: A League of Their Own was pretty much four-quadrant.

Chris: Without question.

Craig: Of this list it’s maybe my favorite of them.

Chris: Well, and Tom Hanks is a hugely important character in the movie.

Craig: Yes, he’s part of it.

Chris: And quite wisely not the dominant character in the movie. It’s also a movie directed by a woman.

Craig: It is. And so you can obviously if you’re centering your new sports comedy on let’s say a female, like a Bend it like Beckham which is a female sports comedy, which I think a lot of male footie fans enjoyed, you will have male characters. The fascinating thing about this list to me is how white it is.

John: It’s super white.

Craig: I mean, sports are one of the areas in American culture where people of color dominate in terms of numbers they’re far over-represented. And yet in this list they’re almost nowhere with the exception of White Men Can’t Jump. I mean, it’s crazy now that I’m looking at it. It’s pretty white.

Chris: I’m wracking my brain.

Craig: It’s kind of nuts. And if you keep going you’ll see it more and more and more. Like a lot of baseball movies take place in the distant past, so when Roy Hobbes is out there in The Natural it’s sort of like, you know, there they are, the nine white guys. And Dodgeball is just sort of lily white. I mean, it’s not lily white. That’s not true. Because Chris Williams is in it.

John: Yeah, but it’s goofy.

Craig: These are largely white casts. And it seems like they’re largely for white guys.

John: So I think we’re talking sort of women, non-white characters centering. Also, you know, there’s a chance that maybe the sport you’re picking is not a sport that is currently popular in the US. So if you’re to make an American cricket movie about like a cricket team that needed to sort of – that was part of the obstacle they overcome. Like they don’t even know what cricket is or sort of that aspect.

Craig: So it’s kind of like the – what’s it, the Jamaican bobsledding team, Cool Running. So Americans try and go to cricket but they’re basically in India or Pakistan getting their asses handed to them.

Chris: Adam Sandler is working on this movie right now. Yes, he’s working on this movie.

Craig: Cricket!

Chris: But when you’re pinpointing these things, you know, about women and diversity, are you suggesting the way to make an outlier or to get it made? Because I have to imagine–

Craig: I’d go get it made on that one, for me, because I actually feel like – I mean, it’s not that you can’t make a movie like this again in the same mold. But it will be in the same mold. There’s something so familiar about it.

Chris: Oh, of course.

Craig: And this list barely even scrapes the surface of what there is. So, it seems like something new would be great in some way or another. New is good. And I think in this category–

Chris: So the Bad News Bears, but done–

Craig: Well, I mean, and they tried to remake it.

Chris: But they tried to remake it–

Craig: They did. They remade it.

Chris: They remade it and they remade it kind of in the same mold but with none of the things you could do.

Craig: Well, that’s the thing.

Chris: The spirt of it.

Craig: This is one of those interesting areas where over time we’ve gotten less permissive. You could not make the actual – I mean, the Bad News Bears was Rated R. There was alcohol. There was smoking. There was racism. And they were children. That’s not doable now in any way, shape, or form.

Chris: No. Because it in no way reflected reality and movies have to reflect reality now.

Craig: Hold on, let’s wield the soap box on.

Chris: No, no, this is what I read. I got the email.

Craig: There it is.

John: But here’s what I’ll say. I feel like a sports comedy is still a movie. And that it’s more of a movie than it is a TV show, than a series.

Craig: Yes.

John: Because I feel like a game of sport, whatever sport you want to pick – I knew you were going to laugh, I said a game of sport.

Chris: Remember there was a TV show. Do you remember Ball Four?

John: I do not remember Ball Four.

Craig: Oh, based on, what’s his name, Jim Bouton’s book.

Chris: Jim Bouton’s book. Lasted for about seven episodes.

Craig: It turns out that in sports there is this built-in ticking clock. Are you going to win or not? I mean, there’s a big game in the beginning, there’s a big game at the end. There’s a big fight in the beginning and there’s a big fight at the end.

John: And Friday Night Lights is an exception but it’s not a comedy. It’s an ensemble drama that is centered around a football team.

Craig: Correct. About family life.

Chris: And the culture. And it’s high school. So it’s not pro and it’s–

Craig: But it started as a movie. Started as a movie.

John: It did. Next category, ensemble dramedies. So we used to make things like St. Elmo’s Fire, The Big Chill, Breakfast Club, Big Fish, Terms of Endearment. So we used to make things that had big casts, where a bunch of folks came together, where characters did grow and change but it was an ensemble. It wasn’t sort of one character’s story. Is that a thing we’re going to be making on the big screen soon? We’ll start with what is the essence of that kind of story. What is the essence of an ensemble dramedy?

Craig: Let’s make McQuarrie take a shot at that one.

Chris: It seems to me as I’m running through the list that you just – nostalgia is a big part of it. It’s my understanding that somebody did a breakdown of why people go to see movies and the number one reason was to have a nostalgic experience. An emotional nostalgic experience. I think that probably plays into sports as well, especially plays into why a lot of sports movies seem to go–

Craig: Back in time.

Chris: Back to that. And you look at The Big Chill. The Big Chill was very much a nostalgic movie.

John: It’s a reunion of friends who had separated. St. Elmo’s Fire, while it wasn’t a nostalgic movie, they were at a specific turning point in their life. They were kind of looking back at—

Craig: See, to me that’s it. We have a group of people that represent some kind of contemporary arrangement. Whether we’re catching them later or they were contemporary or we’re in their contemporariness like for instance The Breakfast Club. But they are at a moment where things are changing.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: And we watch that happen. That to me is the essence of these things. But for the love of god I cannot imagine anyone putting this on a screen anymore. It just doesn’t seem like they will. It’s a bummer.

John: Yeah, it’s tragic. I mean, on a big screen. I think you can absolutely make these for streaming.

Craig: No question.

John: But in so many ways though the one-hour series have sort of taken, even like short series have taken the place of these, where you can see those characters grow over the course–

Chris: Oh, This is Us.

Craig: This is Us.

John: This is Us as a movie.

Chris: Modern Family.

Craig: Correct. And interestingly Dan Fogelman–

John: Yeah, he tried to do it as a movie.

Craig: He sort of tried to do it as a movie. He tried This is Us as a movie and it didn’t connect with audiences. But he’s obviously incredibly good at it because tens of millions of people watch This is Us and it gets all these awards. There is something, I don’t know, we used to be able to go and watch this – maybe it’s just that we used to expect less. You know, we would go to the movie theater and we weren’t asking to have our brains blown out the back of our skulls.

Chris: I went to see Hell or High Water.

John: Oh, which is fantastic.

Chris: Which I loved. And I was talking to Tim Talbot shortly thereafter and I said did you see Hell or High Water? And he said, “Yes.” And what did you think about it? “That was a great movie.” In 1987 that would have been a good movie. But he’s right in that that sort of stuff – I remember going to the movies every weekend. It was not an event. Now when you ask anybody under the age of 25 why they go to the movies they will say in one form or another, “Because I have to go.” They want to be part of a discussion.

I tried to get to see Avengers, which I finally saw yesterday, as quickly as I could because I was tired of having a self-imposed media bubble. There were things in that movie I really didn’t want ruined. Getting to that state. Whereas the stories that we’re talking about, what television does so well now especially is there is a collective history.

If you tried to tune into Game of Thrones now you don’t understand and it wouldn’t – the number of people who are saying three years into Mad Men going, “Yeah, I tried to get into that show and I just couldn’t.” It’s like, of course not, if you turn middle of season three none of this makes any sense.

Craig: Start at the beginning. That’s true. But I do think that one of the problems for – like I remember going to see St. Elmo’s Fire. And my expectation was that I was going to see a group of people that were somewhat older than me dealing with problems. And I knew at some point somebody was going to like, I think Rob Lowe was going to light a torch on fire with some hairspray or something, and Demi Moore was in a corner super dramatic. And I think thought, OK, I’m going to see some sort of human drama. That would not do it anymore. Now when people go to the movie theater it’s like, well, this is going to pin me back and it’s going to blow my mind. And I’m going to see stuff and it’s going to be an event.

Chris: An event.

Craig: An event. I just think people go to the movies for a different reason now.

Chris: But don’t you think also what you can get from television is very different than what we could get from television.

Craig: No question.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: No question.

Chris: You could not make Game of Thrones as a feature film. Any of the content in Game of Thrones would be NC17.

Craig: Nor could you have made it for television prior to this kind of strange change.

Chris: Yes. It’s the networks. As soon as basic cable met the British model of television which was you make a good television show and when it stops being good you – when it reaches the end you stop.

Craig: Isn’t that nice?

Chris: Yes, it’s lovely.

Craig: You know what? This is going to be six episodes long. Great.

Chris: Yeah, or six episodes this season instead of 22 every season.

Craig: Which is why I take my hat off to people like Derek Haas who are still doing it, not just on one show, but multiple show. I mean, the amount of story that has to be generated by those guys is bananas. But, yes, the format has become not just flexible but there is not format. It doesn’t matter.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Let’s get back to movies. Next let’s save the legal thriller or the courtroom thriller. We’ll put these things together. So, obviously we have all the John Grisham based ones, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker. We have Michael Clayton. We have Primal Fear.

Craig: Love Primal Fear.

John: Love Primal Fear. Presumed Innocent. Disclosure. A Few Good Men.

Chris: The Verdict.

Craig: The Verdict.

John: The Verdict. I hadn’t thought of The Verdict.

Chris: One of the all-time–

Craig: Well, and 12 Angry Men.

Chris: Yes, oh my god.

Craig: Which is sort of the [unintelligible] courtroom drama.

Chris: Well, 12 Angry Men and And Justice for All.

Craig: And Justice for All.

Chris: We can probably go on.

John: We can.

Craig: Yes, I think we could.

John: So what is the essence of these kind of thrillers? So traditionally I think you have an authority figure who is generally the prosecutor or could be working for the defense who is very smart at the law who has to intercede in a specific situation. They generally didn’t commit the situation. They’re there to solve a problem and in trying to solve the problem they uncover something remarkable that puts themselves either in moral jeopardy or literal jeopardy. We don’t make these. We haven’t made them for a while.

Chris: No. Well, when we were talking about 12 Angry Men and The Verdict, both Lumet movies. 12 Angry Men is a morality tale, sort of a study of–

John: And it feels like a play.

Chris: Yeah, feels very much like a play. The Verdict is a redemption story. The Verdict is in a lot of ways a boxing movie.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Chris: It’s the palooka who comes back for–

Craig: And I think that that’s a good distinction because some of these movies like A Few Good Men also feels like a boxing movie where basically a guy whose dad was a great boxer and who has decided to throw fights instead for a living is going to come back and take on the all-time champ and go down dying if he has to. So, there are those.

And then there are these movies that are they turn on grand questions of justice. What is justice?

Chris: That’s And Justice for All.

Craig: And Justice for All. Or A Time to Kill is very much like that. So those are two different, I mean they always have fireworks. They always have the certain venues that we know. And there is a verdict that is a little bit like the game in the sports movies.

Chris: The Verdict actually ended without the verdict.

Craig: Without the verdict. Well.

John: But here’s a distinction is like a sports movie they want to be a single movie because it’s not a thing that’s going to continue well over time. And so like Murder One was an attempt to take one case–

Craig: Kelley I think.

John: Over the course of a whole season and it just didn’t work. It wanted to be part of one thing.

Chris: I don’t want a mystery to last that long.

Craig: Right.

John: No.

Chris: And first of all the struggle in television, they referred to it for years as the Twin Peaks problem. That you can only lose audience. You couldn’t gain audience. Because when that show was on unless you videotaped it you couldn’t catch up on Netflix, you couldn’t binge it. And there was something fascinating about that. To think about it now, that television actually just spilled out into the universe and that was it.

Craig: And you either caught it with your hands or you missed it. It was gone on the floor.

Chris: Yes. It comes back to urgency. The urgency, how and why one watches a television show or a movie is very different now.

John: I think people should write a legal thriller, I mean, I feel like it’s the kind of movie that you could still imagine making today. I mean, what do you need to make a great legal thriller? You need a star. It is actually a star vehicle. It’s that person you cast as the central lawyer is great. You look at, you know, I think you can make Primal Fear at any point where you also have a great supporting character. Like you look at Edward Norton–

Chris: Well that’s a thriller, like that and Jagged Edge.

John: Oh, of course. Oh yes.

Chris: Have you watched that recently?

Craig: Yeah, it’s amazing.

Chris: I’ve been going back and watching the–

John: He is innocent!

Chris: Yes.

Craig: So great.

Chris: And the other one I went back and watched recently, which was fascinating artifact is–

Craig: Artifact.

Chris: Basic Instinct.

John: Oh yeah. We’re going to get to sexual/erotic thrillers. And that’s there.

Craig: Thank god.

Chris: Can we just skip to that?

John: We can skip to that next.

Craig: I think that there is some space for it, the problem is it is the most trod-upon ground. Because we have 4,000 episodes of Law & Order. And it will never stop. Neither will CSI. NCIS. That arena, the courtroom procedural aspects of it have been just beaten to death. So the question is how can you do it – I think you could go back all the way to 12 Angry Men and that kind of idea.

Chris: Yes. If you ask what they all have in common as I’m sitting here [unintelligible] is the discovery. There is some reveal. There is a hidden secret that sort of turns the case. Those are hard to do.

Craig: What’s the Dershowitz one with–?

Chris: Claus von Bulow.

Craig: Yeah. Claus von Bulow.

Chris: Reversal of Fortune.

John: Reversal of Fortune.

Craig: “No one shook Sunny.” That’s my favorite line.

Chris: And what I love about that is the reversal is the last line.

Craig: The reversal is the last line of the movie.

Chris: “You have no idea.”

Craig: “You have no idea.” And then weirdly Alan Dershowitz has had his own fascinating reversal. But that’s for other podcasts.

John: Absolutely. But I think we can make a legal thriller. And so do you make a legal thriller for the big screen? Maybe. A really good legal thriller I think could also be an awards contender. The same way like The Post was a journalism thriller. That was back in that space.

Craig: Yes. It has be specifically crafted for the Academy Awards. I would think you would need two huge stars. I could see—

Chris: Let’s talk about who those huge stars are.

Craig: Streep v. Washington.

Chris: Regardless of our genre.

Craig: Meryl Streep v. Denzel Washington. Two lawyers going head-to-head over something that is actually legitimately relevant to our society now.

Chris: Well, you’d be talking about abortion, gun control, really hot topic issues.

Craig: Police brutality.

Chris: Police brutality. And then the trick of making that movie is making a movie that is for both halves of the audience, not one.

John: Yeah. I don’t know that you need like a marquee issue. So if it was about sort of corporate control, some way to do it–

Craig: Yeah, you know, he’s not wrong.

John: Because you want a thriller. You still want the thriller. You also want the legal drama.

Craig: You still want the thriller aspect. Because the truth is the thing at the heart of A Few Good Men is not a hot-button issue. There’s an interesting theme to it, but it isn’t a hot-button issue. And maybe it would actually be better without one. Maybe I just want two people – you know what also was really good? The Insider.

John: You know who would also be really good in this? Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise could do a good job.

Craig: Well, he’s done it though.

John: He’s done it.

Craig: Can he come back and do it again?

Chris: Well, I would love to see Tom do a version of The Verdict. I’d love to see him do the broken down. Jerry Maguire is his Verdict.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Oh my god. We could talk about Jerry Maguire forever.

John: We can.

Craig: I’ve got huge love for that script.

Chris: Talk about a weird. What’s the pitch to Jerry Maguire? I’m going to make a movie about a sports agent who is having an emotional crisis.

Craig: My pitch for Jerry Maguire is imagine a man whose life is deeply flawed who has a moment of clarity where he describes exactly who he should be. And that’s the beginning of the movie. And then the entire movie is him trying to become that guy.

Chris: But would you have picked a sports agent?

Craig: No, but that’s fun. I get it.

Chris: No, I mean, it’s such a – the fact that the movie works and resonates–

Craig: There’s comebacks. Makes sense.

Chris: Well, that helps.

Craig: Finding a scum-baggy kind of job like sports agent. I don’t know any sports agents. I apologize.

Chris: Well, yeah, so you just blanket called them all scumbags.

Craig: A little bit. Sorry.

Chris: It’s the whole agent thing.

Craig: Should we go to the erotic thrillers.

John: Erotic thrillers.

Chris: Erotic thrillers.

John: We’ve got Fatal Attraction. We’ve got Basic Instinct.

Chris: Now what does an erotic thriller need? What’s the central elements of an erotic thriller?

Craig: I believe boobs are high on the list.

Chris: Yes.

John: Color of Night. Killing Me Softly. American Gigolo. Gone Girl I would say is an erotic thriller. Or has aspects of that.

Chris: Yeah.

Craig: Well…

John: It’s definitely a thriller. There’s a sexual aspect to it.

Craig: I don’t think of it’s an erotic – I don’t think of it as–

Chris: It’s a neurotic thriller.

Craig: Neurotic.

John: But it’s pulpy in the way that you want an erotic thriller to be.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: Sea of Love. Nice pull. So I’ve got to go back and watch that one.

Craig: It’s good.

John: So erotic thrillers, at the time it was sexual content on screen that you just couldn’t see other places. You certainly couldn’t see it on TV.

Chris: And now you can’t see it in theaters and there’s nothing but on television.

John: That’s absolutely true.

Craig: Or your phone. You can just see it on your phone.

Chris: Yes.

John: Literal pornography.

Craig: There should be a list of – there’s probably a website that has a list of perfectly reasonable civil Google searches that will absolutely blow your mind with the images that come up. I just feel like old people are always, you know, like–

Chris: There’s no parental control strict enough–

Craig: They’re just like, oh, I’m just searching for something normal. Yeah, and then look what just came up.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So what distinguishes an erotic thriller from just–?

Craig: Porn.

John: From porn or from things that have–?

Chris: Sexual obsession.

John: Sexual obsession. All right.

Chris: Sexual obsession. So in Jagged Edge it’s the forbidden nature of the sexual relationship. There is an inappropriate boundary that is being crossed. Michael Douglas is investigating Sharon Stone so he should not be having sex with Sharon Stone.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And Glenn Close is representing Jeff Bridges so she should not be having sex with Jeff Bridges.

John: You know what we left off this list though is Fifty Shades of Grey which really would fit underneath this general category. So it’s romance–

Craig: A thriller?

John: But, I mean, it actually has thriller elements. There’s bad people doing bad stuff in it, too. Her life is in danger.

Chris: Yes.

John: So I think it would fall into this general category. So there clearly is a market for making that kind of movie. We just don’t make it–

Craig: Yeah. I mean, look, this kind of old school classic ‘90s, or early ‘90s/late ‘80s erotic thrillers were weirdly in their own way Puritanistic because they would basically reinforce that transgressive sexual behavior would automatically lead to blood on the floor. It’s all basically a lesson in staying monogamous and don’t get out of your lane and don’t give into temptation.

And people who were overtly sexual are equated with evil. And you see it come up over and over and over. If there’s any reason why we don’t make these now beyond the obvious, which is that there’s kind of no market for them, it’s probably that our sexual mores have kind of come further than anything else.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Can I point out one common thread? There are these erotic thrillers that are starring men as the protagonist and erotic thrillers that are starring women as the protagonist. The ones starring men, the men are kind of bastards. Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas is sort of perfect in that role. You have a character who is violating the audience’s trust.

Craig: Yes.

John: Cheating on his wife.

Chris: If Tom Hanks was in Fatal Attraction and made the decision that quickly to have sex with Glenn Close you’d be like, what, Tom? Whereas Michael Douglas you kind of believed it.

Craig: Yeah. A little lizardy.

Chris: Yes. And I’m looking at Richard Gere who in that stage of his career loved playing an abrasive bastard. There was almost something where he was antagonizing the audience. Cruel Intentions, Ryan Phillippe in that movie is playing a version of Valmont and is enjoying being a bastard. Al Pacino in Sea of Love, that’s like The Verdict meets erotic thriller. He’s that drunken messed up cop. An element that I’m seeing in this is the casting and the writing of the male character they all seem to be – and, by the way, Douglas comes back in Basic Instinct – a little bit of it seems to be the audience enjoying watching this guy get his comeuppance for having broken the rules.

Craig: Right.

John: Yes.

Craig: Morality plays.

Chris: And casting the right actor in a morality play is a big part.

Craig: But they also in some way start to turn these men into passive movers. Because these women come along and tempt them and turn their heads and confuse them. You know, I don’t know, I just think it’s all a bit old-fashioned.

Chris: There was nothing confused in Michael Douglas’s performance in Fatal Attraction. They’re out having a drink after having had a meeting and he makes a decision instantaneously.

Craig: Sure. Yes, he does. But then the movie basically says, OK, fine, that happened. But look how crazy she is.

Chris: Have you watched it recently?

Craig: No.

Chris: Go back and watch it. There’s the whole thing that she’s pregnant. And all he’s trying to do is shut it down. She’s definitely got issues.

Craig: She won’t be ignored.

Chris: But Michael Douglas is not – he handles it the way a panicking male would, not the way the hero of a movie would. The other great thing about that movie is Anne Archer.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Amazing.

Chris: Anne Archer is this–

Craig: I do remember her being like–

Chris: She was the ideal. And for Glenn Close, that’s kind of an unconventional role for Glenn Close. And it’s interesting that she is in almost back-to-back erotic thrillers. And if you go back and watch, look at those two movies which are shot within a few years of each other. And by the way, The Natural was right in there, too. So you look at Glenn Close playing three–

Craig: This like luminous angel.

Chris: Yes, she’s the Madonna. She was this tough lawyer, a little bit corrupt, kind of compromised. And then playing that woman in Fatal Attraction.

Craig: Sort of on the edge, mentally on the edge.

Chris: Who you cast in an erotic thriller is a big, big deal.

Craig: Well, Glenn Close is pretty, pretty good at her job. I think we can all agree on that.

John: Although we’re probably not casting her in the next erotic thriller.

Chris: Expecting great things.

Craig: I don’t think we’re going to be seeing the likes of those.

John: Craig, can we skip ahead to something that you know especially well? Spoofs and parodies.

Craig: Spoofs and parodies.

Chris: Spoofs and parodies.

John: So movies like Airplane, Spaceballs, Not Another Teen Movie, Scary Movie series, MacGruber, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie. Tropic Thunder. Shaun of the Dead. Vampires Suck. Austin Powers. Blazing Saddles. We’re not making many of these movies now. And I have a theory why, but I’m curious what your theory is why we don’t make these movies.

Craig: As David Zucker would repeatedly say, “Spoof is dead.” And his thing is that he would say spoof is dead, he said it before spoof came back. Spoof was dead. I remember Jim Abrahams saying that he was mixing mafia, a Jane Austen movie, Jane Austen’s Mafia.

Chris: Jane Austen’s Mafia.

Craig: And he walked down the hall where they were mixing and on another mixing stage they were mixing There’s Something About Mary. And he just sort of watched a few minutes of it and then went back and said, “Yeah, we’re fucked. Our time is over.”

And it was over. And then the Wayans Brothers brought it back with Scary Movie. But following the success of Scary Movie, and 2, and 3, and 4, there was this sudden – suddenly they were everywhere. And the marketplace was flooded with a lot of cheap stuff. And honestly as one of the people that wrote Scary Movie 3 and 4, I mean, the pressure that we were under from the Weinsteins to make those movies as quickly as possible was brutal. And we couldn’t do them as well as we wanted to do them. And we did them with David Zucker and Pat Proft and Jim Abrahams.

So by the time all that unraveled it was mostly I think killed at the moment by just the marketplace being flooded. But also you got the sense pretty quickly that the Internet was essentially mooting the entire point of this.

John: Yes. That was my instinct.

Craig: Because every joke, I mean, we used to be like, OK, you want to make fun of this movie. Well, four or five nights from now Leno is going to do the joke. Well, now they’re doing the jokes while they’re watching things. There’s no more time. It’s over.

Chris: That’s very true.

Craig: It’s over.

Chris: Everything is – yeah, the Internet is a spoof.

Craig: The Internet is essentially a spoof machine.

John: There’s no way to make the movie quick enough to do it. And even like on YouTube they can do the crappy effects version of that joke anyway.

Chris: But Blazing Saddles is on this list. It is a spoof but it is a spoof with a higher purpose.

John: So it’s not a spoof of any one movie, it’s taking genre conventions–

Craig: Of a genre.

Chris: Of a genre.

John: And Shaun of the Dead is a great example of like taking the genre conventions and upending them in a way that’s—

Chris: Well that’s a mashup.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And a great one.

John: Fantastic.

Craig: It’s still I would say really hard now. I mean, Airplane was a direct spoof of a movie called Zero Hour from 1956 or something, or 1955, which no one had seen. That was sort of the oddity of Airplane that they just did this random thing. But somewhere along the line spoofs became connected to either genres as a whole or when it got really bad pop culture. And that’s when it just all to me absolutely fell apart.

There’s probably room for somebody to make a spoof of some weird movie that has been forgotten.

Chris: Well, but and Austin Powers is taking shots at movies along with Bond. Matt Helm. And some really–

Craig: In Like Flint.

Chris: Yeah, In Like Flint. When the phone rings, that’s directly taken from In Like Flint.

John: But you look at the ones of these that we feel like you could still make is that these films actually have individualized characters who sort of have an arc and have a point of view. And the movie doesn’t exist just to make fun of the movie that came before it. The character is existing within a world and is consistent within a world. So Austin Powers is a spoof of another kind of character, but is also a character himself. And Dr. Evil is a character himself.

Chris: Yes. And it’s a time travel comedy in a way. They both are, at least two of the three, are.

Craig: I mean, the people that kind of come the closest now to doing spoof and parody in their own way is Chris and Phil.

John: Lord and Miller. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Lord and Miller in a weird way do. I mean, Lego has certain spoof aspects to it.

John: Their Spider Man also has aspects of like it’s an awareness of where this is fitting inside the culture.

Chris: Meta.

Craig: Yeah, it’s Meta. Their Jump Street movies are kind of spoofing Jump Street.

John: Oh yes.

Craig: Like it’s a self-spoof. But it’s different. It’s not like, I mean, thank god, by the way. Because honestly nothing is harder than writing those things. I will never work harder in my life than I did writing Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. It was just—

Chris: It’s one of the reasons Chernobyl is not as funny.

Craig: Yeah, I know. It took the jokes out.

John: It took all the comedy out of me.

Chris: You didn’t make the effort. I know.

John: Let’s take the jokes out of biblical epics, and/or sword and sandals movies. So things like Gladiator, Ben-Hur, Noah, Passion of the Christ. King in Heaven. Spartacus. Ten Commandments. Braveheart, to some degree. Lawrence of Arabia. Like we used to make these things. That was actually a staple of original Hollywood. We have the giant ranches here because we used to make these epics.

Chris: Giant movies.

John: Giant movies. We don’t make them anymore.

Chris: No.

John: So here’s–

Chris: Because they don’t win awards anymore.

John: They don’t win awards anymore.

Craig: Precisely.

John: Even though Game of Thrones is being show on smaller screens, it is that kind of sword and sandals thing.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: Yes.

John: And so we’re making them, but we’re making them for smaller screen.

Craig: TV. No question.

Chris: But is TV – I have a very large television. It’s not terribly expensive. I would imagine a lot of people have maxed their credit cards for a large TV.

Craig: You’re comparing your large TV to the TV you grew up, which was like the TV I grew up. That 9-inch black and white thing in the kitchen, with the single antenna shooting out.

Chris: It was a letterbox.

Craig: Correct. But my kids only know those TVs. But those TVs are still not – I mean, they’re not movies.

Chris: No.

Craig: It’s not a movie screen.

Chris: No. But most people, the way their viewing habits are now, we’re making a Mission: Impossible. We have an IMAX segment in it. And people are saying well why don’t you just shoot the whole thing in IMAX.

Craig: No one is going to watch it.

Chris: It’s never going to be seen again. You’re making this balance. And there are times I’ll be framing a shot and Cruise will walk up to me and go, “You know when this is on the big screen and I pull my phone out of my pocket—“

Craig: Here it is.

Chris: This is the screen now. It’s not that it will only be watched on television, but for the life of the film.

Craig: For the life of it. Primarily.

Chris: The theatrical lifespan of a movie is 12 weeks.

Craig: Whoa. 12 weeks. What is this hit movie you’ve got that’s in there 12 weeks?

Chris: I’m talking like by the end it’s in eight theaters

Craig: Yes. Correct.

Chris: I’m giving a conservative—

Craig: Really it’s four weeks is what it is.

Chris: Four weeks. Yeah.

Craig: It used to be months.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: It is now about four weeks.

John: So what is the essence of these biblical epics we’re talking about? So, if you’re talking about a Gladiator or a Ben-Hur, it is a character in a long ago time, typically a Roman time, who is coming up against an authority system. He is leading, it’s always a he in these movies, is leading–

Chris: It’s a Christ figure against Rome.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Christ figure against Rome.

Craig: That’s exactly what it is. Every single time. Christ figure against Rome. Doesn’t matter what you do.

Chris: Doesn’t matter if it’s Rome or not Rome. Doesn’t matter if it’s Christ or not Christ.

Craig: That’s what Braveheart is. That’s what Ten Commandments is. Even when it’s Jews it’s still a Christ figure against Rome. Some hero will rise in a kind of faded destiny way, usually out of nothing. And they have special powers, special abilities. They are spat on, tortured, hurt. Their family is killed. They are persecuted. And ultimately they do some incredibly self-sacrificial thing and the world is saved. And the last scene is people sitting around going, “God, he was awesome.”

Chris: He was a great man.

Craig: He was a great man.

Chris: And it’s always a man.

Craig: And it’s always a man. Patriarchy.

Chris: As a matter of fact there’s a biblical epic with a woman. Mary Magdalene is coming soon.

John: Yes.

Craig: Really?

Chris: Rooney Mara.

John: Rooney Mara plays that.

Craig: Wasn’t there already one of those that like [Murray Bowen’s] company did? Didn’t he do? Oh, I thought he did.

Chris: Maybe we’re talking about the same one.

Craig: No, no, that one was [crosstalk].

Chris: But, yes, I saw a trailer. Joaquin Phoenix is Jesus.

Craig: Ooh. Jesus is a phoenix. I’m down with that.

Chris: Pretty interesting. It’s an interesting Jesus.

John: Yeah. So I guess that’s the question. Is this type of movie really about the setting or is it about specifically that sort of Jesus against Rome kind of thing? Because even Braveheart you could sort of look at as Jesus against Rome.

Craig: Directly.

John: Yeah, so it’s the same concept.

Craig: No question.

John: And to what degree do they need to be big screen movies versus – in a weird way–

Chris: Time.

John: Time.

Chris: Time and distance. When you want to talk epic scale, Lawrence of Arabia is a giant event.

John: But isn’t a miniseries better suited up for this kind of epic storytelling? I think it could have been kind of a fluke that the only thing we had were movies. And so we had to tell the Ten Commandments as a movie.

Craig: And they were very long movies.

John: They’re very long movies.

Craig: Ben-Hur is endless.

John: But the better form would have been as a series.

Craig: I agree with you. I think that there is – these things will generally work better, live better, as series. I think it’s probably where they’re generally going to happen. But one of the few segments of audience that still reliably goes to movies are faith-based audiences.

John: Yes.

Craig: And I’m not a faith-based person. I don’t even really know what faith is. I mean, I know the definition. I’ve just never felt it before. But regardless, they will go to these things. And so you have this other weird segment of movie where every now and then you’ll look at like on Deadline what were the top five movies this weekend and number four is, wait, what the? What? It’s a Prayer for Jimmy? And what is this?

Chris: And it’s why they made that last remake of Ben-Hur.

Craig: No question. Oh yes, yes. Ben-Hur was—

Chris: Was a direct calculated aimed – it was very much targeted at that group.

Craig: I mean, nothing is more cynical as far as I’m concerned.

Chris: No, no, The Passion of the Christ caught everybody off guard.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: Nobody expected. And that was kind of the thing. And remember it came out at a weird time of year. It was January, when January was–

Craig: A cold, dead January.

Chris: That’s the place where movies went to die.

Craig: January, February. By the way, is there any month now where movies go to die? I don’t think there is.

Chris: Yes. Back to school week. The first week of September is still – somebody’s going to do it. But that is–

Craig: Actually a great idea for just a movie is back to school week, let’s go see every movie. It’s just one horrible movie where all of the junk gets dumped.

Chris: Oh yes.

John: All right, let’s maybe wrap up with buddy cop, which was a frequent suggestion. Buddy cop, come on, there have been amazing buddy cop movies. 21 Jump Street. The Other Guys. Hot Fuzz. The Heat. Bad Boys. Men in Black. K-9. Lethal Weapon. White Chicks. Shanghai Noon. That idea that you have two mismatched people who have to work together to solve a crime and to do things. It’s a classic paradigm. You know, Abbott and Castello. We’ve always seen these two, this [unintelligible] go through things. But we’re not doing a lot of them now. So what’s – how do we get to it?

Craig: Well, you know what? I think the Too Fast Too Furious, I just always give Derek Haas credit for that. And let’s so also say RIP John Singleton, the director of Too Fast Too Furious. But the Fast and Furious franchise is kind of a buddy cop writ large with multiple buddies.

John: True.

Chris: Dragged Across Concrete is coming out.

Craig: Yeah. I think they still do these.

Chris: I don’t know that that’s a comedy.

John: Central Intelligence is essentially a buddy cop movie.

Craig: That’s right. That’s buddy cop. And there was just a movie, wasn’t there a movie with Regina Hall just out and – I think that they keep making these.

Chris: Oh, well the Sandra Bullock, Miss Congeniality.

John: Oh, The Heat.

Craig: Oh, that’s way back. But then there’s The Heat with Melissa McCarthy. Yeah, I think they still make buddy cop movies.

John: So I think we may need to step away from the idea of cops. So as long as there are two people who are tasted in a professional job of doing some kind of police-y thing.

Chris: The Odd Couple with guns.

John: An Odd Couple with guns. Thank you.

Craig: Odd Couple with guns. That’s pretty much what it is.

Chris: What it boils down to.

Craig: And they become each other’s family.

Chris: Yes.

John: And so as long as, you know, you can make them for the big screen. You have to have a certain production value and a certain size to make them for the big screen. Weirdly you don’t see as many of them in TV shows anymore. So I guess right now on the air we have MacGyver, we have Magnum PI which is sort of–

Chris: Yeah, cop shows on TV are definitely more dramas.

Craig: Procedurals. Well, because the essence of the buddy cop is that they don’t start as buddies and they end up as buddies. But you can’t end up as anything on a serialized show. You have to keep going. So it kind of has to be a movie.

Chris: Yes. A lot of this conversation seems to be about how technology has disrupted what we imagined the plain of cinema to be. There seems to be a really clear shift.

Craig: And just wait.

Chris: From no home video, to home video, to no home video again. Now it’s home theater. Now it’s home – it’s content. That’s where I think the line is blurring. It’s big screen/small screen.

Craig: And the amount that’s available now is – and the resources that are being poured into it. I mean, better or worse, however you want to chop up the money, there was just way less money. I mean, there were five studios and they gave you some studio. And there were three networks and they gave you some money.

But now we’ve got just billions and billions rushing in to make more and more stuff. It is transforming things. But there aren’t that many more screens. In fact, I’d probably argue there are fewer screens than there used to be.

John: Well, there’s not more time. There’s not more time for people to view things. And so even though we have new people coming in and new distribution outlets, we have new money chasing new things–

Craig: Time is a flat circle.

John: Yes. And so we don’t have the ability to watch more things. And so we have to choose how we’re going to do this.

Chris: I’m looking at the–

John: So I skipped over some things. Is there a genre there you want to tackle?

Chris: Westerns.

John: Let’s talk about westerns.

Craig: Hmm, westerns.

John: On this show we’ve talked about Unforgiven. We’ve talked about 3:10 to Yuma. We’ve talked about sort of westerns. But what is it about westerns that you think can be suited towards the big screen. Because also we had Scott Frank on who talked about his great Netflix show.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: Godless.

John: Godless. Which was sort of exploding what a normal western—

Craig: Meant to be a movie. Written as a script.

Chris: He struggled with it for years, right? He was trying to get it down to something movie size.

Craig: Well, and he does it with all of his movies. But, I mean, look, it was movie size. It’s just that what he was struggling was to get somebody to pay for it as a movie. Because essentially people kept saying well the western is dead, the western is dead, the western is dead.

Chris: And that which is the WWII movie is dead. You hear about this all the time. And then the number of times I’ve seen a dead genre—

Craig: Everything is dead until it’s not.

Chris: Yeah. Dunkirk was a really great example of a dead genre that people don’t go to see anymore.

Craig: My favorite example is nothing could have been a deader genre than pirate movies.

John: Oh yeah, of course.

Craig: Pirate movies. Not only dead—

Chris: Do you remember Pirates with Walter Matthau?

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Chris: Oh my god.

Craig: But before they made Pirates of the Caribbean we had Cutthroat Island which had sank an entire, like a hedge fund disappeared.

Chris: It killed Carolco.

Craig: Yeah, Carolco. An entire company was dead. And before that–

Chris: Killed careers.

Craig: Careers. Renny Harlin. And then – and the thought of making a pirates movie was considered almost obscene.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: And…

John: Pirates of the Caribbean. Just takes one.

Craig: There we go.

John: It didn’t start a new genre. There weren’t like other pirates movies coming after that. It was only the one pirate movie.

Craig: Exactly. Everybody else was like you know what, let’s let them have it. We’re still not making pirate movies.

Chris: We’re still not making pirate movies. And it so specifically hinges around a kind of storytelling and a character. Johnny Depp.

Craig: And a brand.

Chris: Exactly.

Craig: I mean, just built in.

John: It was also supernatural. So you had a supernatural vibe to it which is different than other stuff.

Chris: But the western, Unforgiven represented a shift towards deconstructionist from which the genre never seemed to – 3:10 to Yuma was its own darker western. Godless was its own. What I miss – what I’d love to see is—

Craig: Shane.

Chris: The Magnificent 7. And Shane. Silverado. The Big Country. Movies that are more of an adventure and more a morality tale as opposed to – watch slow west.

Craig: It’s never going to happen. It’s gone. It’s over.

Chris: I will fight you on that.

Craig: Well, look, I think as a country and a culture we have lost the ability to go back to the kind of idealized west. We just know too much.

Chris: No, I don’t think it’s idealized. I think – you look at The Big Country, it’s not idealized. The country is rough, but a man walks into it who refuses to play by those rules. And I think that’s – if you take westerns there are two kinds. There are kind of westerns noirs where the west just chews you up and spits you out. And there’s the place where one can prove one’s self.

Craig: Sure.

Chris: And it’s this rough and lawless place where somebody, you know.

Craig: Maybe a book would do it.

John: A book might do it. I mean, I think it comes back to the discussion we had with the ensemble dramedies which his that we used to go to see those movies that didn’t have a lot of high stakes in them because that was fine. We needed to go see a movie.

Craig: What the hell else were you going to do on a Saturday afternoon?

John: And so I just wonder that this non-deconstructed western that is just truly a western whether it’s actually going to get people to go out to see it on a screen.

Chris: Hell or High Water.

John: Hell or High Water—

Chris: It was contemporary but it’s a western.

John: It totally is.

Chris: It’s a bank-robbing—

John: It’s a pickup truck western and I loved it for what it was able to do. But that was not a breakout smash hit. It was a good performer, but it was not—

Chris: I think it did OK financially and it got nominated for Best Picture.

John: It did, absolutely.

Chris: Which for movies of that size is kind of the – that’s your life blood to keep in the theaters for another—

Craig: John Lee Hancock has kind of made a western in a sense with The Highwaymen.

Chris: The Highwaymen. Sure.

Craig: But, again, Netflix. I mean, and that’s where John Lee lives now. You know, those are the movies he’s going to be making now because – and here’s a guy who made, I don’t know, $14 billion for Warner Bros and Alcon with The Blind Side. And today I don’t think they make The Blind Side for theatrical. That’s what’s happened. I fear that we have lost something kind of permanently in the economics of making these movies.

And it may have literally just come down to the cost of marketing. Because—

Chris: That’s everything.

Craig: Right. I mean, Netflix, the way they market their movie is they don’t. It’s just there.

Chris: When you turn on Netflix they’re like, hey, do you want to watch this?

Craig: Correct.

John: Absolutely. And they bought every billboard in Los Angeles but that’s just for us.

Chris: But here’s the upside to that. Here’s the less than dystopian way of looking at that. In the current culture where the business is suddenly waking up to the fact that they have to diversify, this is something I experience a lot on the movies that I get called in to come in and do fixes on. The business was predicated on a male director makes a $5 million movie that makes $50 million. Let’s give him $200 million in hopes it makes $1 billion. Women were not afforded those same undeserved opportunities.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: Which they are now.

Craig: And were punished—

Chris: And were punished – exactly.

Craig: If they didn’t do the impossible.

Chris: Whereas the way to look at Netflix is Netflix could be the farm system. Now there’s many more movies being made for lower budgets creating – and I see lots of women directing television now.

Craig: Way more opportunity.

Chris: The director lists that I’m now being handed for the TV shows I’m working on are 50/50 and you’re actually looking at, oh, that person is being hired for the quality of their work, which is very encouraging. Is it possible that what we end up with is – you know how the Oscars have sort of divided into—?

Craig: Yes.

Chris: You know, there’s Oscar movies and there’s money-making movies. Now could there be there’s Netflix movies and there’s feature films? And that the feature films because of marketing requirements need to be bigger movies that make more money. And then Netflix becomes the farm system that teaches people how to do stuff.

You could live within the Netflix bubble and make a 14, a 25, and a $60 million movie.

Craig: Yeah. I think we’re there. I mean, I think that’s where we are. The real question, is there any kind – well, question number one. Is there mobility from Netflix type of movies or other TV movies to the big ones? Or do people even want to go? Because here’s the thing. I think a lot of filmmakers don’t – you know, we were talking to Mari Heller about this. Mari Heller made this incredible movie, Diary of a Teenage Girl. It was amazing. And people came to her and they’re like here’s this huge superhero movie, you want to do it? And she was like I feel like I’m supposed to, because we’re trying to advance the cause of female directors and we’re trying to get into those big seats, but I don’t want to.

I want to do this.

Chris: Well, there’s no point in making it if – you look at her and that dilemma knowing that – having nothing to do with who is directing a movie how those movies get made. The script is not ready.

Craig: Yep. [laughs]

Chris: The movie is going in three weeks.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: You’ve never done anything like this.

Craig: The actor is kind of in charge.

Chris: The producer, whose name is on a bunch of giant movies, will not be there.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: And this is all going to be your fault. Do you still want to do it?

Craig: It is really terrifying.

Chris: Correct. And again, it takes a special kind of director to get into that kind of trouble and then accept the help when they bring it in. Because you are essentially now, it’s very embarrassing. You’re at a point where you’re in way over your head. And not because – this is not hubris. They’re promised support, and then it’s just not there. So now suddenly you lose control of your movie. It takes a lot having never been through the process to know that it’s all going to be OK in the end. When the movie works you’ll still get credit.

Craig: That’s a lot to have faith in.

Chris: It’s very wounding. So I can see somebody looking at that and saying—

Craig: Nah.

Chris: But there’s the other side of that is the grass is always greener. You’re going to have people making big giant movies. Michael Bay made Pain & Gain because he really wanted to make it. Michael Bay, some part of Michael Bay – I don’t care, any filmmaker you can name at that level – some part of them wants to make their little movie about—

Craig: Their podium movie.

Chris: [laughs] They want to make their podium movie.

Craig: They want to make their podium movie.

Chris: Yes, and the same thing I would imagine is just – the Duffer Brothers have some big feature they want to do.

Craig: Big ass dumb movie they want to do.

Chris: Yes, they’ve got some big ass.

John: Well, I think Duffer Brothers are a great example because Stranger Things had an effect on popular culture which was terrific and because it was a really popular series. But if that had just been a one-off movie I don’t think it would have had that effect on popular culture—

Chris: No.

John: The way that a movie that’s released on big screens can actually bend culture in a way. So Black Panther can bend culture.

Craig: We have proof of that. Because even though I admired it, Super 8 is Stranger Things.

John: It is.

Craig: And it just doesn’t work as a movie the way Stranger Things works as a series.

John: Yeah. And that was the case where J.J. Abrams wanted to make this smaller movie.

Craig: Well, what do you say we wrap this up by heading into One Cool Things?

John: Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

Craig: I do have a One Cool Thing. I hope that you have a One Cool Thing.

Chris: I have Two Cool Things.

Craig: Well, it’s called One Cool Thing, Chris.

John: He can do two. It’s the 400th episode.

Chris: I have to pick one?

Craig: No, you can do two.

Chris: One of my Cool Things is in the other Cool Thing.

Craig: OK, fair enough.

Chris: Neither of them may be cool.

Craig: They’re nested.

Chris: They’re nerdy.

John: Kangaroos.

Craig: My One Cool Thing this week is a recommendation from grand crossword nerd Trip Payne. And it is an app called One Clue Crossword. Very clever. So you get a little – it looks like vaguely a crossword. It’s not like a proper crossword. But there are no clues except for a picture. And all of the answers—

Chris: I’m already obsessed.

Craig: Are things that are contained in that photo.

Chris: Oh, come on.

John: Oh great.

Craig: And you’ve got to figure out what goes where in the interlocking grid.

Chris: Genius.

Craig: Starts off easy, gets harder and harder and harder.

Chris: By the way to everyone listening, this is the guy who does The New York Times Crossword Puzzle in 2.5 minutes on every Monday. You are like Mr. Crossword.

Craig: No, Trip Payne could – this dude literally was once the actual champion of all crossword puzzles. He’s amazing.

Chris: But it’s you and Megan Amram and David Kwong and Rian Johnson.

Craig: Shannon Woodward and Rian Johnson and Chris Miller.

Chris: And I was a fly on the wall watching you guys and looking at my time. I can’t type that fast. I don’t know how, right?

John: I tried, too, and I can’t.

Craig: Practice.

Chris: If you gave me all the answers.

John: I couldn’t fill it in.

Chris: If you were standing over my shoulder going, “Just type this,” I couldn’t. I couldn’t do the Wednesday in two minutes.

Craig: There was a great, one of the great, great crossword constructors of all time was a guy named Henry Hook. He would make crosswords for The Boston Globe I think. And he was notoriously fast. And one guy once raced him with a crossword, except the twist was that the guy had written the crossword. It was his crossword. And he lost to Henry Hook. Yep.

Chris: That’s amazing. So don’t you think that there’s some sort of a physical hand-eye component?

Craig: You get faster as you. What can I say?

Chris: Well, I definitely – because you’re able to track it on the app. Yeah, my times have improved but I’ve hit a wall. There’s no—

Craig: Yeah, you started too late man.

Chris: That’s the problem.

Craig: You’ve got to get in there when you’re a kid.

Chris: The brain is just rusty. You’re right. I should have done it.

John: So my One Cool Thing, this winter I had a cold and so I had my humidifier out. The humidifier worked great. And I found that I was still using the humidifier because I kind of liked the noise it made.

Craig: Nice white noise.

John: White noise. But like I didn’t need to have this thing out in my room and this fan spinning. So I ended up finding a really good white noise machine. I went on the Wirecutter and picked their best white noise machine. And you know what? They were right. It’s a really good little white noise machine. It’s called The LectroFan High Fidelity White Noise Sound Machine. $46 on Amazon. It’s a small little hockey puck that makes really good sound.

And the thing I learned is that some of these machines they just have a sample that they’re playing, a sample sound. This one generates it algorithmically so it’s always completely random.

Craig: That’s really random. Because I use an app.

John: For traveling I use an app.

Craig: And the app is on a loop. And what will happen is if you’re having a bad night—

John: You’ll hear the loop.

Craig: You start hearing the loop. And now you’re F-ed.

Chris: That’s got to be like delirium.

Craig: No, it’s super bad.

Chris: Horrible. Do you have trouble sleeping?

Craig: Not the way I used to. Not the way I used to. As I get older I find that actually I’m looking forward to going to sleep. I used to dread it. And now I’m like, oh yay, I get to give up.

Chris: Ooh, it’s nighttime.

Craig: I get to quit on life and just unplug.

Chris: I never realized that insomnia was just refusing to embrace surrender.

Craig: No question. For me, insomnia was always just like do not die.

Chris: In your sleep!

Craig: In your sleep. What are your nested Cool Things?

Chris: My nested Cool Things are I brought this computer bag.

John: It’s a good-looking computer bag. It’s a black bag.

Chris: It is a black bag. It is made by a company called eBags. And you can see how there’s one strap. There’s actually two, but you can undo this and tuck it in and it becomes—

Craig: Like a briefcase.

Chris: Like a briefcase bag.

John: Nice.

Chris: And usually the two-in-one king of thing really turns me off. This is great in terms of all its many pockets. My favorite one being this rather large pocket at the bottom.

Craig: Or?

Chris: The case itself comes with a hard shell so you can store all of your cables in here. I took it out and this is where I put my toiletries when I travel. Because you have to take all of your liquids out.

Craig: Right. You’ve got to pull out that stupid clear bag.

Chris: Yes. And this bag just places you right through security.

Craig: That’s great.

Chris: It’s a great bag.

Craig: You know what? There’s a topic, by the way – traveling for writers – that we’re going to have to cover. Because god knows I’ve done it enough this year.

Chris: Oh yes.

Craig: And I got travel wired up.

John: I’ve gotten much better because I’ve done all the book tours.

Craig: Right. Exactly.

John: You just pulled something from this. So what is this?

Craig: Is that a battery?

Chris: This is not a battery. This is a laptop stand. Because writing flat on a desk – when I travel—

Craig: It’ll screw your wrist.

Chris: It screws your wrist. This is made by a company called, I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly, AViiQ. Which is how one would spell AViiQ.

Craig: Naturally AViiQ.

Chris: And for people not watching it—

Craig: That’s everyone. [laughs]

Chris: It looks like a ruler. Right? Well I’m talking – that’s not. You guys are here.

Craig: I’m not looking.

Chris: And it’s like origami. It’s made of aluminum. It unfolds.

Craig: Oh, wow, that’s great.

Chris: And feel the weight of it?

Craig: Oh my god, I’ve got to get this.

Chris: It’s like a few sheets of paper.

Craig: And this I assume is made to fit say a MacBook Pro?

Chris: I’ve had every laptop from a Pro to an Air.

John: Oh my god, it’s so light.

Chris: Everything on it. You don’t even know it’s in your bag.

Craig: That’s great.

Chris: It’s great.

Craig: AViiQ.

Chris: AViiQ. Everybody just go and look at it online. Because there’s no way to describe it where it makes any sense.

Craig: I’m buying that. I’m buying that. That’s brilliant.

Chris: OK, good. I’m glad. And by the way—

John: It was worth the two things.

Chris: This bag, this computer bag, is like $130. It’s not extremely prohibitive.

Craig: It’s not cheap, but it’s not extremely prohibitive. It’s not made of Panda skin.

Chris: Correct.

Craig: The way one would expect Chris McQuarrie to roll.

Chris: And the AViiQ thing is like $20.

Craig: I like that.

Chris: It’s been a while since I bought it.

Craig: I hear you.

Chris: All right. It’s $10,000.

John: [laughs] It’s diamond-encrusted.

Chris: Yes. It’s made of conflict medals from—

Craig: Conflict medals!

John: As we wrap up this show we should remind people that they should buy t-shirts. The Scriptnotes 400-episode t-shirts are available. They should also buy tickets to our live show coming up at the Ace Hotel.

Craig: 400.

John: We’ll have links to both of those things.

Craig: That’s like eight years of podcasting.

John: It’s a lot of podcasting.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: It’s not even counting the special episodes, of course. So, the things that aren’t part of the number sequence—

Craig: Can’t believe it. Wow.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth.

If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

Craig: Chris McQuarrie is?

Chris: Cryptically enough @chrismcquarrie.

John: @chrismcquarrie.

Chris: I’m in the midst of a Twitter moratorium.

John: It’s a good thing.

Craig: Tweet at him anyway.

Chris: Yeah. I answer questions in DMs now.

Craig: Be disagreeable with him. He loves it.

Chris: Yeah, I like being disagreeable.

John: You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We try to get them up about four days after the episode airs.

Some folks have started doing recaps and discussion on the screenwriting sub-Reddit. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Craig?

Craig: No.

John: If that continues that’s great. But basically they’re just recapping what happens on the show.

Craig: Oh, I hope they recap this very moment.

John: You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. or download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

And if you’re doing that you should probably check out the Scriptnotes Listener’s Guide at johnaugust.com/guide to find out which episodes our listeners recommend most. You were on Episode 300. We already have you penciled in for Episode 500.

Chris: Yes, done. I’m there.

Craig: No question. I mean, that’s our Diamond Jubilee.

Chris: OK, great. I’m there.

John: Chris McQuarrie, thank you very much.

Chris: Thank you guys.

Craig: And you know what, John? Thank you. 400 episodes.

John: It’s been nice.

Craig: Thanks man.

Links:

• Order your Scriptnotes 400 shirts, sweatshirts, and tanks (Light) and (Dark)!
• Join us for Scriptnotes LIVE on June 13th at the Ace Hotel to benefit Hollywood Heart. Buy your tickets here!
• Watch Chernobyl on HBO
• The Chernobyl Podcast with Craig and Peter Sagal
• Scriptnotes episode 300, From Writer to Writer-Director with Chris McQuarrie
• LectroFan High Fidelity White Noise Sound Machine
• One Clue Crossword
• eBags and AViiQ Portable Laptop Stand
• Find past episodes and Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Check out the Scriptnotes Episode Guide
• Submit to the Pitch Session here!
• Chris McQuarrie on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.