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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-one-with-alec-berg).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 205 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now like most weeks, I’m here in Los Angeles, but Craig is way off in the other side of the country. He has kidnapped a famous writer/director who we both like, Alec Berg, and he’s holding him hostage in a house. So this can be sort of a special episode because Craig is going to interrogate him and get all the information he can out of Alec Berg.

**Craig:** Yeah. The Bergs and the Mazins are on a little mini vacation together right now. All of the children are out of our hair, spectacular. And what we like to do when we go on vacation is record podcasts.

**John:** Yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** So I’ve got him. And I’m going to be asking him all the questions that people want to know. You know, a lot of questions about Alec Berg that have gone unanswered over the years and they’re all going to be asked, and I will get answers. Oh, I will.

**John:** And I’m looking forward to it. So before you do that, let’s do just a tiny bit of follow up.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** In the last episode, we described the new 200 episodes Scriptnotes USB drive that people can purchase. A bunch of people purchased them so we are not quite in danger of selling out of them but they will sell out relatively soon. So if you would like to get the entire back catalogue of Scriptnotes on a USB drive, you should go to store.johnaugust.com and probably not wait too long for those because they will go. But thank you for everyone who bought one of those.

And Craig, do you remember what the promo code was that you picked for these USB drives?

**Craig:** Yes, the promo code was SINGULARITY.

**John:** That is the promo code that will save you 20% which would almost cover the shipping cost of those in the U.S. So if you want one of those —

**Craig:** Huge savings.

**John:** Huge savings. Second, our final bit of follow up — I’m kind of sad about this, on Tess Gerritsen and her Gravity lawsuit. Craig, talk us through it.

**Craig:** Well, you know, we’ve been following Tess Gerritsen. She alleged that she was owed a whole bunch of money because the Warner Bros. film Gravity, at least in her point of view, was based on her book Gravity that she had sold the rights to New Line, and she’d been suing. And all along the way, we had been following this and saying, “We don’t think she has a case.” Well, neither did the judge, repeatedly. And now she’s saying, alas, she’s giving up.

But she’s saying she’s giving up in the weirdest way. And it’s kind of consistent with everything she’s done so far. I mean, her whole thing is — she would go on her blog and say, “This is why I have this amazing case and this is why it’s terrible and this is why Warner Bros. can’t get away with this.” This is an incredibly one sided thing that even then both you and I felt was flimsy and not substantive.

And her final goodbye here is similar. Rather than saying — so the title of the piece is Gravity Lawsuit: Why I’m Giving Up. The proper answer is because I have no case. That’s not the answer she gives. The answer she gives instead is because the court is nuts and didn’t allow us to prove our justice and so forth. But I disagree. I disagree.

She even cites — I don’t know if you noticed this John, she cites for the first time something, right? What she never gave us was anything from her book and then something from the movie for us all to look at and say, “Oh yeah, that’s very, very similar.” What she does instead now is she cites something from her contract and she believes that this is determinative, and it says, “Owner agrees that the company may assign this agreement blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” May, she just doesn’t see the word may there. Interesting, very interesting.

**John:** Yeah. So this is the end of our Gravity saga and I guess I’ll kind of miss it. The good news/bad news is that people have been tweeting in with all sorts of other lawsuits that are similar, some of which are making it through the court system as we speak. So in a future episode, we will talk through some of these other ones that have percolated up.

My hunch is that we are seeing more of these but they’ve always been there. You and I have both been around long enough that we’ve seen a lot of these things happen, what’s interesting to me is I think more of these are actually going to trial rather being settled before they ever become publicly known. So we’ll talk through some of those. I expect our opinions on them will probably be similar to the Gravity lawsuit but we’ll look at them as they come up.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, a general rule of thumb is if it goes to trial, the studio is going to win. They don’t go to trial with losers in general, they just settle them. They never came close to settling on this one as far as I could tell. I think, you know, when I see something like this, I just keep thinking that at some point, somebody must have reached out from the plaintiff side to say, “Well, do you guys just want to make this go away or what?” And when the studio says, “No. Actually, we would love to go all the way with this.” That’s when you know, they just — that’s just not the way corporate lawyers behave when they don’t have something locked down.

**John:** Yeah. I doubt it’s a philosophical change where the corporate lawyer decided to just become much more aggressive and like, “Oh yeah, we’d love to go to trial.” I think there’s something that has shifted in terms of how they respond into these kind of complaints or just that they felt there were no grounds for the complaint.

**Craig:** I agree. I’ll tell you that I don’t blame Tess Gerritsen for anything she did. I am concerned with her lawyers who I think kind of sold her a bill of goods here, but that’s my opinion, my non-lawyerly opinion that her legal team may have led her down the primrose path.

**John:** Great. So for the rest of this podcast, you are going to be talking to Alec Berg and I will not be there in the room to defend Alec Berg as you beat him up. He’s tied to a chair. You’re going to slap the answers out of him, correct?

**Craig:** Oh, yeah. I’m going to slap a lot out of him.

**John:** But what I’d love to know is how he helped create such an amazing show called Silicon Valley and how he actually topped the work in the first season with the second season. And how he prepares for the crushing disappointment of the third season which cannot possibly live up to expectation.

**Craig:** You know, it’s funny, I was not aware that he was involved in a show called — what is it? Silicon what?

**John:** Silicon Valley.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And so apparently it’s about the silicon mining industry, and also intercut with the plastic surgery industry. So it’s really a great, gripping drama that enfolds over, you know, this sort of nonlinear storytelling mode. So maybe while you’re on vacation with him, you could, you know, rent the DVDs and watch them.

**Craig:** Just to be clear, I’m here with a guy name Alex Berg, I don’t know — do you?

**John:** Oh man, the wrong person, sorry.

**Craig:** Yeah. But this is Alex Berg. He’s not — I mean he’s a writer of a kind-ish. [laughs]

**John:** Well, Craig, I’ll leave it to you to figure out who this man is and why he should be on our podcast.

**Craig:** All right, here we go. So at last, I’m here with Alec Berg.

**Alec Berg:** Indeed you are, sir.

**Craig:** Got rid of Alex Berg, turns out he was useless.

**Alec:** Alex Berg, a real guy, actor.

**Craig:** Oh?

**Alec:** Yes

**Craig:** Not useless.

**Alec:** No. There is an Alex Berg who is an actor, and there’s an Alec Berg who’s a musician, I believe, in Portland. And there’s an Alec Berg who is a tech writer, oddly enough. I think he’s in upstate New York and he tweets constantly. So if you go to Twitter, he’s Alec Berg and I had to be pretentiously real Alec Berg like he’s not real because I’m the real Alec Berg, but —

**Craig:** By the way, you’re not real —

**Alec:** No.

**Craig:** And he is probably real.

**Alec:** He’s much more real than I am.

**Craig:** He seems real than you are.

**Alec:** He certainly tweeted several hundred thousand times more than I have.

**Craig:** Oh, he’s doing — oh, and that means, therefore, real.

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** As we all know, volume equals substance.

**Alec:** Well, sure.

**Craig:** Well, [laughs] so here I am with the real, real Alec Berg —

**Alec:** @realalecberg.

**Craig:** And we are on vacation together.

**Alec:** We are.

**Craig:** With our wives.

**Alec:** Not the way —

**Craig:** I don’t want to start any weird rumors or nothing, although we do have a free path to happiness across the country.

**Alec:** Craig, please, this is going out to the public.

**Craig:** That is true, that is true.

**Alec:** We will end at that part.

**Craig:** Yes, yes.

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Let’s keep it in. So Alec, I’ve known you for many years but I’ve never interviewed you. So I’m going to start a little bit where most of the interviews start and then we’re going to wander off. Because what we like to do on our show is talk about things from the writing perspective as writers. It’s not the same old questions. Nonetheless, I’m going to start with the same old question. You began your Swedish life as a writer at Harvard, I believe. Were you writing even prior to college?

**Alec:** Yeah. I mean, I did a lot of like, you know, the usual creative writing classes and things like that. And those were always the classes that I was, you know, enjoying the most in junior high and high school. I went to high school with Ted Griffin who I don’t know if you’ve had on this podcast or not, but —

**Craig:** No. Ted is simply not important enough.

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** No. We’ll get him on for sure.

**Alec:** Screenwriter of much repute —

**Craig:** Ocean’s Eleven

**Alec:** Ocean’s Eleven and Matchstick Men.

**Craig:** And Matchstick Men.

**Alec:** And he created a show on —

**Craig:** Terriers.

**Alec:** FX called Terriers which was amazing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** Anyway, Ted and I went to junior high and high school together and he was, you know, probably from birth, like just obsessed with the film business. It’s in his family. His grandfather was a director. So he was aggressively making short films. We were actually editing short films together where we would have to plug two VCRs into each other and you would have to play from one into the other.

**Craig:** Basically like the first EditDroid from Lucas.

**Alec:** Yes. Yeah, right, right.

**Craig:** But only with two instead of like twenty.

**Alec:** Yeah, right. But like I remember sitting in his apartment when I think I was in like ninth grade and he was in seventh grade and we were, you know, editing. And I grew up in Pasadena so it was close enough to the film business that I knew it was there. Like I wasn’t like a child of the film business but I definitely was very aware of it.

**Craig:** Did you look at the film business as kind of a trap for feckless dreamers?

**Alec:** I had no sense, really, of what it was. And I certainly had no pretension of like — I always assumed like even from that age like, “Oh, I’d like to do something peripherally pertaining to entertainment.” I was really obsessed with stand-ups. Like when I was eight years old, I could do two-and-half hours of Bill Cosby kind of word perfect.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And then Steve Martin became like the game changer for me, like those few first few albums.

**Craig:** It’s interesting. I went through the same thing. I remember Delirious, Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. It’s like you memorized it almost word for word.

**Alec:** Well, somebody just wrote an amazing piece. Somebody interviewed like a hundred comedians and said, “What was the thing that made you want to be a comedian?” And of those hundred comedians, I think like 80 of them referenced Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. Like that really was like the — that’s the Star Wars of stand-ups.

**Craig:** It kind of is. And I remember, yeah, you would sit with your friends and sort of compete to see who had the most word for word.

**Alec:** Yes. And it’s still amazing. If you watch it now, it’s like it’s not one of those things where you go, “Oh yeah. Well sure, 30 years ago.”

**Craig:** It’s still really funny stuff, yes.

**Alec:** It’s unbelievably edgy. It’s great stuff still. So I was kind of a comedy nerd and we did — Ted and I did — but I mean Ted, far more than I, like driven by show business, show business. So I came to be enamored with the entertainment business, but I always thought I’d be an executive or, you know, an attorney or something like that. Like I don’t really ever think — until I got to college and I started writing — I worked at the Harvard Lampoon and that was where all of a sudden I became aware of like, “Oh, there are people who graduated a few years ago who write for Letterman, who write for The Simpsons,” had just started. The Simpsons started when I think I was a sophomore in college.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And that was one of those things where it’s like, “Oh, this is a thing.” Like people actually, like they don’t get jobs, they don’t go to law school. But I don’t think I was really like, it’s become a very weird thing now where like, there are like sophomores at the Lampoon who are like writing spec scripts and, “Oh yeah, this is my sketch package.”

**Craig:** Weaponize their ambition, yeah. .

**Alec:** It’s like what? Like I didn’t even know what that was or like that’s how you got a job. But I did a bunch of filmmaking in college and then the part of it that I thought I was sort of best at and I was most interested in was writing.

**Craig:** Right. So you were in that — it’s interesting, I was — because we’re going to leap ahead to a question I was going to ask you later, but I want to ask you now because you kind of segued into it perfectly. When you and I — we both got into the business roughly around the same time, in the early mid-90s —

**Alec:** Yes, the good old days.

**Craig:** The good old days. And we came out of what does seem like a fairly naive place. I mean, I remember, when I first came to L.A. that I got this book, Ken Auletta I think was his name, he wrote a book called Three Blind Mice and it was the story of the networks. And I got it because I just didn’t understand what the difference was between a network and those stations that weren’t networks and who made shows. Wait, wait, networks don’t make shows and I had no idea how any of it worked.

**Alec:** Well, the nice thing is that nobody knows how that works still to the this day —

**Craig:** Still to this day, exactly.

**Alec:** And now more than ever.

**Craig:** But, you know, you were at the Lampoon going, “Oh wow, there’s people who write on those shows, maybe I could do that too.” And you’re right. Now it seems very formalized. Everybody seems to be aware of everything very early on. Do you think that — and I promise we’ll get back to you in a second, but do you think that whatever you call it, the farm system, the incubation of new writers, is that damaged beyond repair or is it just too self-aware right now?

**Alec:** You know, it’s funny, I have no sense — people always ask me like, people always like people ask me questions like all the time.

**Craig:** Like just this morning this guy asked you.

**Alec:** Yeah. I can’t go anywhere without people asking me. When I do get asked about like how do you break into the business, the answer I sort of come around to is I kind of look at it like breaking into a bank. Or it’s like, I can tell you how I robbed the bank.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** I can tell you what I did to short the alarm system and to fool people into thinking I was the security guard —

**Craig:** They’ve closed that loop a lot, yeah.

**Alec:** That’s my thing. It’s like people are like, “How do I break into the business?” And my honest answer is, “I have no idea.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Like I know what people were expecting of me back then, like you’d write a couple of spec scripts of existing shows. The rule then was, don’t write a spec pilot because people don’t want to read spec pilots, they want to read existing shows, they want to read —

**Craig:** Just the opposite of what it is now.

**Alec:** Right, right. And now it’s like when I read writer submissions, it’s like — nobody’s writing Modern Family. Like all I’m getting are pilots because that’s the thing people do now.

**Craig:** Do you think that the cohort — I mean, I’m asking to throw an entire generation under the bus, but you don’t have to. But do you think that the cohort of writers that you came up with is stronger at least in inception than say this one now?

**Alec:** I think it’s a generational thing. It’s always going to be, you always think that like because you prize your skills in a certain, you know, order, I think you value certain things that people of your era valued, right?

**Craig:** Right. Like quality.

**Alec:** Well, it’s like, you know, the whole point of like rock music was to piss of your parents. And if your parents like the music, it’s not working correctly. It feels like it’s the same thing where it’s like each generation — like personally, I feel like — especially in sketch, you feel the influence of UCB and that kind zany improv like, “Oh, the twist in the middle of the sketch is this thing goes completely sideways and it turns out we’re on an alien planet watching this on TV.” And to me, as a sort of traditionalist, that offends me, because when I think of sketches I think come up with a really solid premise.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And serve the premise. And this idea of like in the middle of the sketch you go zany sideways, and it’s — you turn the whole thing upside down. That feels like a quit to me. But people who grew up prizing those zany left-turns as like, “Oh, that’s the comedy gold,” I think that —

**Craig:** Oh, but you know —

**Alec:** That feels right to them. So I guess what I’m saying is, without even realizing it, I’ve become hacky and —

**Craig:** [laughs] At last I’ve led you to the truth.

**Alec:** It’s over. It’s over for me.

**Craig:** Halfway through this, you’re going to quit the business.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And at the end you’re going to shoot yourself.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This is going to be great, yeah.

**Alec:** People would just say, we always used to joke about this, like the hardest thing about show business really is like you never get pink slipped, right?

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Alec:** It not like somebody just calls you and goes, “Yeah, we appreciate your contributions. Here’s your severance package. Don’t come in tomorrow.”

**Craig:** Your last day looks just like all your other days.

**Alec:** Right. You keep going in and then all of a sudden you realize that you haven’t been on the payroll for weeks.

**Craig:** That’s right. And you don’t know any of these people.

**Alec:** No. But also, everyone else knows you’re not working there anymore but they haven’t said anything.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Alec:** And that’s the most brutal part. It’s just like it’s a very slow, quiet, there’s no definitive end moment.

**Craig:** That’s actually great news for us, I think. Because I plan on just drifting out of the business.

**Alec:** But the terrifying thing is that, we may be done.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Without even knowing it.

**Craig:** You said it’s terrifying and my heart is singing right now. I’m still happy. It means we can extend this vacation. Let’s just keep driving, man, like Thelma and Louise.

**Alec:** Wouldn’t that be amazing? You suddenly realize there’s just no compelling reason to go back.

**Craig:** Well, you know, a lot of people — no one really knows this except for you and for me, but we’ll share it with them that you and I have this fantasy —

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We’ve been talking about it for years — quitting writing.

**Alec:** Dare to dream.

**Craig:** Dare to dream, quit writing, and the two of us just open some kind of — we’d become lawyers. And I honestly feel like we could get our law degrees — I’m not kidding — in months. I feel like if you and I tried really hard —

**Alec:** I think you can get a law degree. I don’t know if it would be reputable at all but it does seem like —

**Craig:** It would be a degree.

**Alec:** It would be a physical piece of paper that says we have —

**Craig:** Right. If you and I said, “Look, the bar is one year from now, let’s start studying now,” and we’ll take the bar a year from now, I think we could do it.

**Alec:** If our sole reason for studying was to pass the bar, as opposed to amassing actual useable legal knowledge —

**Craig:** Not interested in that.

**Alec:** [laughs] That’s applicable in some real world.

**Craig:** I already feel like I’m more of a lawyer than you are because of the way I’m approaching it —

**Alec:** Yeah. No, you’ve already — you adjudicated this entire thing.

**Craig:** Your scruples [laughs] —

**Alec:** Masterfully. Yeah. No. See, again, this is the problem, I’m out of that business also before I even got in.

**Craig:** I need a new partner. You and I become lawyers and then — and sort of, like, lawyers-managers-agents. We become like some sort of weird new thing. We take on all of our friends, we stop writing, and we just advise them on how to go through their careers. We probably would end up making more money. Now, we’re taking 10% of 20 or 30 A-list writers.

**Alec:** Yeah. And I don’t know that I would end up being more happy doing that, but I’ll bet you I would be less sad.

**Craig:** Well, and then there’s that. Let’s talk about that. Why —

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So Alec, this is what I think a lot of people will never understand. So you and your occasional partners, and for many years you were really tied at the hip with Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** So Berg, Schaffer, Mandel. Even when I started working, I remember people were like, well, there’s Berg, Schaffer, Mandel. That’s like a thing. They’re like a big comedy corporation. And you guys did everything — Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, a ton of movies. You wrote and directed EuroTrip and then there was a lot of movies that you worked on that you didn’t get credit for —

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But a ton of work there. Everything seems to be going great and yet, sad. And I talk about this all the time. And I think in a weird way, people, when they hear me say that I’m sad a lot, they I go, “Yeah, you should be.” [laughs] But I think people would be surprised to hear that you get glum about things. What is going on?

**Alec:** I’ve made peace of it. It’s the creative process. That’s just what it is. I think in any creative endeavor, I feel like if you’re not unhappy with where your product is, whatever it is, you’re not going to strive to do better. Like as soon as — I think complacency is just absolutely anathema to doing good work. Especially in comedy which — I mean, you know, this is a sidebar, but like comedy really is binary, right? Like it’s either funny or it’s not. It’s not like, “We’re going to get it to a certain level and then we’ll just make it a little funnier and a little funnier.” Like certain things are like, “That’s funny,” or, “That’s not funny.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Right? So if it’s not working, it’s just white hot death. I think as soon as you start to feel smug or complacent or satisfied, you know, unfortunately, you stop trying desperately to make everything better. And I feel like everything I do creatively, I always approach from the standpoint of, “This is terrible. This is going to get out into the world, and people are going to laugh at me in a bad way.” Not like a “Ha-ha, this is hilarious” way, like in a “This is what passes for professional work? This is a joke. That guy stinks. He’s terrible. We’ve discovered his dirty secret. He’s talentless.”

**Craig:** Right. There’s a lot of that going around.

**Alec:** And that is the way I approach everything. And it’s like — it makes it difficult because even, you know, when I get an occasional Emmy nomination, for about 10 seconds, that’s awesome, and then it becomes, “Oh, my God. The fall is going to be even more precipitous and more ugly, and people are going to watch —

**Craig:** What do I do now?

**Alec:** The crap that I turned out next and go, ‘Somebody got nominated for an Emmy for this?'”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** But ultimately, as awful as all that sounds, I’ve sort of made peace with it because it’s good for the work. It just is. It’s a professional hazard but it makes the work better because I don’t stop.

**Craig:** But do you think it’s possible to be happy and still also be committed to — for instance, Jerry Seinfeld, you worked with him for many years.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He strikes me as the guy that isn’t torturing himself. Am I wildly off-base there?

**Alec:** I think he is very hard on himself, but no. He definitely has figured out a way, I think, to feel positive and good about the good work that he’s doing and —

**Craig:** In a healthy way.

**Alec:** The pleasure he derives from his work seems not to have led him to a place of complacency and mediocrity.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** But there’s a reason that you’re citing him as an example because he stands out.

**Craig:** Exception to the rule.

**Alec:** Right? Like, “Oh, there is somebody who can do that and he’s that guy.” Like the vast majority of people are, you know, when Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld worked together on Seinfeld, Jerry was always the positive one who’s like, “If we set our minds to this, we will do it and we will crush it and we will be great.”

**Craig:** And Larry —

**Alec:** And Larry’s whole thing is, “No, we can’t do this. This will never work.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Right.

**Alec:** “Let’s not even try, because what’s the point?”

**Craig:** And that was a pretty great combination.

**Alec:** And the yin and yang of that was really exceptional.

**Craig:** And that’s an interesting thing for you to bring up because for many years you did have this very — it was a unique partnership. You don’t see a three-man team or a three-person team almost ever.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** In writing, at least. It’s every now and then, but you guys really are the only one of note that I can think of.

**Alec:** Well, Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, those three guys were — there’s a slightly different division of labor there.

**Alec:** Yeah you’ve worked with those —

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean —

**Alec:** So you tell me.

**Craig:** Because in a weird way, there was almost four of them because Pat Proft was usually in the mix as well. One of them, often David, was directing more, you know. But you guys were like a traditional, like the three of you would write a script.

**Alec:** Yeah. And the three of us would direct when we directed. I mean, it really was — yeah, that is a —

**Craig:** Correct. It was extremely —

**Alec:** That is the interesting thing about that partnership because I do see a lot of partnerships where like one guy is the this guy and the other one is the that guy. All three of us did everything.

**Craig:** Right. All three of you did everything in a kind of an equal way. But now, you have sort of said, “Okay, just as Schaffer is off doing The League and Mandel is currently now running Veep.”

**Alec:** He just started running Veep, yes.

**Craig:** Right. And you are running Silicon Valley, and have been running it as the writer from the start.

**Alec:** Yes. I came on after the pilot.

**Craig:** Oh, came on after the pilot.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, after everybody else had done the hardest part of it.

**Alec:** That’s right.

**Craig:** And cleared away all the possible mines that you certainly would have stepped on.

**Alec:** Yeah. No. I showed up for dessert.

**Craig:** You showed up after they loosened it and then just went wee, wee, wee, and out came gold.

**Alec:** That seems fair.

**Craig:** Right. So congrats.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Good.

**Alec:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Nice job. But that’s an interesting thing that you have wandered away from what I would imagine would be this comforting nest where you knew, okay, maybe, and each of you might have had this thought at some point. Maybe on our own, we’re only a third of a great person but together we’re one great person?

**Alec:** I think part of us thought that way. I don’t think we ever had one discussion about, like, how do we work and what is our — like, we just did the work. There wasn’t a lot of, like, you know, talk about process and who does what and who’s better at what and why and how can we, you know, make this process more efficient or hone it in any way. Like there was no —

**Craig:** The other two guys just agreed that you were the best of them.

**Alec:** Well, I always used to joke that Jeff and Dave argued and disagreed about almost everything. So functionally, I got to make every decision because that’s the way — it was majority rules.

**Craig:** [laughs] Right.

**Alec:** And that part of it —

**Craig:** You would just wait

**Alec:** Yes. So in a funny way, it was really like it was — they were helping me make decisions but really —

**Craig:** They should have just even stopped trying to make decisions.

**Alec:** Yeah. Which is not entirely true. I mean —

**Craig:** It’s entirely true.

**Alec:** All right.

**Craig:** It’s entirely true.

**Alec:** No. I mean, we just didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing how it worked. We just did it. And actually, I would say it’s funny. Like there are a lot of writing teams, particularly in comedy, of two people. And you’re right, not that many three-person teams. What’s weird is a three-person team actually makes it much easier. Because with two people you get into these deadlocks —

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Where it’s like, “I think it should be black,” “I think it should be white.” And you fight about it. You fight about it, and all sorts of teams have all sorts of different ways of breaking the ties. Some alternate, some flip a coin.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** With three people —

**Craig:** There is no question.

**Alec:** If two people really have an argument, they argue it out and the third person is almost literally watching it like a tennis match. Just listening to the argument meaning that in the end, well, a lot of times, me, but —

**Craig:** I could totally see it.

**Alec:** But really — but here’s — this was also the —

**Craig:** Here’s what’s going on. You have one Swedish guy, you, watching two Jews beating each other up, just waiting.

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Just waiting for them to tire each other out with words.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you come in and in your flat affect way, just say, “We will do the following.”

**Alec:** Yeah. But what was interesting is, you know, I got outvoted a lot. And what was interesting about that is there just was a level of trust. Like, those guys are both really talented, skilled guys.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And you just get to a point where you go, “I think they are absolutely wrong. I don’t see what they’re agreeing about here. They’re just flat wrong.” But if both of those guys see something in going this other route —

**Craig:** There might be something —

**Alec:** There must be something.

**Craig:** There must be something.

**Alec:** There must be.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** Like we just got to that level of trust where it’s like, “I think you’re wrong — ”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** “But I also believe that because of past experience, if both of you see it, you’re right.”

**Craig:** Yeah. I always felt — when I was writing with Todd Philips and he would say, “No, no, no. This should be this way,” and I would think, “I don’t like that. I don’t think that’s true. But I know that if you see it, then you will at least know how to make it good.”

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And when I say good, I mean, I may never love that one thing but I’ll know that it will work.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because in your mind, if you say to me, “I know how to make this work,” I trust you, you know how to make it work. I would imagine that it was probably that way with those two guys.

**Alec:** Absolutely. No, 100%. That even the things that I was most like adamantly opposed to, in the end I would always come around to and I’d go, “Oh, okay. Now, I get it.”

**Craig:** All right. So the brief journey here, you graduated from Harvard, which is a second tier school, you end up in Los Angeles.

**Alec:** Yeah. It’s the Princeton of Cambridge.

**Craig:** [laughs] It is the Princeton. It’s the Princeton of — I don’t even think — I think it’s actually the Cornell of Cambridge, but fine.

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** So you end up out here back home, essentially.

**Alec:** Yes, yeah.

**Craig:** Where you’re from.

**Alec:** Well, my folks moved to Boston after I graduated from high school. So I finally —

**Craig:** To be near you?

**Alec:** No, my dad is a college professor, my mom is college professor. They got work on the East Coast.

**Craig:** Idiots.

**Alec:** Yeah, they went that way.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Alec:** So I finally, after graduating college, moved really away from them for the first time.

**Craig:** Yeah, I was going to say. Like you thought you were getting away from them?

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then when was that? Like freshman year? Surprise.

**Alec:** Yeah. Well, no. What was really funny is — no, they moved the summer before my freshman year.

**Craig:** Oh, my. You never even had a day?

**Alec:** So we sort of went to college together.

**Craig:** Oh.

**Alec:** But what was funny is, my brother went — my brother’s in college in Connecticut, he ended up seeing and talking to my parents much more than I did even though they were ten blocks away. Because psychologically I’m like, “I don’t have to call them, they’re right there.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** “I don’t have to go see them, they’re right there.” And so I would go months —

**Craig:** The distance —

**Alec:** Without talking to them or seeing them.

**Craig:** I’m really rethinking my strategy of moving halfway across the country, entirely across the country with my parents. I should be next door.

**Alec:** Yeah. No, I was — I didn’t have to call them, they’re right there.

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**Alec:** Why? What do I need to call them for?

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**Alec:** I could shout to them.

**Craig:** And so I won’t.

**Alec:** Yeah, so —

**Craig:** So, you came out here —

**Alec:** Yeah, I graduated. I spent about six months living at home, writing specs because I had a friend who was a couple years older who had moved out to L.A. and had worked in an agency.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Alec:** Chris Moore.

**Craig:** Oh, yes, Chris.

**Alec:** Who ended up producing the American Pie movies. And he worked at a little agency called InterTalent. And he basically said, “Look, I just got promoted. I have my own desk. I’m an agent now and I don’t really have a lot of clients. I can sort of represent you, but you’ve got to move to L.A.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And he said, “When you get here, you need writing samples.” So I spent six months writing.

Jeff Schaffer graduated the same year I did. He basically lived in Cambridge for six months. And we didn’t work together-together, but everything I wrote, he read. Everything he wrote, I read. We would trade things back and forth. Yeah. We were, you know, we helped each other.

**Craig:** And somewhere out there was Mandel.

**Alec:** Mandel was a year younger.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Alec:** So we had worked with him on a bunch of Lampoon stuff but he was still in college when we were out. So Jeff and I moved — packed up his Toyota Camry and we moved to L.A. And our intention initially was to work.

**Craig:** He had a Camry?

**Alec:** He did.

**Craig:** Rich kid.

**Alec:** Yeah. Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** Rich kid. I had a Corolla.

**Alec:** It was something.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** With the leather and the —

**Craig:** Leather?

**Alec:** Yeah. Oh, it had a CD player in it.

**Craig:** Chic.

Alex: Ooh, yeah, no, it was fancy.

**Craig:** God. CD player?

**Alec:** Yeah. I actually ended up crashing his car at one point.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Alec:** So I took him down a peg.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Alec:** So we moved to L.A. and we sat down with Chris Moore. And Chris Moore at that point was trying to get more into features. He represented a young Zak Penn and Adam Leff actually who had just sold the Last Action Hero.

**Craig:** I always put Leff first just to piss Zak off.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Leff and Penn. That team was —

**Alec:** And Zak is —

**Craig:** It was Adam Leff, and Adam Leff’s partner.

**Alec:** Yeah, that’s right. And a slight annex of Adam Leff.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Alec:** So we moved out. Chris was going to represent us. He became a feature agent, so he put us in a room with two kind of fledgling TV agents, one of whom we ended up working with. The other of whom was a young kid named Ari Emanuel.

**Craig:** That kid’s name was Ari Emanuel.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And was it Ari Emanuel or just a different Israeli?

**Alec:** Who can tell, really? I’m Swedish, I can’t tell the difference.

**Craig:** Alec Berg, anti-Semite. I got my news story.

**Alec:** Edit this out.

**Craig:** No, editing it in.

**Alec:** The thing that happened immediately was these agents all said, “Look, you guys have the same background, you like the same shows, you want to work in the same places, you have very similar samples, you’ve worked together for several years in the Lampoon — ”

**Craig:** Right. Formalize it.

**Alec:** “Be a team.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** “We’re going to send you out against each other or we can send you out with each other,” and people feel like rightfully so they’re getting more for their money when they hire a team because you really are getting two — especially in a comedy room they’re —

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re getting more.

**Alec:** You’ve got two brains instead of one.

**Craig:** Let’s take a side trip and talk for a second to the — because, you know, we have a lot of people who listen to the show that are aspiring writers, many of whom have partners. How do you get screwed when you’re a — I mean, you guys got particularly screwed as a three-man team but what are the ways that writing teams get screwed?

**Alec:** Well, I mean, you know, there’s a big thing going on with the Writers Guild about paper teams, right? Where like TV shows will basically say, “I want to hire you and I want to hire you. You don’t work together, but if you become a team, I can hire both of you for one salary and you guys can both work at the show.” And people who aren’t actually teams —

**Craig:** Yes, they’re getting their salaries halved — they’re getting their residuals halved.

**Alec:** Team up and basically each take half.

**Craig:** Right. There’s also — for you guys, there’s — you know, we get money — when we get paid there’s a percentage on top of that that the studios kick in for our healthcare and our pension. And they don’t really double it exactly or like they don’t double the cap for teams. And tripling God only knows what it is.

**Alec:** You know far more about —

**Craig:** What I’m trying to tell you that you’ve been really damaged over the years.

**Alec:** Yeah, no, just —

**Craig:** Deeply damaged by this.

**Alec:** I was aware of that, I just don’t know the extent to which I’ve been damaged.

**Craig:** Let me take out a spreadsheet and then just take a look at these numbers.

**Alec:** I feel like knowing the extent to which I’ve been damaged is going to damage me that much further.

**Craig:** Yes. So as I said, at the end of the show, you’ll kill yourself. [laughs] I’m working towards the gunshot.

**Alec:** Yeah. You’re just going to show me a printout of my career stats and I’ll off myself.

**Craig:** Here’s your pension information. Here are some texts that I’ve had with your wife. Here’s — okay.

**Alec:** [laughs].

**Craig:** But now —

**Alec:** File all of these under “mistakes made.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Exactly. This is the conception of this thing that eventually turns into this amazing career in television. And I want to talk about this — what I think of as — because I’m catching up to Silicon Valley in a way. I’m going to, like, I’m speeding through Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, getting to Silicon Valley in part because I feel like there’s something that unites them. And I always think of a certain kind of story as very Bergian. You prefer Bergian? Bergess?

**Alec:** I prefer neither.

**Craig:** Bergish? Yes.

**Alec:** Speaking [crosstalk].

**Craig:** So Bergian, we all know what Bergian means. Crap.

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But also —

**Alec:** That’s what I’m thinking in my head. That’s Hollywood translation.

**Craig:** Yes, but also, “God, that’s Bergian.”

**Alec:** On the fly.

**Craig:** But also there is a certain kind of recursive self-referential plotting, a kind of a Rube Goldberg plotting that goes on, I see it Silicon Valley the way I would see it in Curb and Seinfeld, too, to maybe a lesser extent, but it’s there. And it’s this thing where these really funny jokes happen. And when you’re writing a comedy and there’re jokes that are connected to plot, they’re on plot, they’re on the specific character relationship that story is about. Then there are these little side jokes, they’re there for funsies. Those become important to the plot. You just don’t realize it’s happening.

**Alec:** Absolutely. No, there’s nothing better than something that plays purely as a joke that all of a sudden you realize it’s like a magic trick.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Alec:** And it’s just like —

**Craig:** This is what I think of as Bergian.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I guess my craft question is how intentional is that? I mean, do you stop and go, “I know I need something that doesn’t seem like plot and seems like pure icing to turn into cake later.”

**Alec:** That’s a great question. The answer honestly is we cheat, which is that I would say way more often than not, that little joke early that becomes plot was written after the plot was written.

**Craig:** Got it. So you’re retrofitting.

**Alec:** That’s the big difference is that you watch a show in a linear fashion.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** The show is never written in a linear fashion. And in fact, one of the great joys of Silicon Valley is because we only do 10 episodes, we can do the same trick from show to show where we’ll come up with something in show six as we’re writing it and we’ll go, “Wait a second, there was a moment in show two where we talked about a similar thing. Let’s go back — ”

**Craig:** Let’s go back and retrofit.

**Alec:** “Let’s put something in the show two script — ”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** “That sets this up.” And there are things that we do all the time in the show where, you know, there’s a conversation in the first episode of the season where somebody says, “Watch out or this will happen, you got to be careful.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And then in show nine or 10, that happens.

**Craig:** What’s the board, the — ?

**Alec:** We have a big grid on the wall in the office.

**Craig:** No. I mean, on the show itself, what’s —

**Alec:** Oh, the SWOT board?

**Craig:** The SWOT board, yeah. Like that was something that you could see like, “Okay, that was just funny. That was just a sad joke.”

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then it became like a runner. I mean, even like the condor, you know, the joke was —

**Alec:** That’s a great example.

**Craig:** It was like, “Okay, we’re making a joke about Schrodinger’s bird, Schrodinger’s egg.”

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** And then that becomes — I always think of that as a very Bergian thing, the ferrets.

**Alec:** But that’s the rewriting process, right, is that you go, “Oh, we can reference that here, we can set that up here.” And you’re basically, yeah, you’ve got a chunk of something and you’re pulling little tendrils out of it and plugging them in in other places so that eventually everything is woven in, right? I mean, that I learned from — that’s Larry David. You know, Larry and Jerry kind of invented —

**Craig:** He invented that in a way.

**Alec:** I think so. I mean, I don’t know, there’s probably somebody who did something 10 years earlier who’s listening to this going, “Damn you. It was me.” But —

**Craig:** Well, sorry, sucker.

**Alec:** Yeah. I just made a joke about somebody listening to this.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Alec:** No, but the honest answer, that’s where I learned it is the whole method of telling stories in Seinfeld is, first of all, there were no freestanding jokes in that show. And it’s what makes that show endure, I think, is when you tell somebody the plot of a Seinfeld episode, that’s the comedy, right?

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** It’s not like a traditional sitcom where it’s like, “Oh, he told somebody that he was he was going to do them a favor and then he didn’t want to do it and here of the funny jokes that happened during that.” The story of Seinfeld episodes, when you just say what happened, that’s the comedy of it.

**Craig:** Right. How far can we go without running out of gas?

**Alec:** Right, exactly. But those are the laughs, right?

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Is the comedy and the story are the same and that is something that I kind of learned to do from Larry. And we did that in Curb also, that like, what’s the story? The story is the comedy, right? Like what’s a funny idea? Oh, that’s a comedy idea? That’s what happens.

**Craig:** Right. Jerry Zucker, I think — I don’t know, David will probably say that he said it first because that’s the way they are. But he said early on they said, “Make plot points jokes, and make jokes plot points,” which is very similar. But what’s different about what you do and I’m using you as the common thread even though obviously all you ever did was just rip off Larry David.

**Alec:** I hope this analysis doesn’t screw me up because I’ve never thought about what I do or how I do it, I just do it.

**Craig:** Let me reiterate again. At the end of the show, you will kill yourself. [laughs]

What you do specifically is you make non-plot jokes plot points. There are certain kinds of jokes that never feel like they’re meant to be plot. They just seem like minor, they seem like minor things that are just there because they’re amusing. And you take those out and really — and no one ever sees that coming because we’re trained, I think, now as just consumers of so much culture and a lot of comedy, we’re trained to see setups and payoffs. We know they’re coming.

**Alec:** Yeah, well it’s like the insert shot of something, right? Like if somebody puts their phone down, there’s a tight shot of the phone. It’s like, “Oh, okay. Here it comes.”

**Craig:** That means something. Right. We are trained for setups and payoffs. You know, we know when somebody says, “There is absolutely no way I’m going in there…” Right? And you’re really good at paying off setups that we didn’t think could ever be setups for anything anyway, like why would the ferret thing ever be relevant?

**Alec:** Right.

**Craig:** You know.

**Alec:** Well, the condor is an example of like where we wanted Jared’s idea of live streaming the condor egg to be just a dumb Jared suggestion.

**Craig:** Correct. But that’s exactly right. Like, I thought the joke was Jared is just being a sweet dork the way he is and these guys are torturing him by making him think that he’s going to kill the bird by calling, which is classic those guys, right? And so that felt great to me. And it turns out, yeah, and then in an Alec Berg way — so sorry for the suicide that’s coming — you say, “That’s what we should be paying off. Not, for instance, making a huge payoff about the guy and that the other company and their competing software,” which is what I think everybody else would do.

**Alec:** Yeah. But again, the way that’s actually constructed is a lot of times in reverse, right? Where we know that we’re doing this thing at the end where there’s this guy on a cliff and that’s the live stream and that catches on. And then we sort of back into all that other stuff.

**Craig:** Great.

**Alec:** And sometimes it’s the reverse. Sometimes you have a funny joke and then later in the show you’re like, “What are we going to do here?” And then somebody goes, “Well, what if that thing becomes this?” “Oh, great.” Boom.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** But a lot of times, you back into it. You know, you go back and you go, “Oh, this should be the funny thing that we do there.”

**Craig:** Really, to me, I think what makes you special and different than a lot of writers is —

**Alec:** Aww.

**Craig:** It’s not good [laughs]. It’s just how incompetent you are —

**Alec:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** And yet you still get paid at such a high level.

**Alec:** Oh, shocking.

**Craig:** It’s that it’s what you choose. It’s when you go backwards, where do you go backwards to? And I find that that’s where you make interesting choices all the time. Because, I mean, you know, everybody, I think, plays the setup/payoff game. But where you go looking for those setups in the kind of retroactive fit ways is very clever and it’s always really funny.

**Alec:** Oh, thank you.

**Craig:** Now, so Silicon Valley, I suspect that you felt great going into the second season. You thought, “We’ve had a great first season, what could possibly go wrong in the second season?”

**Alec:** No, no. Precisely the opposite. I mean, actually in a weird way, the first season was very freeing because it was — “We’re doing this show.” “What is it?” “I don’t know. It could be this.” “What if this is the show?” “How about they — ” “Yeah, that could be the show,” “This could be the show,” “That could be the show.” And you’re just — you’re vamping. You’re just kind of like, you know, you’re really like kind of freeform —

**Craig:** Free.

**Alec:** And it’s like, “This could be the show.” And if it’s not the show, no one will see us fail because no one’s watching the show.

**Craig:** No one will see it. Exactly.

**Alec:** Right?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** So it’s very freeing in a way because it’s really like you’re just backstage doing it for yourself. And then when it got out and it sort of worked, Season 2 was like the, “Okay, now prove this wasn’t a fluke.”

**Craig:** Well, first of all, you guys suffered a ridiculous tragedy in between those seasons. I mean —

**Alec:** Well, it was in the middle of Season 1 —

**Craig:** You were in the middle of Season 1, right.

**Alec:** Chris Evan Welch who played Peter Gregory, brilliant, brilliant actor, unbelievably great guy.

**Craig:** And potentially the reason — I mean, this is the thing, that when I heard the news about that, what killed me was that — and I think we all knew by the time the show started airing, correct?

**Alec:** He died when we were shooting shows five and six of the eight initial shows.

**Craig:** But he didn’t die after the first episode aired on HBO, did he?

**Alec:** No, no. He died while we were filming.

**Craig:** While you were filming.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So we all knew.

**Alec:** There were scenes that we had written for him in the last two episodes of the first season that — and toughest thing I’ve ever had to do as a writer is soon after learning of his death, it was like we got — this train is on the tracks and moving —

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** You know, the show must go on. I had to sit and delete him from these scripts —

**Craig:** Oh, my god.

**Alec:** I mean we loved him, we loved the character, we loved the scenes.

**Craig:** Right. You are part Swedish and, I don’t know, maybe you have a thousandth of the average human’s emotion.

**Alec:** Do I? I can’t find it. I defy you.

**Craig:** If I ever were on a show where the main character died in the middle and I had to do these tragic things like delete their name while I was in mourning and replace them, I would call you.

**Alec:** It was awful, it was really —

**Craig:** Yeah. Even you thought it was awful.

**Alec:** It was grim. No. I was like, I realized in that moment, I’m like, “Oh, this is what it’s like to feel.”

**Craig:** [laughs] At last.

**Alec:** Yeah. No. No wonder —

**Craig:** And then you said, “Ow.”

**Alec:** Yeah. No wonder my wife gets so down. Like if this is what it’s like, god.

**Craig:** She’s like this every day.

**Alec:** Yeah, man.

**Craig:** But he was potentially the reason to watch that show.

**Alec:** He was amazing. Amazing. He was the guy who every time you shot with him —

**Craig:** Something happened, right?

**Alec:** For the next day or two, everybody like, you know, at craft service was like mimicking his delivery and his lines and it was like —

**Craig:** It was a kind of an impossible creation because it doesn’t seem like you can do anything truly new in that space, in a performance space like that. All you can do is versions of things. I had never seen anything like that in my life.

**Alec:** He was brilliant. And what was amazing about it is it was completely farcical and insanely broad but at the same time 100% real.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** Like you believed everything he did was a real human, a very strange —

**Craig:** Very strange but internally —

**Alec:** But very particular human being.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** But everything was real. And that was his brilliance. Like there was not a phony beat to anything he did.

**Craig:** No. It was all consistent to his character. You know, when he called the hamburger buns breadings, I believed it 100%. And these breadings have sesame seeds, these breadings do not.

**Alec:** Yeah. And, you know, have you been to Burger King.

**Craig:** Yeah. Burger King.

**Alec:** Do people like it? Is it enjoyed?

**Craig:** [laughs] Is it enjoyed? And then there’s that thing he did that you made me notice. I mean, I think I would have noticed it anyway, when he has that chance encounter with —

**Alec:** Yeah. Belson, yeah.

**Craig:** With Gavin Belson and the rest —

**Alec:** I think my favorite scene to date that we’ve done on the show.

**Craig:** And instead of saying goodbye, he does like a weird hand —

**Alec:** His wave.

**Craig:** His wave.

**Alec:** It’s very strange, where he has his hand at his side and he kind of brings it up sort of across his chest and lowers it like he knows he’s supposed to wave because someone has told him that moving your hand in a certain way is a human way of communicating farewell. And he knows that he’s supposed to —

**Craig:** Incredible.

**Alec:** But it’s just a fascinating thing.

**Craig:** And the reason I also love —

**Alec:** And that was all him, by the way, like there was no like, “Hey, do a weird wave.” He just did it.

**Craig:** And we’re going to get into that question, too, in a second. But that character, what I also loved about him was I believed all of his behavior, all of his behavioral problems, but I also believed because of the way you guys portrayed him that he actually deserved every cent of his billions of dollars.

**Alec:** This is one of the things that we worked I think probably hardest on in Silicon Valley is that there’s a huge amount of protecting the characters. And we talk about that all the time. We can kick the crap out of Richard a lot —

**Craig:** But he has to be at least —

**Alec:** But you have to believe that he’s good at this because ultimately you want to root for him to succeed. And like when we first started, a lot of people, especially like tech journalists and people in the tech business were like, “Wait, is this just like — are you just like kicking the tar out of us? Like is this just a poison pen letter?”

And the answer was, no, of course not. Like, we’re going to take shots and we’re going to call out, you know, things that we see as ridiculous. But we’re not indicting the tech business because our characters are striving to succeed in that business. And if we’re saying that what they’re striving to do is nonsense, then we’re telling the audience not to root for them to succeed.

**Craig:** Not to root for them, not to care about our show.

**Alec:** Right. So ultimately, what we’re saying is there’s a right way and a wrong way to succeed in the business, you know. But we’re not saying that success in that business means that you’re a bad person or is a bad thing because then the audience is going to go, “Well, why am I rooting for somebody to get to something that I know is bad?”

**Craig:** It’s odd to me that the tech community missed the subtle cues of what you were presenting there. But nonetheless, I think you guys do a great job of that. And, you know, particularly good job with him because he did seem like if you pushed him even three or four more millimeters one way or the other that I would just stop believing that he had actually earned all that money. Whereas a guy like Gavin Belson, I think of as somebody who actually probably can’t do much but was a very aggressive businessman.

**Alec:** Of course. No, I mean look, we play with that a lot, too. Like, we can’t render Gavin as a complete buffoon because he needs to be formidable.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Right? We need a real enemy. We need a real heavy that Richard has to actually battle and those battles have to be real and hard. And if Gavin is just a buffoon —

**Craig:** Well, you look at him as this incredibly — he is like a Steve Ballmer kind of guy, like I don’t think of Steve Ballmer as a big tech head, but I think of him as a corporate bully.

**Alec:** Yeah, but oddly, most CEOs are not engineers.

**Craig:** That’s right, exactly. Gates was — Jobs really wasn’t —

**Alec:** Well, we did a joke in the pilot about that, right, where Richard sort of, you know, raises his nose at Jobs, right, because Jobs didn’t even write code, right?

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Alec:** And it is a funny like engineers versus management thing.

**Craig:** 100%.

**Alec:** It was like Jobs versus Woz. You know there is a yin and yang. Where engineers traditionally don’t make great CEOs because they’re so in their heads.

**Craig:** Exactly, and so that’s what’s interesting that that’s the story that you’ve set up now for Season 3.

**Alec:** Yes. But we have to have that conversation about protecting all of the characters. Like Gilfoyle and Dinesh giving Jared crap is something where it’s fun to watch, but we have to be very careful about making Gilfoyle and Dinesh too mean because it’s just like once they’re just slapping a baby, it’s like you hate them for that. And so it’s like you like them beating him up, but we have to be very careful about how far we go.

And it’s funny, we always talk about — Mike and I have kind of come up with this thing that we call the Price is Right school of comedy where it’s better to be significantly under the line than to be even one penny over the line.

**Craig:** One dollar over, exactly.

**Alec:** Right? Like you’d rather be $10 under than $0.01 over.

**Craig:** Well, because nobody really gives you credit for being slightly over the line. Either you are or you’re not.

**Alec:** It is damaging, and sometimes it just destroys everything. And so you’d rather miss under, under, under, under, under than ever miss over.

**Craig:** When you were evaluating this, I mean, because here’s what I think people probably — for people that are writing, they put so much pressure on themselves to get it right. When you’re writing especially this kind of comedy which is truly about generating laughs, you just acknowledge upfront you’re going to blow some things. You have to. There’s no way, you can’t hit home runs if you’re not occasionally whiffing. So there’s I assume this very painful and painstaking process in editing where it’s like, “No, that went too far.”

**Alec:** 100%. No, we do it in the writing process, we do it on the stage when we’re shooting, we pull people back, we, “Okay, go for it. Try it. And if it doesn’t work, you know, we’ll pull it back later.” And yeah, we do a tremendous amount of writing in the edit on the show where there’s a huge amount of lines on people’s backs that we do in ADR, and reconfiguring things.

And, you know, a lot of times if you’re on somebody’s close up and you want to build a pause into that, that pause is not they were pausing when they performed it, there was somebody else off-camera talking. And we take that line out so you build a pause in, like you play with rhythms and —

**Craig:** You know, when it comes to comedy, I wish that there could be some kind of program or something for up and coming comedy writers to watch comedy people edit comedy because that is where you see so much happening. The rescue missions that happen when you’re editing comedy and the tricks, the bag of tricks that are enormous, I mean, especially when you’re doing joke-based comedy and you and I both spend time doing a lot of jokes-based comedy. It’s all about the rhythm and finding, oh, my god, if I need him to just stare and then look briefly to the right, where is that? Find that.

**Alec:** Oh, the number of times like you’ll use a piece of like after you’ve cut —

**Craig:** After you’ve cut.

**Alec:** And somebody says like, “Hey can we do one more?” And the actor will kind of look up to hear who’s off-camera talking to them.

**Craig:** Gold.

**Alec:** You use that piece because it’s like we need something where he turns to his right so that we can cut to that guy and he looks like he’s looking.

**Craig:** Have you ever done one where you played it backwards?

**Alec:** We have. We did it. There was a scene in an episode in the first season where they hired a guy named The Carver and then we shot two scenes and we realized in the edit that those two scenes really should be one scene. And we glued them together. We had a shot of Kumail in the second scene standing up and leaving. And we used that shot played in reverse so that at the end of the first scene, we cut to a shot of Kumail sitting into his chair which was actually a shot of him standing up from the second scene.

**Craig:** This is the epitome —

**Alec:** And you put some footsteps in, so you hear him enter.

**Craig:** These are the tricks.

**Alec:** Right. So when you’re watching the show, you go, “Somebody’s walking into the room.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** And then you caught to Kumail sitting. You go, “Oh, that was Kumail who walked in.” And then the second scene starts.

**Craig:** Kumail does act ambidextrously. I mean, the reputation that he has is like —

**Alec:** You can’t tell.

**Craig:** You can’t tell. Even when he’s walking forward, if you play him backwards, it seems natural.

**Alec:** It’s his gift. He walks forward backwards.

**Craig:** He walks forward backwards. He’s incredible.

**Alec:** He’s a talent.

**Craig:** By the way, I mean like I’ve told you many, many times, if all the show were Gilfoyle and Dinesh talking, I would watch it. I would. I know I would.

**Alec:** But see, here’s all I will say. And those guys are brilliant, super, super funny. I respect the hell out of them. But —

**Craig:** Throw them under the bus.

**Alec:** But the fact is, this is an ensemble show. And the reason that you want to watch those guys all day every day —

**Craig:** Of course. You’re right.

**Alec:** Is that they’re part of a bigger machine that works.

**Craig:** You can’t eat dessert all day. I get it.

**Alec:** Right.

**Craig:** I get it. And it’s true. And —

**Alec:** But it’s great that people think that. Like people want the Erlich show, people want the Jared show, people want the Dinesh and Gilfoyle show.

**Craig:** That means you’re doing it right.

**Alec:** Right.

**Craig:** It’s interesting. I saw an interview with those guys and they said something that made me so happy because whenever actors are being interviewed for junkets and things, somebody inevitably, in comedy always, will say, “How much of this is improv?” And the actors will always give one answer and the writers will always give another. It’s just hysterical.

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** “Yes, you know, they let us kind of do, you know, obviously there’s the script and, you know, then they kind of — we find stuff in the moment.” And the writer answers always like, “Less than you think. Less than you think.”

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] “Ever here and there.” And what I find fascinating about you guys is that you guys switched. In this interview, the actors are all like, “No, the scripts are really tightly put together, so we stick to them.” But when I talk to you, you’re like, you know, you’ll say like Zach Woods is an incredible improv artist and that Kumail and —

**Alec:** They’re all super nimble and yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, and that they go on these incredible runs and that there is improv in the show. So is it just that you guys are all incredibly humble or is the answer sort of somewhere in the middle?

**Alec:** I think that we’ve just found a balance. And I’ve worked on shows where the writers are very sort of hostile about the cast and the cast are very hostile about the writers and there is a lot of like, “Oh, you want me to go out there and say this? I’m going to look like an idiot.” And that there’s this animosity and there really is this cliquishness where like the writers are mad that the actors are tanking their jokes. And the actors are mad that the writers are giving this garbage. It’s exactly the opposite on this show. I just think that it is a special show in that regard that I think the actors have tremendous respect for the writing and we all have tremendous respect for them as performers. And it’s just a good —

**Craig:** It’s a good mix.

**Alec:** It’s a good ecosystem. And I credit Mike Judge for that as well, like he’s just a super laid back guy. He was a musician and you can tell from the way he writes and the way he directs that it’s all done by ear. It’s not “I have rules and I’m going to, no, this is the way I shoot.”

**Craig:** He feels it.

**Alec:** “I have a style.” He just listens. And if it sounds right, it works. And if it doesn’t sound right, he wants to adjust.

**Craig:** And so, heading into Season 3, I assume now at last, right? So, okay, first season’s whatever.

**Alec:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** Second season, very scary. I mean, what are we going to do?

**Alec:** Sure.

**Craig:** We lost a key cast member and I was so worried. But then we put together a really good season. So now you’re comfortable and happy and perfectly ready for Season 3 knowing that nothing can go wrong.

**Alec:** Of course.

**Craig:** And by the way, here’s the gun, here’s how it works.

**Alec:** Yes, right.

**Craig:** Now, answer the question. Yeah. [laughs]

**Alec:** I see what you’re doing. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, what do you think?

**Alec:** You’re [crosstalk].

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

**Alec:** Look, I feel like, like I said, there was a freedom to Season 1 that, you know, I think in the moment, I was terrified because, “What is this? We have to make a show out of this. How do we do that?” Look, this applies to everything. I feel like I wish that I could figure out a way to enjoy anything that I’m doing in the moment.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** I enjoy an enormous amount of what I do retroactively.

**Craig:** Like this for instance.

**Alec:** Right. Yes.

**Craig:** You will later look back at this.

**Alec:** Like, right now, this is awful. And at a certain point, I might look back after I realized that this led to the freedom of not having to work again where I’ll go, “Oh, that was good.”

**Craig:** This was the moment.

**Alec:** Yeah. That was pink slip moment. But, virtually, nothing that I do, like during any of it, during the writing process, during the directing, during the editing, if you said to me, “Are you having fun right now?” The answer, 100% of the time, is no.

**Craig:** Is no. So, you’re looking forward to more of that?

**Alec:** “But did you enjoy doing that?” I did. Tremendously. “Did you enjoy that thing?” I enjoyed having done things.

**Craig:** In the past. Right.

**Alec:** Yes, of course.

**Craig:** So, you appreciate the past.

**Alec:** Right.

**Craig:** The present is misery.

**Alec:** I wish I were better because there have been an enormous amount of things that I’ve done that I look back at and I go, “That was awesome that I got to do that. That was an amazing thing that I was allowed to do.”

**Craig:** “But while I was doing it, I hated it.”

**Alec:** “I wish, in the moment, I had been able to relax and have more fun doing it.”

**Craig:** I mean, let’s —

**Alec:** I can’t. I can’t.

**Craig:** Let’s end with this.

**Alec:** Pow!

**Craig:** [laughs] That was Alec Berg in his last interview.

**Alec:** Beep.

**Craig:** [laughs] Reporting live from the Sonoma County Coroner’s Office. Do you think it’s possible, when you say you can’t, if you at least intellectually acknowledge that you’ve worried in all of the moments, some of the results have been good and some have been bad.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Therefore, we can take that variable out. The worrying isn’t what makes the work good. Can you at least then say, “Well, why don’t I just stop worrying since it’s having no effect?”

**Alec:** But, see, I feel like you’ve made a spurious leap of logic there.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Alec:** Which is I believe, unfortunately, that the worrying is what makes the work good. That being so terrified of caulking it up —

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Is what makes me reexamine and reexamine and shred and tear apart and rebuild and —

**Craig:** Okay. But let me —

**Alec:** And if I’m ever enjoying this machine that I’m building in the moment and going, “This works great,” then I’m not scrutinizing it to the point where I’m going to make it work as well as it can.

**Craig:** But I think you’re confounding joy with satisfaction. In other words, you can enjoy the process while saying, “Well, it’s not good enough but it will get better.”

**Alec:** Except that I believe that my motivation to really push and work hard —

**Craig:** Is dread.

**Alec:** I’m not a person who runs to something. I’m not running to quality. I’m running from failure.

**Craig:** Okay, running away. Well, it’s Woody Allen’s thing, you know, that his big goal when they asked him, “What are you always trying to achieve when you make a movie?” And he said, “To not embarrass myself.”

**Alec:** Yeah. And that’s it. That is the sole drive. And I know you would think having done this the way I’ve done it and having worked on the things I’ve worked on, that worked the way a lot of them worked, that at a certain point I would go, “At this point, having done this 20 plus years, I kind of know what I’m doing.” I don’t feel like that at all. I feel like I know less now about how to do it than I did when I started. What I know is I think I have a better idea of what doesn’t work.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** So, I can look at something that 20 years ago I might have looked at something and I might have said, “Yeah, I think that’s pretty good.” Now, I’ll look at it and go, “This doesn’t work, and here are 50 reasons why. That’s no good. This is no good. That guy shouldn’t be this way, that guy shouldn’t be this way, she shouldn’t be talking like that.”

**Craig:** Suddenly, the channel for success becomes incredibly narrow.

**Alec:** Yes. But I don’t know any better now how to make things work.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** I just am much better at identifying flaws.

**Craig:** You just see all the mines in the field.

**Alec:** Right.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** So, it gets harder and harder as I do it. Not easier and easier.

**Craig:** Well, there is one way out, Alec.

**Alec:** Yeah. No, I think we’ve come to that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Here, let me show you how this works. [laughs] And take that. No, no, don’t touch that yet.

**Alec:** What’s this X here?

**Craig:** That, you want to push that down.

**Alec:** Orange dot. What do I do with that?

**Craig:** The orange dot you want to be looking at directly or taste it.

**Alec:** Oh, that’s right.

**Craig:** Well, Alec, a tremendously insightful conversation. I, like you, am soaking in misery all the time. I share this with our listeners constantly.

**Alec:** Yes. But that’s the job.

**Craig:** It’s kind of the gig. It’s part of what we do. I try as best I can now to find little bits of joy.

**Alec:** Yes. It’s funny, we always used to have this running joke that there’s not a funny comedian on earth with washboard abs. And the reason is, once you take the time to focus on yourself and take yourself seriously enough to sculpt your body like that —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alec:** You’re taking yourself seriously.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Alec:** And you’re not kicking the tar out of yourself and you’re not going to be as funny as you can be. And I sort of have just embraced that.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Alec:** At a certain point, I’m sorry for all the misery that I caused my wife and every time I come home and I say, “This show is not good. You don’t understand,” I know I said it wasn’t good before, this time —

**Craig:** That you’ve been saying this to me, I mean, like, you were really worried about this season.

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** Really worried.

**Alec:** Desperately worried. I was convinced that it was a colossal — like we had just driven it right into a cliff.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** I swear to you, it’s not a —

**Craig:** It’s not false —

**Alec:** I need approbation, somebody telling me how good I am. It’s really not. I was genuinely 100% convinced that Season 2 was a disaster.

**Craig:** When you said that to me, it wasn’t like I thought to myself, “Oh, no, no. There’s something I can tell him that will make him feel good.” I thought, “He’s giving me something as he sees it as a fact.”

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** I’m not going to tell him that his, you know, dead cat is really alive by shaking it in the air.

**Alec:** Yes.

**Craig:** And I understood, by the way, exactly where you were coming from. Exactly. Because it’s a very hard thing to do. I mean, it’s essentially a sequel. Every season is a sequel. And you’re always on the horns of, “I want to be different but I don’t want to be so different that it’s — ”

**Alec:** Both.

**Craig:** We have to kind of the same, we have —

**Alec:** It’s like releasing albums. I think like every band, you know, like, there are AC/DCs who just make the same album over and over and over again. And they’re great.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Right?

**Craig:** And that’s what their fans want.

**Alec:** Right. There’s Madonnas who, like, “Oh, now, she’s this woman. And now, she’s the Marilyn Monroe lookalike, and now she’s Vogueing,” and there are people who can reinvent themselves and each version is good.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alec:** Right? And then there are bands that, you know, they do an album or two and then they put something out and you go, well, I don’t want this. It’s over.”

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s over. You’re done. Here’s your gun, go ahead.

**Alec:** Yeah. Yeah, they are the one-hit wonders.

**Craig:** No, I got actually why you were so upset or concerned, really.

**Alec:** Yeah. Terrified.

**Craig:** But what I know about your show is that the characters are so strong. And I think that no matter what you do plot-wise — because here’s the truth, if you were to say to me, “Figure out the Season 3 plot line,” I think I could sit and come up with a plot line, sure. Would I care about it? I wouldn’t care about the plot line as much as I would care about the characters as they moved through it. To me, that’s the heart of television. The true heart of television is the characters.

**Alec:** Everything is so interdependent that I’d think you care about the characters because the characters care about executing certain things. And that’s the plot.

**Craig:** Yes. But I will tell you as just — this is my experience of the show. I was not worried that they were going to lose their company. And here’s why. Either they were going to lose their company and then I was excited to see what those characters would do, or they were going to get their company and I was excited to see what those characters would do. The dilemma and the building the case — by the way, the lawyer, I mean, just an amazing performance. It was a great, great performance.

**Alec:** Oh, Matt McCoy?

**Craig:** Matt McCoy.

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just crushed it.

**Alec:** Unbelievable.

**Craig:** That’s another great lesson, by the way, is those little characters have to be like your best characters you know. Just your best characters in their own quiet way.

**Alec:** Yeah. And he was so freakishly good. So great.

**Craig:** So good, so good. Anyway, I wasn’t worried. I’m not worried for Season 3 either, although you probably will fail this time.

**Alec:** Oh, we just started writing a couple of weeks ago and I’m already — I just go, “That’s it. It’s over.”

**Craig:** Actually, this time I believe you.

**Alec:** We had a good run.

**Craig:** Yeah — not even — two seasons is not a good run. [laughs]

**Alec:** Eighteen episodes, that’s a lot.

**Craig:** In Britain. [laughs] I mean, come on, man.

**Alec:** We had a good run.

**Craig:** No, this is going to be one of those like, “What happened?”

**Alec:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “Did you ever watch Silicon Valley?” “No. Should I?” “Well, only the first two seasons. Only the first two seasons. Don’t go after that.”

**Alec:** By the way, you’re channeling — this is my internal monologue.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wonder how I know what that sounds like.

**Alec:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Ladies and gentlemen, Alec Berg. Thank you very much for joining us.

**Alec:** Thank you for having me. This was fun.

**Craig:** And we’ll do it again. We’ll get you on live with John.

**Alec:** Would love to, yeah.

**Craig:** So you can face his withering questions.

**Alec:** Bring it on.

**Craig:** All right, that was Alec Berg and now back to the regular show.

**John:** So, Craig, that was your interview with Alec Berg which I did not hear a bit of, but I assume that you got all the answers out of him, that he’s not bleeding too hard, that there are not any marks that cannot be healed with time or with plastic surgery.

**Craig:** Not only that, but I fully expect a Pulitzer for — I mean, truly one of the great coops of journalism right there.

**John:** It was basically Frost/Nixon but in a podcast form.

**Craig:** It was. It was Frost/Nixon except important.

**John:** Yes. [laughs] Let’s talk about our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing this week is a video that was sent around because the subway, the purple line of the Los Angeles subway is being constructed very, very close to my house. I will be near one of the new subway stops. And so they sent through all this information about the street closures and everything else they have to do to make this subway happen. It’ll be open in like in 2020, so it’s quite a ways off.

The coolest thing they sent was this video that describes and shows how the subway boring machine works, how they actually create the tunnels. And it is so different than you would think. I had a hard time believing that such a robot existed. It felt like something of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, that we’re actually able to build this thing that can bore and also take all the ore and transport it back.

It was so amazing that I immediately want to set a movie inside a subway digging construction. So it’s a 15-minute video I’m going to send you from a German subway boring tunnel machine. And I think you will find it fascinating.

**Craig:** That is such a boring machine. You know who drives the boring machine? Arkham Knight. Are you playing Arkham Knight?

**John:** I’m not playing Arkham Knight. Is Arkham Knight great?

**Craig:** It’s the greatest and the Arkham Knight who is not Batman. That’s the whole question is, who is the Arkham Knight? I know. He drives a boring machine at one point.

**John:** I think that’s great. You know, the villain at the very end of the Incredibles is the Underminer. Perhaps he is the boring knight.

**Craig:** He is the boring knight.

**John:** Arkham Knight, is it a open sandbox or is it a strict sort of campaign storyline?

**Craig:** Yeah, if you’ve played the other Arkham games, it’s essentially the same thing. You’re in a general sandbox area but your missions are on rails. It’s Arkham. It’s very, very good. It’s very, very good. But that’s not my One Cool Thing this week.

My One Cool Thing this week is “Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle”. And when I say One Cool Thing, I mean one kind of cool thing because the truth is, Rex is not cool at all. [laughs] He’s not cool. Rex Parker is a man named Michael Sharp. He is a professor I think at — I want to say SUNY Binghamton. I’m guessing on that one, I think.

But what’s interesting about Rex is that he runs a blog, “Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle”. He does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle every single day. And then he puts the solution on his blog and then analyzes and critiques the puzzle.

And what’s fascinating is, because I do the puzzle every day, and it’s like, if there were no film critics in the world, if nobody reviewed movies at all, that wasn’t even a thing, except for one guy, one guy did it, that’s kind of what this is like. He’s the only crossword critic I think that exists.

And amazingly, even though he’s the only one, he is incredibly typical for critics. He’s just cranky as hell. He hates most of the puzzles that he does, so of course you’re left thinking, “Why do you do them every day?”

He hates about 90% of them. That’s just my unscientific tally from reading his reviews each day. He particularly hates bad fill. Fill is what they call in crosswords — you have your longer theme answers and then Fill are the shorter answers. So, you know, a lot of bad crossword words that people learn, he’s not a big fan of those.

But I do check him out every day after I do the puzzle and it makes me understand how people use movie reviews I think because the way I use his stuff is, I complete the puzzle and then I go over to Rex to see if I’m either angry at him because he’s wrong, or happy with him because he’s right. Either way, I get validation. I get the validation of anger at him because he’s stupid or pleasure with him because he’s smart. It has nothing to do with him. It has everything to do with me. And as it turns out, I agree with him about 50% of the time.

But if you are interested in getting started on the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, you could do worst. At least at his site, you can get the answers pretty quickly and you can see how he constructs his solutions. And to be fair to Michael Sharp who is cranky, cranky, cranky, he’s a very good solver. His solve times are fairly extraordinary. Well, as he says on his website, he is the 9th greatest crossword solver in the universe based on the 2015 Indie 500 Crossword Tournament.

**John:** He sounds like an amazing character, so even though I could not care less about crossword puzzles, I will check out his site just because that persona you’re describing sounds amazing.

**Craig:** It’s kind of great.

**John:** What do you think is his day job?

**Craig:** I know in the day he’s a professor, so I think that his deal is he is — I want to say a professor of English, possibly? Yeah, at SUNY Binghamton, I believe. So he’s an academic.

**John:** Cool. Very nice. I have one last plug. So every Friday this summer, we are going to be putting up some brand new scripts in Weekend Read. Weekend Read is the app that I make for iOS, for iPad and for iPhone.

And so the scripts are only up for the weekend. It’s truly only a weekend read. So if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, there are no scripts up there for you to read because they were only available from Friday until Sunday night. So you just missed out on Josh Freedman’s original script pilot for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, you missed out on Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and a highly recommend Black List script.

So, every Friday, check out Weekend Read because there will be brand new stuff up there all summer long.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel who’s also on vacation on the West Coast. Matthew Chilelli edited our show and did the amazing outro of this week. Our thanks to Alec Berg, our wonderful guest. I hope his wounds heal. Craig, have a great week.

**Craig:** You too, John.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes 200 Episode USB drives are available now!](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Tess Gerritsen on why she is giving up the Gravity lawsuit](http://www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-lawsuit-why-i-am-giving-up/)
* Alec Berg on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Berg), [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0073688/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/realalecberg)
* [The Harvard Lampoon](http://harvardlampoon.com/), and [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harvard_Lampoon)
* [Jeff Schaffer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Schaffer) and [David Mandel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mandel) on Wikipedia
* Silicon Valley on [HBO.com](http://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series))
* [Christopher Evan Welch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Evan_Welch)
* [Crenshaw/LAX Tunnel Boring Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLbkiTnRw5qna2lET4HkTFbIQ8EXEAoZhT&v=iN_bnsFrGBA)
* [Batman: Arkham Knight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_Arkham_Knight)
* [Rex Parker Does The NY Times Crossword Puzzle](http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/)
* [Check out Featured Fridays](http://johnaugust.com/2015/weekend-read-featured-fridays) on [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/everyman-vs-superman).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode has Three Page Challenges in it that use some F-words, so if you’re listening to this in the car, there’s a very good chance we will end up using some of those F-words in the podcast. So, just standard issue warning for explicit language. Thanks.

Hello, and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Episode 202 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, I’m in Vancouver Canada. You’re in La Cañada. So, in some ways we are straddling the border, but also in the same semantic space.

**Craig:** Yeah. La Cañada is the sister city to all of Canada. I love Vancouver.

**John:** One tiny little village in California. One giant country that is very close to the US border.

**Craig:** It’s massive. What are you doing up there?

**John:** Just vacation. Just a week’s vacation.

**Craig:** Ooh, I like it.

**John:** We picked one of the weeks of the year in which Vancouver is absolutely stunningly beautiful and sunny and it’s been terrific. So, I tweeted and you probably saw this tweet. I jumped off a bridge, which was quite fun.

**Craig:** Yeah. I saw it and I think you’re out of your mind.

**John:** Yes. I am insane, but it was actually tremendously fun. And it was because my whole family, or actually four people in my family decided, hey, let’s do it. And so I said, you know what, that’s a really good idea. We should do it. So even my nine-year-old daughter did it, which was again, questionable parenting if anything had gone wrong. But because everything went really right, it was empowering for her as a young woman who could take charge of her destiny and jump off bridges.

**Craig:** You know, it’s not. It’s not empowering. It’s sick. I don’t understand why you would do it. I don’t understand why she did it. I don’t understand why anyone does that. This bungee jumping thing — anything jumping, bungee jumping, jumping out of a plane, jumping — base —

**John:** Jumping on a trampoline.

**Craig:** Base jumping. Jumping off of a couch. [laughs] But you know, here’s the thing, I do believe that there’s some kind of genetic thing where some people appreciate that feeling of falling and other people hate it. And I’m definitely in the hate it camp.

My daughter is — she loves it. She loves rollercoasters and all that stuff. I can’t. And my son is like me. We can’t. You know, that feeling I’m talking about right?

**John:** Absolutely. It’s that feeling of being completely out of control, but at the same time knowing intellectually that nothing bad can actually happen to me.

**Craig:** I’m not talking about the psychological. I’m talking about the physiological feeling. Do you not get that sensation?

**John:** Oh, I absolutely get that sensation. But also I know that the endorphin rush that happens after is also tremendously great. So, I’m looking past that terrible moment to the great moment.

**Craig:** A couple years ago I was in Florida with my in-laws. We were having dinner and my wife’s grandmother, who is still alive, god bless her. Even though I think she’s 97 now. So she was about 95. We’re all sitting there eating dinner and this topic comes up, the topic of falling and that feeling.

And my mother-in-law said where do you feel that feeling. And I said it’s in the pit of my stomach. And we were all talking about where it was. And then my wife said, Gamma, because that’s what she calls her grandma. “Gamma, where do you feel that feeling?” And she looked up from her baked fish and she said, “In my clitoris.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** It was the greatest moment of my life.

**John:** And I have a suspicion that because of that she enjoyed the feeling of falling. I hope she enjoyed the feeling of falling.

**Craig:** No. [laughs] She wasn’t actually a big fan of it. No, because not all clitoris feelings are good feelings. There’s good clitoris and bad clitoris, I guess. But when a 95-year-old woman refers to her clitoris in any context, it’s spectacular.

**John:** Craig, we’ve just found a title for this week’s episode. There’s good clitoris and bad clitoris. It won’t be controversial at all.

**Craig:** No, no. Twitter won’t erupt.

**John:** Not a bit. So while the title of today’s episode might be about the clitoris, the actual topics we’ll be discussing today really have nothing to do with female genital health. We’ll be looking at three Three Page Challenges. We’ll be looking at a system for writing your screenplay that must work because the guy gave a Ted Talk. We’ll look at everyday heroes. We’ll look at what happens when a union threatens to sue a filmmaker.

But first, we have follow up. Craig?

**Craig:** Just a touch of follow up. I heard from a couple of writers on Telltale Software’s Game of Thrones app, because that was my One Cool Thing last week. And I did leave one name off, Zach Schiff Abrams who actually ran the writing room early on when they were breaking the story. They were very happy to be called out on the podcast. So, I just wanted to make sure that we acknowledged Zach because he was obviously a big part of the development of that product.

**John:** Craig, I played the first two episodes of it on this trip. I played one on the plane. I played one last night. They really are just phenomenally well done. So, a great recommendation from you, but really just a great experience for anybody who is jonesing for a little bit extra Game of Thrones in their lives.

I really want to make some House Forrester like t-shirts. I want like a House Forrester team shirt because I’m really rooting for the Forresters. And I just feel like more bad things are going to happen to them.

**Craig:** I mean, even Jesus is like, come on. Come on, you’re being a little hard on those people.

**John:** Now, Craig, have you gone back and made different choices along the way? Because for people who didn’t follow the last episode, these Game of Thrones games done by Telltale games, they’re sort of like Choose Your Own Adventure where you get to make choices along the way. They’re more sophisticated than the simple book kind of choices, but you can kind of make some choices that are going to affect the plot, but you also get the chance to rewind and make some different choices if you want to.

Have you just stuck with the original choices, or did you go back and change anything along the way?

**Craig:** I’ve stuck with my original choices. I suspect now that I’ve played through four of these things that it’s really the allusion of choice.

**John:** I think you’re right.

**Craig:** They carry over some things. They’ll say things like, well, you did do blanket-blank. But those things really still are contained within the rails of the story. The big things that happen, you cannot avoid happening.

**John:** I was curious whether the song the girl sings — this is not a spoiler at all — the song the girl sings incorporates some of these specific events that you did or didn’t — it was generic enough, so we’ll see.

**Craig:** No, I think that song actually is a good example of how your choices do impact things, because it’s those areas where they go, okay, we’ll reward you and make you feel like your choices matter. But your choices don’t matter. [laughs] Not really. You’re really just watching TV. You’re just watching a side series of Game of Thrones. That’s the way I feel about it. I think they’ve just done a great job.

**John:** So, while that game may be slightly on rails, this guy has a system that can break you out of your rails. This is a system for writing a screenplay quickly and, Craig, this is your entry to the Workflowy, so tell us about this guy and why we should maybe stop the podcast right now.

**Craig:** Well, someone on Twitter who just likes winding up — I mean, that’s what’s happened now. I get it. People go, “Oh, this will make him crazy.” And they’re right. I’m not complicated. They sent me a link to a website called FAST Screenplay. Fastscreenplay.com. And the gentleman who runs Fastscreenplay.com, Jeff Bollow, gave a Ted Talk, well, it’s a TEDx Talk —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** In Dockland, which I think is —

**John:** It’s Australia.

**Craig:** Australia.

**John:** And so he’s not Australian though. That’s a fascinating thing. I kept waiting for an Australian accent and it never came.

**Craig:** Right. I don’t understand the deal with TEDx. The deal with TEDx is pretty much anybody who can write the word Ted on a banner and stick it behind them gets to give a TEDx talk? I don’t understand any of it. Anyway, I went over to this website and I just got infuriated.

And here’s the thing. So, look, he’s selling a system. It’s the same old come on that we’ve read in a million different ways, in a million different places. He’s got a system to help you write a screenplay. It’s a system to help you write a screenplay that reads fast and eventually if you master his system you can write fast. Obviously, the system is not good enough to get him to sell screenplays for millions of dollars apiece. He would prefer to just take your money. Always interesting.

And you get this lifetime membership. Lifetime membership for a limited time only, $600. What?! And that regular price is $1,300. But, you know, it’s a special right now because it’s celebrating the release of his Ted Talk. But here’s the thing, all right, so whatever, it’s baloney, of course. I mean, he says things like, “FAST Screenplay is a yearlong step-by-step professional screenplay development system worth over $30,000.” Uh, yeah, if you also get like a Kia with it or —

[laughs] I mean, I don’t — how do you come up with that number? And then he says it’s designed to replace a three-year university program and ten years’ worth of real world, hands-on skills and insights, which as you know are incredibly quantifiable.

It includes over 1 million words of content. Oh boy. That must mean it’s good.

But here’s the thing that really snagged me in my little umbrage gland and started squeezing it. He says, “Please note FAST Screenplay is entirely not-for-profit. Every dollar that comes in is poured right back into the system, which is why we keep our price so low.” What the hell does that mean?

**John:** It’s fascinating.

**Craig:** So, of course, I immediately went, wait a second. Not-for-profit, that’s not just a phrase. That is a status. That’s a tax status here in the United States. It is an IRS tax status. So, I started looking to see, well, what is this company? Well, according to their website, FAST Screenplay is trademarked and copyright by Embryo Films in Sydney, Australia. Embryo Films seems to be just a — seems to be a for-profit film production company that is turn owed by another media company of some sort.

I see no information indicating that they have any kind of tax exempt status as a non-profit or not-for-profit corporation. But also if it’s not-for-profit, why are you charging anyone anything? Why don’t you just put it out there?

**John:** There’s a subtle distinction between not-for-profit and unprofitable. And there are many businesses that are unprofitable, but not actually not-for-profit. It’s an important distinction that seems to be really swept under the rug here.

I found the site and his whole video kind of fascinating. And I had to sort of keep skimming through the video because it was just so empty and vacuous and it’s just like a bunch of buzz words strung together in a way that had the qualities of human speech without actually having any content.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And the site is very much the same thing, too. But, honestly, you could switch out the word screenplay for almost anything else on any page and it could be about like investing in real estate, or how to do almost anything. So, it felt like there was a template kind of behind the whole thing.

That said, I thought it was all really well executed template stuff. And so I found myself sort of fascinated and repulsed by him as an individual and what he was trying to do. And as a character I found him kind of fascinating. As a person who is trying to take money from screenwriters, I found him, of course, just to be horrible.

**Craig:** Yeah. And this is a new twist on the generic horribleness of these sorts of people and these sorts of ventures. And it’s the, oh, we’re not-for-profit. Does that mean — do they pay themselves salaries? Like what do they do with all of this money if they’re not for profit? Is it to run this website? That can’t cost that much. I mean, each person is giving them hundreds of dollars, even if you just go month-to-month, which is an option.

A three-month subscription is $300. That’s their minimum, as far as I can tell on their website. So, everyone is giving them somewhere between $300 to $1,300. What are they doing with all that money?

Are they paying themselves salaries and so that’s why it’s not-for-profit? None of this makes any sense. I don’t know what this sentence means. “Every dollar that comes in is poured right back into the system.” What?

**John:** Well he says very clearly, “Our goal is not to make money off writers. It’s to generate screenplays which we can turn into films and lift the overall quality of screenwriting to empower individual voices and visions around the world.” Parenthetical, it’s the “variety of imagination that expands our thinking.”

**Craig:** What the hell does that mean?

**John:** I don’t know what it means. But I found it all kind of just amazing, as if some sort of bizarre AB tested kind of system developed the perfect like I’m going to get money off of screenwriters system.

**Craig:** I think you’re actually onto something. This really does feel like a brilliant application of a standard get rich quick template. That you could plug in real estate or investment or work from home or penis enlargement, or any of these things, and lay it out like this and it would work.

I’m just baffled.

**John:** So, here is why — I’m trying to always play my devil’s advocate. Like, well, what if he really is sincere, and what if he truly believes what he’s saying. And on some level he might truly believe what he’s saying. But if his overall goal is to improve the lot of writers and to do the things he’s saying in these dreamy kind of speeches, there are many other ways to do that. And there are many sources he should be looking for those screenplays rather than trying to create a new class of brilliant screenwriters from scratch.

That’s the part that feels so incredibly disingenuous. He’s saying like, oh, I searched throughout Australia and could not find any good screenplays, so I must now make more screenwriters. That I just don’t believe on any level.

**Craig:** Yeah, I know. If he doesn’t care about profit and he wants to help screenwriters and he has this brilliant system that will transform you into a genius, just publish it on the web for free.

**John:** That would be great. You could either do that, or you could fund the very needy Australian screenwriters who have things they want to make, and they cannot make them in Australia because it’s challenging to make films in Australia. That would be another great way to do that.

**Craig:** I just — I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m tired.

**John:** Let’s switch to a happier topic. This is another great suggestion from Craig Mazin. It’s an article by Jordan Crucchiola called Bring Back Everyday Heroes. It ran in Wired Magazine. And it’s talking about the nature of heroes in our movies and how they have literally gotten bigger. And as the movies have gotten bigger, literally the men in these movies have gotten so much bigger in a way that is strange and perhaps dangerous. Craig, take it.

**Craig:** Well, every now and then you come across an article that says something that you think is immediately obvious and yet no one has pointed it out yet in this kind of way. And this was one of those articles. So, Jordan Crucchiola, I’m going to go with the standard Italian pronunciation, I don’t know if that’s right. So, what he says basically is that we used to have a certain kind of American action hero, a male American action hero who at least physically was roughly like the average guy.

He uses the example of Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China. Kurt Russell, he’s in decent shape. You know, he’s not overweight, but maybe he had gone to the gym a bit. There’s not a ton of muscles there. And that’s kind of the point. But now he says take a look at the evolution of Hugh Jackman from the first X-Men movie, where he played Wolverine, to now. And it’s astonishing.

I mean, truly astonishing. It’s like looking at the before and after pictures of Barry Bonds when he was playing as a rookie for the Pirates and he looked like he was basically 170 pounds soaking wet. And then eventually after all the ‘roids and the HGH, he was like the Incredible Hulk. It’s a very similar thing when you look at Hugh Jackman’s body. And I don’t know if there’s any kind of chemical shenanigans. I just think it’s insane amount of working out.

And what he says, at least the point he’s making, is this isn’t just a superficial issue. It’s actually affecting stories, and that’s what really fascinated me because the truth is when an actor has a certain physicality it limits or it certainly influences the choices you make about that character.

**John:** Exactly. So, a lot of times you’ll be writing a character who is supposed to be like the ordinary guy next door. So, an ordinary man forced into extraordinary circumstances. But the Rock isn’t an ordinary person. He is sort of by definition special from the very beginning. And the characters who we are seeing in these kinds of movies these days are these just larger than life and sort of impossible people. So, you don’t have the Kurt Russells as your action heroes. You don’t even have the Keanu Reeves as action heroes. You have these super human gods.

He does single out like some movies really call for gods. So you look at Captain America, well I mean he’s Chris Evans because he’s supposed to be this sort of larger than life character. He’s like this ordinary man who got transformed. That’s great. Or you have Thor. And Thor is supposed to be a god. Great. Chris Hemsworth is perfect for that.

But you have these other people that are supposed to be just kind of normal folks. You end up casting the Rock in it, suddenly you have to change the backstory to make some reason why that person is in this movie right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, here’s what I think silently goes on when I see a character who is just an amazing physical specimen. A certain amount of drama is immediately diminished. Here are some things that I think can’t be true about that character. They can’t be lazy. They can’t be unmotivated. They can’t be undisciplined. They can’t be depressed. They can’t be resigned to life. They can’t even be uncool, because it’s essentially impossible to become that freaking awesome if you’re held back in all of these other ways. And so you start to lose dimensions of that character. You also start to lose a certain amount of risk.

So, when you look at The Terminator, obviously Arnold Schwarzenegger is supposed to be massive because he’s this possible robot. But playing against him you had Michael Biehn who basically was like a 165 pound guy.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And that made it better, you know. I mean, you don’t want — and eventually you could see how those movies then turned into bigger against bigger. You know, we had what you’d call great everyday heroes. Harrison Ford, who kind of elevated fear as the epitome of heroism. All of his characters were always afraid. And that made them more believable. Charles Bronson was skinny but super angry, which I thought was really cool. Steve McQueen sort of embodied whatever the non-physical dimensions of a classic masculinity are. And then you had Sean Connery who was all about charm and confidence instead of brawn.

You see the difference between Sean Connery’s body and Daniel Craig’s body. It’s not even close.

**John:** Absolutely. You look at Harrison in Indiana Jones. Now we would make Indiana Jones with Chris Pratt who has also transformed from schlubby guy into super-hot guy and sort of action star big muscle guy. And that changes the nature of that character.

Now, it would be a question of when Chris Pratt plays that character, is he going to keep this new Chris Pratt body, or is he going to go back to an ordinary size? I don’t know. But it does change our approach to that character if he’s already the biggest guy in the room.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I mean, is this the worst thing in the world? No. There’s still actors that portray a kind of an everyman sense. But there is a dark side to this. For every article about the latest fashion for women or the latest fad diet for women, there are three articles saying this is not good for women and for girls.

But these things that are happening now in movies I think are probably also not good for boys and for men. And there’s some interesting — I started looking around, some interesting statistics. Over the last three decades, the percentage of men that said they had body image concerns has gone from 15% to 43%, which is a rate comparable to those currently found in women.

And when you look at what they call the muscularity of ideal male body representations, from 1979 to the 1990s it went way high. And is currently still way, way up there. I think it’s not great for boys to look up to the heroes and see these absolutely impossible to achieve bodies. I mean, they’re not impossible to achieve. Well, from where I’m sitting they are.

**John:** So, here we’re taking a look at how male heroes have become sort of giant and larger than life. In many ways I’d say that women in movies have always been sort of these impossible to achieve ideals. They’re always like they’re a great cook and yet they’re hot in the sack and they’re stunningly beautiful and they can do all these things. Women are always supposed to be perfect.

And in some ways we’re maybe falling into the same trap with our male characters where what you said before, if that guy is that ripped he can’t be lazy. By his nature he couldn’t be sort of the slack off. I just worry that we’re going to end up with these characters who are so perfect from the beginning that they’re not going to have any journey to go on.

You know, you look at Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. We talked about Michael Biehn, but Linda Hamilton in the first Terminator, she’s just an ordinary woman. She’s not — there’s nothing special about her. She’s a waitress. And then because she’s ordinary, she’s really fragile. And then in the second movie she can become hardened and tough because of the events of the first movie. And she can be ripped in that movie and that was a great transformation. That was a change.

Now, I just worry that she’s going to have to be sort of jacked from the very start and that’s not the same kind of movie. That’s not the same kind of experience.

**Craig:** I agree. It’s a little bit of the superhero-ization of human characters. I think for a lot of these actors, they realize that in Hollywood today the apex of our business and the apex of how you are employed as an actor is to be a very popular superhero. And so you have to have a certain kind of body.

And the problem is that you have that body while you’re making that movie and other movies. And you can’t stop, because there’s going to be four action man movies and you have to be jacked up for all four. So, looks like when you’re doing the other movies in between, you’re going to also have to be jacked up. And that’s becoming an issue.

**John:** It’s limiting the kinds of movies you can make. I was trying to think of some movies that wouldn’t be possible to make because we don’t have the right people anymore. Like kind of any movie that Burt Reynolds was in. You know, you don’t make Smokey and the Bandit kind of because I don’t know who we stick in Smokey and the Bandit who is that sort of — maybe you just go with like the guy who stayed schlubby. Maybe go with like a Josh Gad kind of character because there’s just no other choice to make that.

Or the counter example, you look at Melissa McCarthy in Spy this last weekend, a huge hit. And maybe that was in some ways a reaction to everything we’ve been forced by like what a hero is supposed to look like. And that’s maybe the reason why Melissa has become this force in popular culture is because she’s not representing all those other ideals.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I mean, she is one of the few women onscreen that represents that what a good third or more of American women actually look like and are ignored. And whereas no men are ignored. I mean, there’s an actor I can look at for every male body type onscreen, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep an eye on — it’s like well what we did to women and what we’ve always done to women onscreen is wrong, and now we’re starting to do it to guys.

So, how about we don’t do it to either men or women. [laughs] That would be nice, right? There is one interesting thing I noted was the casting of Paul Rudd as Ant Man which reminded me very much of when they cast Michael Keaton as Batman. And I thought, oh, you know, yeah. Like, that’s a regular person. Like the whole point of a superhero movie is that you are wearing a suit that makes you awesome, or that you have some sort of particular kind of training or attitude that makes you awesome. You don’t necessarily need to be massively jacked up. You can be a little bit more representative of a wish fulfillment.

**John:** I would say if you look at the Iron Man movies as they tracked across, I think they’ve focused much less and less on Robert Downey, Jr.’s physical health over the course of them. You know, you don’t shirtless shots of Robert Downey Jr. anymore. And maybe that’s great. Maybe that’s okay.

But, again, that’s a character who has a suit of armor, so therefore doesn’t have to be, I don’t know, doesn’t have to be ripped and doesn’t have to rely on his own physicality. And it would be great to see more movies with heroes who are relying on their physicality and its ordinary person physicality rather than sort of super seven days at the gym physicality.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m with you on that one.

**John:** So, how do we fix this, Craig? We can’t just point out the problem without correcting the problem.

**Craig:** I think that these problems are always fixed the same way. A hit movie comes out that shoes a different possibility. So, every movie Melissa McCarthy makes is that movie right now. I mean, she has failed to fail. From Bridesmaids through to Spy, every movie she’s starred in has been a hit. Every single one. And she has this extraordinary fan base that is very broad and very deep and that’s a testament to her. And I think that’s opening a lot of eyes. That’s the way Hollywood works. They just respect money. They don’t actually have any real belief system. I think people think they do.

They don’t. Their only belief system is what will put money in my pocket. So, I’m hoping — I’m actually rooting for Ant Man. I was really rooting for it when I knew that Edgar Wright was doing it, but I’m still going to give this one its fair shot because it does seem like an everyman kind of deal. That’s the only thing that’s going to help.

**John:** I agree. And I think as we find heroes who aren’t the classic — the sort of new ideal of this sort of Superman thing, we just need to sort of point that out and make sure that people are aware that this is a good thing that we’re doing this.

The upcoming Fantastic Four, Miles Teller is in that. And Miles Teller isn’t a giant, ripped guy. Maybe that will work, and maybe that will be another sort of indication that there’s not just one type of person we stick in these kinds of movies. We’ll see.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think the better test are the guys like the Wolverines. Because, you know, Mr. Fantastic is supposed to be like a slender, stretchy kind of guy. It’s the brawlers, you know. The Kurt Russell used to kick butt and he didn’t need to be massive.

**John:** Where is our Roadhouse going to come from?

**Craig:** Exactly. Although he was really cut in that movie.

**John:** It’s tough. So, while we’re figuring out who should star in the next Roadhouse, Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA are working to make sure that we don’t see another aspect of the film industry portrayed. This is a lawsuit. Craig, talk us through this.

**Craig:** Oh boy. What a mess this is. So, a woman named Amy Berg has directed a documentary about the sexual abuse of child actors in Hollywood. The film is called An Open Secret. And it is currently platforming right now. I suspect like most documentaries it will not have a big theatrical life. It will mostly exist on video on demand.

And I have not seen the documentary, although it is about a topic that is sorely needed to be aired out. There is a legitimate issue that’s been going on for years and years about the sexual abuse of child actors. And one of the people that she interviewed was a gentleman named Michael Harrah who is a, or was a, manager of child actors and a former child actor himself who had been a longtime member of the SAG Young Performers Committee which he co-founded in 1975 and chaired from 2001 to 2003.

And when she sat down to interview him at SAG I believe she confronted him with the fact that this guy Joey Coleman, who was a former client of Michael Harrah’s, is accusing him essentially of making advances toward him. Having him sleep in Mr. Harrah’s bed. Mr. Harrah touching him in a way that he did not want. And when — since Michael Harrah apparently acknowledged that he might have done something unwanted. He said in the interview, “That was something unwanted I shouldn’t have done. And there’s no way you can undo that, but it is certainly something I shouldn’t have done.” Yikes.

Okay. Well, that’s not good. But here’s a really ridiculous outcome of this. SAG, feeling somehow like they’re being tarred with this brush because this guy is being presented as somebody who sat on a SAG committee and created a SAG committee, which he did, SAG has now threatened to sue Ms. Berg and is attempting to block her film because they do not want any references to SAG, SAG/AFTRA, or any SAG/AFTRA committees to be included in any portions of the documentary.

Then, they claim they didn’t do that. But they did. This is just terrible behavior by the union in my opinion.

**John:** So, we don’t have any more information about the actual nature of the allegations of the actual abuse way back there. So, this is just us talking about sort of what is the function of a union in sort of threatening a filmmaker for essentially defaming the union or saying anything untoward about the union or making sort of allegations about the union.

You can understand an organization trying to protect itself, but this felt like really tone deaf in terms of what they were trying to do. If you are a union representing actors, you want to embrace the idea of filmmakers tackling difficult subjects and try to sort of come to clarity. You want to sort of publicly state it is our goal to protect all actors. Like that’s the first thing you should probably be doing, rather than sort of coming after saying don’t dare use our logo in your film.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, here’s the deal. From what I understand from this article, Miss Berg’s film does not accuse SAG/AFTRA institutionally of any crime. What she’s saying is that somebody who was a co-founder and member of their committee, the Young Performers Committee, seems to be admitting, at least on tape, to very questionable behavior at best. And at worst, child molestation.

And SAG’s reaction just seems really, really out of whack. And I think sometimes unions do stuff like this because there is a certain amount of paranoia and monomania as a cultural default. They are so used to the fight that they fight with the companies that they go into this defensive stance where anything that is “not good for us” will therefore weaken us at the bargaining table and be bad for actors. Anything. So there is this closing of ranks when bad news arrives and I just think it was a huge mistake, huge mistake. And I would ask anyone over there that’s involved in this decision to think twice, thrice, and quadrice, because this is not what you want to be doing as a union, threatening to sue a director for a film that frankly is getting to the heart of something that’s hurting your members.

**John:** It very much feels like the memo went to the wrong department. And if the memo had gone to the public relations department, they would have had a response to it which would have been maybe the correct response. But instead it goes to the legal department and the legal department does what legal departments do. They respond in legalistic kind of ways. And they don’t necessarily have a good sense of how something will play out in the broader world. And that really feels like what happened here is that if your first instinct is, well, we have to threaten a lawsuit because that’s what we do, that’s not going to necessarily be the right outcome here.

So, again, that speaks to leadership and sort of who you put in charge to sort of make these decisions about how you handle situations that come up.

If I were SAG, if I were running SAG, and lord knows I would never want to run SAG/AFTRA, but if I were running that I would look at this as a really good test case for when bad stuff happens, how are we going to make the decision about who should handle it and the ways we should handle it. And this was just really bungled.

**Craig:** It’s bungled. And I think you’ll see a little bit of what they call the Streisand effect. Where very famously years ago somebody found out where Barbra Streisand lived and put her address and a link to — a Google Earth photo of her home on the Internet on some small unattended corner of the Internet. She found out, went crazy, sued, and suddenly everybody knew where she lived. [laughs] And everybody saw her house. And I think that SAG/AFTRA is just making this so much worse because now when I hear about Miss Berg’s movie I immediately think, oh yeah, that’s the one that SAG/AFTRA is suing her over. That’s crazy.

What a bad decision. Bad decision. Bad. Bad, bad, bad. So, no good SAG/AFTRA. Big mistake.

**John:** All right. Now we get to go to some good things. We get to look at three Three Page Challenges. So, it’s been a while since we’ve done this. God, maybe ten episodes. But if you’re new to the show, every once and awhile we invite our listeners to send in the first three pages of their screenplay or their pilot of a TV show and we look through them on the air.

So, if you would like to look through these pages with us, you can find links to the PDFs at johnaugust.com. Just search for this episode and Stuart will put the links in there. You will also find them on Weekend Read if you are on the iPhone and want to download them on there.

So, we have three of these. Thank you to everybody who submitted them. If you would like to submit your own scripts to be looked at for the Three Page Challenge, just those first three pages can be sent to johnaugust.com/threepage, and that is where you will find instructions for sending us your three pages so that we can look through them on the air.

We get about 100 a week or something, and Stuart has to go through all of them. So, if we don’t get to yours that’s because of just sheer numbers. It’s not because we don’t individually like you or love your writing. Stuart tries to pick a representative sample of what we get in and sometimes the best of what we get in, but sometimes just things that have interesting things to talk about. And I felt like all three of these Three Page Challenges had really interesting things that people can learn from.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, which of these should we hit first?

**Craig:** Well I’m holding Get One Free in my hand by Zach Kaplan.

**John:** Let’s do it. Do you want to — ?

**Craig:** Summarize this?

**John:** Yeah, recap that for us.

**Craig:** All right. I’ll give you a little recap. So, Get One Free, written by Zach Kaplan. It opens on black and a voiceover, a man that we’ll know as Sadler is talking about how even in suicide brand loyalty matters. And then we fade in on a convenience store where Mr. Sadler is buying a pack of cigarettes from a low key paranoid Indian man in his 50s, Barry. And he identifies that his brand is Camel Crush. And then while Barry goes to get his cigarettes, Sadler looks around and imagines different kinds of people and the different kinds of cigarettes that they buy and smoke. And in voiceover comments about how blue collar types smoke Marlboro Reds and sorority girls smoke lights. And housewives smoke Parliaments. And depressed 65-year-old men smoke L&Ms.

And then at last he gets his cigarettes. He goes out into the parking lot, sees four teenager skateboarders, teenage skateboarders around his car. And they ask him if he could buy them some cigarettes. And that’s essentially our three pages.

**John:** Absolutely. So, this reminded me a bit of, because this had the nature of a character who is in the scene and we also had his voiceover through a lot of it, it reminded me a bit of Fight Club in that sense of where you have sort of the narration of the moment in addition to the things happening within the scenes.

If I had a frustration, it’s that while the voiceover felt like it was happening in its own space and was sort of its own movie, the actual action happening onscreen wasn’t that compelling in our first three pages. It was a lot of just standing there, waiting around, looking at things. So, I felt a little under-excited about Sadler, our hero, based on what he was doing. Basically the only information I had was this ongoing voiceover from him and it wasn’t giving me a great sense of who he really was, or why should we be looking for what he does on page four.

That was sort of my first instincts here. The actual writing of the voiceover about sort of the different kinds of cigarettes, sure, I totally get that. But in some ways it felt like it would be a more interesting Tumblr post than a voiceover setup for what we’re seeing right here on the screen.

Craig, what was your instinct?

**Craig:** Similar. I thought that it was — first of all, I’m not one of these people that has a voiceover problem. You know, we hear this all the time, “Don’t start your script with voiceover, blah, blah, blah.”

No, go ahead. It’s good. I like it. I thought it was a mistake to start the voiceover where he did. So, Zach has the voiceover begin over black. That little speech that he does there is disconnected from any visuals so unless it’s something a little epic and poetic and specifically expository like say the beginning of Lord of the Rings, it’s just going to feel a bit of a mistake to hear just that much talking over darkness. Also, it’s not necessarily.

Because we’re going to go back and we’re going to have voiceover in a bit, I’d rather just open with a guy buying a pack of cigarettes. And the man says what kind and he goes, “Oh, I’m sorry Camel Crush.” And then he begins to think about what he just said and about brands. That would be more interesting to me. I would actually just recommend cutting that first chuck of VO.

A little bit of a problem for me, I actually got a lot I thought about who this guy was from his VO. He seems nihilistic. He seems too cool for school. He seems bored with life. He’s got that tone of a person who observes without feeling like he’s part of humanity.

A little bit of a problem is I don’t actually believe what he’s saying here. I don’t believe what he’s saying about these brands. There’s a little bit of a facts not in evidence. He’s telling me that plastic surgery infused housewives in their 40s are all about the Parliaments. Are they?

And if they are, who cares? I mean, there’s a little bit of a who cares factor to that. When he goes outside and these kids ask him to buy them cigarettes, it ends really well. I like this. There’s a certain wit here. The kids ask to buy cigarettes and then they hand him a $5 bill and the kid says, “Here’s five bucks. Wait, haven’t I seen you on TV,” which is interesting. He must have been on TV.

Sadler says, “No. And you can take those five bucks and buy a time machine, because it’s not 19-fucking-95.” And that’s really smart.

So, I think that Zach has a really good sense of how people talk. He’s got an interesting rhythm. I think he’s trying to be cinematic here which is cool. The content may be, I don’t know, I’m interested. I’m curious to see where it goes. This may be the wrong topic for a good writer. Because it feels a little forced, but it may also work out pretty smartly.

**John:** So, I agree with you about the voiceover and that by starting the voiceover over black, it makes it feel like that is the framing for the entire movie. But the voiceover speech is just about the cigarette thing. And I can’t believe that the whole movie is going to be about brands and cigarettes. So, by starting it within the scene I think you’re going to make a stronger case for here’s a guy and now we’re going to hear his voiceover while he’s waiting for his cigarettes. That’s going to probably get us better started on this specific thread of who he is.

Because there is so much voiceover and it feels like this is a thing he’s going to do throughout the script, that it’s not just going to be the situation where there’s some voiceover at the very start and then it goes away for a lot of it, and there’s also going to be situations in which Sadler is going to both be talking within a scene and when he’s going to be voiceover-ing, I would consider putting all of Sadler’s voiceover in italics just to make it really simple and clear to the reader which things are being said to a character and which things are being said just to the audience.

An example is on page three. “The kids turn to him, nervous. ‘Hey man, um…can you buy us a pack?’ ‘Welcome to the team.'” That’s a voiceover and I think it’s great that that’s in voiceover, but it would be very easy to skip over that voiceover little tag because you just become blind to it. So, sticking in italics might help us realize that the moment didn’t stop. We just had a line of voiceover there.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a really good idea. Plus, there is a little bit of a formatting — I’m going to call it a mistake.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** It’s not a killer, but he’s putting VO in a parenthetical where the so-called Riley’s go, like thoughtfully. He’s putting it under the character name. Typically what we do is put a (VO) in parenthesis next to the character name. So, it would say, SADLER (VO) on one line, and then his VO.

**John:** Most people would call that a character extension. So, if it’s a parenthetical, something that’s in parenthesis right after the character’s name, that would usually be voiceover, OS, or OC for off-camera. Sometimes I’ll do that for On-Radio, just to be clear it’s a different kind of speech but it’s not talking about the delivery of the line, or not clarifying sort of the action that’s happening there.

**Craig:** Yeah. Especially in a script where, you’re right, I think your suspicion that there’s going to be a lot voiceover is correct. You’re actually going to save a lot of space.

**John:** Yeah. Helpful.

**Craig:** It’s a ton of lines, yeah, that you’re just wasting there.

**John:** I had a bit of an issue with the shopkeeper. “A low-key paranoid Indian man in his 50s, BARRY, tends to him. Sadler stares at the cigarettes.” So, you call this guy Barry, but is Barry going to keep coming back? Because it felt weird to me that we’re giving this guy such a specific name, a name that doesn’t really fit a 50-year-old Indian man description. And so I have to keep track of these two names. And Barry and Sandler for some reason feel kind of similar.

So, by the time I saw Barry again, I was like, wait, who’s Barry? I had to go back to figure out that it was the shopkeeper. If it’s not an important character, I would maybe just keep him shopkeeper if we’re not going to be circling back to see him again. How did you feel about that?

**Craig:** I agree. There are a couple issues here on Barry. One is that, yeah, you’re right, if he’s not a recurring character, call him Clerk I think would be fine.

I wasn’t quite sure why he was so hostile. It seemed like a pointless hostility unless they have a preexisting relationship which doesn’t appear to be the case, because Barry doesn’t know what his brand is.

Also, if you look at this paragraph, this is something that I see a lot and I would make a suggestion here, Zach. “SADLER, 35, slightly hipster-ish, dirty blonde hair, stands dead-eyed in front of the counter.” And then I would do the line of dialogue. “Sadler: Can I get a pack of smokes?” Then say, “A low-key paranoid Indian man in his 50s, BARRY, tends to him.” “What kind?”

Because when you do it all at once is happening is I am imagining, when I read action I’m imagining it happening. What I’m imagining happening the way you’ve written it, Zach, is a guy standing there and another guy is tending to him. I don’t know how that means. I just feel like two people are staring at each other and then finally someone says, “Can I get a pack of smokes,” which I don’t think is what you —

**John:** I agree with you there. Splitting that up is going to make that read a lot more clearly. So, page three is where I had the most issues with action lines and figuring out the best way to arrange our sentences to get the effect across. So, “EXT. PARKING LOT – SOON AFTER Sadler’s walking to his car, but he sees a group of four adolescent, skateboarding degenerates around his car.” In this sentence we’re using the word car twice, which isn’t awful, but isn’t maybe the best we could do.

We also need to capitalize FOUR ADOLESCENT SKATEBOARDING DEGENERATES or some part of that to indicate that these are actually people.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’d capitalize DEGENERATES.

**John:** I would agree. That’s the best choice. And I’d write around one of the cars, just because it’s more important that as Sadler is walking out he sees a group of four adolescent skateboarding degenerates around his car. Just get rid of the second car. Repeating a word within a sentence without effect is not your best choice.

Next paragraph down, two paragraphs down, “Sadler takes a few steps back, unsure, then keeps walking toward his car.” It’s mean to be a character moment, but by keeping it all as one sentence you sort of lost the flow. So, if you broke that into two sentences, “Sadler stops, unsure. Stills himself. Continues walking towards his car.” Breaking that was two separate things makes those actions you can actually play. As one sentence it’s like I don’t know where it began or where it ended.

**Craig:** I think that beat is clashing with what’s going on anyway. I mean, what I took from that was that he was nervous that these kids were there to beat him up, or rip him off, or something. But in fact the kids themselves are nervous because they want cigarettes. They’re waiting for this guy to come out so they can ask him for cigarettes. If you see a bunch of nervous kids around your car, you’re not nervous. I think he probably should just say, “Can I help you guys with something?” and we could skip this beat.

Remember, in a movie we’re going to have to watch this guy stop, see them, take a step back, then walk towards them. Then “Can I help you guys with something?” It just feels like it’s going to get cut. It’s not informing what’s going on.

**John:** I agree with you. So, Craig, what’s your verdict after three pages here?

**Craig:** My verdict is that Zach has some skill and I like the way he writes. I like his dialogue. I thought that he’s — and there’s an interesting. I will say I’m particularly pleased with the fact that he’s clearly writing about something, even if the voiceover at the top is perhaps out of place. The notion of brand and what brand means for yourself as you are self-harming is interesting.

I don’t know where it goes. I don’t know what the point is yet. I just like that there’s going to be a point, hopefully. So, it’s ambitious. I don’t know if any of it works out well. But, no, I was pleased.

**John:** I would agree with you. I’m curious enough to see what this movie becomes, because after the end of page three I really have no good sense of where it’s going to go. You have a sort of nihilistic hero and we don’t know sort of what the next step is for this movie. So, I think I would get to page ten and if it was — I’d hope by page ten to know what kind of movie I was in.

The last thing I would say is most people who send in Three Page Challenges put some sort of contact information on the front page. Just a generally good idea to put an email address or some way that people could get ahold of you if they love your pages. Zach didn’t have one. But if you are sending this in, it’s useful, because you want people to like this and reach out to you to tell you that you’re a great writer. So, put some sort of contact information on your title page.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Great. Our next script is called Not Dark Yet, by RM Weatherly. And RM is a woman. Stuart confirmed this for us. It is a script written in Courier Prime, so therefore it’s already about three steps ahead.

**Craig:** Oh lord.

**John:** Oh lord. Let me give a summary of this. So, we start in a well-ordered street of cookie-cutter McMansions. Just outside this neighborhood we see Damon Carol in his 30s who is standing over a dead body. He’s in his pajamas. He has his dog. And he’s come across a body. And he’s really not freaked out by it. He sort of kicks it with his foot. It reacts a little bit.

He tells the dog, “No, no. We won’t call the police yet. The police are sleeping. We’ll wait till they wake up.” And he convinces his dog to leave.

Next we’re in a diner in the morning. And we see our guy, who is evidently a detective, talking with a potential client. Her name is Eva. And they’re talking about her hiring him to do some recon on her husband who might be having an affair with somebody. She’s not convinced that he is having an affair. It’s sort of more idle curiosity. And they talk about sort of that there aren’t many detectives left in his line of work in this area.

So, that is where we’re at at the end of three pages. Craig, talk us through it.

**Craig:** There’s a lot of confusion in this for me. And so I was working hard to try and figure things out. And failed in spots. I think I succeeded in some spots. But let’s talk content first. The contrast of the cookie-cutter McMansion neighborhood, wealthy suburb, to a forest — now it says just outside the town. I have no idea how we’re supposed to know that it’s a forest just outside the town, unless we see the forest from the suburb and then cut to the forest.

And then we see Damon Carol who is there with his dog. He’s wearing matching monogram pajamas under an overcoat. He’s staring at this corpse. He’s at ease.

Okay, interesting. Fine. He touches the body with his foot, then cringes as the corpse has a phantom reaction. I don’t think that’s how corpses work. There is some sort of stuff like that shortly after death. But not like when you’re in the forest and somebody touches you with your foot, you’re not going to sit up. And even if you did, Damon should freak out because — and then realize that it’s phantom reaction.

He then says to his dog, “I thought I smelled something.” Now, I don’t know if that’s “I thought I smelled something,” or “I thought I smelled something.” I don’t know what he’s talking about.

**John:** It feels like it’s in the wrong place. I got really tripped up by that line, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. I was so confused by it and I even thought like, wait, is this one of those things where the corpse has evacuating its bowels? I literally had no idea what the hell was going on that point.

Then, some headlights approach and he covers the body up. It says, “Suddenly, at the sight of HEADLIGHTS approaching in the distance, Damon picks up debris to create a leafy sheet over the body.” Well, he’s certainly speedy, isn’t he? This is a car driving by, and he’s going to cover a body with leaves before the car gets past him? I don’t think so. That didn’t work.

Then, he says, “We’re going to come back.” And he says to his dog, “The po-lice don’t get in till 7.” At this point I’m like, okay, wait, so that’s sort of like an African American dialectic affectation. Is he black? And the name Damon is a pretty common name for black men. So is he black? I don’t know, because no one is telling me. But am I supposed to know from that? Or is that just an errant hyphen?

**John:** Is it affectation? Is that some weird way that he’s talking for an affect?

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** We have no idea. We don’t have enough information about him to know what the hell is going on.

**Craig:** Right. So, at this point, now I understand the point of a scene like that is to create mystery, but there’s a fine line between mystery and confusion. I need to know that I’m not supposed to know things. I can’t think I’m supposed to know things but I don’t. That’s confusion.

So, okay, we get to this diner. Now, this is an interesting conversation. This woman, and all we know about her is that she’s robust and big-boned. I don’t know what that means exactly. Does that mean fat? Does that mean tall? Does that mean fat and tall? Big-boned is a euphemism, that’s sort of a meaningless euphemism. Regardless, there’s an interesting dynamic here. This is where I started to perk up.

Essentially this woman is saying, I got from this conversation that he was a detective. And I got from what her comments were is that the detective business is sort of done. He’s the only detective around because there isn’t really any crime around here. And then she suggests that she will hire him to tail her husband because he might be up to something. And you know what? She’ll even pay him double. And at that point Damon realizes she doesn’t suspect her husband at all. She’s taking pity on him. She’s essentially trumping up a job to pay him.

Now, that’s interesting. But it came out all wonky. It’s a good dynamic. It’s a good subtext to arrive at. The problem is I only determine that from the action lines. I don’t think I get it from the dialogue.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so it’s wonky. It’s off.

**John:** I agree it’s wonky and it’s off. And I actually had a challenge with that whole diner scene because the line that leads into right now is, “Are you alone?” And then we cut to a diner. And so my natural story brain goes like, oh, whoever is asking that question must be the person who is like seating him at a table, or something like that.

So, I read Eva as a waitress the first time through. And it wasn’t until I got to the end of page three that Damon motions for the waitress for another cup of coffee and I realized like, oh wait, they’re sitting at the same table. And I didn’t catch that here. Because there’s nothing that indicates that they’re sitting at the same table. All we hear is “The voice belongs to a robust, big-boned EVA KEYS, in her late 40s. Damon takes a sip of coffee, considering his answer before speaking, but Eva has a mill of questions. She continues:”

So, I didn’t get that they were sitting alone at a booth. I didn’t know anything about the space. And so I just made the wrong assumption based on the prelap getting me into here.

I got confused a lot, too. And let’s talk about the nature of the setting. The suburb and then the forest. Right now, RM, she has Wealth Suburb — Night and then Ext. Forest — Continuous. Continuous isn’t really the right choice here. Continuous is if it literally is a continuation of the same action. And that’s not where we are. So, just give Night here. So, we’re traveling to a new place, put the city lights in the distance if you want to. Do something to let us know where we are in relation to that previous place you set up.

I’m not convinced that cookie-cutter McMansions is going to make sense for this character ultimately with the conversation we have later on, but regardless, if the forest needs to be near, show us where the city is and tell us that it’s important.

**Craig:** Here’s the thing. You’ve touched on something important. What Eva and Damon are discussing essentially is that he’s the only private eye that’s left. And he says, “That’s right. Damon Carol, the only one in the book.” And I don’t like lines like that where somebody clearly announces their name so the audience knows. There’s better ways to do that.

But, why would there be any private eyes in a McMansion suburb? That’s not where private eyes are. Why would anybody be surprised that there’s only one left? Frankly, they should be surprised that there’s one at all.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** It just doesn’t make sense.

**John:** If it were like a dying town, if it were a Cincinnati or like something that used to have private eyes and they all left because everybody left, that would be great. Or if it was some sort of like it was a boom town that people moved on from, that would be great.

I like the idea of the last detective left in a town. That’s a great idea for a character. And I sense that this Damon guy could be really fascinating. And I’m projecting forward, but I’m guessing the reason he hides this body is so that he can actually discover it later when the police are there and get credit for it. He has a whole game plan. But I’m not getting it through the scenes that I’m actually seeing on the page.

So, even this thing about the phantom reaction. I have a sense that RM has an idea in her head of what that reaction is. Describe it. Be specific rather than just say a phantom reaction, because I don’t know what that is. Does it shit itself? Does it pass gas? Does something pop? Is there spontaneous spasm? Anything would be great. But phantom reaction, I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m going to make a suggestion, RM, too. I’ve been thinking about this diner scene. The idea that someone is hiring a private eye out of pity is really interesting. I think the scene would probably work better, and I don’t know if this ruins the story or not, if he’s sitting in a booth with this woman and he’s saying, “Are you ready?”

And she says, “Yes, I’m ready.”

And he opens up a folder and he shows pictures of her husband. And he says, “I’ve tracked him here, I’ve tracked him there. I’ve checked his texts and all the rest of it, and this is where he’s been going.” And he shows her. And it’s — he’s going to the library.

And she’s like, “Oh, so he’s not cheating on me?”

And that’s when Damon leans back and says, “No, he’s not cheating you. And that’s when I decided to follow you.” And then he shows pictures of her and how she, or texts that she called him and said, “Look, just do this, the guy needs the work.”

In other words, let him be a real detective to the point where he detects using his detective skills that this was a pity hire. Which is — because I want to know that he had to find out, that he didn’t immediately know it, but that there was that moment of sickening realization that somebody is giving you a handout. Like you thought you had a real job and it turns out to just be pity. That’s awful. So, find a way to demonstrate that a little more dramatically and with a little more surprise for the audience.

**John:** Agreed. You’re also describing a scene that has changes over the course of it. Where we approach the scene with one bit of information, we approach it with everything we know about detectives, and so therefore the next thing is that the detective is going to show us that the man is having an affair. Oh, but the surprise is that he’s not having an affair. The second surprise is that you actually hired me out of pity and the scene can build and change.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. So, that’s what you’re going for. And I think particularly in an early moment when you’re establishing a character, showing that they’re competent is important information. I suspect that you’re going to want Damon to be competent. Demonstrating that they are in dire straits through their competence would be interesting, too.

So, anyway, I think there’s a lot of work that needs to happen there. And really do take this to heart, RM, that mystery is good, confusion is bad.

**John:** Agreed. We were talking about sort of the dialogue scene, but let’s also back up to the discovery of the body scene, which I think should play as a completely silent scene. I don’t think there’s any reason for a guy to talk to his dog. It feels forced to talk to your dog.

But, that moment of suspense where he’s like is he going to be able to cover up this body in time, give us some real — give us some time there. Give us some sentences to describe the sort of growing — the headlights getting closer. He’s trying to cover it up. He’s trying to find the right kind of leaves to go over it. The dog keeps knocking the leaves off it, like you know, there’s moments of suspense, or comedy, or something else there that’s going to be fascinating and we’re going to watch it because it’s such an odd choice to like find a body and then try to cover it up.

That could be great. And we could be with him in suspense and knowing will that car see him. Will that car stop? Will there by anything strange happening? Is he going to wave to the driver as it goes past? There could be something really great there.

**Craig:** Yeah. And maybe just so that you have the time to play that moment, don’t make it a car. Make it a couple on a date going through the woods.

**John:** Someone on a bike, nice and slow.

**Craig:** Yeah. Something. You got to think about real time. This is where screenwriters — it’s normal, we do it all the time. We compress time and space in our minds with such ease, but we forget that somebody at some point is going to be out in a freaking woods at two in the morning going, wait, ugh, the car has to be going like one mile an hour. We won’t even be able to see it until it’s there.

We need all this time for him to do all this stuff. It’s just never going to work. You got to think ahead to those moments. Those are the worst moments where you just think, oh, who cares. The audience. They care.

All right. Well, why don’t we move on to our third Three Page Challenge? This one is called Youth on Fire by Olufemi S. Sowemimo. And I’m going to summarize this as best I can, [laughs], because this is —

**John:** This is where you’re earning your big bucks today, Craig.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m going to get a good paycheck out of this. We begin, again, with voiceover over darkness. Someone named Castor saying, “It takes three things to start a fire.” We then are in a college lecture classroom at night. We see two people in the center of the rooms, Sarafina Wyngaard, 19 and beautiful, drenched in some sort of viscous yellow goop. And holding on to her a beaten man, Castor Pollack, 22, and geek-nouveau.

Around them in the room there appears there’s been some kind of huge fight in here. And all of this yellow goop is everywhere. It’s on the walls. It’s coming down into puddles on the floor.

Outside the window, there’s smoke and fire, a college campus set ablaze. Sarafina is holding a Bic lighter in her hand, twirling it around. And so Castor in voiceover says, “It takes three things to start a fire. Oxygen.” Then we cut to a burn ward. He says, a different voice, male voice, Ken, says, “Heat.” And we see a burned figure on a bed with oxygen tanks. And then we go to a grassy field and we hear Sarafina in voiceover saying, “Fuel,” and we see two silhouettes making love, a burning gazebo directly behind them, casting their intertwined shadows.

Then we cut to a city street and an angry mob of teens and twentysomethings fighting with police, overwhelming them. And in voiceover, “All it takes to set it off is a spark.” Sarafina, back in the classroom, places her thumb on the lighter. And before it sparks we cut to black. And then we fade in on Arizona Institute of Technology, AIT Campus Day. It’s apparently finals day and Congrats Graduates.

There is a large bear. This is the school mascot. He’s on his hind legs and a placard says the AIT Great Bear. And a distressed student comes out of the building and he looks at his final exam, it’s terrible, he’s gotten a terrible grade. And he freaks out and starts attacking the bear, yelling at the bear about how upset he is and how much he hates school. And while he’s doing that, Castor in voiceover talks about how school basically screws everybody.

And that’s —

**John:** That’s our three pages.

**Craig:** That’s a lot in three pages.

**John:** It’s a lot in three pages. So, I love movies that start with provocative imagery and gives us a sense of sort of the flash forward of where is this all going to get to. And so that’s very much what he’s doing here is setting sort of some moment from probably quite late in the story where this couple is together, something terrible has happened, the school is on fire. There’s yellow goop for some reason. These provocative images invite us to ask questions and therefore we are intrigued to get the answers to those questions, and therefore we’ll keep watching the movie.

The challenge I face is that I got just really lost and I lost some faith in this movie’s ability to make me want to follow all the way to those answers. Especially when we got into this student who comes out and has all his interactions with the bear. That’s where I was like I don’t — I didn’t feel confident that I was in good storytelling hands based on the things that we’re happening, and especially in that last page.

Craig, where were you at with this?

**Craig:** Well, that’s right. I mean, so, look, lots of good things to talk about here. Olufemi has a terrific sense of how to create a mental image with text. And that, boy, that’s a big part of our job. And so I saw everything on the first page and a half. There was a hundred things going on. I saw it all. And that’s great. And I was really interested. And I understood that there was a mystery there. I wasn’t confused.

I was fascinated. And it was so interesting. I think that voiceover wise, you’re going to run into trouble moving voiceover like this between three voices because in particular I don’t think anyone is going to know that Castor and Ken are different people. Male voices, even when they’re different men, will often sound the same if there’s a continuity of voiceover like that. Particularly when we’re not seeing a different voice. And we don’t. There’s a burned figure on a bed. So, that’s a little bit tricky.

I thought the order, oxygen, heat, and fuel, was wrong, because we start with a lighter, then we go to oxygen, then we go to fuel. So I thought it should have been heat, oxygen, fuel.

But I was so like, oh my god, this is crazy. What — how — and I understood that I was definitely going for another Stuart special, [laughs], where we open at the end of a movie and then go to the beginning. And that’s because Stuart loves that. Don’t keep doing it just to make Stuart pick your scripts. But then, oh man, did it fall off the rails. And the reason it fell off the rails was tone. Tone, tone, tone.

So, the first page and a half is dark, and moody, and poetic. I mean, the character’s name on page one, and I don’t love things like this.

**John:** Sarafina and Castor.

**Craig:** Well, and also Castor — his name is — where is page one. Castor Pollack. Which is sort of a hammy reference to Castor and Pollux, the Roman twins. You know, all right, fine. He went to school, I get it. But the tone is mood and poetic and visual.

Then when we get to this scene, where the student, the first thing he does is yell at this bear and says, “Fuck you, rape bear. Screwed me right up the ass, you stupid bear. You like that? Did you like it, huh?” This — I’m like, wait, wait, it’s like I started watching Fight Club and then I cut to black and then the next scene I’m watching Neighbors.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** What’s going on? I was so confused. And then Castor’s voiceover seems completely irrelevant because all we’re really watching is a student freak out and Castor’s voiceover saying, “Students freak out.” This did not work.

**John:** It didn’t work at all. And I lost a sense of where this voiceover could be connected to. So, if you’re giving me these provocative images and you have a voiceover that’s sort of establishing like, you know, to make a fire you need heat, fuel, and oxygen. Like, I get what that is. That’s like a movie telling itself. But then to have that voiceover and have multiple voiceover empowered people feeding me more stuff just made me frustrated and sort of confused about what was going on.

But I really want to talk about the stressed student, because what he’s doing is so crazy cartoonish, but even the setup feels really strange and sort of not specific to our shared understanding of how college campuses work.

**Craig:** Wait, you didn’t buy that his final exam was graded instantly? [laughs]

**John:** So, his final exam, and “red marks cover the page like battle wounds. Nonsense. Absurd. You can go do better, etc. Up top a score of 13 out of 50.” We have the macro lens out for that, because we’re reading a lot apparently. If we see this guy freak out, we’re going to get why he’s freaking out. And this felt like the kind of scene that should have taken place entirely without him talking or without anyone else talking. And so if you want to do some cartoonish things, don’t also have him say cartoonish things. You can have him take cartoonish actions or like, you know, get fucked by the bear, or sort of do that stuff that he wants to do, just let’s not talk about. Let’s just sort of show it.

And if you want to comment on it, maybe have real characters in the scene commenting on it, because the voiceover was just not working for us.

I also want to talk about the specificity of campus. Like what is campus? Colleges are big and I don’t have a sense of where we are on this campus. I needed a little bit more scene setting, because apparently this is where most of the story is going to take place, is my guess, since we’re ending there and we’re starting here. Give us more. Tell us, are we in the main quad? Give us a sense of what kind of school this is. Because you say Arizona Institute of Technology. It’s like, am I supposed to think ASU, am I supposed to think MIT? Those are very different vibes and very different kind of feelings of what those students are like.

In general, like since we’re going to end on sort of a war scene, is this supposed to be normal days? Is the calm before the war? Show us some calm before this guy storms out.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, when you have a character doing something like this guy is doing where he’s mimicking being raped by the bear, no one does that on their own. It’s just simply not — at that point you’re mentally ill. That’s crazy. You would do it in front of a friend to make them understand how you felt possibly. I mean, I don’t love it at all, but you would not do it alone.

And it’s being commented on, again, by Castor, Ken, and Sarafina in voiceover. We have these three disembodied voices like a Greek chorus suddenly now talking, like having a conversation in VO. Look VO can be terrific. A conversation in VO, when we have no idea who is doing it yet, very difficult. And when the tone of the conversation is in polar opposition to the tone of what we’re looking at, you end up with a disaster.

So, this is so interesting to me because I feel like page one through 1.5 is fantastic. And page 1.5 to three is horrendous. And so I guess I would say that’s good news, because if you can make 1.5 fantastic pages, you can make 110 fantastic pages. But, something went rapidly awry.

**John:** I also want to think about what is the audience’s expectation after this kind of opening. So, when we do the flash forward opening and then we’re coming back to sort of the real start of the movie, my instinct is the first person I see, or the first person I should be focused on should be one of the important people. And so when you tell me in the script “distressed student,” and then I get a page and a half of just distressed student doing stuff, I’m thinking well is this our hero? Is this the guy I’m supposed to be focusing on? Because as a moviegoer, I would assume like, oh, this must be our main hero person. But the reason I know it’s not is because you didn’t give him a name. He’s just called Distressed Student.

So, I’m really conflicted about sort of should I be paying any attention to this guy? Is one of these other people going to step in, oh wait, they’re being voiceover, so who knows. And that’s a real frustration. Stories don’t always have to start with your hero. Obviously many great movies start with characters who are not your hero, who are sort of disposable and you never see again, but movies that start with this sort of flash forward structure and then come back to reality, I would bet 90% of them, one of the very first people you’re going to see if your hero to establish, ground you in the reality of this is the character’s journey.

**Craig:** Absolutely true. In fact, I’ll go a step further. When you start with voiceover over a tableau like this, sort of a — I imagine this is all very tableau like, these first 1.5 pages. When you come out of it, you’re close on someone. You want to be physically close on a face. I could easily see the first thing we see being Castor’s face not beaten, and we hear over his face some cry. And then we reveal that he’s looking out his window at a girl who is sitting under a banner that says Congratulations on your Finals, or Good Luck on Finals, and she’s just sobbing.

And we go, oh boy. You know, I would get that. But you’re so right. You have to come back to a face almost to understand even time wise what the hell is going on. If you’re going to play the time game, help me.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** Great. So, as always, I want to thank everyone who has submitted for the Three Page Challenges, especially these three people who were brave enough to have us talk about their three pages on the air. If you have your own three pages you want us to take a look at, it’s johnaugust.com/threepage, and you can submit your own. If you want to read through the ones we’ve talked about, they’re on the show notes, so just johnaugust.com.

It’s time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a video that everybody on the Internet said I should watch, but I avoided watching it because it’s 15 minutes long. Now I watched it and it’s really, really good. It’s called The Fallen of World War II by Neil Halloran. And what he did is a great data visualization of —

**Craig:** It’s so cool.

**John:** It’s so good. It’s all the deaths of WWII. And sort of showing in sort of a great chart form of like how many people died from each country, both military casualties and civilian casualties. And it sort of shows you how big WWII really was and how it sort of out-scaled everything that had come before it, and really everything that’s come after it.

And so it was harrowing but it was also — ends on a surprisingly hopeful note in the sense that you recognize that since the horror of WWII we’ve not had anything approaching that in terms of death on a global scale. So, really just spectacularly well done. Just a great example of what’s possible to do with great data visualization. It also reminded me way back in episode 30 I talked about The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronical of Atrocities by Matthew White, which if you liked this visualization, I would urge you to read that book. Because what it does is it talks through sort of all of history’s great atrocities, some of which are in Halloran’s video.

But it gives you a sense of like what is the context for these great deaths that have happened in history and the kinds of things that lead to these big catastrophic events.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s great. Anytime somebody says how bad things are now, and the world is getting worse, I perversely want to punch them and make the world worse because we’re not even in the same galaxy of badness that existed in the middle of the 20th century.

When you look at Russia alone, it’s astonishing. When you think about what it means for millions of people to die, and then you think about tens of millions of people. It’s unfathomable. And there are all sorts of theories as to why it hasn’t happened since, one of which is kind of obvious, because it can’t. Everybody has nuclear weapons. You simply can’t do it anymore. You can’t have a war like that anymore. But I think also the war itself was proof that we shouldn’t have a war like that anymore.

It’s unreal. It’s just hard to fathom living on a planet and yet, you know, my parents were alive when that was happening. It’s just remarkable. Just remarkable. So, yeah, an amazing video.

My One Cool Thing is like on the other end of the spectrum. It’s on the loose end. So, I’m not a big wine guy, but any time I get a bottle or something I just want to say like, oh, is this crap or is it okay? And I think I mentioned this to you. There’s a website called CellarTracker where people can write their opinions of wine and it’s actually kind of useful because people that know about wine — and I am not one of them — will say things like, you know, this is a good wine, but don’t drink it now, drink it three years from now. Or leave this out for an hour, or just go ahead and drink it.

And they have an app now, it’s free, and one of the coolest things about it is you can take a picture of a wine label and it will search some database somewhere in the sky and show you that bottle of wine exactly from that year with all the reviews and thoughts on it. It’s so cool.

It will even give you a sense of what it should cost. So, if you’re in a store and they’re like, “This is the best and it only costs $120,” well, maybe it really only costs $50. So, very cool, and it’s free. They ask for a voluntary payment, which I have yet to do. Actually I just noticed that it said that. [laughs] I feel super ashamed. I will send my voluntary payment in. CellarTracker for iPhone and possibly for those other phones that others talk about.

**John:** Yes. The engine underlying it is the same thing that does Vimeo, which is an app I’ve used for a while. And I think it’s actually so smart because it’s a great use of like you have a limited data set. Although there’s thousands of wines in the world, there’s only thousands of wines in the world. So you can actually just digitize all of the labels out there and then figure out like these are the wines. And you can match those up to reviews of them and actually provide a useful service from that data set.

So, I thought it was just a really smart use of cellphone camera technologies, scanning, the power of the computers that are in our little pockets all the time to do it.

**Craig:** What a world!

**John:** We live in a great world. Better than WWII. So, this is all —

**Craig:** Yeah, and in WWII people were dying in the millions and now in 2015 my phone gets me drunk.

**John:** Ha-ha. And that’s our show this week. If you have something to say to Craig Mazin, you should write him on Twitter. He is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Longer questions, write to ask@johnaugust.com.

If you would like to leave us a review on iTunes, that would be fantastic. Just search for us there at Scriptnotes. That’s also where you can download the Scriptnotes app for your iOS device. We’re also available for Android devices on the appropriate app stores.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel who picked these Three Page Challenges. Thank you, Stuart.

Our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli, and man, did I make his life difficult this week. We had Skype dropouts and my brain did not work very well. So, thank you, Matthew. If you have an outro for our show, we love to have great musical compositions as outros, things that incorporate the [hums], but in clever new ways. Matthew writes a lot of them, but we also have great people who have written other ones for us. So, if you have one of those outros, just send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com and we will get that into the queue.

For Craig Mazin, I’m John August. Guys, thank you so much. See you next week, Craig.

**Craig:** Bye John.

Links:

* [John jumped off a bridge](https://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/608473352420925440)
* [FAST Screenplay’s Jeff Bollow at TEDxDocklands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH6AyjGgcns)
* [Action Movies, Stop Taking Away Our Everyday Heroes](http://www.wired.com/2015/06/action-stars-impossible-man/) on Wired
* NEDA’s [Statistics on Males and Eating Disorders](https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/statistics-males-and-eating-disorders)
* [SAG-AFTRA Threatened To Sue Director Amy Berg Over ‘An Open Secret’](http://deadline.com/2015/06/sag-aftra-threatening-sue-an-open-secret-director-amy-berg-1201438339/) on Deadline
* [Submit your Three Pages here](http://johnaugust.com/threepage)
* Three Pages by [Zach Kaplan](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/ZachKaplan.pdf)
* Three Pages by [RM Weatherly](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/RMWeatherly.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Olufemi S. Sowemimo](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/OlufemiSSowemimo.pdf)
* [The Fallen of World War II](https://vimeo.com/128373915) by Neil Halloran, and [fallen.io](http://www.fallen.io/ww2/)
* The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White
* [CellarTracker](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cellartracker/id893759800?mt=8) for iOS
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Adrian Tanner ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-200th-episode-live-show).

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

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

**John:** And this is the 200th episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

We are here live, recording this episode for the whole world to listen to. I was thinking back that our very first live episode was in a pretty small room. That was in Austin, right? That was the first live show.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think so. That’s right.

**John:** Since then we’ve done shows in Austin, Los Angeles, New York City.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** This time we’re doing it live for the entire world to hear at once.

**Craig:** Oh, my…

**John:** Yeah, I know. It’s daunting.

**Craig:** And we’re live streaming it, right?

**John:** Yeah, we are. There are 198 people as we recorded this show who are listening to this show as we are recording it.

**Craig:** And so while we talk, they can give us feedback in real-time —

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So they can complain about me instantly.

**John:** Absolutely. Keith Vacario says, “Hello world.”

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So that’s absolutely the kind of thing to do.

**Craig:** God, you know what the funny thing is, you know, we watch things like this all the time. But when you do it, suddenly you feel like you’re the first person to ever do it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Like, “Oh, my god, I’m flying a plane in the air. Look at me.”

**John:** It’s amazing. We’ve landed on the moon.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** And there’s no better person to be in the cockpit with us as we’re trying to attempt this moon landing than our own, very first guest, our Joan Rivers, Aline Brosh McKenna. Welcome Aline.

**Craig:** Yay!

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Yay! You had to say cockpit.

**John:** I had to say cockpit.

**Aline:** You had to work blue.

**John:** I had to work blue. I had to bring it back to phallic humor.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna, you were with us at our last live show. And at our last live show, you described this TV show that you were trying to make with Rachel Bloom. I’m so sorry it didn’t work out. But we’ll get in to all of that stuff. We’re going to talk about TV. We’re going to talk about whether the quality of a movie affects its long-term prospects at the box office.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And we’re going to answer a whole bunch of listener questions including the ones that people are typing right now —

**Craig:** Right now.

**John:** Into the little field.

**Aline:** Type, type, type, type, type.

**Craig:** Type your questions. This is it. This is your chance.

**John:** This is the show. Aline, when we saw you last you brought Rachel Bloom with you and she sang for us and she described the show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that was —

**Aline:** What month was that? It was Christmas, right?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It was the Christmas show.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was right before New Year’s.

**Aline:** Right. So what was happening at — do you want me to tell you the —

**John:** Tell the story.

**Aline:** Okay, so what happened at Christmas was we were feeling pretty good about the show’s chances. We had just delivered the cut. We were doing the show for Showtime and they’d been super encouraging. We had a great experience with Showtime. And they were kind of saying the things that you say when you want to take the girl to the prom. It seemed like they were really interested in doing it. And then in January, we kind of started to hear, well, in Christmas, we had thought we would already be hearing from them and we kind of didn’t. But we kind of thought, well, maybe he’s going to call us later.

**Craig:** Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they’re at church.

**Aline:** Yeah, they’re on vacation.

**John:** So, like, Showtime wasn’t ready to leave his wife.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Showtime was not showing up with the corsage. And, you know, I always say that in show business good news happens really quickly and the rest of it doesn’t. Anything that doesn’t happen quickly is basically bad news.

**John:** So when did you have a sense that things were not going to happen?

**Aline:** January.

**John:** Oh, really?

**Aline:** So in January I started to feel like, “Hmm, this is taking an awfully long time,” and I just could tell, you know, having done this for a while, you can tell when there is that level of enthusiasm in phone calls and it kind of wasn’t there and we had had such a good experience with them that it was one of those breakups that was like everybody really liked each other. We’d had a great time.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** They were really sad. We were really sad. It ended up not being a good fit for them kind of tonally and brand-wise. And it was kind of great and difficult because I understood where they were coming from because the show ended up being a little bit more sunny and upbeat than it had seemed on the page. On the page, it had seemed very edgy I think. And Rachel is sort of a pretty naturally cheery, upbeat, lovable person. And try though we did to squelch that, we failed.

**John:** You could not break her spirit.

**Aline:** And we could not. So what happened after that was that we all went to what I have now come to see as one of the stages of grief when you work on a TV show is we’re shopping it to other networks.

**John:** Now, this is about the time that I ran in to Rachel Bloom because she and I were randomly both flying to Boston. We were seated next to each other on a Virgin Atlantic plane to go to Boston. And so, I had not seen her since the live show. I was like, “Hey, Rachel, what’s up with your show?” And she was at exactly the stage of like, I guess, it is past denial to bargaining?

**Aline:** But having to run into a lot of people who’s like, they have a busted pilot. And you say, “What are you doing?” It’s like, “We’re waiting to hear from Epics.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Is that a thing? Is Epics a place?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a real place.

**Craig:** What is that? [laughs]

**Aline:** So what you come to find out which I didn’t know because I actually haven’t worked in television that much is that so many people do programming.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And our joke with my friend Kate who is our executive at CBS is that we were right at the point when we were thinking someone was going to call and say, “You know what, Eggo is doing programming now and it’ll be on your toaster and you’ll be in the morning making your Eggo and there’ll be a TV show.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And we would have been like, “We’re perfect for them. We’re perfect for toasters and waffles,” and you got to this place where, honestly, they were places that I had never heard of that were considering the show anyway.

**John:** So at this point, you have the show.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** If you have the cut.

**Aline:** We have a pilot.

**John:** You have the cut.

**Aline:** We have a pilot and we have episode two and episode three written.

**John:** Oh, great. So, you are showing them this pilot that you’ve cut and it’s cut sort of for Showtime. They’re seeing that pilot and they’ve seen these two other scripts. They could theoretically come into the room with you if you guys wanted to talk.

**Aline:** Exactly.

**John:** But what was the conversation? Was it just your agent sending it out or were you doing — ?

**Aline:** They were sending the link and the scripts to people and we got a variety of reactions. And I guess it’s sort of like putting a movie in turnaround. We got a couple of instances where somebody liked it and then they would try and bump it up to someone else.

**Craig:** To the next level of approval.

**Aline:** Right. But TV is like — people are developing very specific products for their network and what they think is their brand. And so they don’t really, you know, it’s rare for shows to move. And so, you know, as —

**John:** And yet there are examples of like shows that did move and became giant breakout hits. CSI is I think the most classic example.

**Aline:** Was it shot though?

**Craig:** Who let CSI go?

**Aline:** No, it wasn’t. I don’t think it was shot though. I think it was a script.

**John:** I thought CSI was shot. I mean, I may be misremembering.

**Craig:** How can they let that go?

**John:** Isn’t that crazy?

**Aline:** Somebody should tell us right now live.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Absolutely. Someone who can do research live, tell us where CSI was actually shot for and who picked it up.

**Craig:** It’s about time these people paid us back.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There are a lot of instances of scripts being picked up by other networks but not that many of things being shot because people in TV in particular want to feel like they put their stamp on it.

**Craig:** So where did it end up?

**Aline:** So what happened was in the meantime while we were shopping it, I had gotten very into this show called Jane the Virgin.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** On the CW because I had several friends and a bunch of them are our mutual friends who insisted that I should watch it and that it was great. And then I would love it. So I started watching Jane the Virgin and I was simultaneously obsessed with it and sort of broken-hearted because I felt like even though it’s not like our show, there’s something about it in spirit. I felt like it reminded me of our show.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** So I called —

**Craig:** More wine?

**Aline:** Here is your half glass.

**Craig:** Thank you. Here is my half glass.

**Aline:** So I called our executive and I said, “You know, I know we’re only going to cable places but do you think there’s a possibility that we could send this to CW, what do you think?” So he sent it to CW. I’m going to make this story shorter. We sent it to the CW. They really liked it. We had a meeting.

**Craig:** CW is Warner Bros.

**Aline:** So CW is half CBS and half Warner Bros.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Aline:** It used to be UPN and the WB. They merged into The CW. They’ve recently gotten a lot of shows that are very popular and critically acclaimed. Two of them are superhero shows, Berlanti does —

**John:** Flash and Arrow.

**Aline:** Flash and Arrow.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then they have Jane the Virgin which has done really well and won a Peabody and its lead won a Golden Globe.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Aline:** So they’re doing cool stuff. So they expressed interest in our show. They really liked it. They really dug it. The people there really kind of got what it was. We had a meeting with them and they said, “Can you do an expanded version of it?” So what we did was we took the existing pilot and we — in the script stage, not in the edit. You know, we just wrote what our scenes would be. And what I didn’t realize is that a network — how much longer — okay, so a cable half hour and a network hour, what do you think the time difference is?

**Craig:** A cable half hour, my guess is it’s probably like 26 minutes. And a network hour is like 43 minutes.

**Aline:** So the cable half hour is like, it can be 30, 31, even 32 minutes.

**Craig:** Oh, like a real half hour.

**Aline:** Yeah, a real half hour because they don’t have commercials.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And the network hours can be like anywhere from 41 to 44 minutes, something like that.

**Craig:** I wasn’t that far off.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You weren’t that far off, yeah.

**Aline:** So basically —

**Craig:** I barely know what TV is.

**Aline:** Right. So basically we had to add — we have to add about 10 minutes.

**Craig:** 10 minutes.

**Aline:** 10 minutes.

**Craig:** No big deal.

**Aline:** So it wasn’t double, which some people thought we were doubling the size of our script.

**Craig:** You know by the way the story about Game of Thrones? Not to interrupt.

**Aline:** Yeah, go ahead.

**Craig:** But I’m interrupting.

**Aline:** Interrupt.

**Craig:** Dan and Dave did their first show and they were having this problem because they weren’t hitting their time, you know. Like they had, basically, they had done like, I don’t know, they had shot now like nine episodes and they just weren’t timing out. They needed more time. So they had to set aside a week where they just wrote extra scenes to put in for all of the shows.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And then they just shot a bunch of scenes of like people talking to pad out the shows, but in a weird way those scenes where it was like it’s just two people talking were some of the best scenes of the first season.

**Aline:** That people enjoyed the most.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because it was just what people wanted to see.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They wanted to see two interesting people talking. But it’s like the whole timing thing is a fascinating thing.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I know that Derek and Chicago Fire, they are constantly dealing with the breaks and all that stuff.

**Aline:** Right. And so it’s a different format. It’s also a different format because you don’t break obviously on a cable half hour.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Aline:** You don’t break. So we had to build in breaks. We did that. We lengthened it. And here is what happened which is funny, I think, and interesting for writers. So that was in April, we had that meeting. And they said, “We’re interested and can you expand it? And we are thinking about maybe you for off season development,” which I had never heard of before. And we were like, “Okay.” And they said, “But we don’t need to have the script back until later, until after we’ve finished with our development.” And so, Rachel and I had actually started working on something else and we sat down in my office and she goes, “You know what? Let’s just do it. Let’s just do the script. Let’s just expand the script and hand it in and just be done with it. We’ll know it’s done before we do something else.”

**Craig:** Smart girl.

**Aline:** Jew.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Jewish. That’s a Jewish mind at work.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Are we going to be in trouble if we talk about Jewish people like that?

**John:** No, I think it’s absolutely fine.

**Craig:** Because we’re Jewish.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Yeah, you guys can talk about anything.

**Aline:** We can do that.

**John:** I’ll stay silent here.

**Craig:** John, what are your opinions about the Jews?

**John:** As a German I feel —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** So we did it. We turned it in. And I think it showed them that there was a show there that had some viability that didn’t involve a ton of changes.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** We had profanity in the Showtime show and we had some sexy stuff but we were able to pull it back pretty easily. And so, what ended up happening was we went from being like something they were going to consider offseason to midseason to a show they were putting on the fall schedule.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Which is, congratulations. So you are now a show on The CW fall schedule which is nuts.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s awesome.

**Aline:** And we’re going to be the lead in to Jane the Virgin —

**John:** Great.

**Aline:** Which is like a Cinderella story. I mean, it’s just like a happy thing for me because I am such an obsessed huge fan of that show.

**Craig:** Well, fantastic.

**John:** So, I think you’re allowed to say that you’ve sent me the link to see the show and it’s amazing. I just love it.

**Craig:** I’ve watched a bunch of it. Now, how did I watch a bunch of it?

**Aline:** You watched a — there’s like a six-minute trailer.

**Craig:** That’s what I watched.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I watched a six-minute trailer and it was —

**John:** So I watched the whole show and it’s just great.

**Craig:** Okay, I’m not surprised because I love her. I love you. I love musicals. But also, in watching that trailer it really reminded of that segment from 500 Days of Summer that Marc Webb shot —

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** Where Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns his problems and his joy into this outside Busby Berkeley dance number.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Oh, here’s the thing that I did not know which is that Marc Webb could go toe-to-toe with you on the musical theatre stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, I have no doubt.

**Aline:** He knows absolutely so much about musical theatre.

**Craig:** But is he having coffee with Seth Rudetsky this weekend? No. I am.

**Aline:** Well, he did, though, take us to Marie’s Crisis. Do you know what Marie’s Crisis is?

**John:** No, so therefore you’re much more knowledgeable.

**Aline:** OMG. So Marie’s Crisis is this bar in the Village.

**Craig:** I don’t live in the Village. It’s not fair.

**Aline:** Well, you go to New York.

**Craig:** I did meet him in the Village.

**Aline:** And they sing show tunes.

**Craig:** Well, that sounds pretty great. But I mean, I sing show tunes in my car.

**John:** Singing show tunes in a bar is —

**Aline:** But it’s a bar filled with people and there’s a piano in the middle and he sings show tunes.

**Craig:** So what you’re telling me is there’s a gay bar in the Village? Is that what you’re telling us? Is that the big news?

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** I’m telling you that Marc Webb goes there and took us there.

**Craig:** I would totally go there, by the way.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah. You would love it.

**Craig:** By the way, Seth Rudetsky is, if you are in Los Angeles, I’ll just give Seth a plug.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** He’s playing Largo Saturday evening. He’s doing his Seth Rudetsky Deconstructs —

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Broadway songs at Largo.

**Aline:** Oh, wow.

**Craig:** So go check it out.

**Aline:** I love him.

**Craig:** I’m not going to be able to make it myself, so I’m just going to have a special one on one. By the way, I talk about Seth Rudetsky like the way other people might talk about Tom Cruise.

**Aline:** Yeah. Right. [laughs]

**John:** Absolutely. [laughs]

**Craig:** Nobody cares.

**John:** You’ve named him so often that —

**Craig:** Most people don’t even know who he is.

**John:** Like Seth Rudetsky is like a —

**Aline:** I think he’s great.

**Craig:** By the way, you want to know how cool I am? I know Seth Rudetsky and people are like, “Ah, is that your rabbi or — ?” [laughs]

**John:** So let’s do some real-time follow-up. Stuart Friedel sitting off at the corner.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Can you do a Google search through all the transcripts and see how often in johnaugust.com Seth Rudetsky shows up? For a person who’s actually not part of the show, I bet he shows up at least 10 times.

**Craig:** Stuart has leapt into action.

**John:** So —

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You are going to be so busy.

**Aline:** So busy.

**John:** Oh, my god.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So because you were kind of late to this whole process —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** You had to race to get a staff together, correct?

**Aline:** Yes, yes.

**John:** You had to have a staff that could also like write songs.

**Aline:** Well, I had another friend who got a show picked up and I called her. And I said, “So what writers are you [laughs ]meeting with?”

**John:** Oh, no. [laughs]

**Aline:** And she said, “Oh, we’re done.” Because she knew from, like, weeks that they were getting picked up. So she had already staffed. So we’ve been staffing which has actually been really fun. I’ve read great people and that’s been really interesting. We do have original songs. So we’re trying to get kind of into our season early because we’re going to write — and for the first 13, we’ll have like maybe 25 songs. And Rachel is our primary songwriter.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So, she’s the sort of the showrunner of the song staff. But she, you know, has a million ideas. So it’s fun. I mean, I think for people who listen to this show, what’s interesting is that when you’re a writer of a screenplay, you have a completely different role from being the showrunner or the executive producer of a television show. You really are a producer and writing is your sort of, I would say, your main, your core responsibility. But there’s a lot of production stuff.

And I can’t remember who said that producing is the stuff that writers do to procrastinate.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Like making phone calls and taking meetings.

**Craig:** Right. So now it’s like they’re paying you for it.

**Aline:** And now it’s like a huge part of your job is a lot of phone calls, meetings.

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** And meeting executives. We did have a —

**Craig:** You’re still going to have to write.

**Aline:** But we have a lot, a lot of writing to do. So I have people around us who really can help us, you know, get the logistics of the show going. We had an amazing, amazing line producer, Sarah Caplan, who did Lost and —

**Craig:** Jewish.

**Aline:** She’s British, though.

**Craig:** Oh, British Jewish. That’s barely Jewish.

**Aline:** So it’s interesting. She did Lost and she worked on thirtysomething. So she’s great. Anyway, we have a lot of people helping us. But it’s fun. You know, it’s a different role from being a screenwriter because as a screenwriter, your role is always mediated and mitigated through the director no matter how close you are. You’re really not the boss, unless you’re the producer, in which case you’re still not the boss.

**John:** Yeah. On the 100th episode which I just recut for like two episodes ago, we talked about this idea of like the screenwriter-plus. And we were talking about people like Simon Kinberg —

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Who are sort of that screenwriter-plus. They are the person who’s essentially showrunning this idea of the movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And now you’re going to have that firsthand experience of showrunning an actual show.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And you will love it and it will also just drive you crazy.

**Aline:** Well, I know your experience. I remember your experience.

**John:** Yeah. So I’ve done a couple of these. And the one time we actually went to series, it was soul-crushing. But you are wiser and more mature and you have better people around you. So I think you’re going to flourish.

**Craig:** And you’re Jewish. I mean, I think it’s a huge thing.

**Aline:** [laughs] We keep going back to that.

**Craig:** I’ve got my own little series that I don’t, you know, I have yet to write anything. I still have to write the pilot. But if that happens, I would be in that position, along with our good friend and guest of the show, Carolyn Strauss.

**Aline:** Oh, right. Carolyn Strauss.

**Craig:** And, you know, I’m kind of looking forward to something like that. But it’s funny. Sometimes that, you know, even Simon who’s oftentimes the screenwriter-plus, there are probably jobs where he’s like, “No, I’m just the screenwriter.”

**John:** Yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s kind of a weird thing, you know. Like, “Oh, yeah, on this one, I’m just the — ”

**John:** I’m just the words.

**Craig:** I’m just a guy.

**Aline:** Well, something —

**Craig:** Nobody really cares. [laughs]

**Aline:** Something that’s interesting is that, you know, we talk a lot about why there aren’t more female directors. And I think that if we shot a substantial amount of movies in Los Angeles, that that would change. Because if you look at, there are so many powerful, successful female showrunners —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And most of them shoot their shows in L.A.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Jenji is here, Shonda’s here.

**Craig:** Shonda’s here.

**Aline:** And, you know, you can have that, you know, whatever happens no matter how many hours — and I had been on the track to direct a movie which would have taken me to Eastern Europe for months at a time. And so even though my workload here might be difficult, I’ll still be able —

**Craig:** You’re here.

**Aline:** To be here. And I think if we —

**Craig:** They have that huge complex in Santa Clarita.

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** Your show is set in the Valley anyway.

**Aline:** Yeah. We’re going to shoot it —

**Craig:** Is that where you’re going to shoot it?

**Aline:** We’re not shooting in Santa Clarita, I think. But we are going to shoot in a place like that. Our show is set in West Covina. [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** [sings] West Covina.

**Aline:** Which is like a —

**John:** California.

**Aline:** Which is like a, you know, a sort of a sun-baked California suburb. Luckily, most of Southern California looks like that.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** But I do think that if there were — it’s such a Shonda, just to keep it Jewy.

**Craig:** Oh, not Shonda Rhimes, but this is a different Shonda.

**Aline:** It’s such a Shonda —

**Craig:** That’s Yiddish for a sin.

**Aline:** That we don’t have more production here in L.A. where everybody is based. You would be —

**Craig:** I know. It’s a Shonda.

**Aline:** But wouldn’t you be? Yes.

**John:** Stuart did complete his research and found out how many mentions of Seth Rudetsky have occurred on the Scriptnotes podcast.

**Stuart Friedel:** Nine.

**Craig:** Nine.

**John:** Nine.

**Craig:** Well, now it’s up to like 20.

**John:** Exactly. We’ve mentioned Seth Rudetsky so many times.

**Craig:** Seth Rudetsky.

**John:** You’re basically his publicist.

**Craig:** Look, I would love that, you know. By the way, Seth Rudetsky [laughs] I’ll just say another thing. He has a show. It’s really, really funny, called Disaster. He’s trying to bring it to Broadway. It’s hysterical, hysterical.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So.

**John:** Broadway —

**Craig:** I will, yes.

**Aline:** You’re an uber fan.

**Craig:** I’m a huge fan.

**John:** Let us —

**Aline:** Let’s move on.

**John:** Congratulate Aline on her amazing show.

**Aline:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Well done, Aline.

**Aline:** Thank you.

**John:** And we’ll put a link to the trailer in the show notes so that people can —

**Aline:** Thank you. [laughs]

**John:** Our next topic is something that Stuart found. Stuart found this thing. It was a subreddit, which is talking about the relationship between a film’s quality and its box office. And so what this guy did, it was a Reddit user named tcatron565 which is like a totally Reddit name.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s the perfect statistical mean of all Reddit names.

**John:** I’m sure. It’s a subreddit called DataIsBeautiful. And he looked at the wide releases in 2013 and figured out what percentage of their total gross came from their opening weekend. And then he charted that against their audience score from Rotten Tomatoes. So he’s basically saying like, how much money did this movie make on its opening weekend versus total.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And do people like the movie. And intuitively, I think all of us here would agree that like —

**Aline:** Big multiple.

**John:** Big multiple. And so it was interesting to look through this subreddit because they didn’t have the same lingo that we would have for it. They were talking about like —

**Craig:** I loved it, by the way.

**John:** Yeah, I really loved —

**Craig:** Because I was that dork from college. I thought it was great. I actually thought that guy did a great job because first of all he picked two interesting criteria. One was that he picked the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, not the critic ratings.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which one would imagine probably is more relevant to determining how a movie resonates with an audience. And I also like the criteria of what percentage of the movie’s total box office was earned in the opening weekend because the theory is, okay, well, if a movie earns most of its money in its opening weekend, there was a big drop-off, it probably means there was bad word of mouth.

Now, that’s not perfectly good because there are some movies that have so much pent up demand and interest they’re always — like if a movie opens to $150 million, there’s no way it’s coming back next weekend and doing another $75 million. It’s not possible.

**John:** What’s interesting looking through this is that they didn’t have the lingo that we would have for what that was. So Aline said it right from the start. What was the multiplier?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Basically, what percentage of its total box office came from that opening weekend. So if you opened at $10 million but you made it to $100 million, you have a 10 times multiplier which is crazy.

**Craig:** That would be awesome.

**John:** That would be amazing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Almost unprecedented.

**Craig:** Right. And whereas like a 2.5 — I mean, the standard really you’re looking for is a 3 multiplier, right? That’s sort of middle of the road. And that’s exactly what he found. Roughly the average was around 3.2 or 3.3 multiplier was average.

**John:** The other thing we would talk about is what was the drop-off from first week to second week.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And we would definitely weight that based on what kind of movie it is.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so if a prestigious art film drops off 50% in its second week —

**Craig:** Probably bad.

**John:** Doom.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But if something like, you know —

**Craig:** A horror movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** A horror movie, totally expect that drop-off to be 50% or more —

**Craig:** Because —

**John:** Or a giant box office, you know, it made $100 million, it’s going to drop off hugely.

**Craig:** It has to drop off. And especially with real genre pictures that appeal to teens in particular, you’re always going to get that drop-off because teens are, as we know, they’re highly motivated to see movies opening weekend. So, horror movies, broad comedies, they tend to be really frontloaded just because the nature of the audience. It doesn’t necessarily mean when all is said and done that people didn’t like the movie.

But he did a really aggressive and thorough statistical analysis. He was talking about regression to the mean. He was talking about his R-values, his R-score. I mean, there’s all this like really good stuff in there. And buried in the thing, he sort of said, I was kind of surprised how loose the correlation was.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Now, alternately, there was a very similar study that was done and posted on The Black List blog, and we’ll throw that link into the show notes. And that one I wasn’t as much of a fan of because that one, it was the same thing. On one sense, it was what percentage drop-off was — or what percentage of your total box office was your opening weekend.

But the other one was they used the Metacritic score, which as far as I’m concerned, is irrelevant. And, you know, then they charted out all these things. As far as I could tell looking through the charts —

**Aline:** What were the conclusions of the first Reddit thing?

**Craig:** Well, the conclusions of the Reddit thing was that there was a loose, a very — here’s the thing. Statistics. You can say anything you want in statistics, but it’s all about but how robust is the correlation. So if you flip a coin twice, you could say, “Well, it looks like this coin is going to come up heads all the time but it’s a very loose correlation.” So he was saying there is a loose correlation between —

**Aline:** Between the “quality” of the movie.

**Craig:** Between the audience’s affection for a movie —

**Aline:** Perceived quality, yeah.

**Craig:** And the box office multiple.

**John:** Yeah. You had sent me a link this afternoon to the second thing which is on The Black List. And what I found interesting about it is because this guy broke out movies by sort of like their total box office tier, it was useful to look at, you know, a tiny little indie movie, like the multiplier factor is really huge. When you look at the giant box office behemoths, they will make a tremendous amount of their box office that first weekend just because —

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Of the nature of the kind of movie they are.

**Aline:** Right. So that —

**John:** So that tiering was useful for me.

**Aline:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** The tiering was, I mean, it’s the kind of movie it is, and then also you have to remember, huge budget movies have massive marketing budgets behind them.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So of course they’re motivating an enormous part of the audience that might normally slip to week two. They’re showing up at week one because they’ve just been motivated. They’ve been bombarded. So it’s a little difficult to make this correlation. I think it’s fair to say that if people love a movie, it will have good word of mouth and it will do better. Duh, right?

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There’s no big surprise there. I think it’s a mistake to try and equate good movie with, say, Metacritic score, or even with Rotten Tomatoes score because that’s a self-selecting audience anyway.

**Aline:** But I just think it’s interesting, you know, every weekend you have these postmortems where people try and figure out, and they’re doing it right now with Tomorrowland —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Trying to figure out was it this, was it that, is it original in content, is it not, is it… — And the truth is that, you know, it really goes back to the Goldman rule like, you know, we all do the best we can in a inexact science and you can’t really account for why certain things — you can account for a certain amount of these phenomena, but really, things break out because of a million reasons or don’t break out for a million reasons.

**Craig:** And Tomorrowland, correct me if I’m wrong, made mid-40s, right?

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Made like $45 million. That’s good.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** What happens now is people will say, “Well, it’s good but not good in light of its budget.” The audience doesn’t care about the budget.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** The audience doesn’t care about your profit and loss sheet.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** $45 million worth of tickets sold is good.

**John:** So the real conversation will be next Sunday or Monday as the second week comes through and everyone will take a look at like what was the drop-off, which will probably be a factor of what was the reception of the audience.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And the audience reception was mixed. And so that will be curious to see sort of how it plays out next week.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** That’s the sort of normal conversation we would have. What’s so fascinating is to look at, you know, a person with a stats background who didn’t have any of our terminology trying to explain this phenomenon he was seeing.

**Craig:** It was interesting. There’s another thing that people forget sometimes when they do these analyses. And there are two movies come to mind, Austin Powers and Pitch Perfect. Movies that come out and kind of bomb in their own sort of way. And then find this life on video and —

**Aline:** And they’re also, I mean, they’re marketed. They have marketed themselves. I mean, Pitch Perfect had marketed itself for, you know, the months since it came out because people watched it over and over again. It caught on and that, so —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** There was so much marketing that was beyond the marketing they were actually doing.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Aline:** And so those movies have such built-in awareness.

**Craig:** If you just look at the point on the chart of how much money did Pitch Perfect 1 make at the box office. Austin Powers 2 made more in its opening weekend than Austin Powers 1 made its entire run.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Oh, I think that’s true of Pitch Perfect as well.

**Craig:** I’m sure it is. It has to be.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And so that’s really the lesson there is, well, box office isn’t necessarily the only test of success either, because some movies are discovered after. Office Space is the bomb of all bombs when it comes to theatrical release. And God only knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars —

**Aline:** Do you think if they made a sequel now people would go?

**Craig:** Oh, my god. If Mike Judge ever did it, and he won’t —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if he ever did, it would be massive. No question.

**Aline:** That’s interesting.

**John:** I think that’s true as well. And it’s a thing we encountered with Big Fish because Big Fish was not a huge box office hit but it actually did so well in its afterlife that we continue to sort of get interested in doing more stuff with Big Fish because it did so well.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There you go.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** And so that’s an example. Like that’s not a movie that lends itself to a natural sequel. There’s not a Big Fish 2 on the docks, but like it’s useful for things down the road.

**Craig:** Wasn’t Free Willy kind of in its own way a sequel? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, it really was.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s its own sort of unique thing.

**Craig:** It’s its own thing.

**John:** I think it’s time to open up for some questions.

**Aline:** Yay.

**Craig:** How do we sound, Stuart? Stuart, I’m check —

**John:** Oh, we got a thumbs up from Stuart.

**Craig:** Stuart gave us a thumbs up.

**John:** We have two questions that came in early, so —

**Aline:** [makes noises] That’s my alien voice.

**Craig:** I know. [makes noise]

**Aline:** [makes noise]

**Craig:** What have we got? Live questions?

**John:** Well, we had two questions that came in before we started the show at all. So I was wondering if Aline might read the first question from Molly.

**Aline:** Okay, the question from Molly is —

**John:** Because it’s a question from a woman.

**Aline:** Hi, John and Craig and Stuart.

**Craig:** Awww.

**John:** Stuart.

**Craig:** Stuart. If can’t get Stuart married off of this?

**Aline:** I’m writing a script that is an adaptation of the life of a former U.S. president. I strive for authenticity —

**Craig:** I hope it’s McKinley.

**Aline:** And historical accuracy. So I would like to use direct quotes from the president’s speeches, letters, and memoirs as dialogue. Is this an acceptable practice in biographical films or seen as unoriginal because the dialogue didn’t originate with me, or is it plagiarism? If it’s acceptable, do I somehow need to cite which lines are actually historical and not my own original creation? Looking forward to the show tonight, Molly.

**Craig:** Molly.

**John:** Molly.

**Craig:** That’s a really good question. I have an answer for you, Molly.

**John:** I do, too.

**Craig:** The answer in order is yes, no, no, yes, no, no. So, it’s absolutely acceptable. It is not plagiarism. It is part of public record. Presidents are public figures. Their speeches are absolutely reprintable in all ways, shapes, and forms. No, nobody would look at it as plagiarism. In fact, quite the opposite. Take an obvious example, if you were doing a movie about Lincoln, which of course has already been done, and you change the text to the Gettysburg Address, people would be angry.

**Aline:** But let me throw in a caveat.

**Craig:** Yes. What is your caveat?

**Aline:** With Selma —

**John:** I was going to say Selma.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** They did not have the right to his speeches.

**Craig:** Okay. I think they did. Here’s my point. My feeling is that they would have had the right to those speeches but they could also be sued and have to battle over it. And then they have a movie about Martin Luther King that is being sued by the estate of Martin Luther King, which is bad press. But I actually think an argument could be made that as a public figure delivering a public speech, that is now part of the public record and is absolutely public domain.

**Aline:** But she had to paraphrase them and you don’t think that she — do you think she just didn’t want to take the risk?

**Craig:** I think the studio combined with the — I’m sure the screenwriter initially had that in there completely. You get into trouble there where it’s like, okay, if we’re making a movie about Martin Luther King and the family is like, “Boo, you’re exploiting,” oh, it’s a nightmare.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if you’re making a movie about McKinley [laughs], I don’t know why I like to go to McKinley always —

**John:** You should.

**Craig:** Somebody should make a movie about Franklin Pierce. If you’re making a movie about Franklin Pierce, go for it. I mean, obviously, A, everything is in public domain now anyway because of the age. So always check, you know, if you’re making an old — if you’re doing one about Ford, you should be fine anyway, I think.

**Aline:** But do you think like in the way that Martin Luther King’s speeches are owned as intellectual property by his estate, like if you were doing a John F. Kennedy movie where he has a lot of famous speeches —

**Craig:** I don’t —

**John:** Here’s a question. Like if you took something from Profiles in Courage, John Kennedy’s book —

**Craig:** That’s different. That’s different. And by the way, of course John F. Kennedy did not write Profiles in Courage.

**John:** But his name is on it.

**Craig:** His name is on it. It was ghostwritten. But that’s a novel and that’s expression in fixed form. But if you do a movie about Kennedy and you have him stand up and say, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” —

**John:** Well, of course that’s fine.

**Craig:** Well, you say of course that’s fine but really —

**Aline:** But that’s —

**Craig:** But that’s what the King family was saying is it’s not fine.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** And I think that’s about avoiding an unpleasant battle in public opinion, especially on something as sensitive as Martin Luther King and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The last thing you want to be is like, “A white corporation going against the wishes of the family,” you know, like it just smells bad. It’s bad business.

**John:** So going back to Molly’s question though, she’s writing a movie about a president, which is awesome. Make the best presidential movie possible. If you think you need to use a lot of stuff from his speeches, then I worry that you’re not making the best possible presidential movie.

**Craig:** Or maybe there’s one speech or another.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** I mean, let’s say she’s doing like Teddy, you know.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Teddy had some good speeches. But I guess even beyond that, regardless, you should write — this is the time where you get to do whatever you want. I mean, if the downside of being a screenwriter is that we’re not actually making a movie but we’re making a movie on paper, the upside is we can do whatever we want.

Down the road, some roomful of lawyers will give you advice on that stuff. But nobody will look down upon you for actually using the text of publicly delivered speeches by political figures.

**Aline:** And I’m assuming that Molly is going to be writing conversations with him and his spouse and his advisors. She wouldn’t have access to those anyway.

**Craig:** Right. Dramatize —

**Aline:** She’s going to be making that up. Especially, if they’re famous speeches, obviously people will know that she’s excerpting. But in general, she’s going to have to make up probably what consists of her dramatic writing, she’ll have to make up anyway.

**Craig:** Word.

**John:** Word. Craig, another question that came in before we started recording.

**Craig:** Yes. This one came from Cody Tannen-Barrup.

**John:** What a great name is that.

**Craig:** The best. Hyphenated, Tannen-Barrup. Hey, John and Craig. Thanks for everything you do. That’s weird, Cody didn’t thank Stuart.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** But I guess that’s just —

**Aline:** Also, I wasn’t thanked.

**Craig:** And also Aline wasn’t thanked. [laughs] You’re welcome, Cody Tannen-Barrup. Question. I was asked by an agent to send him a script. I sent it two weeks ago. What’s the etiquette of following up? How long do I wait? Do I just expect that if he liked it he would get back to me, unless I should move on? Thanks. Cody from Northampton, Massachusetts. Sent from his iPad.

**John:** Aline, tell us, when should you follow up?

**Aline:** Well, this is a great question. I’m glad that we can share some of this. I’ve been doing this a long time. I have never gotten any better at the waiting to hear part.

**John:** I haven’t either.

**Aline:** I don’t know what it is.

**Craig:** You’re human. [laughs]

**Aline:** There’s something about the minute you press — it’s like the minute you press send, you go back into the document and you find a typo instantly.

**Craig:** Always.

**Aline:** Instantly.

**Craig:** By the way, isn’t that amazing?

**Aline:** You press send —

**Craig:** Always.

**Aline:** You go back in there and you’re like —

**Craig:** It’s sick.

**Aline:** Yeah. That’s I think —

**John:** In the old days when we used to print out scripts —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** I would wait for the messenger to come and pick up the script and take it away. And then I would look through it, like, “No, typo.”

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** Always.

**John:** And now it’s a PDF.

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** It’s something, honestly, that I still work on when I hand in a script. My husband pretty much wants to get away from me. I have not gotten any better at this. In the beginning of your career, it’s so difficult and it’s so heartbreaking.

**Craig:** I mean, like we send a script in to some agent or whatever the hell we do, two weeks go by, maybe it’s slightly bad news. But when you’re trying to start your career and this is — well, one agent you know and the one person who showed you interest and now two weeks have gone by, it’s your whole world focused on that one return call.

**Aline:** But I think it’s fascinating. It’s sort of like, you know, when you’re driving and there’s a pedestrian in front of you, you’re like, “Move more quickly. I’m going to hit you. [laughs] What are you doing?”

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then when you’re the pedestrian, you’re going [makes noise].

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, easy car.

**Aline:** And it’s the same thing when someone —

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** Gives me a script to read. It’ll often sit in my inbox for a long time and I won’t respond or won’t read it. And it doesn’t mean I don’t like it or I didn’t it —

**Craig:** So what do —

**Aline:** Here’s the thing. You can’t read anything into the two weeks.

**Craig:** But what do we tell them? Like when should you write back?

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** So I think you should write back with — if you sent it on a Thursday or Friday, you should write back on Tuesday to make sure that they have it.

**Aline:** Oh, interesting. Interesting.

**John:** So I would give them a weekend, which counts as sort of one day. Otherwise, you give them like just, you know, a few days to make sure that —

**Aline:** I might give them a week.

**Craig:** It’s funny, like I’m actually a two-weeker guy.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Like I feel like email works. And so I would check in two weeks later. By the way, also you can always call the assistant.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Like for instance for that one, like four days later, give the assistant a buzz and say, “I’m so sorry to bother you — ”

**Aline:** I just want to make sure.

**Craig:** “I just want to make sure it came through and then I will leave you alone, I promise.” And they’ll say, “Oh, yeah. It came through.” Then I would give it two weeks and then I would just drop a quick line.

**John:** So I had a conversation with my agent, David Kramer, about this and he said that it’s one of his great frustrations is when people don’t send the email back saying, “Got it.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Just acknowledge that you received it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because it honestly reduces your stress load tremendously to say like, “Got it. Thanks.”

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** And so just this last week I had a situation where I sent something through and I expected like, well, it’s a long weekend, whatever. And then I get the email back today saying like, “Oh, because of Con, we didn’t send it through, so it’ll be like another week.” I’m like —

**Craig:** So frustrating.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like, oh my god, the whole time I was like —

**Craig:** It’s so frustrating.

**John:** I’m picturing all the bad news that possibly could’ve happened.

**Craig:** You know what the word for what you were doing was?

**John:** What?

**Craig:** Because this is what my therapist tells me I do all the time.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Catastrophizing.

**John:** I love that word.

**Craig:** You were catastrophizing.

**Aline:** Oh, and that’s what happens when you turn in a script, all you can do is picture them thinking, “Oh, my god. What do I do? How do I — what do I say to her?”

**Craig:** It’s catastrophizing. But not only does this draft not work, this person can’t ever work again in Hollywood or anywhere.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** And should be punished publicly. [laughs]

**John:** This person —

**Aline:** And it’s funny because even —

**John:** This person is an impostor.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** The impostor has now been revealed.

**Craig:** At last we know the truth.

**Aline:** But you kind of build up a thing where “You know what, I feel pretty good about this one. I’m just going to hand this in and go to the Grove and I feel great.” And it takes anywhere between two minutes and 11 minutes to go into the spiral.

**Craig:** It breaks everyone.

**Aline:** So if it makes Cody feel any better, it happens to everyone. I would say after a couple of weeks, you can lob in. And I would probably, if John’s saying a Tuesday, I would say the end of the following week, I would say lob in an email saying, “Hey, just checking in. I wanted to make sure you got it. Would love to hear from you about it. Would love to talk about it with you.” If you don’t hear from them way soon after that, I think you can just take that as being French for no.

**Craig:** Well, you could. I mean, the truth is that sometimes it takes time, and especially if you are a flier. An agent is like, okay, a friend of a friend and you come, whatever. You send me your script.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s at the bottom of my pile.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So at some point, they’re going to pick it up.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you just have to be patient. And in your mind, essentially you have to remove yourself from that sicko equation of this is going to change my life. You just got to keep going on with your life and assume that that’s not going to change your life. And then if a wonderful thing comes crashing in, like the letter from Hogwarts inviting you and telling you you’re a wizard, then that’s great.

**Aline:** But the thing I would also say when you’re starting out is give your script to lots of people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Give your script to a friend. Give your script to an agent. Give your friend who’s an assistant. And I always think of it as like you’re putting little paper boats into the Central Park reservoir.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you who I give my script to. Just the other day, one of the smart — here’s an unsung screenwriter — he’s sung. But one of my favorite people in this business and he’ll never come on the show because he’s like a weirdo shut-in and he’ll never listen to this, so I don’t have a problem [laughs] with saying —

**John:** So you can call him a weirdo shut-in and —

**Craig:** He’ll never know that I called him a weirdo shut-in. But Bob Gordon, do you know Bob Gordon?

**John:** I know Bob Gordon.

**Craig:** So smart. So Bob Gordon is probably most known for writing Galaxy Quest. Brilliant, brilliant guy. I met him in Nashville actually. And like you know when you meet someone, you’re like, “Oh my god, you’re like me [laughs], you know, but even weirder. This is great.” And I sent him my script and he had such a smart comment that was just so good and really —

**John:** Was it devastating?

**Craig:** No. That’s the thing. First I thought, well, because I really like to be open about these things, I thought, “Okay, well, if I took that on its face, it could theoretically be devastating to the structure of the story.” But then the more I thought about it, I thought, “No. You know what he’s getting at I can actually solve and it will make so many things better and I could do it in three pages at the start of the script.”

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And it was so helpful that —

**Aline:** But, you know, you just —

**Craig:** This isn’t about praising Bob Gordon.

**Aline:** You put your little boats in the water, send them out, as many as you can.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then try not to worry about them. And some of them will come in.

**Craig:** That’s what Seth Rudetsky would do.

**John:** [laughs] So a question from the feed.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Steve Bethers asks, “Craig, do you think Robert Mark Kamen is Writer X?”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Wouldn’t it be great if like these two threads came together? So Robert Mark Kamen was the unsung screenwriting hero that Craig brought up last week and Writer X was this screenwriter who — wouldn’t that be amazing? I think it’s impossible, amazing.

**Craig:** It would be shocking, obviously. It would shatter me in many ways.

**Aline:** Wow. Will Writer X ever be revealed?

**John:** I’m not sure there ever was a Writer X.

**Craig:** Writer X will never come back.

**Aline:** Do you think he’s not a real person?

**Craig:** No, I think Writer X was a real person. I think that —

**John:** Well, I think Writer X had no produced credits, so that was the issue.

**Craig:** Right. And so Final Draft was like, “Hey, Writer X, why don’t you do this and we’ll give you a hundred bucks.” I don’t know if they even paid him. But I think after the shellacking that occurred, Writer X probably will not appear again. No, I don’t think Robert Kamen is Writer X. At the risk of being a dick —

**John:** Isn’t that amazing?

**Craig:** I don’t think the writing was good enough to qualify as Kamen level.

**Aline:** Kamenesque.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was not Kamenesque.

**John:** All right. We’re going to scroll back through the feed and look for a new question. So if you have a question for us, put it in the feed and we’ll hit it. Stuart has one all highlighted.

**Craig:** Ooh, god, Stuart, you’re good.

**John:** We have a question here from G Red asking, “Aline, there was some discussion about dress codes in Hollywood for writers. ‘Don’t be the best-dressed person in the room.’ Is that true for women?”

**Aline:** Yeah, I remember hearing that and I giggled through that at the thought that Craig or John would be at all concerned about —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** How they were dressed with respect to the others.

**Craig:** I think that was a Writer X thing in a weird way, wasn’t it?

**Aline:** It was a guy who’s saying that he shows up at meetings dressed in a suit and he feels more comfortable in a suit.

**Craig:** Whatevs.

**Aline:** I mean, I will say for women that, you know, I remember when I very first came out here I had bought a lot of fancy clothes and suits. This was a long time ago.

**Craig:** Like Hilary Clinton suits?

**Aline:** Yeah, kind of. And my agent said to me, “You’re a writer, wear Converse.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** I think that dressing well in Hollywood is a little bit different from dressing fancy. You want to show that you have some — well, for a certain type of writer, it’s not —

**Craig:** [laughs] Meaning not me.

**Aline:** Terrible to show that you have some taste and that you’re cool and that you’re — you know, I think dressing fancy, dressing up, wearing heels, wearing a skirt, wearing a blazer, that’s not really what writers do.

**Craig:** Don’t dress like a suit. That’s basically —

**Aline:** Don’t dress like a suit, yeah.

**Craig:** You don’t want to be corporate.

**Aline:** You can be cool and people can see that you’re making an effort in how you look. But fancy is not really du jour for anybody.

**John:** On the podcast, I had discussed Wes Anderson. If Wes Anderson showed up for a meeting, you kind of want Wes Anderson dressed like Wes Anderson. So if you were a female writer, a female director, it would be appropriate to dress up kind of like the person who you kind of are.

**Aline:** I know more people whose thing is that they do something odd in the other direction. Like they always wear hoodies or they wear pajamas or, you know, writers are more known for doing that kind of thing —

**Craig:** There is a writer, I won’t say his name but everybody will probably figure out who it is when I say it, who’s constantly just doing these very contrived things with his clothes. He wears a mask. [laughs] He’ll put on a clown nose. It’s just —

**John:** I know who you’re talking about.

**Craig:** You know who I’m talking about. It’s ridic —

**Aline:** I do not.

**Craig:** I just mouthed it.

**John:** Mouthed it.

**Aline:** Right, right.

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous and it’s just insecure and dumb. I mean my whole thing about — this is one area where there’s definitely sexism going on for sure. For a guy, you know, I always feel like I have the confidence of thinking, it doesn’t what I’m wearing. I’m going to be wearing something sort of schlubby because that’s who I am. But if I can start talking impressively, nobody will give a damn what’s on my body. I do think that people are judgy about women. I actually think that it’s — a lot of a women are judgy about women with clothes, and that’s a bummer but it does — I think if what you’re saying is don’t look like a not-creative person —

**Aline:** That’s right.

**Craig:** But don’t also try and look like some contrived example of a creative person, you should be fine.

**Aline:** Yeah. I don’t — I think it’s just — it’s we live in a casual city and people dress casually.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And you can look cool. But it really isn’t a thing of dressing up. People don’t really wear suits, so you would look, you know, odd. That being said, there are some people who that’s their thing. Sam Raimi wears suits. Everybody knows that.

**Craig:** If it’s natural to them —

**Aline:** And if it’s — and if it’s your thing.

**Craig:** Paul Feig does it.

**Aline:** Yeah. Paul Feig is dressed —

**Craig:** Paul Feig directs in a suit.

**Aline:** Yeah, he is dressed to the nines all the time.

**Craig:** Which is crazy. That’s like taking a shower in a suit.

**Aline:** You’re right.

**Craig:** It’s nuts.

**Aline:** He’s dressed to the nines all the time.

**Craig:** Do you know who dresses great?

**Aline:** Who?

**Craig:** Sexy Craig. Oh yeah.

**Aline:** Sexy Craig. Sexy threads.

**Craig:** You like this velour? Yeah, it’s real velour, 100%.

**Aline:** This is from J.Crew.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** We have a lot of speculation in the chat thread about who you were talking about when you mouthed off —

**Craig:** Oh, really? Who did they come up with?

**John:** Some of the things are fantastic. Carrot Top. Is it Nolan?

**Aline:** I read a great thing.

**Craig:** No, Nolan is a jacket and tie guy.

**Aline:** I read a great thing that somebody tweeted which is like, if you have a Carrot Top, shouldn’t your hair be green?

**John:** That’s a really good point. Wow.

**Craig:** Mind blown. Mind blown. Inception.

**John:** All right. Another question from Stuart from one of you listeners. Jason Bob Gardner II writes, can you break down the skill set difference or responsibilities between a showrunner for a show versus director of a feature film?

**Aline:** The showrunner for the show is the producer and the writer. So you’re doing really what a feature producer would do for a movie, you’re doing for every episode. And you’re the writer. And then you choose a director and the director figures out sort of how the thing is photographed.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** If that makes sense.

**John:** I think that makes a lot of sense. A director is still incredibly important in television because that director is Marc Webb in your case, who did your pilot, is figuring out the vision for sort of how the shots go together, especially on a pilot. But even on a given episode, like how you are going to make that day’s work work, how you’re going to put this whole thing together.

**Aline:** You’re translating the visual — translating the script into the visuals, yeah.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And then editing that pilot together.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** At least the first stab at it.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And the real difference, though, is that unlike a feature screenwriter, the showrunner has tremendous influence and power in sort of deciding what the final cut of something is going to be.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** It’s hiring that director onboard.

**Aline:** It’s sort of like you’re in charge of the whole — and the whole is not the one episode. The whole is the series.

**Craig:** That’s right. The showrunner is going to be there later. So they have to be in charge of things like, you can say, “Well, as a director when you make a feature film, what are the characters wearing?” That’s your job. It’s not your job on television. It’s everyone’s job in television particularly the showrunner because the showrunner is stuck with that for when you’re gone.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** In features, if a director is also the writer, then frankly they are kind of like a showrunner. In that regard, it’s very similar.

**John:** Yeah, they’re a showrunner who’s doing a pilot.

**Craig:** A showrunner doing a two-hour pilot. Exactly

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So like, you know, Todd Phillips, basically is like a showrunner on his movies. He is the producer, he is the director, he is the writer or at least, you know a co-writer. And so —

**Aline:** And often, showrunners direct. I mean, Matt I directed the finale of Mad Men.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** I mean what’s interesting for me is that I had a big adjustment to make in being a screenwriter because I am fairly sociable. I like to be around other people. I like to talk to other people. So especially for the first 10 years in my career, it was very difficult for me to deal with the being alone in a room. I’m also, and this will be a surprise to everyone, a bit bossy.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** No, not true.

**Aline:** And so —

**Craig:** What?

**Aline:** I enjoy — working on a TV show is fun because it’s rather gregarious, lots of people. You have a crew, a cast, a family, a set. You know, I like to make decisions and I’m comfortable with extending the writing decisions into the production decisions.

**Craig:** So bossy. Just —

**Aline:** Just a little bossy.

**Craig:** Who am I scared of more than you? Nobody.

**John:** Nobody.

**Craig:** Nobody.

**Aline:** That says more about you than me.

**Craig:** It does.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Completely.

**Craig:** [laughs] Absolutely. Whatever you want me to say.

**John:** Chris Percal writes, as someone rushing to finish a TV spec for the Fellowships, how important is it to follow a showrunner’s format? Specifically, if the showrunner has a few formatting quirks that are atypical? Thanks.

So Aline, you must have read a bunch of scripts.

**Aline:** I couldn’t care less about it for a minute, I think.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, if you’re — you have to stick to the structure of the show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you’re — if the show that you are mimicking or writing an episode of starts with a cold open every time —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** You’ve got to do that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If the show has a certain amount of breaks, you got to do that.

**Aline:** I will say this. I know how you guys often say, you know, the first 10 pages of a screenplay are really important, blah, blah, blah. Wow, the first 10 pages of your pilot that you’re submitting for consideration —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** Couldn’t be more important because you don’t really have the time to read past and, you know, the people that I have read for staffing where I read the 10 pages and I’m like, “I’ve got to read this whole thing.” If you can do that, you stand out so much. You’ve got to grab people in the beginning.

**Craig:** So that’s more important than nailing the tiny little formatting, quirky, baloney, rules, baloney?

**Aline:** Also, do not save your good stuff for page 48.

**John:** Yeah. Right at the start. You must have read more in this last of couple of months than years.

**Craig:** What’s the state of writing out there? [laughs] Not good, huh?

**Aline:** Well, when you find somebody who can really do it, I think particularly for the beginning writers, it’s a bit like music. You know, I always love that thing when the first couple years of Idol where people would audition and Randy Jackson would say, “You know what, singing, not your thing man.”

**Craig:** It’s not for you.

**Aline:** It’s just not for you.

**Craig:** It’s not for you.

**Aline:** You know, what else you like you to do?

**Craig:** And he would say —

**Aline:** Remember, he would say, “What else do you like to do?”

**Craig:** “What else do you like to do? Do you have other hobbies?” And they’re like, “But all my friends tell me that I’m great.”

**Aline:** Right. And I think you can tell particularly with the emerging writers, right away, if they, you know, there’s a voice and a music. I mean the thing that really kills me and continues to kill me is, particularly in television, people writing things you cannot see.

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** She remembers the summer by the sea.

**Craig:** Makes. Me. Crazy.

**Aline:** But particularly like I feel like I will give more leeway to that in a screenplay where you’re setting a mood and maybe you write in a more of prosey style.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** But when you’re writing a television episode —

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** If you want to tell me, she smells hyacinth and thinks of her Aunt Lou, I got nothing. There’s nothing I can see.

**John:** She’s throwing your script across the room.

**Aline:** Yeah. It’s tough.

**Craig:** And by the way, these are people that have agents, have managers.

**Aline:** Oh, yes.

**Craig:** Are represented.

**Aline:** Oh, yes.

**Craig:** And still you’re —

**Aline:** And also, it’s a taste thing. I’m sure there are scripts that I don’t respond to that other people pick up and think are great.

**Craig:** I actually, I think that I’m pretty good at telling the difference between my reaction to a script. If I read it and I think, “This is not my taste versus you are bad. You’re actually incompetent. This is not right. This chair only has three legs and you’ve forgotten the back is upside down. And I can see glue blobs.”

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There’s a difference.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And it is, I got to say, it is amazing. And this should be encouraging for our listeners out there, following along live as we stream. There are a lot of bad, bad, bad writers who have agents. And you can take them out. And by the way, a lot of people think I’m one of them.

**Aline:** So I have a bunch of friends.

**Craig:** So you can take me out, too.

**Aline:** I have a bunch of friends who are writers because they were readers.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And they were reading a lot of the scripts and they thought, “Man.”

**Craig:** I could do better.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s that shit plus one thing that makes me so nervous.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** It’s making a —

**Aline:** What?

**Craig:** Terry Rossio’s crap plus one. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So his crap plus one theory is that a lot of people look at Hollywood and they go —

**Aline:** Oh, right.

**Craig:** “Well, that’s a bunch of crap. All I have to do is plus one of that and I’ll be fine.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But they don’t realize that —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** The crap that you see eventually —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Has already been broken — like something started brilliant —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And then the process just destroyed it down to crap.

**Aline:** Right. But you can — it’s kind of glorious and interesting to see people who just have an ear and this is what they were put on Earth to do.

**Craig:** It’s fun. It’s great finding people like that.

**Aline:** And, you know, how much of it is learned and — but, you know, I have by and large enjoyed the process of reading. And I don’t think for a second about the format, is the short answer.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Great. One last question from Adam Alterburk. He writes, “Who decides when script is locked for production? And how does one handle the political side of this decision?” We’ve never talked about that.

**Aline:** That’s a great question.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** What a good question.

**Craig:** Well, locking for production is something that you — if you are the writer now that’s sort of the production writer, and in fact I’m doing this right now for The Huntsman.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I have to talk to the line producer, a woman named Sarah Bradshaw. And she and I coordinate. What I say is, “Look, I don’t — it doesn’t matter to me when I lock this. It doesn’t matter to me what we call the white draft. And it doesn’t matter to me what we call blue or if we should lock pages at this point or issue a whole new draft. What would make your life easier on your end?” And then she tells me and that’s what I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because that’s not creative. That’s about a process. There are times when I’ll say, “Look, because of the way this last week went, we’ve just changed the second half of — there’s like every page, there’s a single asterisk gone and it’s super annoying. Why don’t we just not — why don’t we issue a whole new draft?” And then they’ll say yes or no. And that’s what we’ll do. And it’s as simple as that. You just coordinate with the line producer and get to know them. And it’s really important for you to be a master of your software.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you know exactly how to do it and you know exactly know how to not screw them up. They have all experienced screenwriters who have screwed them up.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s huge mess. And they don’t like that. So know how to work your stuff.

**Aline:** It’s also great to find somebody who knows how to do it, too.

**Craig:** That’s the best.

**Aline:** You know, somebody else who knows how to handle the program. But the one thing, I have worked with people who hate revised pages. I worked with a director and a producer who want to keep the script as white as possible. And so they want you to lock as late as possible so you don’t end up with a script that’s stuffed with confetti.

**Craig:** Sure. No, I get that. But, you know, at some point you have to be able to —

**Aline:** Of course.

**Craig:** To move around. And so what I’ll do like, for instance, I know that there are some things I have to write that are for what’s coming up in the next three weeks of shooting. Rather than just send one thing at a time which would create multiple revisions.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** What I’m doing is I’m saying, “Okay, look, here’s the new stuff, not in a script. Take a look at it, let’s get it approved by the director and the studio.” And then if everybody approves, then I’ll just say, “Okay, here’s a bunch — an aggregated bunch of approved stuff. This is now our green draft.

**John:** So I’m going to talk people back through who have not been through production drafts to understand what we’re actually saying. When a script goes in production, it has a locked draft. Basically, all those page numbers are going to stay the same.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That is considered the white draft. And then if there are changes that are made to that script, they release it as colored pages. And those colored pages will fit into the script that was already released and locked. So if you have change something on page 56, and you’ve added a page between 56 and 57, that is page A56 or 56a depending on how your numbering system works.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And those pages will go in there. So it’s a way of like not reprinting the whole script every time, which is a really good thing. The issues and challenges become, when do you close that down? And most scripts that I’ve brought into production, it tends to be about like two weeks beforehand, it has pulled the trigger and suddenly like, okay, that’s the white draft and everything from that point forward.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But what Craig is saying is really smart too, is that if it is just a small change and it’s not going to shoot really soon, you hold back on releasing those pages so you can release it as a block so it’s much less confusing.

**Aline:** You just to be careful because sometimes there’s departments that are waiting for those pages for some reason.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s why to me, there’s a sort of like two levels. When I try and do this stuff. I mean I would do this like with the Hangovers, this is how Todd and I would do it. We wouldn’t — because we were changing stuff all the time. But we wouldn’t just like every five minutes, go — we made sure like, “Okay, who needs to know this?”

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Here’s three pages that’s not script stuff. And it’s not like pulled from the script. It’s just a scene that we all now we’re going to be doing. Obviously, you never mess with scene numbers. That’s the one thing you can’t do. And then if everybody knows, then we can hold it and then we do an issue.

**Aline:** The funny thing about scene numbers, I know you guys have talked about this is that, people rush over to you and say, “Are you doing something to 56?” And you’re like, “What’s 56?”

**Craig:** What is 56?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** How would I possibly know what 56 is? But they know — the crew —

**Aline:** Well, eventually you kind of learn.

**Craig:** Always knows.

**Aline:** Eventually —

**Craig:** I don’t.

**Aline:** Never?

**Craig:** I never once — I’ve gotten to the end of a movie and somebody’s like, “All we have left is 83a”

**Aline:** 73.

**Craig:** And I’m like, I still don’t know.

**Aline:** Yeah, once in while, there’s ones that become, you know, important or you know that scene is being revised.

**Craig:** I don’t have space in my brain. [laughs]

**Aline:** And in 27 Dresses, it was scene 69. And every time it came up —

**Craig:** How’d you remember that one, huh?

**John:** A question for you guys. I suspect you do the same thing. I always keep a printed out copy of the script so I will do like one last idiot check if I’m going to release pages to make sure they will actually fit in the real script. Do you keep a printout of your script or do you just trust that it’s going to work?

**Craig:** I don’t. What I do instead is I have the prior draft and the current one. So, for instance, if I’m working on, I don’t know, what’s the order, blue, yellow, pink?

**Aline:** Blue, pink.

**Craig:** Blue, pink, yellow. So I’ve got — let’s say I’m going to yellow. So I take my pink draft. I save it as. And now I got my pink draft on the left, I got my yellow draft on the right. And then when I’m done with my yellow changes, I just look back —

**John:** You’re looking at the PDF that you created out of it?

**Craig:** No, I’m looking at my screenwriting files.

**John:** And I would never trust that. I will always either create a PDF or literally print it just to make sure there’s no like —

**Craig:** That’s what a German would do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s very German.

**Aline:** Brings it back around. There’s absolutely nothing worse than realizing that you’ve unlocked some page or not locked a page.

**John:** Oh god.

**Aline:** Or starred a page.

**John:** I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight, Aline.

**Craig:** Why would you do that? What’s wrong with you?

**Aline:** You’ve done five hours of work and not locked or unlocked or released or marked —

**Craig:** Stop talking. Please stop. Stop. [laughs]

**John:** I will have nightmares.

**Aline:** Because there’s no way you can go back and recapture all those keystrokes. That’s really — so when you’re doing —

**Craig:** I’m getting pee shivers.

**Aline:** When you’re doing production revisions, you have to turn on the part of your brain that is the librarian that can —

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Sort of monitor what you’re doing.

**Craig:** Because my god, they will hate you. And also, it’s not just hatred. It’s a hatred plus you’re an outsider who doesn’t understand our world. It just makes screenwriters look worse in that — as screenwriters, we have to be able to operate the way the crew operates.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Or they won’t respect us.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They don’t really care that we, “I invented everything. None of you would be here without me.” They don’t care.

**John:** They don’t care at all.

**Aline:** But the first time you do the job — the first time you’re the job, the writer in production —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There’s a little bit of like, “So okay, listen, I was just still wondering. Guys, what do I…?” You have to sort of — I guess it’s like any job. Anybody who’s ever worked in production, you kind of fake it till you make it. You kind of use your, you know, your wits. I, you know, when I —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** The first movie that I did that on, there was no Internet. Oh god, I can’t believe I said that. But I couldn’t Google like how do you lock that, unlock that, what did I do, what were you doing?

**Craig:** What year were you born? [laughs] The no Internet.

**Aline:** The first movie that I wrote when I was doing the production edits was ’99.

**Craig:** Oh, there was the Internet in ’99.

**Aline:** But I mean, we weren’t on there. Like you wouldn’t —

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You weren’t going to Google and saying, “How do I lock this?”

**Craig:** No. That’s — oh that, yeah.

**Aline:** “Unlock this?” You know.

**Craig:** I mean my first production —

**Aline:** No, I feel like people now —

**Craig:** Was ’95.

**John:** Mine was ’98 for Go. Yeah.

**Craig:** Mine was ’95 for America’s favorite —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Classic RocketMan. And —

**Aline:** Well, I’d done TV stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I have another Cool Thing. I have Two Cool Things.

**Craig:** You have Two Cool Things?

**Aline:** Yeah, I just realized another one.

**Craig:** That’s not my Cool Thing.

**Aline:** I just realized two things.

**John:** Okay. Start us off Aline.

**Aline:** With our two things?

**John:** Cool Things.

**Aline:** Okay. I realize one, there’s a diet thing that I haven’t discussed with you guys, which is this — and I would like to put the — if we could find the study, put it in the show notes. There is a study that shows that it matters when you eat. So you should eat within a 12-hour span. And they did a study with mice or rats where mice who ate all of their food, no matter how many calories they had, in a 12-hours span, never gained weight. And the mice who ate the exact same amount of calories over a 24-hour span, gained tons of weight.

**Craig:** But who’s eating over 24 hours?

**Aline:** Well, but a lot of people eat from 6 o’clock in the morning until midnight.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** I’ve heard this general theory like you should only eat during —

**Aline:** So the general theory is you should eat from 7am to 7pm.

**Craig:** So explain why Spanish aren’t super fat.

**Aline:** They don’t start eating until — I don’t know.

**Craig:** They wake up, they eat breakfast.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Then they have like, they take a nap.

**Aline:** I am only —

**Craig:** Have a huge dinner. And then they eat dinner at like 11pm.

**Aline:** Well, I’m just reporting the fact. I’m just reporting the facts, ma’am.

**Craig:** And then they —

**John:** Twelve hours diet.

**Aline:** Twelve hours diet. And then the other thing is —

**Craig:** That sounds like baloney to me.

**Aline:** All right.

**Craig:** It smells.

**Aline:** I wanted to run it by you just to see how —

**Craig:** It smells.

**Aline:** How it went on the umbrage, because you know what? I want to tell you something. I totally believe it.

**Craig:** You believe it?

**Aline:** I totally believe it.

**Craig:** Something about it smells.

**John:** There’s science in mine as well. But go to yours.

**Aline:** Okay. So then the other thing is —

**Craig:** Mine is all about science.

**Aline:** So bone broth has gotten very trendy.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, bone broth?

**Aline:** Bone broth, do you know what this is?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Do you make broth out of bones?

**Craig:** Is it broth out of bones?

**Aline:** So if you guys lived in Brooklyn or in Silver Lake —

**Craig:** I was born in Brooklyn.

**Aline:** You would know what these things are. So bone broth has become very trendy.

**John:** Stuart Friedel is from Silver Lake.

**Aline:** It’s a — you know what bone broth is?

**Stuart:** I’ve heard of it.

**Aline:** Yeah. Bone broth is a soup that you make by boiling bones for hours and hours and hours.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Aline:** And people distill it and they make, you know — and Kobe Bryant drinks it and it’s trendy.

**Craig:** Oh, then it must be good.

**Aline:** And when you go to a butcher, you can have bone broth.

**Craig:** Yeah, it makes sense.

**Aline:** But bone broth is —

**John:** Somebody in the thing just said, Aline Broth McKenna. [laughs] Congratulations, Craig McDiarmid. You won the feed.

**Aline:** Well done. So, but bone broth is something that Korean people have been eating for centuries.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Aline:** And we lived in Koreatown. And I found this place that makes authentic Korean bone broth.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And it’s awesome. It’s the only thing they serve.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And I love restaurants where it’s the only thing they serve.

**Craig:** We serve bone broth.

**Aline:** We serve bone broth. You go in. And you decide —

**Craig:** I’ll have the bone broth.

**Aline:** But you can have bone broth with flank, brisket, intestines, tripe and tongue or mixed. So you get a bowl with the bone broth and it’s supposedly one of the most nourishing things you can eat.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Aline:** And you choose the kind of meat. And then it’s unsalted. So you salt it and they bring you scallions and they bring you hot sauce and they bring you kimchi and rice.

**Craig:** Everything other than the bone broth there, sounds awesome.

**Aline:** It’s like a delicious beef soup. Anyway, it’s supposed to be —

**Craig:** If you boil bones long enough, you’ll get glue.

**Aline:** It’s supposed to be the most restorative wonderful thing. And I found this place in Korea that does it. It’s not a trendy place.

**Craig:** In Korea?

**John:** Koreatown.

**Aline:** Koreatown.

**Craig:** Oh.

**Aline:** Did I say in Korea?

**John:** You said Korea.

**Craig:** Because that’s a whole —

**Aline:** Wow, the wine is kicking in.

**John:** 1.5 glasses of wine.

**Craig:** Well, there’s South Korea —

**Aline:** The wine is kicking in.

**Craig:** And there’s North Korea.

**Aline:** Anyway, it’s called —

**Craig:** They would love bone broth in North Korea.

**Aline:** I sent the link to myself so that I can remember the name of it, and it’s in Koreatown. And it’s called, for the eight people who are going to drive over there, oh good lord, where is it?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Where is it? It’s called Han Bat Sul Lung Tang.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Stuart will have that in the show notes. So everyone can like feast on bone broth there in Koreatown. Craig Mazin —

**Aline:** There’s also a line out the door.

**Craig:** I have a One Cool Thing that in many ways is just wonderfully oppositional to the nonsense we just heard about 12 hours and bone broth. This is a new Alzheimer’s treatment that they are working on in Australia. And it’s actually pretty remarkable and I have to say, very exciting because, I don’t know — do you guys have anybody with Alzheimer’s in your family?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. My aunt had it. It’s the worst. And it’s just a brutal, brutal disease. So Alzheimer’s happens basically because there are these proteins that start to gather in the brain that should be cleared up by glial cells and they’re not. And so they basically become like sticky, tangled bone broth in your brain that are kind of blocking transmissions and disrupting memory and ultimately destroying you as a person.

So what these guys in Australia are doing is they’re actually using this kind of ultrasound — so they’re — it’s not invasive. It’s not pharmacological. They’re actually ultrasounding your brain and it’s disrupting those tangles of proteins. And what they found in rats is that they were able to restore 75% — they had rats with memory problems. I don’t know how exactly they get rats to have Alzheimer’s but they just do.

**John:** [laughs] They try to do the crossword puzzle and they can’t.

**Craig:** They can’t.

**John:** They can’t do it.

**Craig:** So they pulled them out. So they had rats with Alzheimer’s, 75% of them regained all of their memory after this treatment, all of it.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Which is astonishing. So it was so promising that they’re already kind of moving towards human trials which is amazing. They think they’ll be able to get human trials going in 2017. If this sort of thing works, you and I —

**Aline:** Won’t have to worry about it.

**Craig:** And Stuart will not have to worry. I mean I’m kind of hoping that we can hit the singularity and just be put into —

**John:** Yeah. I would say that Alzheimer’s is way up there on my list of overall fears because the idea of not being able to, you know, be myself and sort of have my memories and have my own personality is terrifying to me.

**Craig:** It’s terrifying. And if there’s something as simple as this to solve it —

**John:** That would be great.

**Craig:** That would be awesome.

**John:** Great. My One Cool Thing is also about simplification and science. So it’s a article that was in FiveThirtyEight this week by Emily Oster called Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding. And Emily Oster, she is not a doctor. She is an economics professor. And she was looking at the data behind breastfeeding and sort of like the real study is to see like what is actually really going on behind the scenes when they’re doing the studies on breastfeeding.

And because we’ve always been told that like breastfeeding is awesome.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And I kind of believe breastfeeding is awesome. But I also had this sort of suspicion is like, but how are they really testing for that? And are they really taking care of all the other variables?

**Craig:** How do you measure awesome?

**John:** How do you measure awesome?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because are you really like taking into account the age and background and economic setup —

**Craig:** Socioeconomic status.

**John:** Of all the people who are breastfeeding.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And she was able to do that. So she took a look at all the studies. And when you actually filter out for all that other stuff, you find that a lot of the advantages of breastfeeding aren’t quite so pronounced or aren’t —

**Craig:** They’re not boob-based. They’re sort of related to other issues.

**John:** Exactly.

**Aline:** They’re correlative?

**John:** They’re correlative, rather than causal. So I bring this up because, you know, I think breastfeeding is still awesome and I’m a fan of people who want to breastfeed, I think we need to make sure that we make it an option for any woman who wants to and sort of create structures for that.

**Craig:** And not demonize women who don’t.

**John:** Exactly. Not demonize families that don’t do that because, you know, we’re a two-dad family. And so we did not have breast milk.

**Craig:** [laughs] Try as you did.

**John:** But we know other two-dad families who did like, you know, they would have —

**Craig:** They would buy it.

**John:** They would buy it.

**Craig:** I told my wife to sell it. We had a freezer full of this. She would make me freeze every stupid extra bag. She made so much — my wife is not a big bosomed woman.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She makes so much milk.

**Aline:** Making milk has nothing to do with the size of your boobs.

**Craig:** Apparently, I did not know that. I just went like, big, you know, like a guy, big boob, big, lots of milk. No. She made so much milk. And so our freezer’s full. So I’m like we should sell this. And she was like, “No, I can’t sell it.” She was weird about it.

**John:** Yeah, she totally could have. But I think the question is, you know, we had other two-dad families who ended up like, you know, having breast milk frozen and like FedEx’d and every day they were using that stuff.

**Craig:** And it’s probably —

**Aline:** So I think a lot of us, you know —

**John:** But according to science, it’s actually not necessarily —

**Craig:** It’s not worth all that trouble.

**John:** No.

**Aline:** A lot of this with parenting all these like, you know, strongly held beliefs that people have are just, you know, their talisman that they’re clinging to because it’s so scary and it’s so challenging emotionally. So people cling to things which are “we’re attachment pair, we’re not, we’re breastfeeding, we’re not…”

**John:** Right. Absolutely.

**Aline:** You know, it’s all sort of like things you tell yourself that is going to —

**Craig:** And then they go away.

**Aline:** It’s something that’s going to make you safe.

**Craig:** Like remember co-sleeping?

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Co-sleeping, everybody had to co-sleep. So our baby, our first kid was born and we tried co-sleeping for two days. And we’re like, screw this. He’s sleeping, we’re not.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** This is the worst.

**Aline:** And we just don’t have enough —

**Craig:** He doesn’t remember.

**Aline:** Of an emphasis on our culture in happy parents make happy babies.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And sort of do what works for you. And we cling to these things in a very anxiety-ridden, unrealistic way, punish each other. It’s the same thing with childbirth and natural child birth —

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** And not. And there’s so many judgments attached to it. Whatever works for you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Whatever makes you a happy parent is what makes for a happy child.

**Craig:** I’m so with you on that. You know, we were like — I remember, we went to my son, our first kid was born at Cedars because we lived near here. And we went to this talk that the retired head of obstetric anesthesiology ran. He was no longer in practice, really old guy, he’s like 80 years old. And he was talking about epidurals and why and how, you know, why he thought it was a good idea. And this one woman raised her hand and she was very like and she said, “Well, I’ve heard from my friends that an epidural can prolong labor and I don’t want to prolong my labor because I don’t think it would be good for my baby.”

And he said, “Well, in my experience, actually, it shortens labor because when you’re in pain, you’re muscles tighten. When you’re not in pain, you’re relaxed, you relax and labor actually goes faster. Granted that’s only in my experience, I’ve never had a baby myself, but I have overseen the delivery of 70,000 babies.”

And that’s when I leaned back and went, “Okay, epidural.” [laughs] 70,000, that’s good enough.

**Aline:** You know, it’s funny my dad — but do you know there are some people who have like a very valid reason for not wanting that and that’s important to them.

**Craig:** Totally.

**Aline:** And they should do that. When my parents were raising me and they didn’t have a lot of, you know, they were living in a country they weren’t born in. And I remember my dad went to a lecture that a parenting expert gave. And, you know, everyone asking these questions about should you do this, should you do that and do that.

And the guy said, “You know, what’s really important, the most important thing is to love your children.” And my father thought, “Well, I’m doing that.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So what could go wrong?

**John:** I think it’s really good on the 200th episode of this show that we’ve brought all the way back down to really the crucial fundamental issue of what Scriptnotes is.

**Craig:** Vagina.

**John:** Vagina. Female health.

**Craig:** We’ve always been a gynecological podcast.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** We have like a shadow gynecology podcast. We dress it up as screenwriting.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s really —

**Craig:** But we’ve always been about gynecological issues.

**John:** A pretense about that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Two hundred episodes.

**Craig:** Unbelievable.

**Aline:** I can’t believe it.

**Craig:** John, congratulations.

**Aline:** How long ago did I start emailing you and saying, “What’s going to happen for the 200th?”

**Craig:** I know, I know. Aline was very excited.

**John:** Episode Four or five.

**Aline:** I was very excited. [laughs]

**Craig:** But I have to say, John, what an adventure we’ve been on. I mean, you know, I wouldn’t have foreseen this.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** I mean we — this is over — almost four years.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** It’s insane.

**Aline:** And I know I think I’ve said this before, but when each of you said I’m doing this thing with the other guy, I thought, “Well, that would be interesting.” [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s not going to work. [laughs] Well, that’s kind of why it does work.

**Aline:** It does, yeah.

**Craig:** I think, I mean if we weren’t an odd couple, it would be very boring.

**John:** We’re both strong personalities, but very different personalities and —

**Craig:** Well, you know what I think one of the things that helps us, we are both strong personalities, but I decided very early on — I don’t even think I decided. I just did it. I decided to be the beta male. [laughs] I decided to be the beta podcast male because it’s just — it felt right.

**John:** If people are watching the Twitter feed, I posted a photo of Craig and Aline and Teddy who is our summer intern. And Teddy, the dog is the alpha dog even though he looks like the beta dog.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s crucial to see dogs in their own environment having their own sort of space.

**Craig:** I’m totally the beta podcast guy. Now, what’s — how many people actually showed up for this?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh, we had a total of like 250 people in our —

**Aline:** Wow. Nice.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you, everyone. Thank you. That’s awesome.

**John:** That’s amazing. So that’s like a big full house. So thank you guys very much for listening.

**Craig:** And we can kind of cull some of these questions for another Q&A.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So we’re going to be saving the transcript of all the Q&A here.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So we’ll get back to some of those things.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Guys, thank you, guys, so much for listening.

**Aline:** It was fun. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks. And thank you, Stuart. Two hundred — and Stuart, have you been here for all 200?

**Aline:** Oh wow.

**John:** Stuart Friedel has been here from the very beginning.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Craig:** Stuart just nodded.

**Aline:** And it was as if, yeah, it could have been grief. It could have been joy.

**Craig:** It was as if I had asked him do you like tuna fish. He just has one emotion which is mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

**Aline:** I like tuna fish.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** He does like tuna fish. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro for this week’s show. Thank you, Matthew, and he did our intro and so much stuff for the show.

**Craig:** He’s the best.

**Aline:** Lala.

**John:** If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write to us @clmazin for Craig, @johnaugust for me. Longer questions, go to ask@johnaugust.com. People who listen to the show know where we are.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We are on iTunes. We’re Scriptnotes. Look for us there. We have an app which is downloadable. You can find our show there.

**Craig:** {laughs]

**John:** It’s been two glasses of wine. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** John hit two glasses and has just fallen off —

**Aline:** Yeah, that’s it, it’s going off for a cliff.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** Craig Mazin, thank you always. But Aline Brosh McKenna, thank you for coming by.

**Craig:** Aline. Thank you, Aline. You are our Joan Rivers, but alive.

**Aline:** I want to be Supergirl.

**John:** You could be our Supergirl. Did you watch the Supergirl trailer?

**Aline:** I did. It’s my friend Ali’s show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I’m excited about it.

**John:** I’m excited for her, too. And I heard like negative buzz on it. And it was like — but the show is not for you. I mean like the show —

**Aline:** No, I think it looks like lots of fun. She’s adorable.

**John:** She’s adorable.

**Aline:** That actress is amazing. She’s the girl from Whiplash. Supergirl —

**Craig:** I have to recuse myself from discussing any issues regarding superheroes and gender. Thank you.

**John:** And thank you all for listening. Good night everyone.

**Aline:** Bye-bye.

**Craig:** Good night.

Links:

* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes) and [180](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male)
* [CW picks up Crazy Ex-Girlfriend](http://deadline.com/2015/05/crazy-ex-girlfriend-dc-legends-of-tomorrow-cordon-cw-series-1201422393/) on Deadline, and [the first-look trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ctFmXGm_yE)
* [Jane the Virgin](http://www.cwtv.com/shows/jane-the-virgin/) on CW
* [Marie’s Crisis](http://www.yelp.com/biz/maries-crisis-new-york) on Yelp
* [Seth Rudetsky’s Deconstructions](http://www.sethtv.com/watch-tv/deconstructions/)
* u/tcatron565’s Reddit post, [2013 Domestic Wide Releases Opening Weekend Out of Total Gross Over Audience Perception of Film](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37d8fg/2013_domestic_wide_releases_opening_weekend_out/) from [r/dataisbeautiful](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/)
* [A Cliff or a Rolling Hill](http://blog.blcklst.com/2015/05/a-cliff-or-a-rolling-hill/) from the Black List blog
* [Can You Copyright a Dream?](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/selma-martin-luther-king-can-you-copyright-a-dream-114187.html#.VWyxT1xViko) on Politico
* Hear about Writer X on [Scriptnotes, Episode 194](http://johnaugust.com/2015/poking-the-bear)
* The New York Times Magazine on [A 12-Hour Window for a Healthy Weight](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/a-12-hour-window-for-a-healthy-weight/?_r=0)
* EaterLA on [Korean bone broth soups and where to get them in LA](http://la.eater.com/maps/bone-broth-korean-los-angeles-koreatown-map-guide), and [Han Bat Sul Lung Tang](http://www.yelp.com/biz/han-bat-sul-lung-tang-los-angeles) on Yelp
* [Ultrasound Restores Memory to Mice with Alzheimer’s](http://www.popsci.com/ultrasound-restores-memory-mice-alzheimers) on Popular Science
* [Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/) on FiveThirtyEight
* [Supergirl first-look trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOAMGpRilnI)
* [Intro and Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-long-and-short-of-it).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 196 of Scriptnotes. A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we will talk about writing tight versus writing long, producer credits in US television, the trend of hiring multiple writers simultaneously, screenwriter’s dress code, the jealousy over other writers’ success, and several other questions related to previous episodes. Craig, it’s going to be a very, very big and busy show.

**Craig:** Yeah. You want to pray for traffic right now. You need time folks. You need to settle in now, calm down, relax. You’re in a safe place. We’re going to walk you through everything.

**John:** Absolutely. So, this is a great podcast to listen to as you’re driving to the West Side, or from the West Side. If you’re in New York City, maybe this is a great time for the subways to slow down a little bit. If you have a big chore in front of you, like a lot of dirty dishes, maybe dirty up some extra dishes. Make an extra big pot of chili because this is going to be a lot of stuff today.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm, this is a five-chili podcast.

**John:** [laughs] In follow up, last —

**Craig:** I don’t even know what means. What does five-chili mean? I don’t even know what that means.

**John:** A five-chili podcast, I mean, is that a hot podcast?

**Craig:** I guess. It’s like you have to make five pots of chili. It really makes no sense. But sometimes when I say things that are stupid, I like to just keep talking about it. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. It’s always important to dwell on the things that make no sense at all.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, what do we got today?

**John:** Last week on the show we had Ryan Knighton and he was fantastic. I loved that episode. And he talked about writing while Canadian. And people seemed to have a great response to that.

**Craig:** He’s a really intelligent guy. And he has this very interesting perspective on screenwriting because he’s an outsider. He’s an outsider because he’s Canadian. He’s an outsider because he’s a novelist. He’s an outsider because he’s blind. And he’s completely blind, by the way. Before we started the show, sometimes people say well they’re visually impaired, I can see some things. He actually smashed his head into the microphone. He’s that blind.

But he had all of these things that made him kind of an outsider and yet somehow through, oh my gosh, talent and hard work, he’s about as inside as it gets, writing a screenplay for Ridley Scott. And I feel like, frankly, everybody is an outsider until they’re an insider. And so I think that was part of it. But he was just particularly good at expressing what his perspective was and how it had changed over time. It was a great discussion.

And maybe my favorite part of it is that you and I got into a fight in front of him about what he looked like.

**John:** Yes. And so I want to sort of go back to that thing, because I said — we were talking about some project that he was involved with and someone had brought up Chris O’Dowd. And I said on the podcast, oh yes, I think Chris O’Dowd could play you in the movie. Or I said basically like you look kind of like Chris O’Dowd. And we threw it out to the listeners about whether our guest, Ryan Knighton, looks like Chris O’Dowd.

And the votes came back and I was wrong, apparently. He does not look like Chris O’Dowd.

**Craig:** No. He looks nothing like Chris O’Dowd. And it was interesting because usually when you say to somebody, oh, I think you look like so-and-so, they will either say, “Yeah, I get that,” or, “What?” But Ryan was like, “Oh, do I?” Because he hasn’t seen his own face in a really long time. So he might now look like Chris O’Dowd.

But, no, Ryan, you do not. I don’t know what —

**John:** I had a hunch I was going to lose this bet because Stuart Friedel was tasked with trying to find two photos to put in the show notes that would show how Chris O’Dowd and Ryan Knighton looked like each other. And he had a very hard time doing that.

So, he picked the two that looked the most alike. But he said, “You know what? You’re going to lose.” And I lost that bet.

**Craig:** Yeah, he just doesn’t look like Chris O’Dowd.

**John:** Scott wrote in and said, “As someone who is legally blind, though I am still able to use a computer and type, it was inspiring to listen to today’s podcast. One of my biggest fears is if I do lose all my sight completely, I wouldn’t be able to continue with my dream. That’s clearly not the case. Thank you. I listen to your podcast religiously, but not cultistly, and treat you and John like my film school.”

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** So, that was a very common email we got in. People loving that episode with Ryan Knighton. But I wanted to highlight that one because that last sentence, “I listen to your podcast and treat you and John like my film school.” So, it was written as if it was written to Craig, which is so strange because Craig never checks the email.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He doesn’t even have the password for the email.

**Craig:** I would if you let me.

**John:** It was so weird.

**Craig:** Yeah, you don’t — you keep me away from all that stuff. That is odd.

**John:** So I assume it was written towards Craig, not written towards Stuart, but maybe it was written towards Stuart. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think anyone is treating you and Stuart like their film school.

**John:** Yeah, probably not.

**Craig:** I mean, listen, there’s something about me that either drives people away, or draws them in tight. I’m either the worst or best.

**John:** I think there may be like a daddy thing, honestly, where because daddy has strong opinions, you’re sort of like — you push back against daddy, but then you’re also sort of like, oh, but I love daddy. So, if daddy is on my side, I think you’re kind of the daddy of the podcast. If I’m the professor, you’re the father. And you give people stern talking’s to, but sometimes they love you for it.

**Craig:** I think of myself as the Oracle and you as the Architect.

**John:** Oh, great. Yes, so back to the Matrix.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Great.

We have some questions for our listeners. So, this is episode 196. We are approaching episode 200. And we are trying to figure out what is going to happen at 200 and what is going to happen beyond 200. So, spoiler alert, there is not going to be a live show with an audience like we traditionally have done for some other big events, and that’s all because of Craig. Craig does not want to do a live show with an audience because he has stage fright suddenly.

**Craig:** Well, I just, I don’t know. We’ve done a lot of them. And I get this kind of panic, a little bit of a panic, that we’ll do one and suddenly we won’t be the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts anymore. And we’ll have half of an audience full of people that have been there before. And they’ll all be like, “Yeah, you know…it’s all right.”

**John:** They’ll want us to play our greatest hits. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I figured, oh, well, you know, if you don’t go away, how can they ever miss you. But, you had a really interesting idea because then Aline started yelling at me, which as you know, is an intense experience.

**John:** So, if you’re the Oracle and I’m the Architect, who is she in this? Is she Neo? Is she Trinity? Who is she in the Matrix analogy?

**Craig:** I think she’s the Merovingian.

**John:** Oh, wow. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Oh, you didn’t see the sequels?

**John:** I did see the sequels. I just didn’t understand them.

**Craig:** [laughs] I actually understand them. It took me a long, long time, and I had to do a lot of reading. It’s actually kind of amazing. I don’t — the third movie just does not entertain me. The second movie is incredibly challenging and entertains me and actually has some remarkable things going on philosophically and in terms of what they’re suggesting.

I don’t know, one day we’ll have that discussion. But the Merovingian is the French guy in the restaurant who is very, very aggressive, but also French. And she’s French and aggressive.

**John:** That is Aline, because she’s French and she’s aggressive. Done.

**Craig:** Done. Right? Although she would probably want to be Monica Bellucci, his wife, because she’s super stylish. I’m still going with the Merovingian on that one.

Anyway, you had this really interesting idea that maybe what we should do for the 200th episode, since it deserves some kind of attention, is a Google Hangout where we basically — anyone can see it, right? So anywhere around the world people can just hang out with us while we do our show.

**John:** Yes. So I think that is what we will try to do, something like that. And so I’m throwing this out to listeners basically saying, help. So, if you are a person, a producer, who does those kind of things where everyone can sort of tune in and listen and watch a livestream happening, that is a thing we would be interested in doing. And we would be happy to come to a place and do that and perhaps bring in a guest and do that.

But we don’t want to sort of have an audience big situation. We just want to have us doing the show live there. And maybe be able to take some real-time questions and comments from listeners around the world.

So, I know it’s very possible to do it just with a standard Google Hangout. And worst comes to worst, we will just do that. But I have a hunch that someone who listens to us in the Los Angeles area probably has a setup that is kind of custom made for this. And if they would like us to use their facility, we would be delighted to use their facility.

And so it would be probably a nighttime kind of thing, so people could watch it after work. And sit back and watch us do our show.

**Craig:** That would be nice. I just don’t want to wear pants. I mean, that’s really the thing.

**John:** Well, it’s going to be from the waist up, so it’s all fine.

**Craig:** Good. That’s better than from the waist down.

**John:** Oy. That’s never a good podcast.

Now, if you have a suggestion for that, you can write in to ask@johnaugust.com, our standard email address, or on Facebook or Twitter. Just tell us that you are a person who knows how to do this thing.

I have two other questions for our listeners. First off, would you want a 200-episode USB drive? So, way back in the day when we hit 100 episodes, we put out a USB drive that had the first 100 episodes on it. And we updated those later on to 150. I’m not sure if people still want them. And so we haven’t been selling them for a while. If people are interested in a 200-episode USB drive, let us know.

So, again, you can tweet at us, you can let us know on Facebook. If there seems to be sufficient demand, we will make them. If there does not seem to be sufficient demand, we won’t make them at all.

Last question for you, this is something we talked about at lunch. If you had to pick your favorite episodes out of the 200 episodes of Scriptnotes, or basically like a beginner’s guide to Scriptnotes, what would those episodes be? Because there certainly are a lot of episodes. And I’m trying to put together a blog post about here are the top episodes of Scriptnotes. And it’s actually kind of challenging, because they’re all so very different.

The ones that keep getting brought up on Reddit are things like the Final Draft episode, or the more recent sort of investigatory episodes. But there’s also episode 99 about Psychotherapy for Screenwriters. There’s the Frozen episode. There’s Ghost. I don’t know which you would recommend as being the top episodes. But I would love our listeners to provide a listener’s guide. So, if you have ideas for that, email us, send us on Facebook, tweet us to let us know, and we’ll talk through those next week.

**Craig:** That’s a good plan. I like that plan.

**John:** Yeah. Just off the top of your head, are there ones that you’d want to single out for people to pay attention to?

**Craig:** Well, aside from the ones you mentioned, I think Raiders of the Lost Ark was our first in depth movie study. And I really enjoyed that one. Craft-wise, I thought our episode on conflict was really good. I’m trying to think of like one of the more oddball guests we’ve had, because we’ve had quite a few now at this point.

You know, I think the Lindsay Doran interview is great. The truth is that like everybody else I’m going to have some recency bias.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** So, I think that people should dig deep. Dig deep into the back catalog. Look for those B-sides. Find something cool back there.

**John:** Sounds good.

All right, let’s get to today’s work. The first question comes in from Danny who asks, “Do you always strive to write the tightest, most economical ‘perfect script,’ or do you ever purposely write extra?” Craig, what is your answer to Danny’s question?

**Craig:** Well, I’m not sure that this is advisable. I don’t know if what I do is right, but the answer is, yeah, I always strive to write the tightest, most economical, ‘perfect script’ while I’m doing it, knowing full well that there is no such thing as perfection or even close to perfection. I might be completely off by 180 degrees. I might think that I nailed it and other people might hate it. This is just the life of what it means to be a writer.

But I don’t ever turn a script in — this is just me — I never turn a script in that I haven’t really carefully tightened all the little tiny screws and bits-a-ma-bobs in. I really try and keep it tight. Yeah. So I do a lot of editing and a lot of careful work.

I don’t write — purposely write — extra ever. I will save things that I think, okay, I’m taking this out and putting it aside. And this may be why I work well with Lindsay because she is the most — I thought I was the most obsessive about these little tiny things. You know, laser cutting the edges. And she’s even more so like that. I mean, every period, comma, everything is discussed and tightened and made just so.

So, that’s my process. I don’t know if it’s right. It’s just that’s the way I do it.

**John:** Yeah. I’m very mindful about where I’m at in the process. And in those early drafts, which are just for myself, when I’m just first putting words on the paper, I will try to write something that feels like the final scene, but I won’t freak out about making every sentence the leanest possible sentence it could be, or I won’t stress out as like, oh you know what, I bet I could do that in two sentences rather than three. I will just try to get it down on the page. And I think it’s most important, you know, the scene that is written is better than the scene that is unwritten.

So, I want to make sure I get something down on the page that reflects the intention. I will go through before it’s a draft I show to anybody and try to make sure that I’ve gotten the scenes as tight as I can and I’ve taken out the scenes that just are never going to make it into the movie. And that’s one of those hard things that only comes with time where you recognize, you know what, this is a lovely scene. We could shoot this scene. It will never make it into the movie. And so sometimes I’ve had to cut a five-page sequence because I recognize this is never going to actually make it in there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But there have been times, and even recently, where I’ve looked at stuff with that sort of really sharp editor’s eye and said, “Will this ultimately make it down through the process into the final cut of the movie?” And I can’t say with certainty that it would. But then my question is will this help the people who are trying to make this movie understand what the movie feels like? Will this help get the cast and the directors to take this movie seriously?

If the answer sometimes is yes, then I would be more inclined to leave that scene, that line, that moment in the movie in the script for right now, because it helps inform the kind of movie that we’re trying to make. It’s helping be part of the trailer for let’s make this into a movie. So, sometimes I’ll recognize that this might not survive, but it’s important to be in the draft for right now.

Do you ever do that?

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I mean, the distinction I make is this is good for the read, as opposed to this is good for the movie. There are times when something is good for the read. And there is value there, because a good read will get you to your movie. And a good read will also clarify your intentions and, as you said, fill in some of the blanks for people, even if it’s not required in the movie itself. And it may be cut in the editing room. It may be cut prior to shooting, but that’s one of those spots where you do have to acknowledge that while we are writing a movie, we’re limited. We’re limited. We just don’t have the tools that a movie has.

That’s why we don’t charge tickets to stand around and read screenplays. So, yeah, sometimes you want to keep something in there for the read. But I wonder if part of the difference between our techniques or work practices is just in the way we — you know how some people are auditory learners and blah, blah, blah. So, when you’re writing, do you find that your writing occurs while you’re writing, or is your writing occurring in your mind and then you write it?

**John:** I think it’s happening in both ways. I’ve described before on the show that essentially my process of doing a scene is just looping it, just visually looping it in my head and hearing the people talk, and figuring out, like filming the scene in my head, essentially. And then trying to get a version of that down on paper as quickly as possible. Then going through and finding the absolute best possible words to describe it.

So, it’s the looping. It’s the scribble. And then it’s the real writing. And obviously all of those phases are real writing, but we tend to think of writing as being that final phase where you’re picking which nouns and which verbs go in which order.

**Craig:** Well, I suppose my theory is no good, because that’s pretty much what I do, too. I mean, I play the scene in my head and I have people talking back and forth. I will start to edit dialogue in my head as I’m going. And then I start to write. And before I kind of say I’m done here, I do really read it through. And this is one area where I know you and I are different. I am a re-paver. I will go over it, and over it, and over it, and over it, and over, and over, and over. Then I move on.

I don’t feel comfortable moving on. I need — it’s like a security blanket. I need to know that if they had to shoot that tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a problem. So, it’s mental.

**John:** And because I write out of sequence, that’s not a huge factor for me. So, I don’t worry about that.

**Craig:** The thought of writing out of sequence makes my heart race.

**John:** But I want to circle back to this idea of how lean you can write, because there always is that option that you could take out that sentence. You could take out that parenthetical. If you really wanted to, if you looked at the final movie and you just wrote down here’s what the actors are literally doing, and here’s what they’re saying, that would be the screenplay of the movie.

It’s a representation on paper of what the movie is like, but it’s not a real plan for making that movie. And often the carefully written sentence description that is giving the feel of what that scene is like is as important as the lines of dialogue being spoken. And so I’m always very mindful of as I’m cutting, wow, I hope I’m not cutting meat and, worse, I hope I’m not cutting into the bone as I try to slice this thinner and thinner.

And as I’m trying to trim pages, as I’m trying to get the movie in its best fighting shape, I’m often mindful of like, wow, you know what would be better? If we just took out this whole scene, rather than trying to cut the scene down so short. I would be better writing around this problem than trying to just make a shorter version of this moment.

**Craig:** This is a constant inner battle. You don’t want to be the person who cuts nothing. Nor do you want to be the person who goes cut happy and starts to hurt your own movie. That’s almost scarier. This is where having a trusted partner is an enormous help, because when they are with you on the ride the whole way, whether you’re working very closely with a director, or working very closely with a producer, or those of you who write with writing partners, it’s baked into that situation.

Somebody can say, “Actually, we’ve hurt the movie. And so losing that hurt the movie, and we need to put that back.” And I’ve had those moments with Lindsay for sure. I sometimes get a little over zealous. And it’s interesting — somebody else defending your work and its worthiness of being in the movie is more compelling than you doing it to yourself, you know?

Because we are not objective, of course. I mean, it’s easy enough to fall down the trap of, well I read it, it’s good. If somebody else says, “You wrote it, and it’s good. Please put it back.” Maybe you should put it back. So, it’s good to have somebody like that along for the ride if possible.

**John:** There’s always this talk about you shouldn’t direct from the page, which we’ve dismissed many times. Of course you are trying to provide a vision for the movie. But I’d also say you shouldn’t try to control the Avid from the page. And if you are writing so tightly and so specifically that it literally feels like there’s exactly one way you could shoot this and no other way could possibly work for this, that may be a signal that you are writing a little close to the bone. And that you’re not giving enough space for this to exist in a scene, exist as a moment.

And there have been times where I’ve come into a scene and realized you are trying to park in too tight of a parking space and you’re not giving yourself the options of how you’re going to actually handle this moment.

**Craig:** Well, then, of course, reality will intrude. And so even if you’ve written the scene to be the tightest parking space of all time, hopefully you are still in communication and partnering with the production. And they’ll call you and they’ll say, “We got to change this. We can’t shoot it this way. But here’s what we have.” And then you go to work.

So, you’re right. There is a point of diminishing returns on fastidiousness. And you do have to be aware of that certainly, because ultimately the world will not conform to your micrometer-measured sentences. There’s going to be some confirmation to the world around you as you shoot.

**John:** A real world example that happened pretty recently. There’s a movie I wrote where I got these notes about tone and I realized what they were actually responding to was essentially I had edited it a little too tight. And there were moments of sort of scene description and sort of feeling that I had taken out just kind of for the economy of getting to the next thing. And without those it was feeling rushed.

I had taken out some of the painting of the world, a little bit of the feeling, the looseness, the suspense in some cases. And I needed to sort of put that back in. in some cases it was literally like adding a few more line breaks so that those — there was a little bit more air on the page.

And it’s so hard when you’ve looked at it a thousand times to recognize like, oh yeah, I actually do need that extra little bit of space there, because people are going to zip through this and not pay attention.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve become accustomed to your own material and it becomes part of your experience of the script to the point where you don’t need it anymore. It’s no longer a crutch for you. But everybody else needs it. Everybody else — they’re reading it for the first time, essentially.

**John:** I think it may have been Aline on the show who talked about you look at a joke a hundred times, like, wow, this joke is not funny anymore. It has to be cut. And then everyone else, like it’s funny for them because it’s the first time they’re seeing it. And that can be a real challenge, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve got to really be careful about that stuff. And, you know, as you’re going through — this is where, by the way, actual production experience is very helpful, and watching movies get edited is very helpful. Sometimes I will have discussions with producers or executives and they’ll say, “Well you know, we’re just wondering, do we need this line?” And I’ll say, I don’t know, but you’re there and you’re shooting. And it doesn’t require set up. It’s free. It’s essentially free.

So, where I take “do we need this” notes very much to heart is when it will actually impact the day. But if it’s not going to save any time, well, just do it. Why not? Unless people just don’t understand it, you know?

**John:** Yeah. There’s always that sense of, well, we could cut this. And they’re trying to point out like this is not absolutely essential. And so there’s this sense that anything that is not absolutely essential could be cut, and therefore maybe should be cut. And it’s a question always worth asking, but it’s never an automatic guarantee that you should cut those things.

A lot of times I’ll have moments, and I’ll know that in the back of my head like well that could disappear. And I’ll think through the editing math of like well if that moment, if that scene, if that line went away, would it be possible for everything to still make sense? And I’ll have a plan for it. But that doesn’t mean that the line should go away, because it could be incredibly integral to everything.

Certainly going back to our discussion of Ghost, there are so many scenes in Ghost that could go away, but that movie would be diminished if they went away.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And if they had cut those scenes during the writing process, the movie would not exist.

**Craig:** And then, of course, there were scenes that they did cut. And that’s the thing — sometimes I feel like when people are discussing a screenplay, the writer is there with the producer and the studio and the director, but there’s this fear of being humble. There’s a fear of admitting that we’re all guessing. But, it’s important to admit that right off the bat, because everyone who has made a movie has gone into that first screening and been shocked by something that worked, and shocked by something that didn’t.

Sometimes the biggest laugh in the movie is a line you didn’t even think was that good. It’s just —

**John:** Oh, 100 percent.

**Craig:** It’s the weirdest thing. So you have to kind of be humble enough to appreciate that there’s a chaotic factor to this that cannot be predetermined. It cannot be divined. So, if you’re on the fence, sometimes it’s good to skew in favor of inclusion.

**John:** It reminds me of the common thing said about when, I think it was Sony was buying Columbia Pictures, and the legend is always that one of the Sony execs pulled the Columbia exec aside and said, “By the way, we only want to make the hit movies.” And the similar thing for in making an individual movie is like the director saying, “Well, I only want to shoot the scenes that are going to be in the movie.” Or, “I only want to shoot the exact shots I need to make the movie.” But, of course, you don’t really know that. And so what you’re doing is your best guess about what things you’re going to want to have in the editing room to construct the final movie.

And so the writer is coming up with this material and hopefully shaping it in a way that if followed to the tee and really following his plan, you will have a good movie. But you won’t really know. And you won’t really know until you’re in your seventh cut of this film.

And so you’re trying to get the best material possible so you can have the best shot of making your film.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s the great paradox of writing is that you have to write it like you’re shooting it, and that is all that will be shot, but at the same time you have to be flexible enough to change it.

**John:** Yes. Our next question comes from Michael in Liverpool who asks, “Can someone please explain why the TV show The Following has a list of producer credits the same length as my penis?” And I don’t know —

**Craig:** Does he give the length?

**John:** So he says that his penis is attached as a PNG, as a graphic, but that is not in fact true. There is no graphic attached.

**Craig:** Oh…

**John:** So we’ll have to assume that his penis is about 13 names long, which is how many names —

**Craig:** I think you need to read this question like you’re from Liverpool. The same length as my penis?

**John:** Can someone please explain…?

**Craig:** No, that was kind of Irish.

**John:** I’m not great with my British accent at all.

**Craig:** This is The Beatles thing. The same length as my penis? Uh, well, how long is his penis? Let’s find out in names.

**John:** In names. So, there are 13 names listed on this episode of The Following. And so I went through and I did my homework and I actually looked up on IMDb like who those people were. And so of those 13 names, nine of them are writers, which is not surprising because in US television, most of the names you see listed as a producer are high level writers. So, they are writers who are no longer at the entry level. They are no longer staff writers or story editors. They have moved up the ranks.

And when you move up the ranks in TV writing, you get a producer credit. And those producer credits escalate as you rise higher and higher on a show, or sort of moving show to show.

Way back in 2004 I wrote a blog post describing sort of TV credits. And so this was the hierarchy that I listed then, which is largely accurate. So, you’re looking at given TV show, you’re looking at the credits scroll by, one of the executive producers is almost always the creator of the show. And that creator of the show may also be the showrunner, the person who is most in charge of the show at the moment, but it may not be the case.

There could be other people listed as executive producers. Below that, co-executive producers. Below that, somewhere in that vicinity, a consulting producer, a supervising producer, a producer, then a co-producer. Then below that would be a story editor and a staff writer.

Now, sometimes those aren’t exactly accurate, but that’s a general sense of what that is. The other producer credits you might see are a line producer, or an associate producer. Those are almost always not writers. Those are usually the people who are responsible for the physical production or the editing. So, those are some of the names you’re going to see. And that’s absolutely true with the credits for The Following.

Because there are so many names, we’ll have a list in the show notes, but essentially of the 13 names listed, nine of them are writers. So the only ones who aren’t writers there, there’s a woman, Lauren Wagner, who based on her credits I think she runs Kevin Williamson’s production company. Kevin Williamson is the producer/creator of the show.

Kevin Bacon is Kevin Bacon. He’s the star of the show. He’s listed as a producer. There’s a man named Michael Stricks who is a production manager. And there is Marcos Siega who is a famous director, a big director who is the director of this TV show.

Everyone else there is a writer. So, what’s with all the producers? Well, there’s a bunch of writers. And so that’s employment. That’s great.

**Craig:** It’s essentially a symptom of the fact that television is written by a staff. So when you have a large group of employees working on something, somebody somewhere has to figure out what they’re going to be paid. And anytime you’re paying groups of people stuff, what immediately begins to happen is a codification of salaries and leveling. So, we’re not going to pay everybody ad hoc. Nor are we going to pay you more money than the person that’s your boss. So, eventually titles occur.

And it’s very much a military system here. I mean, just replace lieutenant and corporal and captain with consulting and supervising and co-executive. That’s kind of what’s going on.

In movies, that’s not the way we do it. There’s one writer working at a time. And so there isn’t a staffing system and a ranking system. Sometimes the writer that ends up with the credit for the movie, the writer that’s written it all, well she actually got paid half as much as the woman who kicked the whole thing off, who got paid more. So, the salaries are all over the place, and therefore in features the producers are typically not writers — sometimes they are — but typically not and they are more running the business and creative end of the company of the movie.

But here I think it’s probably about salary.

**John:** Yeah. It’s about salary, it’s about experience, and responsibility on the show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so the people who have been doing this for a long time, they’re going to rise up the ranks and they’ll have higher producer credits on a given show. And that is a way of reflecting that and a way of paying them for that.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** So, Craig, in your last answer you said that features do not have multiple writers simultaneously, but now unfortunately that situation seems to be happening more and more. Jay writes in, “My writing partner and I are repped working writers in the studio system with about five years of credits on relatively big studio movies, sadly none yet produced. But more importantly we’re big fans of Scriptnotes and have been since the start.”

**Craig:** That is more important.

**John:** Jay, you’re awesome.

**Craig:** That’s the most important.

**John:** It is more important. Yes.

“We just saw this disturbing report that WB is hiring established screenwriters like Will Beall, Jeff Nichols, etc., to start writing first acts for their upcoming DC movies. That is pitting three writers against each other to work on the same outline and write competing versions of Aquaman’s act one, for instance. Do you see the industry as a whole moving in a similar direction with writer’s rooms? Paramount is setting one up for Transformers, for example. Is this a larger trend in bake offs?”

A related post to this is Kim Masters at the Hollywood Reporter wrote a long piece about DC and Warners and them trying to figure out how they’re going to do their movies. And so both Aquaman and Wonder Woman have this situation where there are multiple writers working simultaneously on things and it apparently is not always the happiest situation. Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Well, the Kim Masters piece in the Hollywood Reporter, I think, puts its finger exactly on the big difference between what they’re endeavoring to do with the DC properties and what Marvel does with the Marvel properties. And I understand that at Warner Bros they’re looking at the way Marvel does it. They probably see some version of kind of a writing room system. And which is, by the way, the way that movies used to be done way back in the day.

And they’re thinking, well, let’s just copy that. It’s working. And I understand that. But, the main difference is there is one authorial vision being imposed on all of those Marvel movies and that’s through Kevin Feige who runs Marvel. And Kevin Feige is renowned for not only doing his job well but being an extraordinarily educated Marvel-ologist. He was hired, I think, in small part because of his encyclopedic knowledge of what is a very large collection of characters and storylines that interweave and reboot and restart and have various versions.

So, he is imposing a singular vision. If you are going to hire multiple writers to work on one movie as a bake off situation, they must be guided by one creative authorial vision. They have to be, or you will just end up with a bunch of parts that don’t fit together. And I’m not even getting into the fact that I think this is just kind of bad for writers and bad for movies in general. I think it’s not going to works. Unless there is somebody that has Kevin Feige’s knowledge of Marvel but for DC, I don’t see how this works.

It’s tempting. I know why they do it. It’s tempting. It seems like, oh, well it will go faster. Instead of hiring three writers in succession, we’ll just hire them all at once. It just doesn’t work that way.

**John:** Yeah. If writing were the kind of thing where you could clearly tell like well this is the version that won, and therefore we are going to get behind her script and her vision and she will be the one to deliver it and praise everybody — this is the one — then I could maybe see it working. I could maybe see the consensus of rather than have a bunch of people pitch their takes, we will pay them money to write it up and we can look at their actual words and say like this is the person who has the vision for what this movie is.

We will support her 100 percent and go with her vision. But what this article says and what we know from our other conversations is that is not at all what happened. And it’s not what seems to be happening in the DC movies. And it’s never really happened anywhere else. You might say like, “Oh, we’re going to have these three versions,” and then you’re going to have a bunch of different opinions about what is the best of those three versions. And then you’re going to hire on a director who is going to have different opinions about what the best of those three versions is.

And so rather than having one writer pulled in a bunch of different ways, you’re going to have three writers pulled in a bunch of different ways and everyone is going to be extra confused.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s this thing that happens when one writer writes all the way through. They will get some amount of it right. They will get some amount of it wrong. No one is perfect.

Consider Joss Whedon, for instance. Joss Whedon is I guess the other singular vision over there at Marvel who has had enormous influence obviously on the movies that he makes, but on the movies around him at the same time that are touching on his movie. Well, Joss Whedon doesn’t get everything right. Joss Whedon makes mistakes. I’m sure Joss Whedon would be the first person 20 years from now to look back at Avengers and say, “Well here’s a bunch of things I think I could have done better.”

But here’s the thing. They’re his mistakes. They are mistakes that are consistent in voice, tone, and vision with the stuff that works. When you’re looking at a movie that’s been cobbled together from three, or four, or five different writers, like a Frankenstein monster, the mistakes will be incredibly jarring because they have nothing to do with the stuff that’s working.

They won’t be consistent mistakes. They won’t be part of the same feeling. That’s where things start to come apart. And I’ll tell you, when you watch a movie and it has that cobbled feel, it’s hard to even say what exactly is putting itself between you and the movie, but something is. It’s like there’s a thing between you and it. It starts to take on an artificial hollow vibe.

So, for instance, I’m a big fan of Chris Nolan and his Batman films. I can look at each one of those Batman films and say well here’s something I just don’t like, but the mistake is consistent and it’s part of Nolan’s vision and so I am okay.

**John:** I get that. Thinking about other situations where multiple writers are working on a movie simultaneously, James Cameron is trying it right now for the Avatar sequels. And so he is essentially the showrunner and he has — I believe it’s three writers who are writing the movies with him/for him. I don’t quite know what is happening in that room. Josh Friedman is a friend, but I don’t know any sort of secret insights about what’s actually happening, but the goal is for them to work together and create something that is better than any one of them could do separately.

Is that possible? Maybe it’s possible, but they certainly have a very strong showrunner in James Cameron who is going to direct these movies and has the vision for what they’re supposed to be.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s a situation I believe would work, rather than three writers reporting to a committee of people who then have to figure out what is actually going to happen and what’s going to go on. That seems to be the challenge.

**Craig:** It seems like Warner Bros is leaning on Zack Snyder to be their singular overarching vision bringer. But he’s been making this most recent Superman vs. Batman movie. Well, if you’re directing a movie you can’t do this part, right. So, Kevin Feige can do this part while Joss Whedon is making Avengers. So, it seems like they’re missing a vital piece there if this is the way they’re going to go.

And if they don’t have that vital piece, and frankly I don’t know if — for better or worse, the DC universe does not really inspire the same kind of obsessive encyclopedic curiosity that the Marvel universe does, then I think they may want to consider — I’m talking like I run Warner Bros. Isn’t this great? They may want to consider kind of returning back to their original model which worked extraordinarily well with Batman and that is to say find a filmmaker with a singular vision and give them that thing. But, the problem from them is they want — everybody wants the shared universe. Everybody wants to do what Marvel is doing.

It may not be possible.

**John:** The other question will be whether the Star Wars universe and sort of what they’re trying to do and Kathleen Kennedy’s role in bringing together all the Star Wars movies, will that be possible. Now, in that case they don’t multiple writers working on one script at the same time, but they are trying to build the future of this whole universe, and there has to be considerable creative collaboration and creative consensus in what that world-building will be.

And whether that falls on her shoulders or someone else, somebody has to finally make those decisions. Someone has to be the Kevin Feige in those decisions. And that will be interesting to see how that shakes out.

**Craig:** No question. I think that it probably very much is Kathleen Kennedy. But they’re making I think the right choice of, for instance, okay, so J.J. really took this next movie and did it. And Rian Johnson is taking the movie after that and he’s going to do it. And they are allowing a vision. They’re allowing a singular voice. And we should also acknowledge that J.J. brought in Larry Kasdan. And Larry is, you know, kind of the great keeper of the flame of the Star Wars universe.

So, Larry and J.J. were that first one. Rian is going to be the second one. That’s the right way to go. I feel like that’s the way to do it. This kind of Frankenstein — and also, frankly, pitting three writers against each other is — any time I hear a studio say, “Well, we’re going to do a cut and paste version,” I just think, yup, you’re done. That’s it. Movie is bad. That’s it.

**John:** Yeah. You and I have both in situations where the cut and paste has ended up happening because there have been multiple writers employed over the course of time. So, someone is brought in to rewrite something, you and I have both rewritten somebody, and we’ve both been rewritten. And sometimes those movies turn out just fine.

And lord knows it can sometimes work out, but are any of those movies as amazing as they might have been with a single writer writing all the way through? I can’t think of any. That doesn’t mean that it could never happen. But it’s generally not the best sign when multiple writers have been working on a movie. That’s the reality.

**Craig:** At the very least, if multiple writers are working on a movie, one writer needs to be the one that does the final reconciliation. You can’t have non-writers doing their cut and paste. They simply won’t see the mistakes that — and screenplay mistakes ripple forth like tiny little seeds that blossom into awful things.

Sometimes you just can’t see them there in the script and then, kaboosh. So, you know, I’ve been in situations where I’ve looked at three drafts and I’ve done something, and then somebody else has come in, and then I come back and they’re like, “Look, we want to keep this and this.” And I’ll say, great, but I still need to incorporate it properly. I can’t just slap it in. There’s a craft to this. There’s an actual job, [laughs], writing. I know, it’s crazy. Crazy.

**John:** That’s crazy.

A simpler question. Adam writes in, “I’ve always been someone who for lack of a better term dresses up. I feel more comfortable in a sport coat and tie rather than a hoodie. I have nothing against sweat pants. It’s just how I roll. I treat every general or pitch like something in between a job interview and a first date. And looking back I’ve probably been the best dressed person in the room more often than not.

“I’m sure I’m overthinking it because it was only brought up after Craig made it clear that there isn’t a writer’s dress code. But do you think there is a subconscious message I’m sending out by not wearing a t-shirt and jeans? Does the writer in a bow tie come off as less authentically creatively than the writer in a graphic tee?”

Craig, what’s your thought?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, I wish it weren’t so, but maybe. I mean, you know, this is one of those things. We’re all taught not to judge a book by its cover, and then everybody goes around judging books by their cover. And particularly in Hollywood where the cover of the book is the most important part of the book to the people that spend money hiring writers. [laughs]

Yeah, if you show up really buttoned up in a jacket and nice pants and a bow tie, it may put other people a little bit ill at ease. Like nobody likes to be the worst dressed person in the room. The writer’s job in Hollywood is the one place where being the worst dressed person in the room kind of makes you cool. And that’s okay.

You know, that said, Adam, I feel like you walk in and if you just acknowledge and you’re like, “By the way, this is how roll. I just like bow ties.” No will care. I mean, whatever immediate impression they get from your bow tie, it will be obliterated by the things coming out of your mouth. So, as long as you yourself are not a non-creative seeming person, I wouldn’t worry about it.

I mean, just know that it’s there. It will be something you’ll overcome every time.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t even necessarily know that it’s an overcome. I think it’s just being aware of expectation. And I think in most cases the expectation is going to be, well, writers don’t dress very well. And so if you dress very well you are pushing against that expectation. And that could be to your benefit or to your detriment.

Let’s say you are a Wes Anderson type. Then you wearing a bow tie is fantastic. Because they are bringing you in, they want to meet with you because they have a perception of you are and it fits that kind of brand. And so if the things you write are movies that people would wear bow ties in, they’re delighted to see that.

If Wes Anderson showed up for a meeting and he was scruffy and wearing dirty jeans and looked like he hadn’t bathed in a while you would say, “Wait, that’s not the Wes Anderson I was expecting.” So, looking like the person that they are expecting could be useful to you. And so if that is a dressed up person and you are writing dressed up movies, that’s fantastic.

Now, if you’re writing dark and gritty crime thrillers, if you are writing big goofy dumb comedies, that may be a bit of a challenge and you’ll just have to figure out what that is when you’re in the room and how you play that.

But, I wouldn’t necessarily change how you dress. You just want to come in there confident. And if confident for you is dressing up some, go for it.

I think my biggest caution against dressing up for these things, and when you say first date or job interview, that makes me feel nervous. And it makes me feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, or that you’re a newbie. And that you are nervous about this whole thing. And that is not a position of strength to be coming into that room.

**Craig:** I agree. Well, hopefully that will help you pick out tomorrow’s sartorial selection. But now we have something about writers judging each other. This is a question from Bobby. He writes, “I have a question/concern regarding all the to do over This is Working. That was the all-script, all-page challenge that you and I did. It sounds like a great script, and I do believe you’re right in your assessment of K.C.’s talents.

“I am filled with vicarious joy, but also jealousy at hearing him get such praise on your show. Basically the thought that occurred to me as I was listening to you continue to praise him in your follow up episode was ‘why him?’ And I realized that gets to the fundamental rub of all Hollywood success stories. The answer essentially comes down to ‘just because.’

“I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling jealous that his pages were picked over mine. I’m sure I’m not alone in believing I’m every bit as talented. I hope this doesn’t come across as critical, and certainly don’t take it as pouting or childish. I recognize that I had as much chance being picked as K.C. did. And that’s really what I’m trying to get at here. It’s all a lottery. Maybe your podcast just changed K.C.’s life. I’d be surprised if it didn’t.

“But it could have just as easily been someone else. And I guess I’d like to get your general take on that sentiment.”

What do you think about that, John?

**John:** I think Bobby is largely right. I think it could have been him, or anyone else. And also that feeling of why him, why not me, that doesn’t go away either.

And I’ll tell you quite honestly as I look at success of other people, or I look at somebody getting that great book assignment, that will still come up in my heart of hearts, too. Where it’s like, but why did that person get that thing, and why didn’t I get that thing? That is a natural human emotion and it doesn’t ever go away.

What I think the lesson to take from this feeling, and from K.C. Scott, is that to some degree it is a lottery, but you don’t win the lottery without buying some tickets. And K.C. Scott took a big risk by putting himself out there and entering the Three-Page Challenge, but then also being willing to send in his script and not know how we were going to receive it. And really tell us more about his life and his own worries and thoughts about the future. Those were all sort of brave choices.

So, while it could be anybody, it’s more likely to happen to somebody who is brave and someone who is taking some chances. And so if there’s a lesson to take from this, it’s that fortune does favor the bold.

**Craig:** I come at this from a slightly different angle because I recognize that this is something that a lot of people feel. And I think you’re probably right; it’s one of those things if you feel it, you feel it, and then it’s all really about what meaning you assign to that feeling.

I have all sorts of mental problems. They’re all related —

**John:** But that’s well-established.

**Craig:** [laughs] And a lot of them are connected to my work. The guns that I have are almost always pointed back towards my own chest. I have never felt jealous of another writer. I don’t have it. And I don’t mean to come off like a saint, because I’m not. I just don’t have that. I’ve never been jealous. If I’ve gone for something and somebody else gets it I just think, huh, well, they must have done something better. [laughs] I don’t know, that’s just the way I am.

But I’m never jealous about other writers. I always feel good when good things happen to other writers because I just don’t have that bone. I wish I could tell you it’s because I’m enlightened. I think it’s just because I’m actually missing that chunk of neurons. I have other chunks of neurons that cause me all sorts of trouble. So, I guess really I’m not much of a help for you here, Bobby, other than to say on my side of it, it’s actually quite nice to not be burdened by this. If there’s a way for you to be less burdened by it, then all I would say is this: it’s not going to help you. And it’s not going to get you anywhere. And it’s not going to motivate you.

And so when you feel it, just recognize it for what it is which is a meaningless feeling. It doesn’t mean that those people are better than you. And it doesn’t mean that you’re better than them. It doesn’t mean that the world is specifically unfair to you. The world is pretty much generally unfair to everybody. So, that’s the only advice I can give you over here in the oddly, weirdly, non-jealous camp. I don’t know. I’m a weirdo that way, I guess.

**John:** I would say that I am genuinely happy when other writers who I know are able to succeed and get great projects. And I’m genuinely happy for them when these things happen. But there’s always a voice in my head that says, “Well, why didn’t I get that call?” And then some of those self-doubts creep back in. And it makes me wonder, well, is it because I am too expensive? Is it because I am the wrong person for this project? Is it because I have this relationship with this person?

What is it that made it so I did not get that call? And Bobby is describing a version of that call, like why did K.C. Scott get called up to have this spotlight put on him. Well, the answer is sort of that kind of random lottery in this case. It was literally Stuart read a bunch of Three-Page Challenges. He sent us the ones he thought were the best. And we said we agreed. And we said, yes, this is the thing.

But just as easily it could have not happened.

I think the thing to take from this is that, yes, there is an aspect to this that is like a lottery. And the good thing about that is you can buy a lottery ticket. And the game is not fixed before you start to play. You can increase your odds of winning this lottery by figuring out ways to just literally increase your odds. Take more swings at bat. Take more general meetings.

Do what Ryan Knighton did in this last episode and he takes like 20 general meetings in the course of a week. That is how you get lucky is by making situations where you can get lucky.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Yeah.

**John:** That’s the lesson here.

**Craig:** I think that’s right. And, you know, you’re making a good distinction, actually. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Okay, I just heard a friend got a job. I’m happy for them. I am also wondering why didn’t I get called for that.” Those two things are different and can be maintained simultaneously.

And when you ask yourself I wonder why I didn’t get called, that’s a useful question, because that question can lead to strategies, plans. Okay, what am I doing now that I could differently? Because obviously there is something I want that isn’t currently here. Let me actually exercise some thought and care and take some action and see if I can’t change my circumstances. That’s valuable.

The part of jealousy that’s not valuable is the part that doesn’t let you enjoy, truly enjoy, when something good happens to somebody else. Even if it was something that maybe you wanted for yourself, that’s the part where you are in a weird way robbing yourself of what I think is one of the great pleasures of life, which is celebrating somebody else’s good fortune with them.

I love that feeling. When Rian told me that he was going to be writing and directing the next Star Wars, I mean, my little heart just about exploded. I was so excited. I mean, I just didn’t know, you know, like, ah, it was just the best feeling ever. I felt like — in a weird way I felt like I was doing it now because it’s my friend, you know. [laughs] I was so happy. So, that’s the only thing, Bobby. Just make sure that you don’t kill that, you know.

But, it’s a good thing, I think, what John is saying, too. Then sort of step back and go, “Well gee, if this is something that I feel I ought to have but I don’t, what can I do to change those circumstances?”

**John:** Yeah. The other thing you can take from that is it is possible for a person in this situation to achieve this thing, so therefore it is possible for me to achieve that thing. And that is a great take home from K.C. Scott is that this is a person who wrote a good script, put it out there, and got a great response from it. And that is possible for anyone who can write a great script.

**Craig:** Correctamundo.

**John:** Great. Circling back to our discussions of arbitration, David writes, “I’m a WGA member who has gone through an arbitration a couple of times. So, I found the episode about arbitration especially fascinating. I was reading that Donna Langley was defending her decision to hire E.L. James’s husband to write 50 Shades Darker, the sequel to 50 Shades of Grey, because he had done some work on the first movie.

“But he didn’t get a credit. Only Kelly Marcel did. Was Donna Langley legally allowed to say that? Was it against WGA rules to publicize uncredited writers? Or does that only apply to writers themselves?”

Craig, what is the actual rules here? What are common best practices? Talk us through what is legitimate for an executive like Donna Langley to say about that situation.

**Craig:** It’s an interesting question, actually. I mean, on the writing side of things we have working rules, which are union rules. They govern our behavior as union members. And we are subject to union discipline if we break them. And union discipline is essentially, it could be a fine. As far as I know the union hasn’t disciplined anyone for anything in forever.

But, one of our working rules is that we would abide by the credits as put forth and that we wouldn’t publicize a different credit. So, if we wrote on something and we don’t get credit for it, we don’t do interviews where we say things like, “I deserve credit on that,” or “I wrote a lot of it,” etc.

Now, was Donna allowed to say that? Probably yes. I think that the — almost certainly yes. The way the contract works is that company is forbidden to publicize incorrect credits. Once the WGA determines credits, they can’t print up posters, take out ads in newspapers, put a different credit on the screen or on video or when it runs on TV.

But it’s a simple free speech issue. And individual is certainly allowed to say I hired somebody to do something. That’s — I don’t think in any way that Donna did anything wrong there. And in that circumstance I think it kind of was something she probably had to say. I think, I mean, it’s a tough spot. Right? You’re hiring the author’s husband. It feels like, on its face, it feels kind of like crazy nepotism. So, you kind of need to be able to say, “No, no, no, he’s actually a screenwriter, too. He was hired to write on the first movie.”

That’s a fact. I think that was fine for her to say. She didn’t say he deserved credit on it. She didn’t say he was the screenwriter. So, I think that’s fine.

In general, it’s not something that you see executives doing because, frankly, they have as much investment as we do in our system of credits.

**John:** I agree with your separation of facts from sort of general policy and practices.

So, you know, by rules they’re not allowed to stick his name on as a writer. That very clearly would be a violation. But facts are facts. And so you can’t just pretend that reality doesn’t exist and that he wasn’t hired. I think it’s a completely reasonable thing for her to say in this situation.

And people will ask me about a film that I’ve worked on that I’m not credited on, I will happily say, “Yes, I worked on that movie, but I never claimed I should have gotten credit.” Yet, all the same, you will see the situations, we talked about the situations on previous arbitrations where people have been very unhappy. And so you can’t go back through and enter into a time machine and un-say all the things you said about who you thought should have gotten credit on the movie.

You said that aloud and that was a thing that happened. And that’s why I think it’s important to be very, very mindful about the kinds of things you’re saying publicly about movies that have not yet had final credits because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

And so just treating everybody fairly and nicely, and being kind, is a general good rule.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s one of those areas where restraint is a good policy. If you must, for extenuating circumstances, as was I think the case here with Donna, yeah sure. But, you know, otherwise if you don’t have to, don’t. You know, it just feels more professional to me, at least, that we not do that sort of thing.

**John:** So, our next question comes from John in London. He writes, “I don’t think my question has been covered yet on the show, but the longer I wonder about it, the more it feels like a time bomb. I’ve begun to write film criticism for a website here in the UK and I’m having a great time of it. I would love to eventually work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. And I have the slightest paranoia that some of the reviews I’ve written, some of which have been mildly scathing, but eventually make me someone that can’t be hired.

“What do you think about this? Have I been watching too many ’70s paranoid thrillers? Or is there cause for concern about publicly criticizing one’s work, and then having it come back to bit me?”

**Craig:** Good question. Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest to you that you stop being scathing, just because I don’t really feel that that’s productive or helps anybody. Criticism is different than scathing. I don’t know what “mildly scathing” means. That’s an oxymoron. Regardless, film critics routinely overestimate their importance and impact on the business.

I actually think barely anyone would notice. It’s possible that if you wrote something and you sat down with the director that you wanted to direct your script, and you had destroyed that person, they would have something to say to you and rightly so because at this point you’d kind of be a hypocrite.

But, if you sat down with a studio, they don’t care that you gave their movies bad reviews. You know what they care about? If their movie bombed or not.

If you give a hit movie a bad review, it’s like you didn’t happen. If you give a bomb a bad review, it’s like you didn’t happen. [laughs] It kind of doesn’t matter, because the movie was going to bomb with you or without you. And the movie was going to be a hit with you or without you.

There is an interesting thing that happens with — it doesn’t happen frequently, but occasionally film critics will become screenwriters. Rod Lurie I believe was a film critic who became a screenwriter. Stephen Schiff, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, is an excellent screenwriter and he was a film critic for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. So he was pretty high up on that food chain.

And I once asked him about it, and it was sort of a version of your question, John. And he said, “Maybe three or four months after I had left my job as a film critic and started my job as a screenwriter, it kind of all came to me in a rush that the entire time I was writing film reviews and critiquing films for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair I had no idea what I was talking about. None.” And he said occasionally he would see a lot of his old cohorts who were still writing reviews and it was the feeling that he suspects ex-smokers get when they see their friends huddled outside of a bar all puffing away.

You know, there’s this other thing on the other side that actually is, frankly, more rewarding. So, I’m thrilled that you want to work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I think that’s spectacular. And I would suggest to you that you would be better served working on that now than spending too much time writing mildly scathing reviews of movies. I don’t think that’s going to help you achieve what I think you’re saying you want to achieve.

**John:** I agree with you, particularly because your name is going to be associated with a bunch of reviews of movies that aren’t especially good largely. I mean, yes, hopefully you’re reviewing lots of really good movies and you’re saying very smart, wonderful things about them. And maybe you can be a champion for some movies that otherwise would go unnoticed.

But more likely, you’re going to have to see some terrible movies and tell everybody that they’re terrible. And your instinct will be to use your clever words to describe their terribleness in a way that is rewarding to the audience for having read through what you’re writing. And that’s not going to serve you well down the road.

If people do find those reviews, they will be mildly annoyed by you when you try to sit down with them for a meeting. If you want to be a screenwriter, I think you’d be better off writing screenplays than writing reviews of other people’s movies. Just, you know, it’s great to watch movies. It’s great to watch movies to understand movies, but just like we’ve talked about before, writing a bunch of coverage on screenplays is a great way to learn about screenplays and then you have to stop because it will just burn a hole in your brain.

And I think being a film reviewer will ultimately burn that hole in your brain and hurt you as a screenwriter down the road.

**Craig:** I agree. Our next question is from Kirk who lives in Huntington Beach here in sunny California. And he says, “What are your thoughts on using sizzle reels in pitches? Specifically Ripomatic ones? I found this term online, so I don’t know if it’s something people actually say. If not, I’m referring to when one would edit together clips of existing movies/copyrighted footage.”

So, as an aside, yes, people do say Ripomatic. So, the idea is that you would find bits of movies that would be sort of like the thing you’d be doing in your movie. And then you edit it together to show them sort of what your scene might look like.

Kirk continues, “I have a professor who swears by them. He has actually worked in the industry. But he also says not to use recognizable people, for instance, movie stars, the people in all existing movies. I have watched a few online.” I think he means a few Ripomatics. “Including Rian Johnson’s for Looper. He used voiceover from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the eventual star, but he used stuff from Se7en and we saw Brad Pitt very clearly.

“Is it better to use a variety of people, not just one actor as a stand in? Or is it okay to use one actor as the star of the sizzle reel? Or is it not wise to make or use a sizzle reel at all if I were to be pitching as a screenwriter and not a writer-director?”

John, what do you think about this?

**John:** I think sizzle reels are terrific for directors. Sizzle reels are a useful tool for a director to land a job or to convince people that as a writer-director that you should be hiring them to direct this movie. I don’t think writers should be making sizzle reels. I think writers should be writing scripts and that is where they should largely focus their time and energy.

But sizzle reels I think are good. I think they’re a useful way of describing to somebody what the movie is going to look like because words will fall apart. And people will see different things when you describe a movie. But if you show them what the movie could look like, that will get them excited and they will lean in and I think it will be a useful tool for you.

So, I strongly encourage sizzle reels. In terms of using one actor or multiple actors, it’s going to depend on what your project is. In most cases, I’ve found sizzle reels are much more useful to describe the world, what the movie feels like, rather than try to show a hero’s journey. Because frankly you’re going to be really Frankensteining something together to try to show this actor from different movies to try to make that feel like one movie.

What’s your thoughts, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean this is not something screenwriters ever do. If you’re trying to sell yourself as a director, if you’re trying to get financing for a movie, sure. But we’re paid to create a movie through words only. That’s our gig. So, if we can’t pitch at using words only, then we have a problem. If we can’t provide some sample of our writing that is words only, we have a problem.

So, when you ask is it not wise to make or use a sizzle reel at all if I’m to be pitching as a screenwriter, my answer to you is it is not wise.

**John:** 100 percent agree. Now, there have been times where I’ve brought visual aids in, and that I think can be very, very useful. Like when we were pitching Prince of Persia, we brought in artwork that showed kind of what the world looked like. That was useful; it was something for them to — it was literally just like mounted on cardboard and showed what that thing looked like. Great. Terrific. Absolutely do that.

But if you’re having to stop and show a reel for something, then you have lost their interest in what you are pitching for your take. So, I would not recommend that.

**Craig:** Absolutely yes. Still photos, I mean, we did this with the movie that I’m doing with Lindsay. We had a collection of still photos that we submitted along to say, look, this is what certain things will look like. And that was very helpful. But no Ripomatics. No. And those are our questions. Those are the questions of the week.

**John:** There were a lot of questions, but we covered a wide range of topics. So, it’s almost time for One Cool Things. Before we get to One Cool Things, a few weeks back I had invited our listeners if they were in the Los Angeles area and wanted to join us for a play test of this new game we were trying, I would love them to come help play test it. And they did. They showed up. And they were wonderful. And we had a really good play test.

And we’re actually really close to being able to launch this game. So, the game is called One Hit Kill. It is a card game. It is fun. And if you want to see what the artwork looks like for it, even the people who came to the play test were testing some sort of generic artwork, so you can see what the real artwork looks like. We have a site now. It’s just onehitkillgame.com. And you can see what the cards look like. And it’s good. It’s fun.

And there’s also kind of a meta game happening on that site, so you can unlock additional cards. As we are recording this on a Thursday, no one has actually unlocked all the cards, so perhaps when this episode comes out on Tuesday someone unlocks it all on that day, I will know it just because of Scriptnotes and I will tweet my congratulations to you.

So, if you want to see this new game we’re about to launch, it’s called One Hit Kill and you can find it at onehitkillgame.com.

But now it’s time for the real One Cool Things. Craig, what is your One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is called Rocketbook. This was tweeted to me by one of our listeners. It’s an Indiegogo campaign, so forgive me.

**John:** Ha-ha. I can’t forgive you for this, Craig.

**Craig:** I kind of can’t forgive myself. I can’t.

**John:** But tell us about it.

**Craig:** Well, it’s a sort of fascinating little product here. And their goal was $20,000. They have currently raised $669,000, so they’re doing pretty well. It looks like a standard school spiral notebook kind of deal. But it’s a bit more than that.

So, you take notes in it, and there are multiple pages. I think their typical one is like 50 sheets. And you take notes in class or wherever and then at the bottom of the page there are a bunch of icons. One of them is for Dropbox. One is for Evernote. One is for Google Drive. You know, stuff like that. And you can check which one of those you want your notes to go to. And then the idea is when you’re done, you use their app to take a picture of the double fold, you know, so you open up two pages at a time. Take a picture of those two pages at a time. It will read the pages, scan them, I think it OCRs them. It also sees which of the things you’ve checked off at the bottom. Sends the things to the various spots you want them to go.

And then in perhaps the niftiest little bit of all, if you use these particular kinds of pens called Friction pens by Pilot, you can erase the pages by microwaving the notebook. [laughs] I’ve stunned you, haven’t I?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I’ve just put me you into like a —

**John:** You have not stunned me at all. You have stunned me in many ways, but I want you to finish. So, talk me through the pros and cons of this product.

**Craig:** Well, I think the number one pro is microwave! I’m microwaving my notebook. I love the fact that there are multiple selectable paths to upload things. So, I’m taking notes on one page because I know I want them to go into a Dropbox thing, but on this page I’m doing stuff on a project that I’m sharing with other people, so I put it in a shared box at Google Drive. That’s really cool.

The fact that I can erase it that easily, so I don’t have to use pencil, I use pen, and it erases that easily is brilliant.

The only con as far as I’m concerned is that you have to actually take pictures of the pages which is kind of a pain in the butt. If you do this regularly, it’s very manageable. If you have six weeks of notes, which is probably not advisable, then it would become a huge bummer.

But, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that expensive. $65 gets you two of the Rocketbooks and a six-pack of the Friction pens. That’s pretty reasonable for a product like this. You know, in my mind I was thinking would this help my son because a lot of times the pages come out, they fall out of the binder, they go bye-bye in his room. So, I thought it was pretty cool. What do you think?

**John:** Great. So, I was fascinated by your choice of this because first off it’s Indiegogo, so it’s essentially Kickstarter. You’re recommending a Kickstarter project.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** That’s fascinating. Second off, episode 100 of our show, we’re approaching 200, episode 100, what was my One Cool Thing? It was the Friction pens. And we were up on the stage in front of a live audience and you and Rawson made fun of me for the Friction pens.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, of course. The pens alone. Who cares?

**John:** Who cares? So these are the erasable pens. And so the reason why they’re erasable is it’s actually heat friction that erases them. So, yes, is it a clever idea to microwave the notebook to get rid of them, yes. But any notebook you microwave with a Friction pen on it will erase. So, that’s essentially nothing magical about the notebook.

**Craig:** I’m standing by Rawson and myself that you need both to be exciting.

**John:** So the microwave — I applaud them for using the microwave as a marketing hook.

**Craig:** Very clever.

**John:** I do salute them for that. So, this app that you point the camera at and it scans, that was another one of my One Cool Things. That was Scannable App from Evernote which does the same thing.

**Craig:** Oh really? Huh?

**John:** So, yes, that was a previous One Cool Thing, so we’ll have links to both of those there. It is a free app for Evernote that does the same situation. So, what is genuinely clever about what they seem to be doing is that you have multiple paths, so you can send it to Dropbox, whatever. So, I applaud them for that. But the $65, whatever that pledge tier is, any piece of people will work as well as the notebook. And the Friction pens you can get at Office Depot.

So, they’re making a lot of money on that. So, what you really essentially are paying for I think is the app, which has no small amount of engineering, so I applaud them for that, but I do find it fascinating that other previously dismissed things of mine packaged together are Craig’s One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Well, I guess, you know what? You’re jealous. [laughs] That’s the deal. You’re just jealous.

**John:** That’s what it is. I’m deeply, deeply jealous.

**Craig:** All I can say is this. When you said it, nobody cared. When these guys said it, they got $670,000. There’s some magic in their pudding, man. They got a flavor in there. It’s like a special flavor. I don’t know.

**John:** I’m going to say that adding microwave to One Hit Kill will clearly be the thing that would push it over the top.

**Craig:** You could try. I’m just saying.

**John:** I should try.

**Craig:** You should try.

**John:** My One Cool Thing this week is the new trackpad on the 12-inch MacBook and on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. So, what is remarkable about the trackpad now is that it seems completely unremarkable. Like you click on it, it’s like, oh, it’s fine. Until you find out how it’s actually working. Have you seen how they actually do the trackpad now?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not moving at all. It’s just using this haptic thing so that it seems like it’s clicking. But it’s not clicking.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not clicking. It’s all an illusion. So, if you go into an Apple store and you go to one of their computers, if you were to turn it off, go to shut down and actually turn the power off, and you tapped on where the trackpad is, like it doesn’t click at all. But the minute you turn it on, it clicks. And it’s all an illusion. And so essentially there’s a little motor underneath it that is creating the vibration that really makes your finger think that it is clicking.

And so because it is all an illusion, it can also create the illusion that if you push harder on it, it has a second level of depth and it clicks down deeper. And it is remarkable how well it fools your finger into thinking that it’s done something that it has not done at all. So, I would just encourage you to try it out next time you’re at the Apple store because the first time I was at the Apple store and I was trying one I was like, oh, this must not be the new one because this doesn’t feel any different. But it was completely different.

**Craig:** I’m waiting on that one just because I’m looking for them to release a new cinema display that works with their USB 3.0 port. How are you — like for instance, right now, you have to plug in your microphone and you also have to plug in power. It wouldn’t work with this?

**John:** It really wouldn’t work with this. And so I was debating getting the 12-inch. I tried typing on it. I hated it. And people I know who have used it, they’ve said like, oh no, the typing is fine when you get used to it, but no one loves the keyboard on it. Or very few people love the keyboard.

So, my travel computer was an 11-inch MacBook Air. And it was just too small. The hard drive was too small. The screen was too small. And I was making do and I decided to stop making due. So, I ended up buying the 13-inch MacBook Pro and it’s great.

**Craig:** That’s what I use.

**John:** I’m happy with it. It’s heavier, but it’s fine. And the screen is delightful. And I got the new trackpad, so I’m delighted.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s cool. All right. Awesome. That was a good show. Good show.

**John:** Good show. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro this week.

If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write to us on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Longer questions like the ones we answered this week, you should write into ask@johnaugust.com.

At johnaugust.com you will find the show notes for this episode and every episode. You will also find transcripts for every episode. So, thanks Stuart for getting those all edited because that is a huge part of his job every Thursday is getting those transcripts up.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you are listening to this on the website, you should also go over to iTunes and subscribe, because that helps people find out about our podcast and sign up themselves. You should also leave us a comment, because we love comments, because we’re human being. You can also leave notes on Facebook for us or on Twitter. Specifically on Facebook we’d love to know your thoughts about, A, do you have a great venue for hosting our 200th episode where we can livestream it; should we do more USB drives; which are the best episodes we’ve ever done? Facebook can be a great place to tell us about that, or you can email us.

You can also find all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. Some of my favorite episodes that you will find there are the bonus episodes, the ones that never got released to the main feed, especially like the Dirty Episode with Rebel Wilson.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Her story about the beret will make you never want to actually look at a beret the same way again.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was gorgeous.

**John:** It was gorgeously filthy.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, that was a fun one. So, if you’re a new subscriber to the premium feed and you haven’t listened to the Dirty show, maybe listen to the Dirty show.

Final plug for One Hit Kill. It’s at onehitkillgame.com if you want to see the artwork for that. And we will be back with you next week. Craig, have a good week.

**Craig:** You too, John.

**John:** See ya.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, 195: Writing for Hollywood without living there](http://johnaugust.com/2015/writing-for-hollywood-without-living-there)
* [Email us](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or [leave us a Facebook comment](https://www.facebook.com/scriptnotes) and let us know your favorite episodes
* [John’s 2004 blog post on producer credits](http://johnaugust.com/2004/producer-credits-and-what-they-mean) and [screenwriting.io on the television writer/producer pecking order](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-the-television-writerproducer-pecking-order/)
* [Superman vs. Batman? DC’s Real Battle Is How to Create Its Superhero Universe](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/superman-batman-dcs-real-battle-792190) by Kim Masters
* [See artwork from our new game, One Hit Kill, and play our mini-game now](http://www.onehitkillgame.com/)
* [Rocketbook: Cloud-Integrated Microwavable Notebook](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/rocketbook-cloud-integrated-microwavable-notebook) on Indiegogo
* [Scriptnotes, the 100th Episode](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode)
* [All our past One Cool Things](http://johnaugust.com/onecoolthings)
* [The MacBook’s new trackpad will change the way you click](http://www.macworld.com/article/2895758/the-macbooks-new-trackpad-will-change-the-way-you-click.html) on Macworld
* [Scriptnotes, Bonus: The Dirty Show with Rebel Wilson and Dan Savage](http://scriptnotes.net/the-dirty-show-with-rebel-wilson-and-dan-savage)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))